By popular demand...

...some documentation that Walter is coping well with the move.

You'll see him here relaxing in some packing material, sleeping in his bed, and creating an impromptu bed out of a trash bag filled with random stuff. I think he's adjusting just fine.

A fond farewell

Cross-posed on Dose of Reality

I’m writing this now from San Francisco, sitting on an air mattress in my new apartment, with the dog curled in a packing blanket that I also used as a comforter last night. We’ve spent the past four days traveling across the country to arrive in our new home. Some highlights from our trip:

• Our route took us through Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. This totaled 2,358 miles over 35 hours of driving time.
• The cats were supposed to be constrained by a pet barrier to the back few feet of the minivan we rented to make this journey. They figured out how to climb over it within minutes, and spent the remainder of the trip free-ranging throughout the van, in particular enjoying cuddling in Walter’s bed. You can see the barrier standing uselessly in the background of the photo...

• We stopped in Des Moines, IA on the first night to see my grandmother (and accept her generous hospitality, having invited me, Mike, Lynn, the cats, and the dog to stay with her). I hadn’t seen her in years, and it was wonderful to catch up.
• There are Whole Foods stores approximately every 9 hours along I-80. Lynn did a pretty incredible job finding places for us to eat along the way that would accommodate our various needs for tasty vegetarian and gluten-free food.
• We had one pretty remarkable Google snafu that led us to an interesting off-roading experience in the minivan. We ultimately found the relaxing State Recreation Area we’d been looking for (about 12 miles up the highway), but only after about 40 minutes of harrowing round-trip craziness and then an easy jaunt down the interstate. We actually passed several ATVs, who looked at us with a level of incredulity I had not previously experienced.

The beautiful two-track road...

The van after our adventure...

For those of you who have been following me on the Dose of Reality site, thank you for your lovely support throughout the past eight years. I hope you’ll consider adding this link to your favorites, and continue to follow me through residency. For the rest of you, stay tuned for the further adventures of one Dr. Andrea in SF…

Recipes for a move

The moving truck is coming in a week, and we’re leaving in twelve days, and I’m trying to clear out the fridge, freezer, and pantry. I’m also trying not to waste food, and to enjoy the last few days of cooking in my current kitchen which, although inferior, is nonetheless much larger than the kitchen in San Francisco. This has meant several things:

1. Making muffins. I am not particularly creative with frozen fruit, but it is delicious in muffins. Similarly, canned pumpkin. I love it in pies, and soups too, but one of those things takes a lot more doing than muffins, and the other just seems out of season.
2. Cooking beans. My slowcooker has been working overtime to cook the volumes of dried beans that I don’t want to move with me. Right now, I’ve got navy beans cooked and sitting in the fridge, ready to become baked beans, and dried peas ready to stand in for split split peas cooking now. I didn’t think I’d have anything positive to say about the terrible spell of cold weather we’ve just started, but at least I can make split pea soup!

Here are some recipes for your enjoyment…

Pumpkin Muffins
Adapted from Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything

2 1/2 c flour
1/2 c corn meal (You can use flour for this if you prefer.)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1 pinch cloves
1 pinch nutmeg
1 c sugar
2 eggs
1/4 c melted butter
1 1/4 c milk
1-2 c pumpkin (I often err on the side of more pumpkin.)

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter/oil muffin tin, or use silicon muffin cups, with which I am now obsessed. Combine all dry ingredients. Beat the egg with the butter and milk. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, including the pumpkin. Combine the ingredients quickly, stirring and folding rather than beating, and stopping as soon as all the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter should still be lumpy. Pour into the muffin tins, and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out dry. This is about 20 minutes.

Split Pea Soup
Adapted, but not yet tested, from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything

2 cups green split peas, washed and picked over
6 cups vegetable stock or water
2-3 carrots, cut into 1-inch sections
1 medium onion, minced
1/2 cup rice
Salt and pepper to taste
Croutons of some kind

Combine the peas, rice and stock in a large deep saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the carrots, turn the heat to low, cover partially, and cook until the peas are very, very soft. Alternately, put these things in a slow cooker and let them cook unattended for a long time. Either way, add the onion about halfway through the cooking time. Mash the cooked peas with a fork, food mill, or immersion blender, and add stock or water if necessary to get the desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper, and serve with croutons.

