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| I've finally grown up and joined the wonderful world of home ownership. Scary, isn't it?
It's been quite an adventure -- it all began when I came to Pittsburgh to start my residency. My roommate from college lived in town and she mentioned in passing that her next door neighbor was interested in selling her place in the past. Amazingly enough - she actually sold it to me!
The only problem is that she sold it "as is" -- meaning that I got the house after 3 college guys lived in here. Needless to say, they weren't the neat type. They left the place in a mess -- dried dog poop on the floor, food everywhere, a nasty refrigerator, a sink full of dirty dishes, old furniture, dirty clothes, and worse. And guess who got to clean it up??
On top of that, the price for painting the place was expensive ... so instead of hiring people, I got friends over to help out. We had a blast ... but it took 3 coats of paint (1 of primer, 2 of paint), the last one which was done by only 2 people. It was tiring, but worth it.
Finally, moving was another process entirely. I drove from Pittsburgh to NJ and we stayed up all night packing. The next morning, movers came to load the truck, then found out that the truck wasn't big enough, so we had to rent a UHaul. That night, I drove it all through the night to Pittsburgh to beat the movers here. We moved the entire day, then I drove back to Altoona to drop off furniture for my mom. The next day, I drove back to Pittsburgh. I was more exhausted from moving than I was from residency.
So a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this house, but at the end ... it's home! Enjoy these before and after pics of my place =).
The foyer entrance (before):
 
The foyer entrance (after):
  
Living room (before):
Living room (after):
Dining room (before):
Dining room (after):
 
Downstairs bathroom (before):
 
Downstairs bathroom (after):
 
Hall (before):
Hall (after):
Kitchen (before):
  
Kitchen (after) - my new stove has a GRILL on it! how cool is that?!!
 
Master bedroom (before):
Master bedroom (after):
 
Bedroom 1 (before):
 
Bedroom 1 (after):
  
Bedroom 2 (before):
Bedroom 2 (after):
 
Hallway (before):
Hallway (after):
Bathroom (before) - check out the tub - it was DISGUSTING!!!!!!:
 
Bathroom (after) - the tub had to be professionally cleaned with high power acids ....
 
