I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape… Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. (Andrew Wyeth)

I'm still figuring out this residency thing and I am by no means an all-star at surgery... but a med student asked me the other day how to be a successful resident after they are accepted through CaRMS to surgery and this is the best answer I could come up with...

How to be a Successful Resident in 4 Simple Steps

1. All for one, one for all. You will never make it across the finish line if you don't do it as a team. The team is everything, it has to come first. Be altruistic, help out whenever you can. Show kindness. Use your strengths and know your weaknesses. Learn to ask for and accept help when it's your turn. Geese don't fly south by always being in the same position within the V. They take turns being the lead and then enjoying the draft. You're all on the same journey, get there together.

2. Cultivate an attitude of gratitude.

Remember all those friends of yours who applied to med school but didn't get in? Look around you during your interviews, the person on either side of you may not get a spot in surgery. Be humble. You carry the burden of responsibility to make up for their missed opportunities. Don't take that lightly.

Also, be grateful for hardship. Laundry doesn't become clean by lying around on the bed. It has to be put in hot water, tumbled around, spun down, and hung out to dry. The attendings who are the hardest on you are the ones who will make you better. Compliments, while nice, rarely improve you. Criticism, while uncomfortable, can transform you- provided that you are open to it. So be grateful for hardship. Lean into the discomfort, not away. In the face of reprimand and disappointed expectations, let the first words through you lips be "thank you"-- thank you for correcting me, thank you for taking the time to teach me, thank you for seeing my potential and wanting me to succeed.

3. Residency is, simply put, an endurance test. Starting PGY 1 on July 1st is like getting out of bed and deciding that today you're going to start walking across Canada. You have 5 years to get to the other side. Some days will be stormy and it will take every particle of your efforts just to cover a minimum of ground. Some days, you'll have a tailwind and the distance will fly by. Every day is another chance to recommit yourself to the journey. Repeat your affirmations. Reflect on the distance you've come. Look ahead and resist the urge to be overwhelmed by the mountains in the distance. Take every day on its own, one step at a time.

4. Acknowledge the privilege you have in hearing patient's most intimate details of their lives, in knowing their bodies in a way their mothers and fathers / husbands and wives will never know, and be humbled by the trust they put in you to guide them on their journey. There is no room for ego here. Treat every patient like they are your mother. Cut away their disease meticulously. Sew them back together tenderly. Attend them on the ward postoperatively in order to rejoice in their healing and grieve in their set backs. They are the heart of what you do. Never forget that.

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.

Wow - I can't believe that it's been nearly a year since I've posted here. I feel pretty disappointed about that since I really do enjoy writing these posts - and Penguin says that he has enjoyed reading them. Alas, since starting 2nd year and working 100 hour weeks on a regular basis, most of my "free" time has evaporated. Perhaps with a little effort and some revisions of the weekly posting headers, I can work having a weekly post back into my normal routine.

In the meantime, I'd like to present to you The Best of 2012. My list of the best of everything we did over the past year. Hope your year was just as amazing and wonderful as ours. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. xo Saroja + Penguin

The Best of 2012 

Best Album: July Talk (self-titled)

Best Book: When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman

Best Comic: found this on facebook... laughed for a week straight.

Best Date Night Idea: Going to see the Stars in concert!! (They were incredible!)

Best Decision: (aside from saying YES! when Penguin proposed) Joining a CSA for the summer.

Best Dinner: our first homemade Thanksgiving dinner together in our new apartment.

Best Gift: Stained Glass Window from Penguin for our 5^th Anniversary

Best Idea: Dear Sophie Video from Google Chrome = genius. Makes me choke up a little every time.

Best Moment of 2012: Penguin proposing in March. Swoon.

Best New Tradition: having everyone who is far from home coming over to our house for dinner on the first Sunday of every month

Best Picture: taking a picture in our bathing suits at -23 degrees celsius while winter camping.

Best Project: Writing the "Happiness Manifesto" and putting it up on our fridge.

Best Purchase: (obviously my wedding dress but I feel I should save this for next year, so...) the furniture for the balcony, on which I spent many an hour sipping sangria and studying while listening to the boats on the river.

Best Recipe: Pork Roast and Thyme-Scented Plums by The Noble Pig (one of our favourite food blogs). We found this entre is best accompanied with cheesy zucchini rice (partially because we had an average of 7 zucchinis in our fridge on any given day from the CSA basket!)

