Our 9 hour Tri-State Journey

7:30am: Departing Fenwyck Rd. heading East


10:30am Entering Pennsylvania (btw Pennsylvania is long and boring)


3:30pm YEA!!! Welcome to NY
(Missing is the photo of the scary gas station in Snowshoe, PA)


4:30pm ARRIVAL in Hopewell Junction, NY (can you tell we are really happy to be out of the car)

NEW YORK HERE WE COME!

In approximately 5 minutes, Caroline and I will be NEW YORK bound. Pics to follow!!

The Ford Rouge Factory Tour

Monday before I took my dad and Steph to the airport, we went to the Ford Factory where the F-150 trucks are produced. It was a great experience to have with my dad!! Thanks so much for everything while you guys were here. We had such a great time!!


At the end of the tour, they have the cars that have been produced at this factory in the past 100 years. We were trying to capture them in this picture...that's why we are the size of ants. My favorite was the Thunderbird.

The Toledo Mudhens

Sunday afternoon we went to the Mudhens baseball game at 5/3 Field in Downtown Toledo. The Mudhens won and Steve even caught a baseball with his bare hand that was headed for Stephanie's head.

Outside 5/3 field

Notice Caroline's beverage in the background (that's why she is smiling)

Scary, I know :)

Long Time No Post!

The whirlwird of the trauma service is now over and I finally have some time to breathe. I put in 315 hours in my 4-week rotation.....that is almost 80 hours/week!! The rotation went really well and I learned a lot. Now I am looking forward to the downhill part of things (at least in terms of hours)...next is Internal Medicine, OB/GYN, Family Medicine and then Pediatrics. BUT FIRST...I HAVE A MUCH ANTICIPATED (AND NEEDED) 2 week break. I started my break last weekend with a visit from my dad and his girlfriend Stephanie. We had such a great time!! Here are pictures from a BBQ we had Saturday with my dad, Steph, and some of our friends.


Me and Caroline (my friend/classmate)


Steve and Mike


Derek and Erin


Steve, Mike, Lindsay and Caroline


My dad could not get enough of the golf course we live on. He borrowed clubs from Steve's friend Derek so he could do some chipping.



My dad and Steph were especially excited about "Cornhole." It's a bean bag toss game that is very popular in the midwest (only the bags are filled with "unpopped popcorn")


An intense competitor

Spring has sprung!!

As much as I like the snow, I was so thrilled to have nice weather this weekend. I went for a run yesterday and today and aside from being incredibly out of shape, it was so enjoyable. Toledo has a bunch of nice metroparks along the muddy waterways in the area that have great trails to run on. Spring also equals the opening of one of my favorite places in Toledo....the GUN BARN, which Caroline and I enjoyed on Saturday. The place is actually called Mr. G's barn and it's a family run ice cream shoppe. However it's barn structure closely resembles this place in Pocatello that sells guns and so it has been appropriately nicknamed the Gun Barn or GB. Our personal favorite is the cone (vanilla ice cream for me and chocolate for caroline) with cherry dip. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I am out of shape.

In other news, I survived my first week of surgery. The hardest part of this rotation is getting up at 4am. I'm having a hard time disciplining myself to go to bed at 10pm (in order to get 6 hours of sleep). As you can see by this post, I'm already late. I got to scrub in on a lot of surgeries this week. The OR is a very intimidating place for a newbie. For the most part, I feel like my hands are just in the way. However, I make a very good human retractor, suctioner and knot tie cutter. For those that haven't heard the story, I passed out on my first case in the OR. Thankfully, things got much better as the week progressed and by Friday I was elbow deep in intestines for 4 hours without the slightly hint of lightheadedness. I did mostly general surgery last week because the trauma service was slow, but I have a feeling there will be more trauma cases this week because the weather is getting nicer.

Trauma Surgery!

Today was my 2nd day of trauma/general surgery. I was assigned to trauma this month but since the past couple of weeks have been relatively slow in the trauma world in Toledo (lucky for the general population, unlucky for me), I'm making friends with the surgery residents to get in on as many general surgery cases as possible. I'm assisting on a laparoscopic cholecystectomy (i.e. gallbladder removal with camera) tomorrow afternoon and am very excited/nervous. Yesterday was pretty slow day and I was a little uneasy about how this rotation was going to go, but today was much better. I did my first trauma consult, made friends with the residents by offering to do one of their general surgery consults (unfortunately for me, it was a consult for a thyroid nodule/mass - not one of my "areas of expertise" - haha like I have any at this point), and did a progress note and some admission orders on a trauma patient that came in last night. In a previous post while I was in the ER, I said something about how I would rather start a shift earlier in order to get off earlier. I may be slightly retracting that statement - this morning I had to be at the hospital (a 20min drive) by 5:20-5:30 this AM for pre-rounds which meant I was kicked out of bed by Steve before 4:30am. That may be a little to early for my liking. Anyways, there's an update and I will try to post something tomorrow about the surgery.