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.

Welcome Home

Since graduation at the end of May, it's been a busy couple of weeks. We spent a little time saying goodbye in Loma Linda, and then packed up a big truck and said farewell to my hometown of the past four years.

We made the trek New Mexico, a drive we did in two days with a stop in Flagstaff, AZ with some invaluable help from John's mom. 

Then after one day of unpacking, I hopped on a plane to Oregon to see my last sister graduate from high school. She was a valedictorian and she's headed far away to the East Coast for college in the fall, and I'm very proud of her. 

EEEE congratulations Nicola!

We went on a gorgeous hometown run.

My sisters are way faster than me. 

The view from the house.

And Mom made vegan waffles. She's the best, thanks Mom. 

Following my weekend trip to Oregon, I returned to my new house in New Mexico and kept getting settled in. John's job started last week already, but I had a few extra days, so I'm finally feeling unpacked and ready to start work. I think I've had enough free time, I'm glad orientation starts tomorrow. 

Our house is a little older, but it's nice and I think we're going to be happy here. 

It hasn't been entirely flawless though. One of my first days here I was shaving my legs with a toe on the little soap ledge attached to the side of the shower. (Ladies know what I'm talking about, when I tried to describe the situation to John he didn't understand me.) Anyway I was not being forceful with it, but all of a sudden in the middle of my shower, the ledge along with all the surrounding tiles tumbled off of the wall and into the tub. The property management company is being good about fixing it, they're just replacing all the tile, so there's a guy named Ernesto and a lot of crazy hammering and crashing going on in my bathroom right now.

A run I took recently here. Those are the Sandia mountains and this is a long running/bike trail that's near our house. 

It's hard to know what's in store in the next three years (minimum) here, but I'm enjoying it one day at a time.

I'm an M.D.!

The past four years have been great and crazy and I feel so blessed to have now graduated with my M.D.

I'm so grateful to everyone who's been there with me the whole time, for 12 years as I've been dreaming about this and going to school and figuring out who I am. I never would have landed here without you all. 

I started this blog during my second year of medical school and it has been a great resource to me to use another part of my brain, learn from others and create a record of this great time in my life. 

I'm looking forward to continuing as I go through my residency in Pediatrics.

I've just moved to New Mexico, so more on that later. We were without internet for our first week in this new place so I'm enjoying finally feeling settled.

And to all my friends now moving into other parts of the country, I MISS you, but you're doing great and I'm so proud of you.

What I Ate Wednesday: Work Day

It's What I Ate Wednesday!

Check it out at Peas and Crayons.

I'm on a basic science elective, so I've been packing lunches but have a pretty fair amount of time at home.

Breakfast: A favorite old staple. Banana peanut butter oatmeal. Black tea with milk. Did I mention I gave up coffee? I can't remember if I talked about that. I'm sure at some point I'll write a post on that on its own.

Lunch: Packed to go. Asian salad: baked tofu, edamame, cabbage, lettuce and carrot with a sesame soy ginger dressing. Apple.

For afternoon snack, trail mix. I was pretty hungry and had kind of a lot of this. 

Dinner: Pasta bowl. That's whole wheat rotini with a couple Trader Joe's vegan meatballs, broccoli, carrots, marinara and topped with nutritional yeast.

And that's What I Ate.

My food lately has been not what I would like it to be - this is an example of a pretty good day, but I've been eating lots of grease and sugar lately and I'm paying for it in the way I feel. And the way my jeans fit. 

Those graduation [May 26!] robes aren't exactly figure flattering, so here's hoping I can feel a little more myself by then.

Run Through Redlands 2013: Stubborn Wins

I was not prepared to run a half marathon, yet I was registered and I decided I wasn't going to let it beat me - so this Sunday I ran the Run Through Redlands.

I last completed this race 2 years ago - it has a lot of elevation change so it's not easy, but I enjoyed it. See this post for my race recap from 2011.

I've been doing short runs maybe twice a week for the past 8 weeks, between getting a couple of colds, and having a couple rotations with unexpectedly long hours I did not stick to training as I intended, so going into the race I just planned to run for the first half and then walk the rest.

Then the night before I was about to go to sleep and I thought, "What if I can run the whole thing?" And by the time I started running I knew that the tiny little competitive side of me wasn't going to let me walk it.

In the morning I fueled up with a mini banana smoothie, tea and a whole wheat waffle with peanut butter.

And I noticed that my shoes were all paint spotted from the Neon Run. 

 So by start time I was all set to go.

 Many thanks to my most handsome supporter. He brought a book.

Granted, my pace was similar to those who were walk/running but I surprised myself and it felt awesome. The views were gorgeous and it was really cool because over half of the course was on roads I ran frequently in my training. We ran right past my apartment!

Look Mom a medal! 

After orange wedges at the finish line [the orange groves here are famous], we stopped by the store so I could get some coconut water. I picked the chocolate flavored one. It was awesome.

Later in the day we went to Baja Fresh and I got a bowl with black beans. 

And then I fell asleep for a while. I should be napping more while I still have my weekends.

And for dinner a Mediterranean style plate with pita, hummus, falafel, samosa, and tabbouleh. I didn't really love all of it, but it was pretty good. 

And so that was my Sunday. 13.1 miles and a couple piles of food.

This week I'm continuing my Basic Science elective in pathology, working on expanding the materials for the second year students for next year. It's kind of hard because it's been a long time since I've studied it from that perspective, but it's good review.

I don't have any plans for my next half marathon since I don't really know my schedule after the end of May, but I'm sure there will be another sometime soonish - likely in New Mexico. 

The Neon Run San Diego

We spent last weekend in San Diego having a great time with some friends and John's parents.

Happy Birthday Arisa and Bradie!

Although it's never a bad idea to head to San Diego for the weekend, I had another particular reason to be there - The Neon Run. I thought it was really fun, there was plenty of paint.

There were some rumblings that things weren't quite right for the Phoenix one - too dark, not enough paint etc.

I'm told this race was an improvement, so that's great. It was still quite crowded, and I wished I'd known how few blacklights there would be, because I would have gone more "glow in the dark" with my attire. Most of the race we weren't really flourescent-ing. Still, people got really into it and it was cool to see all the wild neon costumes. We got our entrance with a Living Social deal.

I ran with two of my classmates - hi ladies!

We didn't stay long for the dance party at the end - mostly because we were super hungrypants. So instead we went and scared an IHOP. There were lots of other racers there, it was good to see I wasn't the only one with an Oompa Loompa face.

Note the beautiful bronze-y glow to my skin.

It's my first colored or dressed up 5k - most of the others I've done were simple ones just for charity. It was really fun and makes me want to find another wild one to run soon. 

I still have orange paint in my ear. Worth it.