Best Rendezvous: meeting Lemonriffic and Kate on a random weekend in Ottawa!

Best Surprise: Scarlett and Constellation's super-awesome-and-still-kinda-secret-news!!!

Best Surprise Visitor: my aunt from BC who came for Folk Fest

Best Vacation: Going to Mexico for Jorge and Dafnne’s Wedding / Christmas

Best Weekend Warrior Adventure: Winter Camping in a Yurt for my birthday

I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

• Getting the Squeeze out of Life
• Holy Crap. What hasn't happened over the past few months since I last posted something on this blog? The problem with posting infrequently is that the enormity of the body of stories you need to catch up on writing grows, making the task more overwhelming with time. So, if you'll beg my pardon, I'm going to try and just list the important points...

• Penguin Proposed. I should have seen it coming but I really, truly didn't. He proposed at home, one on one, and gave me a beautiful button ring that he designed himself. I didn't even hesitate to say yes... in fact, I said yes so quickly that Penguin didn't get to make the speech he planned before I sat down on the couch quietly hyperventilating with joy. The ring is a button because buttons hold things together. But buttons can't work alone: they need a hole that's just the right size, just like Penguin is just the right fit for me! The 4 holes at the center represent the 2 of us and our 2 families, with the thread that ties us all together. The thread makes an X and the button makes an O, for XO, or LOVE!






• As an added bonus, Penguin has also acquired a job out here in Winnipeg - so, for the first time in the 5 years that we've been dating, we finally live in the same city (not to mention the same apartment). Cohabitation has been pure Eden. Everyone warned us that there would be bumps along the way as we transitioned from living independently to living with each other but frankly, we haven't really noticed them because we're both just so grateful to have each other around all the time. It really is incredible.
• Lastly, I'm almost done my first year of residency!!! And (a) I'm not dead, and (b) I haven't killed anyone (yet). I didn't realize how much I'd learned or how far I'd come until we had a patient come in at 4 am one night while I was on the acute care service. I was alone in the hospital - my senior and attending had both gone home to sleep - and this patient arrived somnolent, septic, and unstable. I didn't hesitate: 2 large bore IVs, 2L of normal saline under pressure, stat blood work, upright chest xray, EKG, antibiotics... and without having to ask for help (although I called my senior to give them a head's up on the situation), I flooded that patient with 6L of fluid and had them stabilized and ready for the OR in a matter of 2 hours. It turned out that they had a gastric ulcer that had perforated, creating a hole in the stomach the size of my fist. Had the same patient come in during the first few months of my residency, I would have been filled with uncertainty and certainly needed my senior there to guide me through their care. It was a big turning point for me when I realized that I knew how to deal with an unstable patient all on my own.

• Recipe I've Been Drooling Over
• Penguin recently made these "Boyfriend Approved Vegan Burgers" and I've got to say that they're pretty delightful. We ate them with hummus instead of catsup and it was awesome.

• Favourite Thing on Etsy this Week
• Best. Cat. Toy. Ever. (It's even organic, too!)

• What I'm Reading Right Now
• I've read 2 books in the past few months... When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman, which in my opinion is on par with Come Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant (aka the best book ever!). The other is Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, which is hilarious and frivolous (the best kind of study break, in my opinion).

• TED Talk I Watched This Week
• As suggested by a good friend, here's a TED Talk on vulnerability. Enjoy!

• Song of the Week
• This week, Penguin is away at a conference. While living together is pretty damn blissful, there is still something to be said for those times when one finds themselves alone in the house. It's an opportunity to shower with the bathroom door open, to wear only your underwear while making dinner, to eat only crackers for dinner without someone heckling your lousy nutrition... I used to think that by doing these things every day when I lived alone, I'd never be remediated into normal company again but it turns out that it's not hard to be civilized when the man you love is around. So, now that my alone time is scarce (which is exactly how I like it), I do my best to enjoy it. This video strongly attests to some of the antics I get up to when Penguin is away.

• Thing I'm Most Grateful for This Week
• Having Penguin here in Winnipeg with me. He sacrificed a lot to come out here, start a new job, and still barely gets to see me as I race back and forth between long hours at work and too few hours spent sleeping. I sometimes wonder how I'm ever going to really show him just how much it means to me.