I hope you enjoyed the tour! COME TO PITTSBURGH AND VISIT for the real tour =)
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| 1) Live close to where you work.
When I lived in NJ, I had to fill my gas tank up 1x/week -- at the minimum. When commuting up to Newark, I could gas guzzle much more. But now that I live relatively close to the hospital (at least I could walk during my 1st rotation), I only had to fill my gas tank 1 time over the first 5 weeks of being here. Cha-ching!
2) Wear scrubs to a Chipotle every other Monday.
Even if you not in the medical profession, don a white coat and a set of scrubs (or just scrubs) and walk into a local Pittsburgh Chipotle... where they'll give you the entire meal FOR FREE every other Monday! That's right, folks - burritos, guac, chips, drinks, the whole nine yards is entirely free. And if you're wearing civilian clothes (what are those again?), just flash an ID and you feel like you're stealing candy from a baby. Although this time ... it tastes so much better =P.
3) Go to a Chinese church
Where else can you get the same curry meat/vegetable combo with added spices on the side? It seems like every Chinese church that I've been to has the exact same curry recipe. It reminds me of home ... and gets me a cheaper lunch every Sunday =).
4) Work in a VA
Ever crave mystery-bbq meat sandwiches? or mystery vinegar/bbq veggie sandwiches? Then look no further! It seems like local VAs everywhere provide evening meals at 6pm for residents (as in doctors, not the people "living" at the VA). That's a free meal every day! Granted, they're not always edible, but if you're starving, anything counts.
5) Go into internal medicine
I have never been more well fed in my life. Except maybe when I was an infant and couldn't say no to my mom (let alone say the word no). I eat every meal, every day of the week. And my waistline shows the effects of it (can I go back to my starving surgery days, please??), but at least I save $$ when not having to buy lunch. Remind me why I chose surgery again? Oh right, instant weight loss program.
There you have it, folks! 5 money saving tips from a cheap resident. Oh yeah, and move to Pittsburgh. Groceries are more expensive, but rent is muuuuuuuuch cheaper. You win by being here! That or, COME VISIT!!
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| Life is good.
My last entry was incredibly depressing (sorry ... but thanks for all your encouraging comments!), and I have definitely seen the light. And I have to ask myself ... why in the world did I choose the life of a surgeon? I'm currently on internal medicine right now at the VA -- and while I have to work from 7-6pm and stay overnight, life is soooooo relaxed. I handle 4-5 patients at a time, and while I have to know everything about them, it's so much better to handle than the 50 from pediatric surgery. Yay for free time!
So, what have I been doing with said free time? Mostly wasting my time on the internet, but I've also had to have some fun. I've read 3 fiction books (so much for studying, eh?), hung out with new people and old friends, tried out a few different Pittsburgh restaurants, cleaned my apartment =P, tried Rock Band for the first time, and am headed to Dark Knight tomorrow!
And just 2 pics for fun:
The longest fireworks display that I have EVER seen! Apparently the owners of the fireworks company is based in Pittsburgh, so they donate the fireworks each year =).
Hanging out with AMY at Station Square!
Pittsburgh is actually a cool town ... once I have a chance to actually explore the place. and there are cool people here -- it's just a matter of getting time to spend with them =).
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| Interestingly enough, Xanga is one of the few sites that my
hospital doesn't block, along with eBay.
And even though I'm free to access either one of them whenever I want,
this is the first time in what feels like ages that I've been able to actually
sit down and update the xanga world (as small as it is) about my life. This is all thanks to the fact that I just
finished with my first month of intern year – where I was put on one of the
hardest rotations. The good news is that
it only gets easier from here! The bad
news is that I almost lost my mind two times over the last month.
Over the last month, I must have thought of a million
different ways to lead this entry off – which was entirely dependent on my
mood. I was originally bordering on the
edge of delirium, since I was post-call (during which I got a whopping 20 min
of sleep) and had to be awake the rest of the day to join the real world. Balancing work and life is more difficult
than I thought.
That said, I have really run the gamut of emotions this last
block. There were moments of happiness
when my mom came to visit on my birthday.
There was also happiness when I ran into people I knew from college and
hung out with them. Happiness also came in the form of hanging out with my
roommate from college and her husband. And
happiness (nerdily enough), when I was actually the first one to get a right
answer (as the only 1st year resident in the pack, I have to admit
that I enjoyed this moment – note, it says THIS moment, as in only one moment during
my last rotation). Or happiness was
going to a church where I felt welcomed (thanks to the small Chinese Christian
community) or happiness was going to a fellowship of brothers and sisters (when
