And the photograph was of….

So that picture yesterday….

It’s Martha Stewart!  Not saying she’s ugly now, but, wow, was she beautiful.

Speaking of other famous people, I came across this pic in a magazine while waiting to get my hair cut the other day:

 Mother of two, breast cancer survivor, 51 years old….wow.  Props to her.

~

Yesterday I picked up my dress!  I really love how everything all turned out.  I’m already attached to it.   I know some people “trash the dress” after the wedding, but I want to keep it forever.  I’m the same way with my old figure skating competition dresses.  Too many memories are attached to them.

After picking up the dress, I stopped by where our wedding will be to pick up some brochures for our wedding guests.  It looks beautiful!  Getting excited : )  Here are some pictures:

  ~

Yesterday I managed to fit in a 3 mile run in the morning while I was on my way running some errands.  Figured I might as well run to the place I needed to go rather than drive.  I was planning on lifting last night, but I was EXHAUSTED and famished by the time I finally got back home, so I scratched that plan.  I don’t get it, why is driving/commuting so tiring?  You’re just SITTING, and yet after spending some 3 hours in the car yesterday, I was drained and all I could think about was scarfing down dinner when I walked in the door.

Can you guess who this is?!

I somehow still ended up waking up wide awake at 7:00 despite going to bed at 3 am.    Yes, I am that annoying person who almost always gets up early without a problem.  I think I remember some someecard that said something like, ” ‘I always wake up just full of energy to start my day,’ said no one ever.”  Wrong.  I AM that person, but it’s not always a good thing.  I am also that person that falls asleep early in the evening on the couch like an 85 year old….when guests are still here….sorry, Usha, for falling asleep while you were still here the other night.

Why was I up so late?  Working on wedding stuff as course.   We had a jam-packed day full of wedding tasks yesterday.  Dean was thrilled about this.  Haha….right.  He was a good sport, though : ).  We picked up my wedding band (It’s beautiful, and I can’t wait to start wearing it! : ), drove out an hour to the DuPage County Clerk’s Office to pick up our marriage license application (we both had to be there in person), picked up some stuff for our hotel guest goodie bags, started figuring out the steps needed to put us both on one insurance plan after we’re married, worked on a few thank yous, and put together a rough draft of the seating arrangements for the reception.

If any of you are in the process of planning a wedding, may I make a suggestion:  For your seating arrangements, spend $30 for this app:  http://www.toptableplanner.com/  It made the process of assigning and rearranging seats WAY easy.  Thanks, Kristi, for suggesting this to me….was a huge help!

Today I drive back down to the suburbs to pick up my dress!!

Since it was so nice out, we decided to just walk ~2 miles to where we were going to pick up my wedding band. The walking around in a strapless dress was also important, because I desperately need to even out my sports bra tan line!

Our wedding license, which becomes official when our Pastor signs it and sends it back in!  Was so easy to pick up.  They basically just asked us if we had ever been married before, where our parents were born, and a few other background questions.

~

Yesterday before starting on our errands I headed out for a run (such a surprise, I know ; )  My right knee was a little sore after my 16 miler the other day, so I was debating if I should take it easy and do another elliptical instead, but then I figured, heck, why hold back….what’s the worst that could happen?  I cut my run short and walk back in the beautiful weather??  Not a huge deal, so I decided to run as long as it felt good and stop if anything hurt.  My running-injury-hypochondriac self ended up being surprised:  nothing hurt, so I did an 8 mile loop.

Now although nothing hurt in a bad way, the majority of the run itself was painfully hard.  Us runners love bragging and raving about how awesome our good runs are, but we often neglect talking about the crappy runs.  Ten seconds into my run, I was breathing heavy and wanted to quit.  I guess my legs were probably tired from all the working out I put them through over the past two days.  But seriously, the run was HARD yesterday.  I was literally cursing at the stoplights when they turned green for me and I didn’t have an excuse to stop.  Not sure how slow I was going, but I’m pretty sure I was averaging 10 minutes/mile (or slower) for the first half of my run, which is about ~2 minutes, giver or take/mile slower than I normally run on a comfortable run.  The run felt a lot easier during the second half, though, and I was able to pick up my pace.