• Thing I'm Most Looking Forward to This Week
• Hitting the gym more often. I've been slacking for the last little while and I'm looking forward to re-establishing some balance.

• Bunny Photo of the Week
• No available bunny photo this week. Although I can report that Hoyle has settled in well with his new buddy, Penguin's kitten Zoe. Hoyle immediately established the leadership role and Zoe has been running scared ever since. Hoyle also outweighs Zoe by a few pounds, so I don't blame her for being nervous around him. Haha.

Weekly Update: Less than a Week Until Christmas!!

• Getting the Squeeze out of Life
• In follow up to my previous post, and in response to the emails of some concerned family and friends, there is no doubt in my mind that I've picked the right profession. There is also no greater reward than taking into hospital someone fiercely injured and sending them home a week or two later largely in-tact again. So despite all the anguish and horror, trauma has been my favourite rotation so far. The only thing that really gets to me is when people survive catastrophic injuries with significant morbidity. At this point, it's hard to see beyond their loss of function and emotional scars. It's hard not to think - as unpolitically correct as it may seem - they would have been better off dead. I think, though, that this is largely because we don't often get to see the long-term recovery of these patients. When we sign off as a surgical service, the patients are still in the first phases of their recovery and therefore still appear as mangled, dysfunctional bodies that entrap the bright and aware minds and souls of their hosts. However, I did manage to find the perfect TED talk that addresses this particular conundrum. I'll include it with some details down below.
• For me, dealing with some of the rather unsavory personality types that come in via the trauma service was not as difficult as I thought it might be. I met a whole slew of people who did awful, horrible things to others: from serial rapists, to murderers, to gang bangers, to cop killers. You name it, I laid hands on them, sutured them, talked to them every day about their physical pain, and stayed up late at night trying to solve their problems and get them well again. And for me, it wasn't a crisis of conscience. In dealing with these people, I was reminded of a quote from Joan Halifax, "Compassion has enemies: pity, moral outrage, and fear". Anytime it became difficult to treat one of these patients, my reaction was easily identified as one of those 3 responses, and then, once identified, set aside so that the work could be done.
• It's one thing to limit your practice to "the easy patients" - I mean, if you were given the choice, who would you rather round on every day: a sweet-mannered soccer mom who was in a car accident and broke her leg, does everything you recommend for healing, and sends you and the staff a gift basket when discharged - or-  the impoverished, homeless woman with lice and paranoid schizophrenia who happens to have appendicitis and throws her food tray at your head when you try to assess her belly? The fact is, both of them need help. I, for one, would never want to limit my practice to exclude the latter case simply because it makes my day easier. Medicine, for me, is about treating the breadth of humanity - and trauma has a way of being rather non-selective in its demographics. You are just as likely to get the homeless lady who was hit by a car as you the soccer mom who was driving it.

• Recipe I've Been Drooling Over
• So, on average I manage to score about 4-5 hrs of sleep a night... which means eating breakfast before leaving the house is a tough feat. Fortunately, a leftover can of pumpkin puree in my fridge inspired me to look up this recipe: cheddar, black pepper, and pumpkin muffins are the perfect solution to a fast morning routine plus they have a 5/5 'stick to your ribs' quality that is only beat by steel-cut oats. I highly recommend you try them!

• Favourite Thing on Etsy this Week
• Christmas is coming! Christmas is coming! And, while I'll be working, it doesn't mean that I've been above cruising the internerd for some great gift ideas. Here are my favourites from Etsy this year:

• If any man were to wear  a bowtie of this caliber, he would be guaranteed to make me swoon. What a delight!

• It's a snowflake and snuggling rabbits! Best Christmas Ornament Ever!

• If you can blink your way past the price tag, this piece of art is both profound and inspiring. Not only does it make use of my favourite medium, linocut, but also perfectly captures the best of my favourite season. With that in mind, I think the artist has priced their piece well: good work deserves good value.

