We Are The Thorsons: October 2011

I know that it has been forever since I've posted an update. These past two weeks have been kind of brutal. I can't believe that it was only two weeks ago that I took my boards....it seems like months ago. Lets back up to the week before I took my boards. I had the week off from work, a vacation week of sorts. Not really a fun vacation but a necessary one. I spent part of my time cleaning and organizing the house {although if you would see it right now you would have never guessed I did clean *sigh*}. One of the big organization tasks I tackled was the office. The office was the one room that still really wasn't unpacked from the move down here. Everything sort of just got thrown into the room. There was no organization, just chaos. Here is proof... The before pictures...

I don't have any after pictures. But it looks a lot better now. I moved things around. Took the winter coats out of the closest and put them in the coat closest. I bought rubbermaids and organized the closest. Now I can actually find things and I feel way more organized. I'll eventually try to get some after pictures posted. Not only did I tackle the office, I also cleaned and organized the basement, the garage, the downstairs and the kitchen. It was a lot of work but I was having a hard time focusing on studying so I used cleaning as my way to focus. I'd study for two hours, clean for an hour, study for an hour, clean for an hour, etc.

The Friday before boards, Ryan got home and told me he was taking me on a date. I was so excited to get out of the house for a bit - away from studying, away from cleaning, a breath of fresh air. It was nice.

Ryan got tickets to the UNO hockey game. UNO just joined the WCHA hockey conference so they will be playing the Gophers, Duluth and Mankato this year. We are looking forward to those games. This game was against some team I had never heard of but it was a good date night none-the-less.

On our way downtown for the game.

The tickets were "Club Lounge" tickets which met that we had servers that would bring us food in our seats and Ryan could get larger beers so the same price as the smaller sized beers offered to those not in the club. We were living the life - lol.

The leaves started to change, fall is certainly here...

Ryan got his diploma in the mail!! Woo hoo! It's official! He's got his PhD and he's got the proof!

LSU sent him his diploma and his hood. He had to try it on for size. Nice graduation picture I would say :-)

There it is in black and white, he's a Doctor of Philosophy!

During my week of vacation I spent a lot of time snuggling with the kiddos...

Zoey had just gotten a bath before this picture was taken. Here I am trying to love her up with a little kiss.

Ryan got some computers delivered to the house to work on for his parents. Cooper claimed them ASAP.

The majority of these picture were taken on my cellphone. This one is extra blurry since I had to zoom in to get the picture.

All of the above was prior to taking my boards. Monday morning of my boards, I woke up early to ensure I had enough time to wake up prior to the test and eat a good breakfast. I got to the testing site early and began the check in process. Taking these exams has gotten more strict over the years. When I took Step 1, all I had to do was show my ID and sign in/out when I was going into the computer room and leaving to take breaks. When I went to take Step 2, I had to show my ID and scan my fingerprint in addition to pulling out the front pockets on my jeans. Well for Step 3, it was really strict. In addition to showing my ID, scanning my finger print and signing my name every time I went in and out of the computer room, I had to take off my sweatshirt, pull my pant's front pockets out, I had to put my hands in my back pocket and move them around AND I had to be wanded down {front and back} with a metal detector. Man, what some people will do to steal exam questions. All I could think was, I've come way too far and have spent way too much money on school and these exams to throw it all away by sneaking in a camera to the testing site to take pictures of questions. And not to mention each testing cubicle is monitored via video recording. They really mean business.

After I got home after the first 8 hours of testing, Zoey was hanging out in a new spot that I have never seen before...

I'm not sure why she chose the shower to lay down and take a nap in but this is where I found her.

The second day of Step 3 was long as well. By the end of the 7th hour, I was more than ready to be done. Clicking the final "submit" button was kind of bittersweet - exciting because I'm finally done but so nerve racking at the same time. Only time will tell but hopefully within the next month I'll have my test scores back.

After I finished day 2 of Step 3 I wasn't able to go home and relax :( I had to go into the hospital and prepare for my gyn pre-op case which was the next day at 7am. I spent a couple hours going over the surgical cases for the following week and getting ready to present. Not exactly what I wanted to be doing after finishing 16 hours of testing but I guess that's the name of the game.

