It's May!

As I started this month, I thought a lot about countdowns. The countdown to my vacations. The countdown to the end of Intern year. And the countdown to finishing this ridiculously hard and yet, at then end of it, extremely educational stretch of 13 days without break. I know that many of my friends and fellow residents have worked much more than that, and maybe I am making a bigger deal of it than it needs to be, but it is actually spelled out in our duty hours requirements that we should only work 80 hours per week (I worked 83) and that we should be relieved to have mandatory day off every 6 days that we work. But reality and requirements are not often the same thing, and reality was that someone needed to be on call and work night shifts and weekends while my fellow residents took care of babies, attended weddings, worked on their marriages, and attended conferences. I cover for them, just as they will cover for me when I go to China to see my grandmother, and take care of her in the precious time that we have together.

I'm back on internal medicine this month, which means managed insanity. Insane schedules, insane work hours, and insanely noncompliant patients. While I completely understand autonomy for the patient, I am also somewhat perplexed sometimes why patients who refuse all medical care come to the ER and want to be admitted to the hospital. There are cheaper ways of obtaining 3 meals a day and an air conditioned room with crappy television service.

Knitting has been interesting, as I start working on the Fairy Hill Shawl!

I'm excitedly waiting for my beads to arrive. I have the perfect yarn that I bought at Stitches Midwest 2016 last summer, from Dramatic Knits, in their Cherry Blossom Colorway. It screams spring in the most polite manner, and will be elegantly paired with citron colored beads. It will be the perfect thing to work on during the long plane rides, though at the same time, perhaps sleep deprivation is leading me to insanity, as the thought of hundreds of tiny beads scattering throughout a trans-Pacific airliner jet when we hit turbulence sickens me to my stomach.  Stayed tuned!