• Last but not least, I can't help but smile when I look at this picture. It comes with a sequel that describes "animals of low moral standing"... but I feel that it is important to point out at the trifecta of animal awesomeness are all included in the high moral standing group: penguin, frog, and rabbit. :)

• What I'm Reading Right Now
• Textbooks upon textbooks upon textbooks....  'nuff said. :(

• TED Talk I Watched This Week
• What better than a first hand account of what it's like to survive one of the traumas that so disturb me. This woman was hit by a car, remained in a coma for 18 months, and was discharged to a senior's home because there was no long term care or rehab facility appropriate for her needs. When she says, "they had given up on me, called me a gomer... and the hospital really didn't know what to do with someone in my state", she couldn't be more correct. We deal very poorly with people who do not quickly return to their baseline, require very long term rehab, and have morbidities that make us uncomfortable about our job performance.

• Song of the Week
• special thanks to scarlett for another terrific referral! I promise to post something more festive next week. :)

The Shrine / An Argument from Sean Pecknold on Vimeo.

• Thing I'm Most Grateful for This Week
• Family and friends. And sleep.... dear lord, do I love sleep. It makes everything so much better.

• Thing I'm Most Looking Forward to This Week
• Christmas!!!! Since I can't be there in person, Penguin is going to skype me in for his family's Chrismas morning so I can still share in the family fun. xo

• Bunny Photo of the Week
• It is with a heavy heart that Hoyle, Penguin, and I wish Jazz bunny a fond farewell. A few weeks ago she became acutely ill and passed away quite suddenly at the vet's. It was a very difficult time for all of us and we miss her very much.
• Hoyle felt things most acutely for she was his 24/7 friend and, well they are rabbits, lover. Every day, he'd search the house looking for her and when he couldn't find her, he'd start the search all over again. It was heartbreaking to watch. He lost his appetite, lost interest in doing anything but looking for his friend, and was clearly depressed.
• It took about a week and a half before I realized that my human love couldn't heal his broken bunny heart, so off we set to find him a new bunny. No rabbits were available at the local shelter, so we drove for an hour out of town to meet a breeder of rex rabbits. Hoyle met several bunnies that day and chose, to my surprise, a wee boy bunny whom we have now named Murphy (surprised? I thought not. haha).
• Murphy is settling in nicely and while they aren't cohabitating yet, they are doing very well together.
• Hoyle and I still miss Jazz very much but Hoyle is doing much better since Murphy has come home. And Murphy seems to understand that Hoyle is in need of some tender bunny loving and goes out of his way to groom and snuggle Hoyle as much as he can.

With great love for her indomitable spirit and
sweet peaceful soul- we miss you terribly,  Jazz: 2008-2011.

Welcome to the Family, Murphy!

It's not by looking into the light that we become luminous but by plunging into the darkness. - Carl G. Jung

Forgive me if I haven't posted in quite some time... I've been working on the trauma service and the endless parade of human suffering, despair, and hopelessness have been keeping me up at night, even when I'm not on call.

Some nights, if feels like an endless stream of stabbing in the _____ (chest, abdomen, limb, back, etc), ditto for gunshot wounds (self-inflicted, gang-related, shot by police/lover/family member, you name it). All in combination with a variety of alcohol / substance abuse, my favourites so far being: "spray and 7" (hairspray mixed with 7-up) as well as "lemon paint" (paint thinner plus lemonade). Highest recorded alcohol in a conscious, talking, oriented person so far: 84.0 (legal limit: 0.08; toxic level 38.0).

There are so many more stories. Slowly, the trauma service eats away at your sense of humanity. I stare at the ceiling at night wondering why I don't feel more. It should be devastating. These cases should reduce me to tears. But there are just so many and the stories are often just so extreme. It starts to numb you... until you drive home and someone tries to cut you off and you find yourself parked on the sidewalk, shaking in the drivers seat, imaging yourself on the trauma room stretcher staring up at the faces of your team members as they mumble to themselves, "there are injuries worse than death."

The two most revolutionary things a man can say is, "I'm Staying."

It's not often that I get riled up about political things... but with the recent topsy-turvy results in Canadian federal politics and the tragic death of Jack Layton, I've been keeping an eye on the media and what they've been saying about Parliament Hill.

One of my favourite sources for the down-low on Canadian politics is actually Rick Mercer... because really, I could watch the House of Commons on Channel 200-and-something but frankly those whining, unprofessional louses make me want to crash down the door and demand better representation - while at least Rick makes me laugh by poking fun at them and keeping me in the loop at the same time.

