Sunday, November 23, 2008

The holidays are here...

let the craziness begin!

It was a busy week, Drew had a full week of cardio-thoracic surgery, and my parents came to visit. We had a lovely time with them, which was 24 hours filled with good restaurants and quite a bit of Christmas shopping!

Drew seemed to like cardio-thoracic so it is on the "short-list" of possible surgical careers. During his week he participated in/observed a carotid artery, a carotid artery cleaning, a couple lung resections, the removal of an esophagus and bypass surgery. He seemed to really like the procedures but his problem with this specialty is dealing with patients who have no intention of changing their lifestyles. For example the bypass surgery was for 7 clogged arteries - I am not even sure how to say that - a septuple bypass? And unfortunately the patient has no intention of quitting smoking even after undergoing such a major surgery. Oh, and the other interesting fact is that Drew said the surgeon was so good he completed all 7 bypasses in 3 and a half hours!

This week Drew starts colo-rectal surgery; one that Drew has already crossed off the list. He says he does not want to work on that end of the body and (his quote) "it is a crappy* rotation."

*insert another adjective here

Luckily with Thanksgiving he will only have three days this week and two days next week. He has Thursday through Sunday off and we couldn't be more thrilled! In the past 9 weeks he has gotten only one weekend off. So to get four consecutive days off seems unheard of! It is hard to believe that next week is his last week of surgery - this fall has FLOWN by. But the exciting part is that in the next few months he will have a bit more time to do a little research which may help him narrow down his specialty choice.

The other morning I had a revelation that I am still having trouble wrapping my head around. I realized that we may never have weekends like a normal couple/family. I look forward to weekends to travel to see family and friends, or when we are lucky and they visit us. While he has only had Sundays off since August (with a few exceptions) this situation is only temporary, until December. Then he should have both Saturdays and Sundays off in the Month of December and we are hoping he might have a few weekends off during his spring rotations. Spring rotations are much less intense (6 weeks each) than his two fall rotations (surgery and internal medicine). Not to mention he had weekends off this past summer which allowed us to see family and friends. So I guess I am just struggling with the issue of not having the convenience of getting two consecutive days with my husband a week (or even a month). I guess I have known this, but I guess it just recently clicked. He tells me that during his residency he may occasionally be able to take a weekend off, but for the most part he will work every weekend. And the worst part - based on his short-list, his residency will be 6-8 years; and it may not improve after that. But those are surgeons' hours and it will be something I will have to learn to deal with (hopefully by spending lot of time with friends and family).

Well I have to get back to wrapping Christmas presents! With Gina and Damien heading to France for Christmas, and my parents heading to Florida, we are doing our Bianchi Christmas THIS weekend!

Monday, November 17, 2008

Ta da.....

Here are two of the Christmas crafts I made this weekend....


Floral arrangement I made for Grandma Sinker
(her Christmas present from us)


The wreath I made for our front door!

Saturday, November 15, 2008

I'm alone tonight...

Drew is on-call with trauma surgery. This is the second time this week. This is his first and last week of trauma - which he would tell you is a good thing. Surprisingly, "trauma-surgery" is not as exciting as it sounds. I thought he would be handling all kinds of crazy-odd traumatic surguries... not so much. Instead he deals with every related trauma incident that comes into the ER -so it is more emergency medicine than "surgery." While he has seen a few interesting things (a cyclist who hit a car due to intoxication) he has mostly been examining patients with very LITTLE surgery involved. In fact when I emailed him this week to see how his day was going, and the email I got back said "My day is ok, I think we can cross off trauma. I'm gonna research Neuro some more. I still love and miss it." I asked him yesterday - if you 1) could totally disregard time committment and 2)you had to decide today, what residency would you choose? His answer: neurosurgery. The main concern with choosing neurosurgery is that the residency is 7 or 8 years (which puts him at finishing in 2017 or 2018) and he has read a lot that it is not a family-friendly profession. For right now we are just going to do lots more homework to try and find out just how time consuming neurosurgery is. It does make me feel better that family is a top priority of his! Enough about that...



Today was a busy day for me too - after working out and going into work until 4 I ran around Springfield to do some Christmas shopping. Which the reason I went into work for most of the day was because I am trying to rack up some extra hours because I am hoping to take some time off Thursday because my parents are coming in town! This is huge because my Dad has not come to visit me in DeKalb or Decatur or Springfield where I have lived the past 3 and a half years. Anyways afterwork I ran to Hobby Lobby, JoAnn fabrics, Factory Card Outlet and Barnes and Nobles. (The picture is from all my purchases). Needless to say I have lots of wrapping and Christmas crafting to do. I will post my successful/failed crafts later this week. Time to get to work!

Monday, November 10, 2008

My first post

So I am creating this blog (inspired by Abbie) to keep friends and family posted on our life in Springfield. I am hoping this is better way to keep people informed with Drew's progress in medical school, and in his journey in choosing a medical specialty.

Right now he is in week 7 of his surgical rotation - trauma surgury. So far he has completed neurosurgery, orthopedic, general and pediatric surgery. I am hoping he will have a good experience in trauma because I think it has potential of being something he could could do in the long term. So far Drew has finally admitted that he is going to be a surgeon, but I am having trouble getting him to even admit to leaning toward a specific type of surgery.

We did have a great weekend in Marseilles (we were in town for Jon Bivens' wedding). Drew was a groomsmen - the very firt wedding that he has stood up in. I had a great time because Drew was willing to dance all night - which is quite unusual for him! The weekend was very busy but we did have time to see the Grandmothers and Mary Lynn, Dan and Jake on Sunday.

Well I think that's enough for my first post.