I wasn’t the oldest!) and debating the topic of marriage (note: the discussion
was marriage – why bother?). A bunch of
residents were there =).
But, for all these good moments, I had a plethora of bad
ones. And needless to say, the bad ones
outweighed the good ones. Every day was
a constant reminder of how incompetent and inconsequential I really was. The toughest thing to swallow was my pride,
since we were coming from med school and were told that we were the best and
the brightest of students. After
matching at a top program, I thought I was ready for anything – I was ready to
be intellectually challenged by residency and to demonstrate how good of an
intern I could be. But what makes a good
intern? One who can do everything that
everyone asks them to do, no matter how menial the task – in other words, I
became a scut monkey for a year (scut is doing all the small stuff that no one
wants to take care of, but someone has to do – basically, thankless work). And everyday, there’s a moment where you’re
told what you did was wrong when you weren’t told what to do, or that you
neglected to do something that you weren’t told to do. We have to become mind readers, as
well. When juggling 50 inpatients (whom
you know nothing about because it’s your first day of intern year), 4 consults
that need to be seen, and 2 traumas waiting downstairs, it just feels like
there aren’t enough minutes in the day.
Forget hours, but minutes count.
Here’s a snapshot of my first night on call, which just
happen to be my first night of intern year.
The other junior resident handed me the phone and the trauma pager,
wished me good luck and left. It was
only noon. For the next 18.5 hours, I was the first line
of defense for our pediatric surgery team, and I didn’t even have an
orientation of where anything was located.
And sadly enough, I didn’t even have computer access yet to place
orders, and I couldn’t view any radiographs on the computer…which basically
made me completely useless. And when my
pager was activated (it became like a walking time bomb), the pages began. It was nurses asking what pain medication to
give, them wanting to know what do for a patient who spiked a fever, and nurses
telling me that a patient had arrived on a floor (and I had never heard about
them ever before). While these were
benign calls, they were constant, and I was making decisions on patients that I
had never laid eyes on before. I was
running around checking on patients after surgery, and I had no idea what type
of surgery they even had. I also ran to
level 2 traumas (which are of intermediate severity), but I was never told that
I also had to report to all level 1 traumas (which resulted in being yelled at
by the fellow on the service – the first time I was meeting him … way to make a
good first impression!). And when I went
to this level 1 trauma (the most severe) and was asked to put in an order for a
CT scan, it was rejected because I *still* didn’t have radiograph access
(thankfully my ordering access kicked in by late afternoon). Since I couldn’t put the order in, an
attending did it and “joked” with me that since my order couldn’t go through,
it meant that I needed to repeat intern year.
And as I was running around trying to take care of everything, I was
carrying a stack of papers that I originally had in my white coat (which got
blood on it, thanks to the traumas – so I had to take it off). One of these papers was a list of all the
patients on our service with my notes on it.
In the confusion of the entire night, I misplaced it at one point … and
it was then that I almost lost it. As in
almost broke down and cried and wanted to give up. I have *never* experienced that feeling
before in the hospital – I’ve been frustrated with people to the point that
I’ve broken down, but in a professional/academic setting?! Never.
It was a bad way to be introduced to intern year.
As the week wore on, I booked people for surgery, but I
never got to see the inside of an OR.
And sadly enough, I never learned where the cafeteria was located for a
full week because I never had a chance to sit down and eat. Talk about a crash diet. After the first week, though, things calmed
down a bit because more junior residents showed up (meaning, I didn’t have to
take call as often). While it was a
welcome change to have more people around, but that also meant that if I had a
chance to actually go to the OR, I was cutting out butt pus (or the nice way to
put it was a buttock abscess) or leg pus.
It was always about pus. Yum.
So, the first question that most people ask is – is
residency like Grey’s anatomy?! Yes …
and no. Yes, we wear scrubs every
day. No, they are not fitted
scrubs. Yes, we work with attendings.
No, they are not all gorgeous, I am not sleeping with them, and in fact, I
rarely see them (unless when we’re rounding in the morning and they angrily
demand what happened to their patient overnight when you’re the responsible
intern who caused a problem to their patient).
Yes, there is a chief resident over us juniors. No, my chief resident
wasn’t like Bailey – he was actually an incredibly nice guy who was helpful,
but overworked, which means he didn’t have much time to help me, but was
willing to try when he could (meaning the decisions were up to me). Yes, there are other junior residents with
me. No, I don’t spend the entire year
with them, none of them are interns like me, and I never see my fellow
orthopaedic interns (like Callie, but younger).
