A little help from my friends

Semester #1 is done! I honestly don't know what else to say about it. It's over. Done. Terminado. I've learned more the last 5 months than I think that I have my whole last year of undergrad. I've made a few friends who have helped me get through this madness. I have been amazed at the level of support and commiseration that happens here. I always heard that med school was uber competitive with students even giving intentionally misleading study guides. Thankfully that hasn't happened here.




We've had some good times, my friends and I. We shared some laughs, some pain, but surprisingly no tears (at least not with each other, unless I wasn't invited to some late-night crying sessions. I mean, my friends are all guys. We boast about growing hair on our chests, not about how many times we cried while reviewing material). So, this short post goes out to them, my friends. May we never burn out like our scrubs after anatomy.

This is where we live (in photos)

A few pictures to help illustrate where it is we live.  The good, bad, strange, and different.

I've never lived anywhere that had deciduous trees at the tops of mountains.  Either I lived near mountains that went above timberline (so no trees grew above a certain elevation and the tops were therefore rocky and rugged) or else they had pine trees.  It gives the mountains an entirely different shape to see them without leaves!

We see these trucks occasionally.  This was taken on the drive up to NYC for Thanksiving, and we really liked the mudflaps, too.

One night it "snowed" and they cancelled school for the county's public schools.  This is what the snowstorm consisted of.  (To be fair, people said it was icy elsewhere.)

 You know you've in Kentucky when you use the bathroom at the movie theater and three of the four stalls look like this.

This is where James lives during school.  It's one of the two buildings his classes are in.

This is where we actually live.  I took the picture before we went inside the first time.  It's our little duplex with no fences between the different yards.  (Turns out that's how it is here.  I don't know if it's a southern thing or a small town thing or just a Tennessee thing, but it's a thing.)

At a local taco joint* (Taco Casa, to be exact) they have a house special: The Beany Twins!  You can get a hot dog in a taco or a hot dog in a burrito at little to no cost!

*Mexican food, it should be noted, is in extremely short supply here, both in number of restaurants and types of food available at grocery stores.  I have seen exactly one Hispanic person since we moved here, and here I thought we were moving to a place with more diversity than Utah.  It's a little strange to not have delicious aromas from various Mexican places tempting us.  This is pretty much the highest quality option we have.

I guess someone has to be growing the tobacco people are smoking.  Apparently it's where we live!

We live near Tri-State Peak, where you can sit in Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky all at the same time!  With a strange family behind you!  It's not the four corners (and no, it's not the three triangles either) but it's pretty cool.

We have nice pop choices here.  (Fun fact: Dr. Pepper is a Coke product in TN, but in KY it's considered a Pepsi product.  Who knew?!)

We got a new car and it lives here, too!

This is the view from our back door.  There were horses in the field in summer, so hopefully they'll be back.

Look carefully at these two tree stumps just outside our front door (I'm standing on our front porch taking a picture that shows, in the background, the back porch of the owners of the four culrpits of this )  If this is where we live, than THIS (these two stumps) is where all the dog poop in our neighborhood lives.

Kentucky: where our closest movie theater only has four screens, so you have to catch something opening week to see it, but where the most expensive ticket you can buy (adult, weekend) is only $4.75.

The South: where even the canned mustard greens have a soulful heritage!

What's in a Doctor's Bag?

It's been a while since I've posted on this blog. I guess you could say that taking 27.5 credits of classes is a little time consuming. That being said, I think that I'm finally getting a handle on this thing known as medical school. I've even figured out how to get a little bit of spare time to do things. Crazy, I know.

Anyway, when I'm at school I get a ton of emails. Most of them are essentially spam sent from the school's clubs trying to get me to buy a sweatshirt or a clipboard or some other unnecessary and expensive item. Sometimes there are a few worthwhile emails with volunteer opportunities. I got such an email probably a month and a half ago for a chance to go show some elementary kids what is in a doctor's bag. I thought that it would be cool to do, and since I felt like I could manage to volunteer for a few hours one day, I signed up.

The day came to visit the elementary school. It was an hour away from school and Google Maps took my friend and me to the wrong location at first, but we found it eventually. We got there and this school had some intense security measures. The first one was pretty normal I guess you could say; you had to call in from the outside and they would unlock the front door. We walked in and some of the school was at lunch. The kids were so excited to see us fancy med students in our spiffy white coats. The next thing that I noticed was that there was an armed police officer walking the perimeter of the lunch room. They must have some serious food fights reminiscent of "Hook". I personally thought it was a little excessive, I mean, kids will be kids. Food fights are a natural part of school.

We signed in at the front desk and got our visitor stickers. There were two activities going on that day: one was a mini-med school activity and the other was the doctor's bag thing, which was what I signed up to do. It was a pretty sweet activity. They took us around to about 4 different classes ranging from preschool to second grade. It seemed to me that some of the kids were very shy either around doctors or they were terrified of my height as is usually the case. The first two groups of kids that I had really weren't that interested in what I was doing. However, they all seemed to enjoy playing with my tools. They especially liked my blood pressure cuff. They thought it was the coolest thing being able to pump that thing up. I would have thought that the otoscope or opthalmoscope would have interested them more. Who hasn't ever wanted to see what's lurking behind your pupil or what kind of crusties your friend has hidden in his ear? Shows you how out of touch I am with the youth of these days.

I had a lot of fun doing that. And now, if any of you want to know what doctors carry with them, I am trained in the art of showing you.

Southern snow...sort of.