So, it came as a surprise when Rick Mercer recently posted "Urge to Merge" advocating for a merger between the Liberals and the NDP. So much so, that I was inspired to send in a response, which I thought I'd also post here:

Rick Mercer,

I've been a long-time fan of yours but was really quite surprised to see your latest rant proposing that the Liberals and NDP merge parties to provide better competition to the Conservatives. I feel quite strongly that this is not the solution to the flaws in our current political situation- and no, I'm not one of the soap-box-standing-lawn-sign-picketing political idealists you referred to in the rant, I'm an average joe citizen (at the age of twenty-something) who has a vested interest in politics because I choose to exercise my right to vote.

During the last several federal elections, I wanted to know how to spend my vote wisely, so I started doing some research into how our voting system runs and what other kinds of democratic systems exist. A great video is available on youtube that describes the problem with first past the post (fptp) voting and shows exactly why the two-party system you're advocating for isn't the right solution. A good solution would be to change the way we vote! I don't want my choices limited to conservative or not conservative - that's what got us into this pickle jar in the first place. I realize that an electoral referendum was held in Ontario in 2007 and failed to make waves... but perhaps that was because the general public wasn't sufficiently educated on what exactly fptp voting is and why the current system sucks.

Now I know that your primary objective is to provide comedic commentary on the Canadian political scene but I think your greatest attraction is the accessible and evocative insight into politics that you offer the average Canadian citizen. For this reason, I found it surprising - and admittedly disappointing - that you advocated for the status quo in "Urge to Merge". Please consider using your considerable influence to show Canadians that they don't have to be stuck with a two-party system, forcing them to be divided into groups of "for" or "against" the current party-in-power. Our goal as a Canadian and democratic society should not be to protect a minority rule (the breeding ground for the political apathy you covered so well during the election) when we have the option to empower all Canadians to participate in politics through offering a diversity of parties that can identify and advocate for individuals' unique values and interests.

Thank you and keep up the good work. 

Cheers,

Saroja 

So what do you think about all this?

Weekly Update: We must be willing to give up the life we have planned so as to pursue the life that is waiting for us

• Getting the Squeeze out of Life
• Whew! That last 2 weekends have been quite the whirlwind! Sorry about missing last week's blog update... hopefully, this will serve to get you caught up.
• Last weekend, we went canoe camping over labor day. This was particularly exciting for me since it has been a tradition to do the Baron Canyon loop in Algonquin for the last 4 years on the Sept long weekend. It was very reassuring to know that just because I've moved to Manitoba, the paddling tradition can continue!
• We aimed to do a loop through several lakes up by Jones, ON by way of a meandering river. However, when we finally hacked and bushwacked our way into the backcountry, we found that the river had dried up due to late season low water. Consequently, we hiked (read: portaged) about 4km from the river bed to a road. Along the road were our cars - about 10km away. Fortunately, we happened upon some ATV riders who let me hitch a ride back to the cars to come rescue the group. Despite this, and crap weather, we had an absolute blast and still managed some sweet, peaceful nights, stargazing, and lake swimming in some of the cleanest water I've ever seen.
• This weekend, I've been busy at a variety of social functions. Friday night was the PhD + birthday celebration for one of Penguin's best friends, last night we had our first Gen Surg potluck, and tonight was the wedding reception/BBQ for some friends who recently got married out West. Whew! To top all that off, Carpe and I did a 73km ride today in just under 2 hours. Needless to say, I'm expecting to sleep well tonight. :)
• Anatomy continues to progress well. We're nearing the end of our dissecting phase and still have 2 weeks left to go over the thorax, head, and neck - which will all be covered through prosected (ie. previously dissected specimens). This will be new territory for me, so I expect I'll be hitting the books pretty hard. But, it's also exciting to learn and is definitely going to help me be more confident and comfortable in the OR.

• Recipe I've Been Drooling Over
• We had the first Gen Surg PGY1 potluck this past Saturday. It was a great success, except one of my peers inadvertently tried to poison me with some almonds. All was well in the end, though, and the conversation, food, and wine were all terrific.
• Since I was hosting, I provided the main dish and made the infamous Keller Chicken from Simply Recipes. It turns out beautifully every single time. I've even made it for when we introduced my parents to Penguin's parents (seriously, that's how good it is!)