Yes, we get to operate. No, we
don’t do major cardiac or neurosurgeries, and sadly enough – I didn’t even get
to do orthopaedics during the last month.
Yes, we spend a lot of time in the hospital – there is no opposite side
to that. Yes, we hang out. No, we don’t all live in a house together (2
of the guys are married) and we don’t spend that much time hanging out with our
fellow residents – our schedules are too different. Overall – we’re nothing like Grey’s anatomy,
but I hope over the year, I’ll be able to spend more time with my fellow
residents. In my orthopaedic residency
(that’s predominately in a male dominated field), there are 5 girls out of 8
residents … wahoo! We spent the 4th
of July together, which was fun, except for the part where I had to be at the
hospital by 5:30am the next day. Sleep deprivation is a way of life.
All in all, residency is residency. For the first week, I constantly thought –
don’t they remember what it was like to be an intern? And then I remembered that I can’t complain
for working 90+ hours a week, because when my chief residents were interns,
they were working 120 hour weeks. And medicine
is a very hierarchical system – especially surgery. I have to bide my time before I’m on top of
the food chain. It’s just hard, because
in all honesty – medical students are treated better than junior
residents. They get to operate and see
cool things – we just have to run around and take care of things that no one
else wants to deal with. And in the
grand scheme of things – I’m learning.
I’m not learning what I thought I’d be learning, but I’m learning to be
more efficient, learning to manage patients better (from afar), and am learning
to reassure patients that surgery is not a scary option. As tough as this rotation was, I’m glad that
I started on pediatric surgery. When the
rest of the surgery team treated me badly, seeing cute babies and the faces of
kids made each of my nights go better. It’s
all about perspective, right?
At the end of the day, though, I’m privileged to be exactly
where I am, and I can’t forget that. As
I’m about to post up my ramblings on Xanga, I’m reminded of why I need to be
thankful by reading my past entries.
Perspective – that’s what I need to remind myself. | | |
| I rarely use Xanga as a medium to share personal thoughts ... since I mostly use it to share pictures and report fun events in my life. However, today was one of those introspective days that I felt like sharing.
I'm currently homeless. I took two trips to go to Pittsburgh to find a place, and yet, I still don't have anywhere to live. I was getting so frustrated during both trips to the point that I felt like giving up, because I figured that since God wanted me out there, He would provide a place for me ... and yet, with about 1 month before orientation for residency starts, I am still homeless.
While this may seem like the most trivial thing in the world (c'mon -- I still have a month to find a place! some people have a few days...), it opened my eyes to something greater. During this whole residency application process, I've constantly taken things into *my* hands. After about the 12 version of one's personal statement, it became pretty clear that I wanted "control" over my destiny and over my future. After all, isn't this what I've worked for over the last 6 years of my life?
On away electives, I constantly worked hard to please others, so that *I* would look good. During interviews, I was proud of what *I* accomplished, of the witty things that *I* said, and of the creative answers that *I* gave when asked deep/hard questions. In short, *I* put myself in charge of my life, while fooling myself into believing that I was actually completely trusting God with my life. God works for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28), so since I love Him, I would get the best, right??
Yes ... and no. What I think is MY best for me is not necessarily what's God's best for me. God DOES work for the good of those who love Him, but it's for those who have been called according to His purpose. If *I* were controlling my life, I would have ended up in Boston as my #1 choice (instead of #2 Pittsburgh). But God had to take away my wishes and dreams so that I would be stripped away of what I considered valuable and be left empty handed. It is only when I'm empty handed that God can come and fill me up. It is only then that I can be shaped and molded into who He wants me to be.
That said, it's hard to let go, but for an entirely different reason. As much as I don't want to admit this, I don't want to grow up. Sure, I may be "old" and be the g-ma of the group, but growing up and moving away from what's familiar and good is difficult. While sitting in the last CCF (of which I only started going to recently), I realized that leaving PCC will be harder than I thought it would be. There is a community at PCC that I love serving with and to serve -- it's a comfortable community that God is faithfully growing. It's home. I haven't had to uproot myself in a very long time, and now, I'm being forced to mature and act like a grown-up for a change. I've gotten so use to not being a grown-up that the change will be pretty interesting. Time to pay for a mortgage, a car, and now, the start of my student loans. It's time to face the world, let go of myself, and trust that by doing so, I will truly be made alive in God's hands.
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