People like to talk to their cashier about the weather.  Especially when it's changing.  It's a safe topic - nobody's going disagree or argue about whether it's sunny or cold.  This last week has been getting gradually colder (but nothing like what poor Colorado experienced!), and people  are starting to freak out.  You'd think they'd never seen winter before!  People here treat snow like it's the end of the world, and they really don't get all that much snow.

One night at work, it was that cold weather where the air is frozen and you can feel little specks of frozenness touching your face, but there's nothing coming down.  Just frozen humidity.  A fellow cashier came inside saying, "It's sleeting!"  Another announced, "It's sure coming down!"  Nope.  Maybe a total of ten drops on a windshield.  Sleet?  No.

I want to rant for a minute and say that I love snow.  I agree, driving in snow isn't awesome, and being colder than you want is also not wonderful.   I don't like driving in snow any more than summer-lovers like dealing with sunburns.  But be prepared and you'll get through it; there's no need for the annual Facebook onslaught of snow hating.  Many people dislike hot weather, but you don't see everyone post "I hate all sunshine forever until I die!"  "Gross!  It's sunshine!"  "I can't believe the sun is out! I hate this time of year."  Wear sunscreen if you don't want a sunburn from the sun.  Wear a coat to be less cold from the snow.   Let's stop the hating on snow!  It's not a surprise - I mean, good grief, it's winter.  If you live in a snowy state and hate snow, then move to Arizona.  Four months of complaining and unhappiness because of fluffy white stuff you can't control?  What a sad way to lose a third of the year.  You're allowed to dislike it, but please don't be mean to people who do like it! And learn that this is a third of your life if you live in a place that experiences winter.  Sheesh.  It's just snow.  Rant over.

Anyway, in our city here, people treat snow like it's the Apocalypse.  On Thursday afternoon there were actual flurries in the air - flurries! - and they didn't even stick.  The prettiness of snow without any mess!  Brilliant!  It was not supposed to accumulate, and there's no snow in the forecast, but the sight of a dozen flakes sent people into a frenzy.  Our store was suddenly swarmed with doomsdayers buying milk, bread, eggs, and almost every gallon of water we had.  People buying lighters, propane, and coffee - oh, if I had a dime for all the coffee we sold!  It didn't even full-on snow.  It lasted for 30 minutes and was lovely.  Not a single person through my line that day liked snow, and they all mocked me for liking it.  I've seen snow-hate and snow-fear, but this was exciting: imminent snow death for all as the world comes to an end!  They're all scurrying about, preparing for the Apocalypse, and I'm just smiling, watching the snow fall down.  Some people just like to watch the world burn.

So we went to Louisville the other day...

We went to Louisville a couple of weeks ago in order to get a great deal on a carseat from a lady there.  (She'd found it accidentally  marked at $30 instead of the $190 it usually is and bought it, so we got it from her.  What a wonderful, wonderful thing!)

We decided we'd only spend the night there if we could find a hotel for $50 or under.  Otherwise we'd do the trip in one day (it's a 4 hour drive to Louisville).  Hooray!  We found the hotel!  So excited were we for our little vacation that we didn't think to read the hotel reviews first.

We arrived at our hotel, a more-than-vaguely sketchy little thing in Indiana, just across the river from Louisville.  The front desk first gave us the key to the wrong room.  We walked into our room and find the bed unmade, suitcases out, clothes on the floor...and as we were walking back down to the front desk to fix this mistake, we passed an old couple walking to the room.  Unfortunately, authorizing our key to their room inactivated their keys.  Fortunately, the front desk lady met us all on the stairs and straightened things out.  Then we arrived at our real room.  I wish we'd taken pictures!  Here's what our room consisted of:

• The bedding, towels, and furniture were all stained, torn, dirty, or shredded.  Every last one.  I don't know what blue thing happened on those towels, and I don't want to know.
• About half of the lights worked.  Some of them had no chance, like the one mounted to the wall by the bed with its cord dangling down into nothing - there was no outlet for it.
• The sink made a loud whining sound that may or may not have made me shriek when I washed my hands.
• The bathroom....ah, the bathroom.  There was someone else's pubic hair in our toilet.  The walls had smudges and dirt on them.  The tub itself and the inside of the shower curtain looked like Jackson Pollock had decorated them with mildew and mold.  It was textured with them.  We opted to not shower

After seeing this, we pulled up reviews for the place.  Apparently this is normal and reviews all said that asking for a new room often cost extra and usually ended up with a worse room.  Apparently it's a common short-to-long term "home" for vagrants, since it's cheap.  Apparently some of these vagrants are known for selling drugs and sex here.  Apparently drug busts have happened while visitors stayed here.  And apparently sometimes you can find drug paraphernalia in your rooms.  (We looked but didn't find any.)  At least there were no bed bugs or cockroaches (that we saw) and since it was late, we just slept carefully and brushed our teeth at a McDonald's the next day.  Upon checkout, we found another couple with the same sort of room situation as ours.  Our car wasn't even stolen!

We really enjoyed downtown Louisville.  I'd forgotten about public art!  And museums!  And being near stuff! This is on the same street as the Slugger Museum, and we wandered the area for a couple of hours.

We found a neat science exploration center.  We spent an hour in it and didn't even see a full third of their fun activities and learning stations.  It was free! It's like Salt Lake's planetarium, but better.  We found it because it had this sweet satellite dish mirror outside.












 One of our favorite things in the museum was the chance to be in a bubble.


 James found this sweet looking limo covered in rhinestones? Glass beads? Dried wine droplets?