Someday came so quickly…

I started blogging here just over eight years ago as I was preparing to start medical school, and started blogging for the medical school shortly thereafter. I named the blog for a nickname, Dre, after some good laughs that I would ultimately be Dr. Dre. I didn’t know at that point that I would ultimately be accepted into the MD/PhD program, and that someday I would be Dr. Dr. Dre, if that were really a title that anyone used. As of Friday, and for another ten days, however, I am writing to you as Dr. Dre! Someday is here! My PhD was conferred on 5/3, and the medical school graduation is not until the 17th. I think I’ll plan to keep the title of my blog until I’m as well-recognized as my namesake, Dr. Dre…

Ruti and I after the hooding ceremony! 

Some things…

from the interwebs…

I don’t usually just post links, but there were two things that I just couldn’t pass on sharing, and that seemed somewhat linked.

First, a lovely infographic from the lovelier Ania, a fellow MSTP, about the incredible Ann Arbor. While I’m excited to be heading out of town in a terrifyingly few short weeks, there are definitely things I’ll miss about being here.

Second, an article about deciding whether to go to graduate school. It’s written by a former humanities graduate student, but I think captures a lot of the feelings that I have when students ask me whether they should think about the MSTP or just go to med school or grad school like everyone else. Enjoy it here.

First bike ride of the year!

Cross-posted on Dose of Reality

I spent the last week in San Francisco finding an amazing apartment (although I was not really responsible for the finding… credit where credit is due, Lynn) and noticing the cyclists there. As many of you know, there are hills in San Francisco, and they are not for the faint of heart. Or the faint of leg. Despite the fact that I have been trying to stay on the stationary trainer this winter, I was gripped with a sudden and gripping fear that I would arrive in SF and make a fool of myself on the hills. Arriving home in the 35F with sleet and rain, however, was not helpful. Finally, today was beautiful. It got up to almost 50F, it was sunny, and I got out my bike. I have many friends and colleagues who are much more intense cyclists than I, and even more who were industrious on those few very warm days we had earlier in the year. But today was the day for me, and it was glorious. Thank goodness I made my rank list in the winter!

And then we came to the end…

Cross-posted on Dose of Reality

Believe it or not, my last real day of medical school was Friday. I finished all of my exams for OB/GYN Boot Camp (which was the most fabulous last rotation I could have imagined), and now I just have a month of vacation before I graduate. The phrase “and then we came to the end,” which I used to title this post, is the title of a book by Joshua Ferris that I read a number of years ago, courtesy of the free book room at Borders, if I’m remembering correctly, which chronicles the end of a company as employees are laid off, and moral falls. I keep thinking of it, in relation to medical school, because a few of the characters get a little crazy with the stress of the uncertainty of their fates. I suspect it’s clear why this seems to relevant to my life right now. Despite having checked a number of things off of my list over the past few days (i.e., finish exams, give conference presentation, buy chips and salsa so that Lynn does not go into withdrawal when she comes home today), everything still feels pretty up in the air. As annoying as I find the “Keep Calm & Carry On” memes, that is, in fact, the mantra I keep repeating to myself. Here is a paragraph I posted in 2007, as I was finishing my second year of medical school:

Remember riding on the merry-go-round at the playground when you were little. And you’d hold on so tightly as your parents or friends spun it as fast as they could run, terrified that you’d lose your grip and fly off into the hard ground. Remember how you smiled as you screamed, loving every minute of the terror. And then, remember how gentle it seemed as the merry-go-round slowed to a delicate spin, how calm you felt as your heart slowed, your eyes adjusted to the gently revolving world, no longer a blur. Finally, remember how unsteady your legs felt as you climbed back onto steady ground. Now imagine that the merry-go-round spun until you felt sick - that it wouldn’t stop even when you started crying instead of laughing.

It’s amazing how little has changed, how frequently over the past eight years I’ve felt like I was hanging on for dear life, just hoping it would all slow down soon. Despite the impressively high amplitude of fluctuations between the ebbs and the flows, I’ve loved it, and will certainly be a bit nostalgic as I walk across the stage in another month. For the next few weeks, however, I’ve got a lot of things to catch up on, so, much to my chagrin, I’ll keep calm, and carry on.

Why is it cold again?

I am not handling well the recent drop into the freezing temperatures. It was so nice and warm last week that it just seems cruel to see temperatures in the 20’s now. Fingers crossed this was the last of it, and we won’t have any more snow this year…

Walter agrees.

The books of M4 year

Over the past eight years, I’ve frequently posted about “The books of…” various portions of my training. There were the books I read during my first summer of medical school in 2006, with the last few listed in a second post. Then there were all of the books I read while in South Africa just before starting graduate school in 2007, so voluminous that they couldn’t be captured in a single post. Then there were the books of the summer of 2008, which also required some wrapping up in an additional post, confirming my tendencies not only to read in binges, but also to post summaries of small portions of my life before they are actually finished. Continuing this trend, I’d like to post about the books I read for pleasure during M4 year, even though there are still some weeks left before graduation.