• Favourite Thing on Etsy this Week
• I have a long established love for buttons. Here's a great one from Etsy that's funny in more ways than one (not only am I a secret member of the grammar police but I'm also a gen surg resident, nuff said!)

• What I'm Reading Right Now
• Thanks for the suggestions everyone - I've decided to pursue some tougher reading (rather than my usual non-scholastic fluff) by way of Neitzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. So far so good, it's much more of a narrative than Neitzsche's other books although I'd agree with the intro that he is quite verbose here but his passion more than makes up for it. I'll let you know how it goes!

• TED Talk I Watched This Week
• Once again, it's not a TED talk this week but rather a movie trailer for Finding Joe. The movie refers to the life and works of Joseph Campbell - a giant in the academic sphere for mythology (so much so that George Lucas based the Starwars trilogy off Campbell's theories). Campbell is best known for his motto, "Follow your Bliss"... a concept that he first came across when reading the Upanisads:
• "Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence:Sat-Chit-Ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked."
• And lest you misinterpret bliss for hedonism, Campbell is also quoted to have said, "I should have said, follow your blisters"
• Anyway, it promises to be a really great movie, so here's the trailer for your enjoyment:

Finding Joe - Trailer V.7 from pat solomon on Vimeo.

• Song of the Week
• If you listened to the last playlist I posted, you'll have heard the song Welcome Home by Radical Face. I first heard this song while watching a movie clip of the Swiss Machine. It's a pretty awesome clip and a really stellar song, so I'm glad to be able to share both with you here.

• Thing I'm Most Grateful for This Week
• The total genuine awesomeness of my gen surg peers!

• Thing I'm Most Looking Forward to This Week
• Only 10 sleeps until I get to see Penguin and a month's vacation!!!

• Bunny Photo of the Week
• Here's the Jazz bunny during her favourite time of day: DINNER TIME!

Nom. Nom. Nom.

Because music means more than song...

I should be studying but was suddenly overcome by the need to make this playlist and share it with you. Consider it an ode to the end of summer and a testament to the restoring powers of the wilderness. This music sounds best on a patio or, better yet, on the dock up at the cottage.

PS: Did you know that Sarah Harmer wrote a song (with downloadable lyrics and guitar tabs) to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Parks Canada? (Many thanks to Scarlett for pointing this out to me!) Also, did you know that Parks Canada was the first national park service in the world? How cool is that?! Check out Harmer's song here. I look forward to singing it with you around a campfire soon!

Weekly Update: On Time at Last!

• Getting the Squeeze out of Life*

*this column has been renamed on account of the fact that I generally talk about non-school things as often I as I talk about school-related things here (it's probably a good thing, too!)

• On Thurs, I switched rotations from radiology to anatomy. While anatomy takes place in the basement and has no windows (seriously, I've bought out the Vit D stock at the local pharmacy in the last 2 months) at least there is full powered fluorescent lighting! 
• Anatomy is going to be a great rotation. They basically gave us a cadaver, pointed us towards the library resources, and said, we'll see you in a month for your exam!
• Now, this may come as a surprise to some of you, but most medical schools have abandoned any formalized anatomy teaching in their curriculum. Shocked? You should be. Frankly, in the old days, we used to spend hours and hours and hours in the anatomy lab going over gross dissections - because anatomy was all we knew. It was pure form and function. These days, however, we need to learn about the great diversity of tumor biomarkers and G-protein signalling systems and tons of other microscopic biochemical-type stuff that is what modern medicine (aka pharmacology) is based on. Since there are only 27 hours in the day (according to my work schedule), cuts had to take place. And the first thing they cut was anatomy.
• Now, if I had gone into another specialty, this may not be a huge deal. After all, I did read about anatomy in med school and I even volunteered to go see an autopsy. But there's just no way to avoid the old-school methods of anatomy training when you're in surgery (and for this, I'm quite glad). Being able to stick your hand into someone's chest and say, "yes, I feel the pleura there... and if I move my hand down and to the left, there is the diaphragmatic crus that becomes the ligament of treitz as it wraps around the duodenum" is kinda indispensible.
• In non-school life, things are going fairly well. I had my first bout of home-sickness the other day when it was my Dad's birthday. Even though Mom and Dad weren't home at the time (they were out West helping my Opa move), all I could think about were those happy summers of my childhood where we'd celebrate the summer birthdays up at the cottage - soggy from the lake, with pine gum on the soles of our barefeet, crowding around the old dining room table to chortle the birthday song as Mom produced a cake that was more fire hazard than dessert.
• Even when I was in the Tropical Tundra, I could still drive to the cottage on a weekend if needed. It might have taken 12 hours, but at least I always knew that if my heart was sore and my ego was low, I could just get in my car and go to the one place in the world that has always soothed and restored my spirit. Now, living here, I've never felt more cut off. Granted, the trip to the cottage would now be shorter: it's only a 2 hr flight home rather than a 6 hr drive. But going to the airport certainly makes it more complicated and requires advanced planning (not to mention, money).
• All that said, though, whenever I feel homesick, I try to remind myself how very blessed and I am to be here on this adventure. And blessed, I am, indeed. So it's hard to feel down for very long with the opportunity to do great and amazing things every day - and at least I get vacation in a month, so it won't be long before I can travel back to the land that is my home and sit under towering pines and watch the seagulls play in the breeze.

