Settled In

The Children's Hospital.

We moved here to Albuquerque over a month ago and I think it's because of the long work days that it feels like even longer. I'm now a Pediatric Resident and John got a job as a Structural Engineer at a firm here in town.

All the free time of the fourth year of medical school is long gone and being a Resident is starting to feel real.

For my first rotation I worked on the Hematology-Oncology service and it's hard to believe that month is already behind me. It was a busy month full of all kinds of new challenges of learning the new hospital and being tested emotionally as I figured out my new role and dealt with lots of remarkable kids with cancer and blood disorders.

The schedule of the month was pretty great in that I had all but one of my weekends off. This let me spend plenty of time with John and getting finished settling in here. The weekday hours were pretty typical for inpatient, usually from 6:30 AM - 5:30 or 6 PM every day. I had great senior residents who did their best to make sure we got out on time or early.

During the month we got a chance to explore the area, and we made an addition to our family:

This is Luna!

We adopted her from the shelter here and she's about 2.5 years old. She's already house trained and we've had no trouble with her chewing things up - it's been a remarkably easy transition. She does like to pull John's socks out of his drawer and carry them around. We'll find them in the oddest places.

Albuquerque is a very dog friendly place so we often take her with us when we go out and walks/hikes are her favorite thing in the world.

Satellite Coffee is the local favorite coffee shop. On the day before my first real day in the hospital we went. I was nervous and cracked open the hematology-oncology section of one of my books. It's much easier to study in the context of the real patients I see, but the outing did help. Maybe it was the coffee.

We also had a great time checking out the local baseball park with some of John's coworkers. The Isotopes are a AAA team that feeds into the Dodgers. I'm not that big a fan of baseball as sports go, but it's fun to go and hang out in the local community. 

Some nights of the week they have concerts at the Botanical Garden or Zoo. We went to one with Max Gomez and had a great walk around the garden. 

In other news, I have portable access to all my internet needs because John won me an iPad Mini in a raffle:

He came home from a conference and told me he got me a little present. I assumed it was a hot air balloon trinket or something because that's where his conference was held. He then wrapped it up, hid it and I had to find it. All the buildup was worth it because it's been really useful. I use it at works to look up labs etc. while we're rounding and of course it's great for blog reading, note taking and playing games. (I'm so stuck on Level 135 of Candy Crush Saga).

Now for this month I'm working in the Urgent Care. There's a rare Saturday shift and sometimes late clinic until 7:30 instead of 5 PM, but I have most weekends and don't start until 8 instead of 6:30 like last month. Since I cross-covered nights last weekend yesterday was my first real day off in 12 days - that certainly won't be nearly the longest stretch in the years to come, but I was ashamed to find how tired I got and Saturday came like such a blessing.

We went hiking in the Sandias yesterday and it was beautiful. We've been wanting to go all month but it's been closed because of fire danger. We finally had some crazy rain storms so they opened it up. There's an amazing view of the whole city. Of course Luna loved it.

We've also been meeting new people and trying to find a church. It's been a transition for us both professionally and geographically, so the settling in still feels ongoing. 

Thanks for reading such a long update post. I big "We Miss You" to those of you we moved away from.

Know anything about Albuquerque? I'd love to hear about your experiences or ideas.