And we drove past this exciting place (it turns out is is more of an events center than it is a taste testing site).

We also liked this cool gutted building downtown.  All in all, it was a fun trip!  Even with the hotel.

School Zones

We live very close to both the local high school and TNT Primary School.  The school zone lights here aren't very useful, and this causes some confusion in the area.  Nobody takes them seriously or slows down for the flashing lights, which is not what I'm used to, but that's probably because they're almost never applicable when they're on.  The schools are also over a mile apart and there's no real break between school zones.  Just...1.5 miles of school zone speeds with no children in sight.  What's in between the two schools?  The county jail and police department. Because the schools are on the same street and end at different times, the county decided that they'd just turn the school zone lights on 30 minutes before one school ended...and keep them on until 30 minutes after the other one ended.  Same for school starting.  And so...when are the lights on?

The lights are on from between 2-3 hours every morning and every afternoon.  The lights are on every weekday.  The lights are on on weekends.  The lights are on during the summer.  The lights are lit on Christmas day.  One can only guess what they do with daylight savings.  Maybe they'll just extend them!

I'm used to slowing down for lights.  You know, that being the law and everything.  Plus you have to pass the police department between the schools and don't want to get in trouble... But nobody else here obeys, and I can see why.  It doesn't appear to matter much.  Oh, and my favorite part of this scenario is a little off-shoot road that apparently doesn't see enough traffic to merit its own light but does connect to the light-riddled road.  It has pretty generic rules: "School zone from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm."  School zones...FOREVER!!

TNT

We live in Tazewell.  We barely, barely miss the line for living in New Tazewell.  They're kind of the same city, and we share most of our services.  To specify that they're for both Tazewell and New Tazewell, some things will have a little prefix: TNT.  Tazewell-New Tazewell.  This can be sort of funny at times.  For instance, we have:

-TNT Primary School (an explosive elementary school)
-TNT New Baptist Church (they have fiery sermons!)
-Police cars with "TNT Police" on the side (don't mess with them)
and my personal favorite:
-TNT Fire Department (specializing in dynamite)

The Cashier Chronicles 2

A few anecdotes from my job:

Yesterday I had two unrelated customers in line, a man and woman.  They were talking about food, and they were both overweight.  The first lady says, "I love food!  You don't get fat from starving!"  The second man said, "Yeah, but I don't have much appetite for food these days."  After the first lady left, I asked the man why he didn't have an appetite for food anymore.  He said, "Eighteen years ago my wife died.  Ever since then I've mostly only had an appetite for drinking.  That's why I'm so big."

There is a customer who comes in every other day or so.  His accent is thick and he mumbles, so I have a hard time understanding him.  He usually quotes Elvis and tries to get the cashiers to say "Thank you, thank you very much" to him.  The other day I understood him more than usual when he came in the store and we had a nice chat.  Later, I went to go bring in shopping carts and he came out while I was headed in.  He had me stop pushing the carts and then took my hand and kissed it, saying, "You are a gorgeous soul!"  I said, "Thank you, thank you very much!"

Less of an anecdote and more of an observation: all the cashiers at all the stores here call people "sweetie" or "sweetheart."  Occasionally they'll do "sugar," but mostly not.  I can't quite bring myself to do it because I think I'd sound insincere.  Many customers are not very sweet.  They call that being hateful or being aggravating here, e.g. "I was getting aggravated at all the hateful people today."

I have only had ONE day at work so far in which something like this has not happened: someone will say something like, "You're not from here, are you?"  When I ask them how they know, their answers vary.  "Your accent."  "You don't look like it."  "I can just tell."  Usually they laugh.

One customer jokingly asked me if his cashier was any good (I was not his cashier at the time).  I said, "Yep!  She's the fastest cashier in the West!"  They both stared at me.  "In the East?  South?  In the state?" Nothing.  Apparently that's not an expression here.

There's a nice man of American Indian descent who comes in regularly.  (I have a hard time understanding his accent and low voice, but he's really nice.)  One day he came through my line and said, "You're nice.  Do you like jewelry?"  Why yes, yes I do.  "What kind of pendants do you like on necklaces?" Um...turquoise?  "Okay." Then he left.  He returned two minutes later and opened a box for me, showing me a turquoise necklace.  However, the necklace was in a child's length and was therefore something of a choking-hazard for me.  He said, "Drive around out back with me here," meaning for me to follow him to his car.  One of the other cashiers motioned that this was okay (and presumably safe), so I did.  I stood outside his car while he tried to find the right length chain, but I had to go back in and do my job before he found one.  The next day he came through my line again and gave me a lovely necklace!  He insisted I put it on then and there, and he lady behind him in line jokingly asked, "Are we witnessing an engagement?"  Another cashier says he gives jewelry to the the workers he likes.  "That's why I try not to do that with customers," she said.  "Sometimes this stuff happens."  That's why she tries not to...what, be friendly?  Say hi?  Incidentally, she does not have a necklace from the nice man.

Yesterday a lady came in as we were closing to get groceries.  She was a very large woman and was very clearly not wearing a bra under her spaghetti-strap shirt.  When the time came to pay, she reached into her shirt and pulled out a $10 bill.  From between her breasts.  The bill was damp and warm.  And then she put her $1 change back in there.  After she left, the manager came over and said, "No, she did not just take that money from her boobs!  How did she keep it in there?!  Those are not pockets!"