• Recipe I've Been Drooling Over
• This recipe needs no picture. I made a strawberry rhubarb crisp to celebrate the last strawberry / rhubarb harvest of summer and it is delightful. Many thanks to Lemonriffic for her outstanding crisp recipe. :)

• Favourite Thing on Etsy this Week
• Shopsaplingpress has a great series of cards right now that is simply priceless... here's one of my favourites:

• What I'm Reading Right Now
• Still haven't hit on a new reading book yet, instead I've immersed myself in textbooks on anatomy. Suggestions are welcome! What have you read recently?

• TED Talk I Watched This Week
• I didn't watch any TED talks this week because I have recently become addicted to the CBC's Debaters. Here is an excellent episode that we heard in the car while we huddled wetly around the radio during a rainstorm last weekend that forced us off the cliffs and out of our climbing gear:

• Song of the Week
• I recently re-discovered City and Color the other day... here is one of my favourites, The Northern Wind:

• Thing I'm Most Grateful for This Week
• The bunnies have wormed their way to the top of the list this week: they have been uncharacteristically snugly, which has done much to soothe my home-sickness. Not to mention making me feel just slightly victorious in my 3 year battle to soften their wild spirits and turn them into loving pets rather than 7 lbs furry termites of unlimited destruction.

• Thing I'm Most Looking Forward to This Week
• Penguin is in the process of trying to arrange a work contract that will let us spend more time together in the same city. We find out a verdict on the next step sometime later this week, so please keep your fingers/toes/eyes crossed for us. xoxoxo

• Bunny Photo of the Week
• Friends of ours have recently undertaken a move to the East Coast and their farewell party was this past Fri night. They had a rug that they weren't bringing with them and it turned out to be exactly the right size and colour for my living room! Now, for those of you who've never tried to buy an area rug, let me tell you - don't. It's a painful, expensive process that includes being shunned by store clerks and looking through lousy merchandise that doesn't come anywhere close to the look you're going for. But, in the name of tractionless-bunnies-on-hardwood-floors, carpeting for my apartment has now been acquired at a price that simply can't be beat: free! Many thanks to such wonderful, generous friends. We'll miss you greatly.

"We love carpet!" - the bunnies.

if it never rained, you wouldn't appreciate the sun

Winnipeg is one of the sunniest cities in Canada. In fact, this summer has been one of the city's best in decades - however, the lack of rain has made for a significant drought and some pretty severe backcountry restrictions. Did you know that Manitoba doesn't just put up a fire ban for backcountry campers - they actually CLOSE the backcountry entirely! I can see the logic but it doesn't mean that I have to like it.

Anyway, the long reign of sunny days ended dramatically the other night when my first prairie thunderstorm rolled through. It was certainly worth the wait. My street flooded in moments. The thunder never stopped rumbling. And I wasn't the only one to be impressed, Carpe took video from her own balcony as I was dodging raindrops on my street trying to get photos, too! (video coming soon)