Today is the first day that I've had any time off since finishing Step 3. Ugh, these last two weeks have been borderline awful. I hit the ground running 6am on Wednesday and things didn't slow down until yesterday. *sigh* Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of my test week were so busy, especially Thursday and Friday. Both days started at 6am and didn't end until 8-830pm. And then I was on call Saturday and Sunday and these two call shifts were call shifts from you know where. L&D was a cluster on Saturday - tons of delivers, tons of triage patients and tons of pages. Oh man what I would have given to have had to OB pager break during my shift. Oh well, no such luck.

On the up side, Saturday night I got to do my first c-section as the primary surgeon - skin to skin as some put it. It was awesome! I didn't leave L&D until 830pm that night but getting to primary my first section was totally worth it. My intern classmates and our class advisor were getting together for drinks and dinner Saturday night, so I left L&D and went and met up with them for a while. It was nice to hang out with them outside of work but honestly all I could think about was sleep as my shift started at 6 bells the next morning.

As I was driving into work Sunday morning, I prayed for a less chaotic day. It's not that I don't like to work, but when you work 14+ hours and don't even have time to go to the bathroom or eat any food, it is not fun. Well, unfortunately Sunday continued what I left behind on Saturday :( It was another call shift from you know where. I was tired. I was hungry. I wanted to drop the pager in the toilet {but that would be assuming that I actually had time to go into the bathroom where I could even have a toilet to drop it in, which I didn't}. The pages were driving me nuts! Most of the time pages don't bother me. But the pages were relentless and half the time I felt like I was having to defend our treatment management to the nursing staff. I don't know what it was but some people wanted to argue about everything that day and I think that's what made it so difficult. I did have a 5 minute episode where I escaped to the resident lounge where I proceeded to bawl my eyes out and then I felt much better. Not only that but my chief stuck up for me against one of the nurses which made me feel better too. On the up side...I survived and I'm a better/stronger resident from making it through these two shifts.

Proof that I attempted to eat lunch on Sunday. Unfortunately this is what my lunch looked like over 3 hours after I purchased it :(

This brings us up to this past week. I started Monday morning off not feeling refreshed at all {not the best way to start off a week to say the least}. This week was busy. There were several nights that I came home and fell asleep by 730 or 800pm just to wake up at 430am and do it all over again. *sigh* I just keep telling myself that this is only a phase and that it will get better. I had to work again this weekend. The Saturday night to Sunday morning shift. I got to sleep for a few hours which was so nice. I can not lie, I prayed and prayed and prayed the entire drive in Saturday evening to not let me have a repeat of the weekend prior. I'm thankful to report that it was NOTHING like last weekend. Ahh, the trials and tribulations one goes through on their road to becoming a doctor. I'll get there, eventually, and then all of this will be worth it.

These past two weeks have felt like two months. I'm glad they are over. I'm looking forward to this next weekend when my parents and Kristin are coming down to visit. I'm so excited. This next weekend will be my first day off in almost 20 days. Wow - what a nutty life I live. I have to say that I wouldn't be able to survive weeks like these past couple weeks without Ryan. If it wasn't for him, I'd not have any clean clothes and I'd be living on unhealthy fast food most likely. Thanks Ryan for all the support - these crazy shifts should get better in the coming years when I don't have to carry the pagers anymore :) I tallied all of my hours from these past two weeks. The week of my board exam I worked 76 hours, this past week I worked 83 hours and I already have 8 1/2 hours in from this week! Here's to being an intern!!!

I got home this morning around 900am and then slept until 100pm. I was able to wake up and hang out with Ryan a little bit before he went to his hockey game. Actually having some energy was a nice change for me this afternoon. The weather was beautiful today - a wonderful fall day. I took advantage of the day light {didn't realize I took daylight for advantage until after I went over 5 days straight without seeing it during my crazy past two weeks} and got outside to clean up the back yard. We got a frost sometime this past week {I'm not exactly sure when it happened - ha!} and the tomato plants bit the dust. So I pulled them up and pulled some weeds too. Our tree in the back yard is over it's peak color and starting to turn brown, but it is still pretty...