I had my finger inside a patient's foot today.
Yes. INSIDE. In a gaping wound that was oozing pus. I stuck my finger inside a patient's foot AND HIT BONE. My preceptor kept telling me to stop being such a weenie and squeeze it harder. *hork*
I was going to come home and make some delicious food, like fresh rolls and egg salad for sammiches, or lime meltaway cookies. Problem is, every time I head for the kitchen, the only image that pops into my head is the oozing hole. This is not conducive to cooking. Or eating.
A few days ago, though, I made steamed pork dumplings. And had to face one of my weaknesses. If I were a cookery-themed super hero, this would be my greatest nemesis - secondary only to that bastard lemon.
Oh, don't laugh at me. You know those murderous tubes of dough strike fear into the hearts of the strongest men. Beowulf would hesitate before opening one of these monsters. I followed the instructions on the tube exactly - unpeel paper. Press on seam with spoon. Nothing happened.
AND THEN IT EXPLODED OFF THE COUNTER AT MY FACE.
Look. Look into the doughy face of EVIL.
If it had teeth, they would have latched into my jugular.
Anyway, I flattened out the individual rolls, filled them with a mixture of ground pork, water chestnuts, spring onions, and spices, then stuck them in a cobbled together steamer. I should probably invest in a real steamer, because while my tin foil on a pot worked, the dumplings ended up stuck together.
I can't eat the leftovers tonight, though. because my brain has been forever scarred by the fact that I had my FINGER IN A FOOT TODAY.
And here I went to pharmacy school because I didn't want to touch people.
And here I thought I'd post more during rotations because I'd have more time.
While I didn't have much in the way of at-home work on that first rotation, the ten hour+ days were sort of killer. And then I got sick, which has carried through to now.
I finished my hospital rotation with massive increases in both knowledge and self-doubt. There's no way I know enough to be a pharmacist at this point. My God, I'm going to be in charge of sick people and making clinical decisions without anyone to point out when I've done something stupid. Luckily I have almost a year left to cram in as much information and experience as I can.
The hospital rotation ended up being fairly awesome - I got to see an open heart surgery, make new IVs, was allowed to evaluate patients and make decisions (thankfully nothing I proposed doing would have directly led to anyone dying!). I'm now a week into infectious disease, which is shaping up to be a lot more work. It's great, though. This is the kind of work I want to be doing as a pharmacist.
The preceptor has me going on rounds right now though, which is utterly terrifying and makes me feel completely stupid on a daily basis. I'm taking the stance that this is good for me. Because this is only the first week, I still don't really know what I'm doing. So when the ID specialist turns to me and asks a question, pretty much all I can do is make fish faces while my brain short circuits. I'm hoping this will improve.
Not much else has been happening. I go to the hospital, run around all day, come back, study whatever it is I'm doing the next day, and then pass out. This weekend is another glorious three dayer, thanks to the 4th. I had hoped to make it up to Tahoe, but the traffic was pretty crazy and I didn't have anyone to go with. No, parents, I'm not going hiking alone, so I won't be eaten by bears/mountain lions/crazy mountain men. I listen to you sometimes.
This weekend has been more eventful than most, though. I went on a library adventure and ended up with a slightly ridiculous amount of books. I also went to the most awkward baseball game ever last night. Details another day, I'm still recovering from the social doom.
I also made bread today. I love everything about making bread - the smell, the feel of the dough, punching the crap out of it after the first rise . . . The only problem is with the crust. For some reason, every time I make bread in this oven, the crust is incredibly hard. I have no idea how to fix this. All of my ideas for making it softer were shot down by Cody, the more experienced bread maker, because they apparently would only backfire in the worst way possible. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I know I've said this many, many times before, but I really am going to try harder to post more. And maybe there will be an accordion post soon, as my roommate is on her off rotation and thus not around to be driven to insanity by my playing.
Or, what I do when I actually have some.
The last three years of my life have been spent either sitting in class, going to work, or studying. I have had precious little in the way of free time - or, rather, time not spent feeling guilty about not studying. Now that I'm working four ten-hour shifts, I get three day weekends. Glorious three day weekends. Three days of NOT HAVING TO STUDY ANYTHING.
This was going to be a long-overdue accordion post, but my roommate got home early and I didn't want to subject her to the horrors of accordion practice. We've only lived together for three weeks. I'd rather wait a bit longer before she loathes my very existence.
That said, I spent this weekend in a cooking fervor because it was snowing and I was too much of a wuss to go hike. Yes, snowing. I feel like I never left Idaho.
First, I made mushroom soup. I probably should have gotten more than one type of mushroom, but it was still pretty tasty. This recipe could use some tweaking though, so I'll be experimenting with this again. I might post the instructions once I'm satisfied.
Then I was hunting through my cookbooks and found a recipe for caramel pecan rolls. Note the total lack of pecans in the picture - this is because pecans are insanely expensive and I am poor. Someday, when I am a pharmacist and won't balk at paying $4 for a tiny bag of pecans, these rolls will be covered. Even without gold-encrusted nuts, these were pretty tasty.
-- slight interruption due to cooking disaster followed by airing out of the apartment --
I just attempted to make lemon chicken for a salad. I followed the recipe exactly but halfway through something went terribly, terribly wrong.
Our smoke detector is quite loud, in case you were wondering. And it seems that evil bastard citrus is still determined to be my cooking kryptonite. This is where I fall to my knees and scream "LEMOOOOON" at the sky a la William Shatner.
At least there wasn't any fire.
Look. Look into the doughy face of EVIL.