My point in telling you this is that not every run is going to feel good or be at the pace of your previous run.  Sometimes you will have to slow down your body and run at a much slower pace than you’re used to, and that’s ok.  Your body needs those slow days as much as they need the fast running days, and just because your run is excessively slower than normal doesn’t mean you don’t gain anything from still doing the run.  Quite the contrary!  Usually, what I find, is that if I listen to my body and start out really slow, it gets easier as the run progresses, so don’t throw in the towel at the beginning of the run!

Anyway, that’s just my two cents.

Pic from my run yesterday. I was very glad for the excuse to stop and take this pic! ; )

~

And finally, I saw this old pic in a recent magazine of a much younger version of someone who is currently famous.   Any guesses???  Winner gets….nothing ; )  Sorry, no cool giveaways on this blog.  I will let you know who it is on my next post.

The week before the wedding week.

NINE MORE DAYS until our wedding day!  My gosh, time is flying!

Things are coming together nicely.  We do, though, have a LONG to do list for today, which includes driving an hour to the suburbs to pick up our marriage license application, and then tomorrow, I have to drive an hour down to the suburbs again to pick up my wedding dress!

I worked ALOT the past month and saved all my weekend days off for this last week, which was totally worth it and has made taking care of all these last minute wedding planning a lot easier to manage.

In addition to wedding planning stuff, since I have the week off, we’ve been trying to catch up with various friends before the big day.

We had people over Sunday and Tuesday of this week…..it was fun to show them our place and to get to serve them with some of our recent wedding gifts!

Robyn, if you’re reading this, do you recognize the pitcher?? : )

While grocery shopping before people came over this weekend, we came across this at the store:

Gummy fish flavored vodka?!  Does that sound disgusting to anyone else??

Monday night some of my girlfriends took me out to dinner.  At one point during the conversation at dinner, we started talking about things that annoy us on flights, and we started debating about how necessary it was to turn off your phone when the flight leaves.   Are you one of those persons who follows the rules and turns off your phone when asked to, or do you keep it on and sneak in a few more text messages?  I usually do poweroff my phone, but I don’t pull out my computer or ipad out of my bag to make sure they’re powered off.

~

Monday late morning I set out for a run and ended up doing ~16 miles!  Definitely the longest run I’ve done since December.  I make no claims, though, that it was an awesome, fast run….the second half was in fact, somewhat pitiful and slow, but that’s ok.  I wasn’t panning on running that much and hadn’t eaten breakfast or taken any nutrition with me.

The one thing I was happy about, though, was that I remembered to put sunscreen on, as I was running at peak sun hours and the last thing I want for the wedding is a sports bra tan line!!  haha.  Unfortunately, though, I think that is inevitable, as I pretty much have had a permanent sports bra tan for years, now.

And of course, here are some pics from the run on Monday:

QUESTIONS:

I’ve asked this before, but what is the most unique flavored vodka you’ve seen or tried?

Mine:  Bacon flavored in a Bloody Mary

Do you poweroff your phone on flights when you’re supposed to?  What is the most annoying thing someone has done next to you on a plane?

Someone next me was once clipping their nails on the plane.  Ughhh, the sound was annoying enough, but then the thought of their nail clippings flying everywhere?!   At least they were just clipping their fingernails and not their toenails.  The other annoying thing:  when I was ~12, I was sitting next to a couple who apparently must have been taking off for their honeymoon or something.  They could not keep their hands off of each other.  It was traumatizing for my 12 year old self.

Job stresses and performing under pressure

Done!  Done with this ridiculously long stretch of working and finally have several days off (although I’m working today), which is perfect for getting all those little details taken care of before the wedding.

