Things are good

I am alive! I feel like a normal human again. After having this last weekend off and catching up on sleep and then starting my week of clinic this week was just what I needed. I feel like I have to time to enjoy life - I can do other things besides sleep, drive to work, work, drive home and then sleep. I think there may be someone else who is happy that I am home more...

~Ashley

A Birthday and Recent Happenings

I want to wish a Happy Birthday to the classiest lady I know, my Grandma Frost! She is 90 years young today. My family got together today for brunch after church today to celebrate. I wish I was back in Minnesota so I could have been there to help celebrate but I was celebrating in spirit with them :) I'll be seeing her this next weekend at Hillary's wedding! I can't wait!!

This weekend was my first full weekend off since starting residency and it has been very therapeutic for me. I got off work at 7pm on Friday, got home around 7:30ish and I think I was sleeping by 8:15pm - ha - and I was out for the count. I didn't wake up until the wee hour of 6:30 Saturday morning. It is kind of sad to say that 6:30am is considered sleeping in but *sigh* it is, and it felt really good to sleep that long. I'm not sure what I did Saturday between waking up and then taking my first nap at 11:00am for a whole three hours - it was glorious!! Oh I remember, I woke up Saturday and I went to Target just to feel like a normal person to see if I could find some curtains for our house. I found some curtains but I wasn't completely sold on them so I walked around the entire store and picked up some other needed essentials {shampoo, deodorant, toilet bowl brush - please don't judge, yes we've been in our house for a month and yes, our toilets need to be cleaned but in my own defense I'm never here to use them anyways -ha!- so they aren't that dirty}. Then I went home and slept for those three glorious hours.

Saturday afternoon and just  caught up on life on the world wide web :-) It was fantastic! Then Saturday night I met up with two of my three fellow interns for dinner. We went to Pitch which is a coal-fire pizzeria. If we overlook that parking was terrible and that our "15 minute wait" for a table turned out to be an hour and a half, it was a really good time. It was nice to hang out with my co-interns and see how their lives are going compared to mine. According to my dinner conversations with them, I'm right on track. Yes, I can honestly say being an intern is not fun and as one of my upper-levels told me on Friday "being an intern in July is even worse," and boy is it! But I'm surviving, I'll get through this. Jake {who is the only Y chromosome in the program} wasn't able to make it to dinner with us.

The interns: Morgan, Maricela and Me

Not only was it nice for the three of us to get together, but it was nice for our husbands to hang out and get to know one another. They'll probably hang out without us in the future. I'm looking forward to the next time all of us have the evening off so we can hang out again. It is so hard to be an intern and feel so lonely. Even though these girls are going through the same thing as I am, I never get to see them because we are always on different services and working different shifts and having different sleep schedules *sigh* It will get better.

We stayed out till 10:30pm which is WAY past my normal bedtime {but since I had the ability to take a super long nap earlier in the day, I was able to stay up}. Once we got home though, it was straight to be for me. I slept 10 hours last night! Ten whole hours! It was awesome. Prior to this weekend and since the start of residency, I had only gotten eight hours of sleep on two occasions. I love to sleep. I've really been missing it these past few weeks. This morning, Ryan and I got to work sanding the last few dresser drawers. Yep, we are still working on refinishing the same dresser and night stand that we were working on a month ago. But the sanding is complete on those two pieces and they are ready to be stained. Lucky for me, I think this next week will be a much more low-key week as I'm scheduled to be in clinic. And then not to mention I have a week of vacation which starts after I finish clinic on Thursday! Hillary's getting hitched and we are heading north. I remember when I requested time off for Hill's wedding. I just asked for a couple days but since we are required to take one week of vacation every three months, they gave me an entire week. I remember feeling a little bad that I was taking a week off right at the beginning of residency, but guess what, I don't feel bad anymore. Not after working 260 hours in 22 days. I'm more than ready for a week off! Woo hoo, it's gonna be a fun time!!

Here are some pictures I took off my cellphone this morning. Just thought I would post them.

I can't remember if I posted this one or not, but this is Zoey not wanting Ryan to go down to Baton Rouge.

I wonder if people ever regret getting personalized license plates. At least they aren't as permanent as tattoos!

Cooper and Zoey sleeping and being lazy.

Here's Cooper - the Halloween Cat! And Zoey....I'm not really sure. Maybe she is practicing the new craze called planking.

Cooper still loves air conditioned air!

Zoey usually waits at the top of the stairs for me to get home.

A rare moment of down time while on L&D nights, just hanging out, watching the monitors.

This was me attempting to sleep during the day while I was working nights. Cooper must have missed me because he was glued to my hip most days when I was sleeping.

Zoey also cuddled in during the day while I was trying to sleep. They must have missed me during the night as they couldn't let me out of their sight when I'd get home in the morning.

So, that's about all that's new in my life. I'm looking forward to doing a little celebrating and hanging out with my family this next weekend!

