Catching Up

It's been a long time since I've posted, but for good reason...about a week and a half ago, I finally got fed up with the ridiculous SLOW that was my poor mac and took it to get the hard drive replaced.  Unfortunately, I still have to take it back one more time to get the data from the old drive transferred to the new one, but I had to have the machine, if nothing else, to study for our block exam that takes place tomorrow.  So I might not post for a few days after this, because my plan for now is to take it back to the annoyingly slow mac guy immediately after the test and hope to get it back in less than a week (if you can't tell, I was a little annoyed by the guy's taking so long on the first round).

A lot has actually happened in the past week and a half, though!  For one, I went on a two day road trip with all of my old gymnastics teammates to watch the last one of our number who is still competing.  She's a senior at a big school in the south, so we all trekked down to Georgia for the day.  It was a fabulous time, spending way too long in a packed van, reminiscing about old meets and travels and good times together, trying to determine who would get married next, discussing life goals, etc.  Those girls are always a great fall-back when the world gets crazy just because we've all been together for so long.  And, of course, it was awesome to surprise our friend and get to see some really good gymnastics.  

This entire week has been an off week--no school to allow us to study for our exam--so on this past Monday I did the first four hours of my specialty preceptorship.  Basically, at some point througout the year we are required to shadow a physician in some specialty for 16 hours (specialty being anything that's not considered general medicine--peds, family practice, that kind of thing).  I've been following a resident and attending in the NICU, learning all about neonatology, and Monday was possibly one of the coolest days ever.  I got to learn how to check new babies for all the right reflexes and normal things a baby should do, I got to see a 23 week premie and a baby whose heart was completely backwards.  I got to "help" (well, get sterile and watch) an umbilical artery catheter get put in, and at the very end of the day I got to spring across the hospital and watch a delivery, then help clean up the baby and check him out.  I even got to put his little blue hat on.  It was so, so cool.  End result:  I'm still really, really interested in pediatrics and possibly now interested in neonatology.  Babies are just fun.