Mud-Bucket BoZo

Here she is, the mud bucket herself.... the other day we had her out in the rain and she decided to roll in the mud. Several times. This be the aftermath!

Not much to say

We're 9 DPO today (or 10? not sure...) and have not tested. We don't plan to until Thursday at the earliest, and even then we might not. It's Megan's 25th birthday and we want to enjoy it, and what would make it better than a BFP? Sadly, a BFN would definitely make it worse, so what can you do? Anyway, she's not saying much about how she's feeling and isn't really obsessing, which is healthy, so we'll just have to see what happens.

As for me, I'm post-call after my first Trauma call and I must say it was just as exciting as my LAST call. Yep, no calls. We had one trauma during regular hours (elderly woman fell), but that was it, so really, I just got a good night's sleep (well, until 4:30 am when I had to get up anyway). So yeah, nothing too cool to talk about. Having call on Monday sure does make the week fly by though! One week from tomorrow, I move back home NEVER to come to York again! I'm going to push to switch my family medicine to someplace more local if at all possible b/c I can't exactly take the care with me here...Megan needs it for work!

So I'm off to throw down some lunch, then practice sewing together dead stuff so I can get better at suturing lacerations. Woot!

Surgeon on call

I had my first call night on surgery last night and I must say that I'm exhausted. I mean, all the sitting around in bed studying, followed by sleeping soundly all night was really more than I could bear. Lol. Actually, we never got any calls, so I had a pretty normal night. I didn't even have to go to procedures today, I just get to stay in my room because I'm "post call" and the rule is I can't stay past noon on a post-call day. So I went to the clinic this morning and saw patients there, had some yummy Olive Garden lunch for free, and then came home and have been dinking about on the computer since then. I think I'll have to study soon, lest I get too horribly lazy.

My fainting issues appear to be a thing of the past, thank goodness! I'm so glad that it was only the one day I was having so much trouble. AF has calmed down as well.

Nothing to report in terms of TTC other than I haven't been this obsessive about this in MONTHS. It's weird. Megan needs to smack some sense back into me.

Naptime for me now :D

I suuuuck

It's the first day of my period today, I'm practically hemorrhaging, and I can't stay scrubbed into a surgery. I nearly passed out in both procedures and had to scrub out and sit down. So yeah, I totally, completely suck.

And I'm on call tomorrow...which means I get no sleep (overnight call on surgery). Fantastic.

And it's only 2 dpo, so I can't bug Megan about symptoms...

Okay, really this time

We actually got a positive OPK!!! We're insemming!!! Yay!

I feel really good about this try. Will report back when appropriate....here's to a +HPT on Megan's birthday!!

City moment

I had a very city day today... I grabbed lunch from the local sandwich and pizza shop and ate it sitting on the stairs at the train station then hopped a train to center city. I had to hurry thru the rain with a newspaper over my head to school. Then on the way home, the train station was filled with music from this performer who was doing a "one man band" sort if thing and he was fantastic...he played a great version of the chrorale and shaker dance and there was a little boy from the audience with him who was rattling away this tambourine, and the people gathered around them were clapping around. The rest of us, who were pretending not to be watching, were all listening and smiling from the benches... it was just so cool. I really love being in a big city sometimes :)

In other news, it looks like Megan did NOT ovulate before because it appears that she is now, so we're going to do another insem this weekend. OPK is much darker :)

That's all for now. Tomorrow we're going to meet online friends at the outlets in NJ. Yay for online friends!

Round and round we go

Our return to the world of reproductive endocrinology is scheduled for Tuesday, November 13 at 3:30 p.m. Slight chance we could be preggo by then, if the timing was right or Megan ovulates soon....ha, yeah, right.

Back to work. News for me today...all this being on my feet all day is causing my legs to swell and my veins to dilate and look all gros...looks like it's time for compression stockings. Whoopee. What are the damn things going to look like when I'm 60???

Shameless plug and TTC frustration

This past Saturday we went to a performance by Jana Losey, a singer songwriter who happens to be the cousin of one of my very close friends. We went more to see our friends than anything, but WOW this girl is good!! She's just getting started, but her voice is beautiful and her songs are clever and fun to listen to, so I want to very enthusiastically plug her here! Check out her myspace at http://www.myspace.com/janalosey and catch a show if she does one near you! There are samples of her music on myspace and her first album is on iTunes...

So that's enough chipperness. We don't think Megan ovulated, so we're back to her POAS and we did an insem likely for nothing....sad. But this is pretty par for the course for us, so we're just going to hang tight, make an appointment for the RE next month, and keep on with the natural cycles for now. Hey, maybe we'll break our long cycle record. GAGS.

I'm back in York for the week and I'm seeing a CABG today (bypass, open heart surgery...should be SO cool), so I need to go take a little nap and read up before the case. I'm really excited! I miss my girl though. This living away from home thing sucks like no other.

Time to go! Ish...