White Coat Ceremony

This last Saturday was James's White Coat Ceremony.  If you're anything like me, you've never heard of this before and/or don't get what it is.  Good news!  I now know and will explain it to you.  Towards the beginning of their medical school career, med students have a ceremony called the White Coat Ceremony that celebrates this transition into med school.  It's kind of like a pre-graduation.  At this ceremony, they take the osteopathic pledge (a pledge to treat patients well, to follow the tenants of their schooling, etc.) and they receive their white coats.  This is the coat James will wear in all patient encounters until he completes med school.  This includes rotations, volunteer hours, and his simulated patient interactions.  Here's James with his fancy new coat:

He's really a med student now! Medical schools do this ceremony at different times (first week of school, a few months in, etc.), but for us it was after 8 weeks of school.  Presumably anyone who decided they actually didn't want to do this would have dropped out by now.  The ceremony was nice, with some good speakers.  The "coating" (I love that...it sounds like he's being marinated) took longer.  He feels and looks legit now, and I'm so proud.

The Cashier Chronicles

I recently got a job here as a cashier at a local grocery store.  As the newest cashier, I've been shadowed by some coworkers to make sure I don't mess anything up too badly.  How busy the store is depends on the time of the month, as most of our customers are on Food Stamps and WIC, which are issued at the beginning of the month.  The end of the month is pretty slow.  It's interesting to see how different people will spend this money versus how they'd spend their own money.

I've also learned some new stuff about produce.  I've never actually seen okra before this week, except when Tiana made gumbo in The Princess and the Frog. Who knew?  Fascinating item.  Another produce item with a twist: cucumbers.  Our store carries two sizes: normal and small.  When I got the small ones, I spent forever trying to find it on our produce sheet so I could enter the code into the system.  It turns out their official name is not "small cucumbers" or "mini cucumbers" or "midget cucumbers."  Nope- their official name is "picklin' cukes." Picklin' cukes!  I love it.  It's a good thing I was being shadowed that day or I'd never have found them.

In addition to okra and picklin' cukes, we sell bags of ice.  We do not sell blocks of ice, however.  I was trying to make this distinction with my trainer ("Well, what do I type in if they want a block of ice instead of ice cubes?"  "Who would want a 10 lb block of ice, Sariah? What would you even do with that?") and explained what ice blocking was.  She responded, "That sounds amazing.  Why haven't we done that?  I reckon it'd be great on our hills...hmm.  Do you need grease for it?"  (She puts oil on the bottom of her inner tube to go sledding in winter.  I've never heard of this.)  In return for my explanation of this fun new pastime, she told me about a Southern alternative: muddin'.  Muddin' is where you go out driving (preferably in a mud-friendly vehicle) through mud puddles.  How muddy you yourself get depends on if you're in a truck instead of ATV and if the windows are open.  I feel like ice blocking might be a cleaner option, but still, if we get bored, we'll know what to do!

Heavy Driving

Since moving here, I think that on average we're in the car at least 45 minutes a day. Just to put that in perspective, I bought gas yesterday and have already driven 100 miles. Crazy. I know. Basically everywhere we want or need to go ends up being about 20 minutes away. I think that I'm starting to get used to it, but that's just me talking. At any rate, there is flea market that is, you guessed it, about 20 minutes away. Sariah and I went once a couple weeks ago just to see what it was like. The only thing that I've experienced that was remotely similar was a thing in Argentina called a feria. People have booths that sell a wide variety of things from bootlegged DVDs and CDs to food to animals to old tools. These things are a Southern tradition as the sign proudly proclaims. As a brief side note here before the point of this post starts, the first time we went, Sariah and I were amazed at how many things are sold there illegally. She looked at me and whispered, afraid of offending the wrong booth-keeper, "This is illegal, isn't it?" To those who aren't sure, it is. It's grossly illegal. Maybe I'm wrong; this is the South after all. Things are a little different from what we're used to.

Anyway, we decided to make the 20 minute trek to the flea market for a rug. We found a lovely, Moroccan tile rug that was just the right size for our living room. We even haggled with the guy manning the table and got 5 whole dollars knocked off the price. Life was looking pretty sweet at this point. We gently tossed the rug into the back of our truck and got ready to go home and let our feet bask in the soft fibers of our newly purchased rug. Due to the popularity of the flea market, we were forced to park on the shoulder of the highway. Now if you've ever tried to turn left on a highway, you know that it can take a while to do so. I quickly remembered that we were close to a local BBQ that is supposed to be the bee's knees and it just so happened to be to the right of where we were pulling out. Being the impatient driver that I am, I suggested that we turn right and go on a little excursion to find Heavy's.

I honestly thought that this would be a quick drive and that we'd be back home 5 minutes later than had we just gone home after the flea market. We both thought that. It seemed like a good decision at the time. I'm still glad that we did it because it was kind of fun trying to find this place. Anyhow, we turned right and then turned right again where the sign for the Heavy's was. Things started off well enough; we passed some homes and a few churches without any sign of the place. We thought, "It must be a mile down this road. Surely they wouldn't make their restaurant hard to find." Wrong! We kept on going another mile,which turned into five, which became 20. The road we were on became pretty narrow with barely enough space for two cars to pass each other. However, it was a pretty road. We saw plenty of the soft green water of the Powell River through the dense trees. We even saw some small strips of tobacco plants here and there.