My last night (Wednesday) in the ER…..BUSY!!  I said in my last post how I actually really enjoy working in the ER (i.e. ER radiology), but when it gets that busy, you kind of turn on your robot-mode of working, stop analyzing as much, and just plow through the studies.  More stressful than it is fun.

It’s like running, figure skating or training for any sport.   Obviously the days you feel the best, enjoy it the most, and perform the best are those days when all circumstances are perfect:  you’re rested, your legs feel loose, the weather is perfect, etc….but part of becoming a good athlete is learning how to still perform well when you’re tired, sick, it’s windy and cold, you’re legs feel like bricks, you didn’t eat right, etc.    What do you do in those circumstances?  You fall back on the habits you developed with your training, don’t overanalyze, focus on the goal, and just get it done.

It’s hard but on busy days like Wednesday night.  The CT scans get done faster than you can read the studies.   You’re trying to keep up, but then they start scanning people on TWO different CT scans, so now DOUBLE the amount of what is already a lot of cases are getting done in the same amount of time.  Then two traumas come in, and the trauma team comes in watches over your shoulder as you look over some 1000 images from the scan that they just did for the trauma patient.   Then you try to go back and finish the other study you were looking at, but someone calls every 5-10 minutes wanting you to look at a study done on an inpatient…One other resident and I are the only radiologists in the hospital at night and are responsible for fully dictating all ER cases as well as dealing with any inpatient issues that come.

It’s stressful and annoying, but I know it’s good training…

-mentally:  learning how to stay focused, block out the stresses around you…..to just focus on following your “check-list”

-being efficient:  again, you rely on the habitual search pattern you have developed.  You focus on what’s important.  You don’t overthink:  find what’s important and move on…..you don’t need to spend extra time looking up a more extensive differential or finding the exact name of some incidental finding you made.  If you want to look it up later, fine, but not when you have several other cases to get to.

-Learning to triage/prioritize:  I try to open every scan as they get done and at least preview it to make sure nothing is lifethreatening.  If not, then I go back to what I am doing and work on plowing through some other studies before tackling that one.  If there’s something urgent, then I immediately call the ED team to at least let them know what is going on so that they can do their jobs and get the ball rolling.

-patience and kindness:  training in patience and kindess?  Trust me, busy hospital nights when you’re exhausted will test your patience with other people, but they are your colleagues.  They are consulting you for your advice.  They don’t know how busy you are and whether or not you’re dealing with a trauma or some other urgent issue.  You have to remember that and be respectful, always, not just to your colleagues but to the radiology technicians who are instrumental in helping you get your job done.

~

After my last night of nightfloat, I try to stay up all day the following day to switch back as quick as possible to a normal day schedule, so I usually try to keep my day busy with running errands and other little things that don’t require a lot of thinking but keep me awake, so Thursday, I scheduled to get my hair done.

Then, that evening, Dean and I had a “free” dinner at Gibsons.  Free?  Yup, but that’s because it was for marketing purposes for the business providing the dinner.

The business providing the dinner and marketing their services was a financial advising company.  Yes, I was tempted by the free meal, but this is a topic I am actually starting to think about seriously in light of getting married and with finishing residency fairly soon.  I am really nervous about all the student loans I have and have no idea what the best strategy is to go about paying these off, so we are starting to seriously look into working with a financial advisor NOW.

Working with an advisor will be good, because there’s sooooo much I don’t know or understand about business and finances….we as doctors spend all of our time learning about medicine that we don’t learn about the important and practical things about managing a practice, paying off loans, managing your money, appropriate insurance plans to buy into, how to analyze and negotiate a contract, etc.

Getting ready to head out to Gibsons with Dean. This was the first time I put effort into looking nice and went out with Dean since I was in DC with Dean ~ a month ago.  As a girl, after a month of throwing on scrubs or other work clothes, not blow drying my hair, barely wearing any makeup….it was nice to finally feel pretty.