So, Megan feels like she's going to ovulate, she has EWCM, but the OPK isn't totally cooperating and is lighter today than yesterday. Huh. Oh well, we're going with the whole CM/CP readings as being more accurate than the 50 cent OPK and are going with it. Plan is to insem tonight and tomorrow, and then we'll see where we're at after that!

I cured cancer!

well, rather, I held retractors and cut sutures (new skill for me today!) while the breast and plastic surgeons cured cancer. I helped do a bilateral total mastectomy and reconstruction today, which took a whopping 5 hours, two surgeons, two residents, one relatively worthless medical student, two scrub nurses, two circulators, an anesthesiologist, and a CRNA. Phew! It was totally awesome that both of the surgons were women :) Anyway, the surgery went really well and the cosmetic effect was really good. Since this patient had a lot of skin left over, they were able to fill the saline implants a bit today (often they have to wait for the stitches to heal), which will be really good for this particular patient (she's only 40 and very depressed, and had a hard time deciding if she wanted to do both mastectomies or just the one side with the cancer. Anyway, there were no metastases to the nodes, so it was a total success and felt fantastic.

My only major foibles were nearly passing out after the first hour. I ate a balanced breakfast, hadn't had any caffeine, and was moving my legs, but it got really hot inside the gown (picture one Karisa with scrubs, shoe covers up to mid-calf, a mask, a really big eye shield, big poofy hair cover, calf-length plastic surgical gown, and two pairs of latex gloves!) and I had to say I was feeling faint...so I backed up and had to have someone sit me down, scrub me out (ie take off everything but scrubs, shoe covers, mask, and head cover), and put alcohol pads on my neck (for cooling), then go get some juice and rest for a few minutes. It happens a lot, but this was my first one. anyway, the surgeons let me scrub back in and I finished the whole thing out without incident, and got to help :) :)

I was DEAD after that long, so I grabbed some lunch and took a nap...

Anyway, time for me to head back. My 3 pm lecture was cancelled but the 4 pm one is still on, so must pelt down a beverage before scrambling back to the classroom to learn about...something. I don't remember... Never a dull moment!

Damn you, Suri!

Without running the risk of sounding completely idiotic, photos of Suri Cruise make me so sad...I'm quite certain that any baby Megan produces will bear a strong resemblance to this most famous toddler...see what I mean?


So, world, please stop posting photos of this child until Megan is pregnant. Please.

Bo-Zoe

I couldn't resist...she got a bath last week (Zoe) and she's sooo cute (well, both of them...) :D

Weekends off rock my socks off

I know, a totally dumb expression, but I sooooo mean it! This weekend off was amazing. I got to sleep in three times, got to see my girl AND my friends, including a rousing game of Munchkin (I'll trade you my cute shoulder dragon for your chain mail bikini!) and some fun outlet shopping. Not to mention there was a donut in there as well, AND ice cream (though not on the same day). I'm ready to tackle my first full week of surgery with bells on.

Megan's still not surging yet, so I hope it holds off a couple of days so I can be at home for the insems, so hope for us! Perfect insem day would be Thursday, so let's hope that the OPK stays negative until Wednesday at least :D

Off to study...topic of the evening: fluids, electrolytes, and nutrition.

This place totally sucks

They had no idea I was coming today, so after getting up at 6 to show up for OR orientation, I find out that they can't do it until Monday, and all I can do today is finish my other orientations, tomorrow I come in and watch cases in the OR (so shadowing, like I did in HS and college), and then come back Monday for my scrub orientation so I can actually hold retractors or whatever I'm supposed to do.

Anyway, this is utterly a waste of time. How could communication be THAT bad? And I could have spent more time with Megan if they didn't want me to REALLY start until Monday. Crap crap crap.

Have I mentioned that I miss Megan. I miss Megan. A lot. Sniffle.

Off to waste another hour before my second orientation.....

Pathetic or in love? Is there a difference, really?

Megan left half an hour ago and I already miss her like CRAZY. Let me spell this out for you. We got together two or three days after we met. We moved in together informally after a month or two, officially after three months. Since then, we have been apart for approximately 18 weeks. 6 weeks while Megan studied in Paris, 6 weeks while I studied in Granada, Spain, 2 weeks at Christmas in 2001 and 2002...and that's it, except for a day or two here or there. And this week is our 6 Year Anniversary. So over the past 6 years, there have only been a handfull of days that we've had to be apart. It's not really that we're clingy so much, it's that we really love one another's company, we're the closest of friends, and being away from her just makes me feel empty. At least we'll both be busy most of the time and I'll get to come home on weekends. That will be the saving grace of this place. That I get to spend every weekend with my girl, in my house, with my dogs, in my neighborhood with my streetlights and my street noise. And my Philly smog, gosh darn it!!!!

It really doesn't help that Megan's having a really hard time at work right now. Her boss is making her life HELL and she thinks now that it may be a homophobia thing. Interesting if she can prove it, since it's against their policy to discriminate. Hm.

So I should probably try to read something and get some rest. It's odd that I'm here I guess. And I'm counting the hours until I get to snuggle up with my girl in our cozy bed, crowded with three huge dogs and two annoying cats. ::sigh::