Eventually, the road ended without any sign for Heavy's. We had a choice to make: left or right? I chose right. For whatever reason, Sariah trusts me when it comes to driving. I hope that I didn't destroy that. We drove on and on and on and on. I kept thinking that we would make it back to the main highway any second. Suddenly we saw a sign that said a familiar-sounding highway was coming up on our left. I breathed a sigh of relief and made a turn there. After driving for roughly 15 minutes, we had passed into another county and I knew that something was wrong. Our tank of gas was starting to run low too so my anxiety started to rise. We turned around and drove back the way we came until we ran into a relatively nice couple that were doing yard work together. I got out of the car and asked them how to get back home. Apparently we had gone the right direction, but we shouldn't have turned down that highway that sounded familiar to us (I could have told them that); we should have kept going straight. We hopped back in and drove for another 20 minutes and made it home.

What should have been a fairly short trip to the flea market ended up being a 2 hour escapade deep into the back country of Tennessee. I enjoyed it, even though I got us lost. It was nice being with Sariah. Plus we were listening to Jim Dale read the last Harry Potter book, which we both highly recommend. That man does a fantastic job narrating. But I digress.

Missing Sariah or Where I go all the time

Can I start by saying that I miss Sariah? Even if you don't want me to, I'm going to say it: I miss her. It's not like I don't see her either. It's that when I do see her, either my mind is distracted or it's in very short bursts of usually 30-60 minutes (obviously there are exceptions such as date night or Sundays, where I try not to study at all. Those exceptions rock). Such is the life of a medical student.

My day typically starts at about 6:45. That isn't too bad, especially since I had to be at work by 6:30 for my last job. I get ready and, if I'm driving myself, I leave Sariah home to sleep on. My first class starts at 8:00 with lectures every hour until noon most days. These aren't your typical lectures either. We cover a semester's worth of undergrad material in a couple hours. And then do it again the next day! It is honestly like trying to drink from a firehose. In the afternoon, I have a lab or two that keeps me on campus until roughly 5:30. Then I finally get to go home hungry, tired, and often smelling like formaldehyde. I eat and then study again until 10:30 or 11:00.

I'm going to throw in a little something here about how awesome Sariah is. Most of the time when I get home, she is already making dinner, the house has been cleaned, and laundry has been folded. I am constantly amazed by how willing she is to do those things to make my life easier. This has been a huge sacrifice for her. I mean, she gave up a very promising career at an incredible school to follow me out to the middle of nowhere Tennessee. Not only that, but she left behind all of her friends to become a foreigner wandering in a strange land, and strange it is. She is quite honestly alone out here.

School is hard, but I have friends at school. I'm kept busy by the insane amount of information that I need to know. I don't have very much spare time. It's not all that bad though because the things that I'm learning are so interesting. This is what I wanted to do. However, leaving Sariah behind in the morning and not being "home" when I'm home has been one of the hardest things about med school thus far. I miss her. So for the next few years, the image of Sariah that will be most common for me to see is her rolling over to fall back asleep.

In the end, it will be worth it. She'll still be there when all is said and done. Then I'll be able to crawl back in on my side of the bed, put an arm around her, and just be with her.

Missing James or Where does he go all the time?

On Wednesday, I took a delicious cobb-type salad to James at school.  It was nice to see him for a little while while we ate.  What did he do that day?  Oh, not much.  Just learning about ALL of human embryology and fetal development.  No biggie.  What did I do that day?  Dishes.  I washed the heck out of those dishes.  Plus I made that delicious salad, so clearly I'm the winner here.

On Thursday, I actually got to see James for dinner. Then he disappeared into his study room until about midnight.

On Friday, I took James to school, where he studied and took quizzes and such all day, while I did exactly zero productive things, and then I dropped off his dinner for him so he could keep studying while I continued to be unproductive.

On Saturday (last night), at about ten thirty James finally came home from a long grueling day on campus.  I had spent all day reading The Fault in Our Stars instead of making curtains, and had been texting James updates throughout the day: "This book is very witty!"  "Aaah it's the saddest book I've ever even heard of!"  "I like this book.  Come home so I can tell you about it." "Waaah why why why did I even start this book? I hate it!"  "You don't have cancer, do you?"  (Spoiler: that book is about teenagers with cancer.)  James would respond with comments like, "I'm studying."  "Sounds good. Maybe I'll be done in a few hours."  "Noooooooooooooooo not the saddest book!"

James came inside (we're still on Saturday here) and I looked up at him (having finally returned to the making-curtains activity, since the book was over).  I was startled; I had actually forgotten what he looked like a little bit!  When I'd think of him this week, I wouldn't be picturing his face in my mind.  I'd think about getting dinner to him, or how we were going to figure out who got the car that day, or if he was getting enough sleep, or if he was ever able to memorize those stupid acronyms.  I'd forgotten how much I liked his face!

In some ways, it's nice.  It's like dating again!  I got a little shy at first, thinking, "Woah, I married that?  He's amazing!  How did I get so lucky?  Maybe I should've put makeup on or something while reading that book today."  (Let's be honest, though: I would have cried it all off.)  But in other ways, it's really not nice.  I really miss James.  Even when I'm with him, he's thinking about muscles and proteins while we eat, or else we're driving to/from school.  That's all.  He goes to school in the morning and takes classes and studies.  He either comes home for dinner or stays there.  After dinner, he studies either in his study room or at school.  Often I'm already in bed by the time he's done.  (There are only so many dishes you can do in one day, after all.)  It's worse in the week before a test than other weeks, and since his test is tomorrow, he'll have a day or two where he as a few more hours for me.  But then there's another test in two weeks, so...yes.  That's the honest truth about med school wives.  I'll see him in a few years, I guess. He really does try to spend time with me, and I know I have more time with him than many wives; there's just not very much he can give.  For now, this is what James looks like:

My Manipulative Husband

James survived his first week of med school!  His first test is already here (tomorrow), and he's been busy.  He spends almost all of his waking time at school and studying.  We live 20 minutes away from the school, so it's hard for him to give up the 40 minutes of study time to drive there and back so he can study in a group, so next year we'll probably move closer to the school.  Their biggest class so far has been anatomy, which he's loved.

