things get better

On Friday I had a really good. After the week had started out pretty slow, Friday was sort of bussy in the ICU. I also have to admit, that during the day when our residents had to meet with the new applicants to talk about the program I did not spend the hour studying or having breakfast, but took a nap... That definetely made the day a whole lot better! I was the only senoir in the ICU and got to attend two tracheotomies and one PEG placement. That was really cool and it made the day go by so much faster, since I actually had something to do. And after that it got even better, I got to see a patient for a consult all by myself, write the note and then present to the resident who would only add his assessment and plan!!! I got to do some real work there.
Later that night Deb and I had a short girl's night out, because Tim was out of town. We had dinner at Panera's Bread and then went to Hobby Lobby (a craft store) Those stores are dangerous and I think my family can be really glad that we do not have stores that big and with so much craft stuff in Germany. During my crafty years that would have been very dangerous......
Since Friday was such a great day, I decided to go back in on Saturday and be the only student again that day instead of going in on Sunday and sharing the work with two seniors again. It of course also meant that I had to get all the paperwork done for rounds by myself, but at least that kept me bussy. After rounds we only had to do one bronchoscopy. It is really amazing what the trauma surgeons do themselfs. I don't think any German trauma surgeon would know how to do a bronchoscopy, esophagoscopy..... Their work is very different from German trauma surgeons. What I have seen the trauma surgeons do in Germany is covered by orthopedics over here and what the trauma surgeons do here is more like what the German inteventional medicine doctors and thoracic and abominal surgeons do. I believe that our trauma surgeons in Greifswald would never fix an aortic aneurysm or resect part of a liver due to a gun shot wound (not we would ever get to see gun shot wounds there....) But their responsibilities are very different over here and I really like that, even though I will not get to see many broken bones and how they are fixed (which is something I definetely would need to see for studying purposes.....)
Today was a resting and catching up on things day. I didn't do anything really exciting, just writting a few emails, studying, organizing stuff..... And now we just got back from a Dinner at a Mexican restaurant!!!! Very tasty!
I have also managed to get through the first severe phase of homesickness. (or more a boyfriend sickness) It was not easy and I never had to experience that before. Whenever I traveled before I had a few short episodes of missing certain people/things/events, but I never had a whole week of not being able to really get over those feelings of missing someone really badly. It was a new experience.....