Contentment in a day’s work

1:25 and I’m finally sitting in bed.  Exhausted. Best, most content feeling ever, to lie down, drained, with nothing left to give to your day, because it means a day fully lived, and that is satisfying.

Let’s talk about my job:  I have two more nights left, and then I finish up a LONG stretch of working.  Most of this past month has been spent in the ED (radiology).  It can be stressful, it can be intense, it can be frustrating, but you know what?  In spite of all that, I really like it.  I really enjoy being the senior in ER….it is just a very satisfying feeling to have finally acquired enough of a knowledge base to feel fairly confident in the conclusions and decisions I am making.  I actually really enjoy opening up a study and getting to piece together what is going on with a patient and being able to work directly with my colleagues to help determine a diagnosis and course of action for a patient.  It’s a really satisfying feeling…using your knowledge to help directly impact patient care.  Obviously, no job is all joy and 100% fun and satisfying.  There are frustrations, trust me…..TRUST me, but overall as months and years have gone by, I’ve really come to enjoy my career choice.

Let’s talk about running:  Loving it, no LOVING it.  It’s been slow getting back into it.  After some troubles with my knee, I started running consistently again right before I left for DC in March.

Let’s face it, getting back into running shape is never fun, but the consistency and persistence is starting to pay off.  I feel strong again.  After I got home this morning from my night shift, I threw on my running shoes and headed out the door.  It’s cliche but so true:  getting out the door is sometimes the hardest part!

I had no pace, time or mileage I was aiming to hit.  I just ran, and I loved every minute of it.   I hit the “zone”….I don’t know how to describe it, but time sorta stops and yet the miles fly by when you’re in the zone.  Your body seems to moves without effort, almost disconnected from your mind.  It’s weird but wonderful.  I felt like I was running fast.   Whether that is true or not, I have no idea, but it felt good, and that’s what matters.  When I got home, I tracked my mileage on mapmyrun, and it turns out I ran 13-14 miles.   I was pleasantly surprised.

Part of me is tempted to take my Garmin out on my next run and see just how fast I’m running, but the other part of me is like who cares?   Just enjoy the running for what it is right now.  Don’t try to get all competitive with yourself.  

It’s funny, during the end of my run, I wanted to try to figure out how fast I was going by timing myself in between mile markers, but you know what?  It kind of ruined the zone I was in, because suddenly I started wanting to run faster and faster to beat the clock….I became more concerned about numbers rather than just “feeling” the run, so I dropped that plan and continued on feeling out my own natural, comfortable pace.

Let’s talk about the wedding:  So excited….so excited to be surrounded by the people I love while I marry the man that love.

And now that I have ran AND blogged post night shift, I am completely DONE.  Good night.

Fitting in the workouts when you’re busy

What an incredibly beautiful morning.  I got home from work around 9 am and set out for a run.  It’s my second day in a row putting in 10-11 miles after my nightshift, and they have surprisingly been really good runs.  I think the trick to working out when you have a busy schedule is taking your mind out of it.  Don’t over think.  Don’t over analyze.  Don’t worry about how you’re going to run being so tired….Just get out the door an run.  Make it happen and accept the run however it is….good or bad.

We all want perfect circumstances for our runs:  good pre-run meal/snack, well-rested, preferred time of day, feeling energized, etc. etc. etc.  But, if you always aim for making your circumstances perfect, then you constantly worry excessively about controlling everything, and worry about what happens if, heaven forbid, something’s not the ideal circumstance for your run. Take your mind out of it and train your body to go in auto mode.  You might surprise yourself as to what your body is capable of!  And heck, if it ends up being a crappy workout, at least you still fit it in!  A crappy workout is better than no workout.

First time sporting the running skirt this season.