Flooded Street

Flooded Street + School Yard

~~~~

Ok, so I had some trouble getting Carpe's video off FB but I guess we weren't the only ones filming because a quick YouTube search found dozens of other storm fans out on their balconies enjoying the weather. Here's one such vid that does a good job showing off the best of the storm:

some people never go crazy. what truly horrible lives they must live.

• Current Scholastic Pursuits
• Ahem, my apologies for another late update. Turns out that my new motivation to be the ultimate weekend warrior is making it hard to get around to blogging on Sundays. That said, it's all about balance - so hopefully I'll find the middle road between rockin' the weekend and getting on the computer to update you folks on my adventures.
• I've spent the last month doing a radiology rotation. It was really good - I now have a solid approach for reading CTs and MRIs (which will come in handy when I'm on call at 4am in the future!). And even though I don't pick up on all the findings, I've had a pretty good track record lately of finding the important stuff. So yay me! The rads were, on the whole, really lovely people. They are fun, they like to crack jokes, and they wear jeans to work. They are also probably responsible for 95% of the carrot consumption of Manitoba (my rabbits Hoyle and Jazz making up the other 5%) - these radiologists like to do it in the dark! Like, pitch dark!
• Maybe their mothers never heckled them about watching TV with the lights off or maybe they have congenital melatonin pathways that are independent of the influence of light... but whatever it may be, I can say with certainty that I am not immune! I need to photosynthesize!!! A month is radiology was like a month spent at the north pole in winter: perma-darkness. And you know what happens in perma-darkenss? Saroja hibernates.
• There were days when I literally had to hold my eyelids open to stay awake. No amount of strongly brewed tea or early morning protein breaks were enough to keep me from head bobbing during handover. Eventually, I learned to stuff my chair to the back of the room, behind the rads peripheral vision and do my best not to drool all over myself as they flipped through scan after scan at lightening speed.
• Then, one day, I had an epiphany: turn on the lights! Obviously, this could not be done suddenly because the rads would simply turn them all off again. So each day, I snuck in 5 minutes early and turned up the dimmer switch by one tiny degree... just barely enough to notice without tipping off the staff. And, after a period of 2 weeks, I'd finally brightened the room to an inhabitable state of pre-dawn light. What pleasure those fluorescent photons gave me as they kissed by heavy eyelids! Glory, indeed.
• The interminable darkness of radiology was broken up by weekends of unmitigable fun. This past weekend, I went to a cliff known as Gooseneck in Ontario to go climbing with the Alpine Club. By the way, did you know that the founding location for the Alpine Club of Canada was right here in Winnipeg - aka land-of-the-unending-flatness? Bizarre but true. When I first moved here, I thought my days of climbing were over. But, as true luck would have it, there are some very impressive cliffs to climb with an highly enthusiastic crowd of fellow climbers willing to make the trek over the provincial border. All in all, I was very impressed with both the opportunity and the company. Hooray for the outdoors!!!

Prairie Sunset - driving home from climbing on Sunday night

• Recipe I've Been Drooling Over
• I plan on making this chickpea casserole with lemon, herbs, and shallots tomorrow night as my food for the rest of the week. Yum!

• Favourite Thing on Etsy this Week
• I found these beautiful prints on Etsy - they would be perfect for the bedroom, which is looking pretty stark since all the other art has been hung everywhere but there. I really hope this vendor makes a fish print, too, since it would round out the series perfectly. At only $15 dollars each, it took all my willpower not to snap them up in greedy delight.

• What I'm Reading Right Now
• Bedtime reading has been a little out of control recently. I've read no less than 4 books in the last month that are completely unrelated to my surgical education. This probably makes me a bad student (albeit a better person). Currently, I have not yet selected my next read, so I'm open to suggestions!

• TED Talk I Watched This Week
• This one is for you, Penguin: Dyan deNapoli on The Great Penguin Rescue.

 

• Song of the Week
• Check out this awesome song that Scarlett sent me. Absolutely breathtaking.

BON IVER "Holocene" from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

• Thing I'm Most Grateful for This Week
•  Being done radiology and going back onto a rotation where I'll get to see sunlight!
• Also, meeting a fantastic bunch of outdoors-orientated people who are eager to trip!

• Thing I'm Most Looking Forward to This Week
• Another great weekend, filled with friends, going outside, and other adventures.

• Bunny Photo of the Week
• It poured on our first day at the cliffs for climbing, so we had to set up our tents in the rain and, eventually, pack them up in the rain as well. As always, I diligently set up my tent in my apartment after the trip to air it out. The bunnies came to investigate - from the looks of it, they would make excellent camping guests. They were really quite well behaved inside the tent!