Now, James is going to be a DO, and one of the differences between a DO and an MD is that DOs do osteopathic manipulations.  This means they do stuff to your muscles.  (Remember, chiropractors = bones, DOs = muscles.)  They started in on that this week, and their first lab was finding key features on bones so they can...I don't know...so they can find them.  On people.  And something about muscles.  So James comes home one night this week for dinner and announces, "I need to manipulate you for fifteen minutes tonight.  It's homework."

This was my favorite thirty minutes of the week.  (See?  He doubled his homework time!  He's gonna be a great DO!  Actually, it's mostly because when he was done I said, "I don't think you got them all right.  You should try again.  You're not very manipulative.")  I lay there while he turned my arms, feet, and mostly my head this way and that, trying to press through my muscles to feel landmarks on the bones.  I heard such things as, "Prepare to turn your head laterally," "That can't possibly be too hard, Sariah; I can barely feel it through your muscle here," "Wow, your jaw is in really bad shape! Do you think you can let my study group feel it sometime?" "Where IS that....oh, I was in the wrong place.  It's on your chin," "Oh, that's just your belly button," "Don't be ridiculous, Sariah" and "Your external occipital protuberance is much more pronounced than my lab partner's" (one of my best features! I do what I can to support my husband's manipulation skills).

It was really great, though.  Strange as it sounds, there's something soothing in having someone cradle your face and poke around your skull with their fingers.  He's supposed to learn real manipulations soon (as opposed to poking around your head).  In fact, I'm pretty sure he isn't very good yet and will need lots of practice.  If you come visit us, I'm sure he'll practice on you, too.

The First Day

My first day has come and gone. All things considered, it was a fairly easy day. It was only one lecture and one lab: anatomy. I had to take a couple anatomy classes during undergrad, so I wasn't expecting the material to be anything new. The biggest difference that I can tell so far between med school and undergrad is that I honestly have to memorize know/understand everything that was in that lecture before the next one. All throughout orientation the doctors were saying how med school will snowball if you don't study one day. With the fear of dying in a horrible avalanche of medical knowledge, I have studied roughly 5 hours for one lecture. 5 HOURS! Who does that? If I had heard that someone had spent 5 hours reviewing 1 hour's worth of material, I would have called them crazy. Now, I know better. Medical students do that. This is my life now. Hurray?

On the plus side, it's all very interesting. Anatomy was one of my favorite classes before getting here, so I'm hoping that that will be the case again. The best part about anatomy classes during undergrad was the cadaver lab. There are few things as cool as being able to look inside a body. I know. This sounds kind of weird. But, I'm weird like that. Learning anatomy by touching and feeling everything is awesome. I'm having a hard time finding the right word to describe what it's like seeing inside another human. It's a little bit of awe mixed with a dash of fear with a whole lot of awesome. It's a sacred experience. That may sound strange, but that's honestly how it is. All in all, I'm thinking that anatomy is going to enjoyably difficult.

Future Dr. James .

That's right. Future Doctor James. Today was the first day of that road. It's not that long, right? I mean, May 12, 2018 isn't that far away. I guess school hasn't technically started since I have orientation until Thursday. My first class and lab are on Friday. Everything will really pick up next week. And, after looking at the schedule, I believe them.

Orientation was fine and dandy for me. The professors were taking jabs at each other. We shared some laughs. A few tears  may have been shared as well. It was shaping up to be a fairly chill day. Everything changed when they introduced us to the color-coded codex that is our class schedule. Every hour of every day is blocked with nicely colored boxes that match a specific subject. I was sitting there thinking that this was going to be rough. Quite frankly, I was terrified. What had I gotten myself into?

The professor explaining the schedule didn't sugar coat things either; this is going to be a challenging four years. However, he quickly followed it up with a lot of reassurance. All the faculty is there to help me succeed. The professors may appear like my enemies come test time, but they are all on my side. And unlike Harry Potter with Severus Snape, I will actually know that they are trying to help me as I fight through the evils of mass memorization. Although I'm still scared about the amount of information that I'll be required to master, I feel like I won't be alone. I'll have classmates to commiserate with me, professors that will help me, and a loving and understanding wife in Sariah that will get me through these next four years.

If I had to choose a word for today, it would be reassuring.

Tornado Watch

We woke up this morning to a nice day: birds doing their chirping thing, sun doing its warming-the-earth thing, all good things.  By the time we got to church, it was much the same but with a couple of clouds on the horizon.  After church I noticed an alert on my phone. Tornado watch.  No sweat.*  The watch was for all of Eastern Tennessee, so we might see a storm but nothing major.

*Let's pause for a second and talk about my fear of tornadoes.  I've never lived somewhere with any chance of tornadoes, but I still have nightmares about them every few months.  I always have.  The concept of a tornado terrifies me.  I've never experienced a tornado watch before.  When I say "no sweat," I'm actually sweating quite a bit.  Like a pig.  Like a pig in a tornado.

I mentioned this alert to some people around me and they said, "Eh, no problem; it's the tornado warnings you have to watch out for!"  "Yeah," another agreed.  "It's been several years since we had a tornado around here."  (Several years??  Several?  Shouldn't that be NEVER??)