1. House of God by Samual Shem
I started reading this during 3rd  year, as I’d been strongly recommended to do by several faculty members, but was too overwhelmed by my internal medicine rotation to finish it at that point. I think I struggled through it for a variety of reasons, first and foremost being the volume of reading and studying I was doing for my rotations, but a close second being how disturbingly close it remained to my experiences as a medical student, even as so much about the hospital has changed in the intervening years.

2. Privatizing Poland: Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor by Elizabeth C. Dunn
My introduction to history and anthropology in Eastern Europe, I thoroughly enjoyed this. I was smugly pleased to note that when someone asked why I was reading this book, that I could casually mention knowing someone who is doing engaging and important work in that part of the world…

3. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
What can I really say about this that hasn’t already been said. It was disconcerting to enjoy so much a novel with such a troubling plot. I read this on flights while I was interviewing and creeped out many a neighboring traveler while passing the time. Mission accomplished.

4. Gold by Chris Cleave
This was no Little Bee or Incendiary, but I liked it nonetheless. As I have explained to several folks, I felt that his other two books took impressively extraordinary situations and made them feel intimate and quotidian, while Gold made a rather big deal out of situations that felt a bit like the daily grind. I suspect that some of this was my particular career choice, as the hospitals featured prominently in the book are a much larger part of my daily life than they are of many, but I also didn’t the writing was quite as skillful. Despite this, it was a good read, and motivated me to get on my bike.

5. The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht
I’ve just started this, so I’ll need to write a second post both to maintain parallelism with my previous book posts, and to let you know how this goes. The first thirty pages have been great.

How far I have come?

As I prepare to move across the country, I’ve been doing some sorting at my mom’s house (read: mostly throwing away things that probably should have been thrown away a long time ago). When I moved out for college, she let me keep a bunch of things there and, although some of it has been culled over the years, there are still some piles. I’m making my way through them, keeping the photos but trashing things that have neither real sentimental value to me nor resale value for others. In my most recent visit, I came upon this:

Lest you feel puzzled, let me clarify. It is a reconstructed mouse skeleton from an owl pellet, posed with a Polly Pocket doll in its mouth climbing the Eiffel Tower, or at least a King-Kong-like-scale replica of that notable monument. I made this in ninth grade biology, learning about skeletal anatomy for the first time. I have only Mr. Bassier, my high school science teacher, to thank encouraging us to not only reconstruct the skeletons, but also pose them creatively. There may have also been a contribution from my already-slightly-off sense of science humor...

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming...

With all of the craziness surrounding Match Day, I know you were worried that Walter had been forgotten. Fear not. He is very excited to be heading to a city with notably less snow, despite having notably more fog. He has been hiding from the weather recently...

Matched… and then…

Cross-posted on Dose of Reality

As some of you have heard, Match Day is over and I’ll be heading out to San Francisco to start my OB/GYN residency at UCSF in June. It’s hard to believe that the day is past, and no one really said what we could all anticipate after Match Day itself. Some had hinted that it was somewhat anticlimactic, but I didn’t find it to be that. Finding out where I would be living in just a few short months was nothing short of exhilarating, to say nothing of sharing it with so many important people in my life. Confirming that I’d be leaving the University of Michigan after 12 years here was monumental. What have been odd are the days that have followed. All at once I have nothing to do and so much to do. It’s too early to find an apartment, but too anxiety provoking not to peruse the SF Craigslistings; I don’t have any of the paperwork I need to sign yet, but I know that it’s coming and will need a quick turnaround; I don’t have the energy to really focus intensively on academic work, but there are so many things I’d like to get done before I graduate. I know it’s only been a few days, and it is all starting to settle into place, but I’m getting the sense that this is only a beginning.

On the twelfth day of Matchmas…

My ERAS gave to me,

a major scale serenading from Yale,

some hubbub about U Dub,

a hurrah for the Yellow and Blue,

a disco to lure me to San Francisco,

an evangelist for Los Angeles,

the pitter-patter of palpitations for Pittsburgh,

a passionate yen for Penn,

the paragon in Oregon,

a turn toward Northwestern,

a hopscotch path to Hopkins,

a Partners program love telegram,

and the awesomeness of Beth Israel Deaconess.

