Small Town USA

yikes! i must be busy, it's been almost two weeks and no news.
i spent the first two weeks with the tasmanian devil and now i'm with bugs bunny.
what i mean to say is that doc 1 was very, very fast, with a touch of ADHD and a passion for life and, as he put it, the "gift of gab".
doc 2, on the other hand, is more laid-back, kinda relaxed, spends more time with his patients, and asks for consults far more than doc 1. both of them are great doctors, and i feel that i'm certainly benefitting from seeing the different styles.
it's hard to summarize all that i've learned since i've been here. i can say that i feel more comfortable with invasive procedures. i still don't really like doing shots or drawing blood or putting in stitches, but at least my hands don't shake like i have parkinson's anymore. i'm also much better at dictating (the transcriptionist said i was the best student they've had) and i'm starting to be able to organize my thoughts better during a patient encounter.
i'm learning a lot. i just wish i could relocate all of this good learning back to my home. i like my home. i miss my home. i miss my husband and my dog and my own bathroom. it's not that i'm weepy or sad about it, there's just a low-level uneasy feeling that something's not right. it's like the groundhog who saw his shadow. six more weeks of winter. *sigh*

hastings

I made it to Hastings. I think I would have to post at least twice a day to capture everything that happens, but I'll have to settle for whenever I can get to a computer. I have this afternoon off, hence the post.
I found a great coffee shop that has wireless internet access (and really good coffee slushies) within walking distance from the "dorm".
I put "dorm" in quotes for two reasons: First, I haven't lived in a dorm for eight years (how's that for making me feel old?) and I am still adjusting to the sharing of bathrooms, showers, etc. Second, when I did live in a dorm, I was in a monstrosity of a thing with many other people and a giant cafeteria, you know, a dorm. Here, there are six other people in the whole building. It's more like a big house, only with really small crappy bedrooms and even worse beds. Luckily I sleep like the dead, I don't know how I would survive otherwise. There are train tracks through the center of town and I don't know why but all trains apparently run in the middle of the night. And they all have to blow their whistles on the way past. The bed looks kind of like this (scroll down). But hey, it's a room, and it's free, and the dorm lady is very nice, and other than the trains it's quiet.
So, let's see, the doctors. When I got here yesterday (an hour early - it only takes two hours to get to Hastings), I had a hospital tour, moved my stuff in, and headed to the clinic. The clinic manager introduced me to everyone and we finally got to the doc I was supposed to be with (this was around 3pm), who told me to "jump on in", meaning I had to see patients and dictate notes. Ok, no problem. Then I had to go to a drug rep speaker/dinner because they had already told the drug rep that I would go. So I didn't get back to the dorm until 9. I'm going to learn a lot, though. The doc I'm with this week is so incredibly overbooked that he saw more patients in that two hours than we sometimes saw in a whole day in Fremont. But, like he said, if he didn't see them, what would they do? There just aren't a lot of options here. Everyone in the office seems very nice and accomodating. They're going to make me do blood draws and other things that I don't want to do but have to do to graduate. Just this morning I drew blood (well, I tried anyway), took off a cast, saw a joint injection in a knee, sat in on some diabetic education, and learned all about the lab. And the doc I was supposed to be with wasn't even here! (Wed are his day off).
I should get some research done during my "study afternoon". More to come.