Later this afternoon I was napping on the couch when I woke to a strange alert noise on my phone.  The screen said: "TORNADO WARNING IN YOUR AREA.  TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY."  What?  Take cover immediately?  Who says that?  What kind of a place is this?!

"JAMES!"  I holler.  But James is already up, having received the same alert.

"Where do we go?" he asked.

"The bathroom!  The bathtub!  No windows in there!" I scurry inside.  We have no basement, so this is the best place we have.

Me: "James!  I need towels because the tub is wet and I'm not sitting in water!"
James: "Grab what you need, you know, laptops or anything we'd really need."  (I step out long enough to get my laptop and decide I'm more interested in saving myself than anything else.)
Me, from the towel-lined tub: "James!  Get in here!"
James: "Here!  I got your shoes and socks." (James busily preparing as much as he can in the event of tornado destruction around but not including our bathroom.)
Me: "James!  Why are you not in the bathtub??"
James: "I got some water bottles."
Me: "James! I am not dying alone in a bathtub in a tornado!"

James, as it turns out, is much better at emergency preparedness than me.  I, as it turns out, am much better at plain old emergency than him.  We're sitting in our tub with the door safely shut (flying shards of glass - it can happen, you know) when....the power goes out.

James: "Should I open the door so we're not in the dark?"
Me: "You're not going anywhere."

So we sat in the tub in the dark, with winds and thunder and rain loudly pounding our house until the warning was over about 45 minutes later.  We tried to figure out if we can get radio on our phones to hear updates but we don't know what frequency.  We looked up statistics on cities and tornado deaths.  Fortunately, the last time someone in our city died from a tornado was in 1988.

When we come out, we see the sun again within another 15 minutes.  It rained 3" in that storm. The power came on about an hour after it went off.  It was calm for a few hours and then another storm rolled in.

Now it's 11 pm and we've been watching the sky flashing for the last hour or two, with more rain and thunder.  In the last 15 minutes there hasn't been a full second of space between lightning flashes; it's that continuous.  I've never been afraid of rainstorms before, not when I was inside.  It's nice to be curled up and know the storm can't get you.  But wait, what?  It can get you?  And blow you to Oz?  Tornadoes are a thing?  My nightmares were just foreshadowing!?

We just got a few new alerts in our area:  severe/dangerous thunderstorm and areal flood advisory (the tornado watch from this morning is still in effect until 2 am, by the way). The alerts have helpful tips and facts: "This storm is centered in your town.  Move to higher ground," "When driving in roads covered with water: turn around, don't drown," "Expect quarter-sized hail and winds in excess of 60 mph," "Torrential rainfall may lead to flooding," and "Lightning is one of nature's leading killers."  I feel reassured.

*     *     *

Edit: Monday morning. Nobody got blown away to Oz.  There may have been a tornado in our county yesterday after all (we live in Claiborne county) and 10 homes were destroyed in Speedwell, which is about 25 minutes away from us.  There are pictures on that link of the houses.

Advice for Applying

Sariah has been telling me that I should give some advice to others that are going through the application process that we just went through. In the off chance that someone actually finds this blog, here are things that I have learned through this experience.

First and foremost, you need to be certain that this is what you want to do. I haven't even started med school yet and I feel that I have already been stretched in ways that I wasn't expecting. To give a little background info, I'm not one of those people that always wanted to be a doctor. Although I knew that I wanted to do something where I could help others, I was torn about how to go about doing that. It was an honest struggle for me to commit myself to the idea of medicine. I was worried (and still worry albeit much less) about being able to make it in med school. I was scared about how the career would change my relationship with my family, especially with Sariah. Not only were those fears constantly circling around my inner dialogue, but I was seriously concerned about actually making it into school.

I was sucked into the trap of comparing myself to other students who had similar ambitions as mine. That wasn't helpful at all. Everyone else seemed to be succeeding with ease whereas I was struggling along the way. At any rate, I set aside my doubts, convinced and determined that I wanted to practice medicine. There is so much uncertainty throughout the application cycle that will really mess with your head if you aren't committed to this career path. Even if you are, this process can still mess with you, which leads me to advice tidbit thing number two: have a strong supporting cast.

Sariah has been such a help to me. Not only was she there to proofread essays and personal statements, but to help me keep believing in myself. She and the rest of my family were awesome at buoying me up during this last year. Without them, I don't think that I would have been able to make it to this point. I certainly wouldn't have maintained the same level of sanity after all was said and done.

Third, get your application in as soon as possible. I wish that I had done this. The longer you wait to turn in your primary and secondaries, the harder it is to get accepted due to rolling admissions. Take the time during the summer and get everything finished so that you don't have to stress during the Fall when you may be taking classes in addition to trying to make it into medical school. Learn from my mistake! I was finishing my last semester while still trying to finish the roughly 30 secondary application essay questions that I had.

Fourth, learn confidence, not arrogance. Believe in yourself. Seriously, you got this. You wouldn't be applying if you didn't think that you had what it takes. Don't doubt your abilities. That being said, don't be a cocky son of a gun that won't ever admit a mistake or an imperfection. Don't be that guy thinks he's all that and a bag of chips while advertising it to the world with a billboard complete with flashing lights. That is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the gist of it. Confidence lets people know that you are honestly aware of yourself, meaning that you know your limitations and more importantly your strengths. Arrogance makes me less trusting of that person and (if I'm being honest) annoyed with that individual. I'll tune them out.