~Ashley

All Wrong

Ever feel like you can never do anything right? To say this sums up my day would be a gross understatement. Today it was....sign this....don't sign that....order this....you can't order that, you have to order this.....don't take your hand off the perineum.....don't cap that needle.....cap that needle.....you're fumbling with that suture....keep tension on that cord, but not too much tension, see like this (rip)...oh BEEP there went that umbilical cord off the placenta....follow this patient.....do this....do that....evaluate this patient.....are you done yet.....sign these....call here.....get this consent.....oh pharmacy called you forgot to write po on your tylenol order....run here and drop this off.....oh by the way, don't take your hand off the perineum.....take the pager.....do this....do that....hold it like this.....do it this way....no don't do it that way....oh pharmacy called......are you watching those FHTs....hold the syringe this way.....(next person) no hold your syringe this way......*you're* not doing my sons circ, are you?.....eat lunch now.....do this....no, you're doing it the wrong way.....UGH! I can't do anything right. Am I really doing it the wrong way or am I just not doing it your way?!

I literally think I'm looking forward to having an entire weekend off more than anything right now....well time off and sleep. You through my sleep deprivation in on top of all of this and it makes it like 10 times worse.

It has been one of those days. I'm not having fun and honestly feel like 'what the heck did I get myself into!' Ugh, I hate this feeling. I honestly hate it. Even though quitting seems like the thing to do, I know that this too shall pass. I just hope that it passes soon.

Oh, just calculated my hours. So far, during my 21 day history of being a resident, I've work 247 hours....no wonder I'm tired.

Off nights and back onto days!

For the past week, I've been working night on L&D. Working nights is hard to do. Your body gets all wacked out and doesn't know when it should be sleeping or when it should be signaling you to eat. But I made it. I made it through one week of nights. I think I saw Ryan for a total of 30 minutes this past week and that was because he got off work early and made it home just as I was packing up my stuff to head in for the night. Sleeping during the day is difficult. I definitely need to work on getting some black-out curtains for the bedroom so my body somewhat thinks that it's night time when I'm sleeping in the bright light of day. Even though the adjustment to working nights was difficult, there were several things I enjoyed. The hospital is quiet - people are not hustling to get everywhere, etc. But on L&D, nights can get ca-raz-ee! The good thing about that - if it's busy, you're busy and the night goes by fast. If it's slow, you can sleep and then the night goes by fast :) It's all relative, I guess. I'm back working days for this next week and I'm REALLY looking forward to this next weekend as it's my first full weekend off!!! It's going to be awesome but I'm guessing by the end of the week I may look something like this...

Oh Coop, I love you - even if you continue to lay on the couch cushion making it permanently deformed :-)

~Ashley

My life lately.

This is what my life looks like as of this past week. I'm on OB nights. Some of the nights have been good. Some of the nights (like last night) have been crazy busy.

I'm catching on to this whole residency thing. I'll survive even though someways I think I won't. 

My shift ends at 8ish Friday morning at which time I'll go home and sleep for a bit but not too long because I have to sleep Friday night so I can wake up bright and early and be back at 6ish Saturday morning to do it all over again.

Oh how I am looking forward to a weekend off to spend sometime with Ryan. *sigh*

On being a new resident.

Where have the last two weeks of my life gone?! Since starting residency I've barely kept my head above water. I've come to know a whole new level sleep deprivation. Ryan was gone for my first week of residency which was both good and bad. Good because I was literally sleeping or at work and wouldn't have had a lot of time to spend with him, but bad because I was here all by myself trying to adapt to being an intern. Agh, I have to tell you. I am exhausted. I was the lucky intern who was scheduled to work the first weekend and the 4th of July. By this past Tuesday I was worn out, felt like I had zero time to do anything but work and sleep. Let me tell you about sleep - well, I didn't get much sleep around the 4th. Neighbors shot off fireworks until 2am for nearly five days straight. That made for really early mornings when the alarm would go off at 4:45am. Slowly I'm learning my way in the world of residency. It's coming along. At least I know where the bathroom is now. {Crisis averted!}
~Ashley

There's a new doc in town!!

Big news day here are the Thorson house :)

In Ryan's news: he is officially a doctor!!! He past his PhD dissertation defense this morning. A lot of work went into his final research project and I am more than elated to see it all pay off and finally be over with. Ryan's graduate school experience has been a bumpy roller coaster ride with unfortunately many more downs than ups. I'm just so happy that it ended on a high note! Ryan is still down in Baton Rouge/New Orleans right now tying up some loose ends and visiting our friends Nat and Quyhn. I'm excited for him to come home so we can celebrate :) So proud of him!

In Ashley's news: today was my first official day as a doctor! It went great! I got up early after not getting a bunch of sleep. I wasn't really nervous for my first day so much as I was nervous about Ryan's defense. All of the residents in the program are fantastic. I could not ask for a better bunch of people to work with. I had dinner with the residents who are a year ahead of me last night with the other incoming interns. They are just a great group, plain and simple. I feel very taken care of :) This morning I arrived at the med center bright and early at 6:30am {I'm going to have to get used to not sleeping in anymore :( } I am currently orientating on the gyn service. It was a pretty low key day which was a great way to start. The craziness for me will be this weekend when as I'm covering labor and delivery. Ready or not...here I come :)

Today has been a great day {and super hot and humid...99 degrees as I was driving home at 6:00pm}! I feel super blessed!

~Ashley