Fantastic things about Yale:

• Some of the happiest residents I met on the interview trail
• Incredible School of Public Health
• New Haven! A surprisingly endearing town with fantastic pizza

On the eleventh day of Matchmas…

My ERAS gave to me,*

some hubbub about U Dub,

a hurrah for the Yellow and Blue,

a disco to lure me to San Francisco,

an evangelist for Los Angeles,

the pitter-patter of palpitations for Pittsburgh,

a passionate yen for Penn,

the paragon in Oregon,

a turn toward Northwestern,

a hopscotch path to Hopkins,

a Partners program love telegram,

and the awesomeness of Beth Israel Deaconess.

The University of Washington was fantastic for the following reasons:

• The only OB/GYN residency in the state – that means all kinds of excitement
• Amazing research resources and residents who are excited about using them
• Seattle! So many friends, so much delicious food, and such a beautiful part of the country.

*Just a reminder that this list is alphabetical, and is in no way indicative of the order of my preferences. I said that at the beginning, but wanted to say it again. Alphabetical. All alphabetical by program name as I had them listed on my list (so basically random, since they were sorted by all kinds of odd abbreviations)…

On the tenth day of Matchmas…

My ERAS gave to me,

a hurrah for the Yellow and Blue,*

a disco to lure me to San Francisco,

an evangelist for Los Angeles,

the pitter-patter of palpitations for Pittsburgh,

a passionate yen for Penn,

the paragon in Oregon,

a turn toward Northwestern,

a hopscotch path to Hopkins,

a Partners program love telegram,

and the awesomeness of Beth Israel Deaconess.

Awesomeness at Michigan:

• Fantastic residents that I know I adore
• An amazing chair who has mentored me for over a decade now
• Friends and family so nearby

*For those of you who do not already bleed maize and blue, this is a line from the alma mater, The Yellow and Blue.

On the ninth day of Matchmas…

My ERAS gave to me,

a frying pan-Rube Goldberg-plan to get to San Fran,

an evangelist for Los Angeles,

the pitter-patter of palpitations for Pittsburgh,

a passionate yen for Penn,

the paragon in Oregon,

a turn toward Northwestern,

a hopscotch path to Hopkins,

a Partners program love telegram,

and the awesomeness of Beth Israel Deaconess.

UCSF has so many great things going for it:

• Awesome residents who are friendly and accomplish great stuff while doing all kinds of other things (like biking!)
• San Francisco! Family, friends, and all the queer culture a girl could want in an overall amazingly fantastic city.
• A great range of clinical experiences (including a PGY-3 rotation in Hawaii…)
• Faculty in my research area

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming…

…to announce that I matched!

I find out where on Friday, but I got the official e-mail today letting me know that I’ve matched somewhere.

Let the Matchmas continue…

On the eighth day of Matchmas…

My ERAS gave to me,

an evangelist for Los Angeles,

the pitter-patter of palpitations for Pittsburgh,

a passionate yen for Penn,

the paragon in Oregon,

a turn toward Northwestern,

a hopscotch path to Hopkins,

a Partners program love telegram,

and the awesomeness of Beth Israel Deaconess.

UCLA was an exciting surprise on the interview trail, as I’d never really visited LA before:

• Great mix of academic and county hospital experiences
• Phenomenal School of Public Health and research resources
• The beach – many of my other options are near the ocean, none offers a beach experience like LA
• LA! Great food, Hollywood, giant pits filled with tar, good friends, who could ask for anything more?

On the seventh day of Matchmas…

My ERAS gave to me,

some palpitations for Pittsburgh,

a passionate yen for Penn,

a paragon in Oregon,

a turn toward Northwestern,

a hopscotch path to Hopkins,

a Partners program love telegram,

and the awesomeness of Beth Israel Deaconess.

Offerings from the University of Pittsburgh:

• Big program filled with friendly residents
• Women’s Health Research Institute with amazing resources
• Pittsburgh! A surprisingly charming city that somehow straddles the East Coast and Midwest, retaining the best of both worlds, including a reasonable cost of living
• Every OB/GYN fellowship you could possibly imagine available

On the sixth day of Matchmas…

My ERAS gave to me,

a passionate yen for Penn,

the paragon in Oregon,

a turn toward Northwestern,

a hopscotch path to Hopkins,

a Partners program love telegram,

and the awesomeness of Beth Israel Deaconess.

Things Penn has to offer:

• Fantastic public health research resources
• Diverse patient population
• Nyia! One of my original med school classmates is an OB/GYN resident there
• Philly – a fun, new city with a super cute gay-borhood