Fifth and finally, the wait/alternate list is not the end of the world. I applied to ten schools. After writing all of the secondary essays and paying all of the fees (seriously, someone is making money somewhere off of these applications. It's ridiculous!), I was invited to interview at three schools. Of those three schools, I was wait-listed at two of them and rejected from the third, which I found very annoying especially being rejected after flying all the way out there and spending all of that money. I kind of felt like that Asian guy in "The Dark Knight" when Morgan Freeman's character tells him that the joint venture with Wayne Enterprises was off - "A simple phone call would have sufficed," pre-interview that is. Anyway, Sariah and I were stuck in this state of alternate list limbo. We were stressed out because we didn't know if I would have to apply again or if we would be moving across the country at some unforeseen time in the near future. It was not a pleasant experience, but I'm glad that it happened the way that it did. I received a phone call one day from my school explaining that I had been accepted. All of the anxiety and stress were gone. I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't lose hope about achieving your dream if you are placed on an alternate/wait list.

There are a slew of other little things that I could mention like save up money as this is expensive, or get your letters of recommendation taken care of early, but I think that these five things have helped me the most. To you who may be applying to med school, remember, you got this.

The South: Who Knew?

Things we've learned about where we live:

• What fireflies look like!  Incredible!  We've never seen anything like it before!
• Humidity + Sariah's hair = not friends.
• Kentucky, which we're about 20 minutes from, has no sales tax.  Tennessee, which we live in, has no income tax.
• You have to pay tax on purchases from Amazon if you live in Tennessee.
• "The South" is loosely defined.  If you go to the Wikipedia page, you'll see a cool map that shows which states are more or less often referred to as the South.  I thought it was pretty cool.
• There are lots and lots of different churches here.  Lots.
• There are lots and lots of different accents here.  All wonderful, though!
• All new wildlife.  I saw a frog, a bobcat (the feline, not the construction vehicle), and some sort of gopher/prairie dog but bigger this week.
• Did I mention the fireflies?!

Our Great(?) Moving Adventure

We're here in Tennessee now!  Everyone kept telling us that this move would be a wonderful adventure, we'd love it, and we can tell our children about it (except I'd never heard my parents' own early marriage moving story until we were in the middle of our own, so maybe these stories are ones you hide deep in your soul until you need to make someone feel better about their own experience).  But no, it was pretty rough, thanks to our truck.  We'd saved up for a while to afford this move and to afford to buy furniture, etc. when we got here, and it's a good thing we did!

Two days before we left, our truck died in a drive-through in Provo.  Our mechanics didn't know what the problem was, but they did say that our spark plugs and wires looked pretty bad so we got all those replaced.  After lots of prayers, we started our drive.

We were driving across Wyoming on Thursday and when we stopped to get gas, our car died right there on the off ramp.  We tried calling some mechanics but they were full until Monday.  Finally it started after cooling off and we went to an auto parts store, where Bill checked our engine out.  We felt very scolded as Bill shook his head and face-palmed over the state of our transmission fluid.  "Dirty," he said.  "And burnt.  But it should get you to Colorado.  I hope."

It did get us to Colorado...and there the car died again while in some stop and go traffic.  Here we are by the side of the road.  We really enjoy the motto on the side of our trailer: "America's moving adventure!"

Here's James pretending he knows how to fix our car.

We let it cool down again (and prayed pretty hard) and made it to a mechanic near my parents' house.  After checking things out, our mechanic Oliver said that he was 60% sure the problem involved our fuel pump.  While that was neither reassuring nor cheap, we changed our fuel pump and got a transmission flush.

We got to see some really beautiful things while we drove.  We saw two zebras grazing in a pasture in Kansas.  (No joke.  Zebras.  Two of them!)  Here's the St. Louis bridge, which James was pretty excited about driving on:

All was well until just past St. Louis when the truck shuddered violently while we stopped for lunch.  The nearest mechanic was a dealership that said some of our brand new wires had melted in our hot engine and needed to be replaced.  We got going again a few hours later and our truck has behaved ever since!  We drove through some impressive thunderstorms (or maybe just the same storm many times?) and got to see the widest rainbow I'd ever seen (diameter-wise, that is).  We also saw both ends of the rainbow at different times, which was fun.

Now we're here in Tennessee at our new place!  It's a duplex and is much more fun than I'd expected.  There's not a stitch of carpet in it, but lots of nice wood laminate flooring.  We have two bedrooms now, as well as a bigger kitchen and some yard space.  Whoever lived here before had a dog with a robust digestive system, and I'm sure the grass will grow all the greener because of it.

Our trip was hard, but mostly because of truck and monetary worries, and we've had many miracles in that regard and have faith that things will be okay.

Things we learned on our trip:
-St. Louis is so named because French explorers were big fans of King Louis IX around the time it was discovered and named.
-Apparently the Cumberland Gap (approximately where we live) is a big deal.
-Tennessee is very green and sprawling.  There aren't a lot of fences between yards, just lots of rolling areas that merge and are dewy and open.
-Our town is very, very small. We do have a Sonic, though!  We even have a Red Box!
-We actually live in New Tazewell, not Tazewell, but they're kind of the same thing.
-There are no pots of gold at the ends of rainbows. Wouldn't that have been helpful?
-If your semi's trailer breaks in half on the highway and loses all its cargo, it blocks traffic for a very, very long time. 
-Jim Dale is an excellent reader of Harry Potter.
-Faith and prayers are a wonder!

And now we're here!