Beautiful spring morning. So refreshing to be outside after being locked up in the reading room at the hospital all night

A picture I sent Dean to prove that I was still alive : )  (since I hadn’t really seen him since 8 pm the night before.)

Today was the first day this year I wore a skirt running …. this past week it has finally been feeling like spring!  Question:  Running skirts:  love them or hate them?  My favorite thing to run in are my Nike shorts, but wearing skirts has grown on me.  I used to be totally against them….I guess I thought I was too cool to wear one or something….like I felt like I wasn’t a serious runner if I was wearing a skirt.  But times have changed, I became less judgmental about the skirts, and have even grown to like them.

 

What Dean and I depend on each other for

My last 48 hours:

Tuesday: run ten miles. shop and run errands all day (found possible jewelry for my wedding!), cumulatively walk at least another 3-4 miles, work at the hospital from 8pm – 9 am, walk back to my apartment and get back around 9:45ish, try to sleep, but construction/drilling/hammering being done right outside my window prevents that, after intermittently sleeping for a total cumulative ~2-2.5 hours, get up to attempt to make my cake tasting appointment, which is an hour out of the city, Dean and I get stuck in traffic and end up canceling the appointment (but we still end up wasting an hour in the car), we head back to the apartment, but I can’t sleep, so I write some thank you cards and drink part of a beer, sleep for an hour, wake up, pack food, and head back to the hospital for another 12 hour shift, drink copious amounts of caffeine, and down advil to stop the pounding tension headache…oh the joys of switching over to nightfloat. It’s all good, though. I mean, if I were a new mom, functioning on this amount of sleep would probably be the norm, so I guess this is good practice ; ) (that won’t be put into affect any time in the immediate future!). Plus, working like this now will make Dean and my week in Cancun next month seem all the more relaxing : )

~

So I’m just curious, for those in relationships, who is the person that is better at keeping track of to do lists and important dates? I guess that’s probably more a girl thing, right? Now, Dean is great at remembering his appointments for his job and remembering important dates in our relationship, but it’s another story when it comes to other things….. Several weeks ago, I was describing to Dean all I had planned on this one Saturday. He was like, “what? But aren’t we going to do something?” Me: “No hun, that’s your Bachelor party weekend.” Dean: “Oh yeah.”

I had to remind him at least two other times that his Bachelor party was on that particular Saturday.

A similar incidence happened this past weekend regarding plans. So….I’ve decided that I’m going to start putting HIS social plans into my calendar as well:

NF stands for “night float” btw. You’ll notice that when I’m on NF, not much else happens in my life

Dean, you are going out with your friends tonight. Don’t forget : )

The funny thing is, while Dean may be absent minded when it comes to our/his social calendar, I am the one who is completely absent minded about where I place things. I’m always like, “Dean….you know where my glasses are?” Dean: “Yup, on the table on the left.” Me: “Dean…where are my keys”? Dean: “By your purse next to the desk.” “Dean, where is my phone?” “You left it on the kitchen counter.”

This happens at least twice a day. I would most definitely lose my mind without him.

~

In my last post I wrote about how I really want to do Boston next year, in a large part because of what happened this year. This still holds true, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole Boston Marathon series of events from this year: Why has it gotten soooo much media coverage? Why were/are so many people, including myself, emotionally affected by what happened? Don’t get me wrong…what happened was absolutely horrible and senseless, but only 3 people died. Again, please don’t take this this wrong way. One person is too many. My heart and prayers go out to those affected by the bombings, and my gratitude to all those who aided in caring for people during this tragedy, but I guess what seems odd to me is why this has gotten so much attention while other awful things that are happening in the world around us every day, with far greater numbers of people affected and killed, get far less attention. I guess the issue is not why Boston has gotten so much attention, but why don’t other stories as well? Anyone follow me? I ask this not just of the media and our society, but of myself, too, because I readily admit that the Boston bombings really shook me up more than most news stories. Why don’t I care more about other atrocities?

Anyway, just food for thought.