Trajectory

Wow it's already been about 2 months since I started at this new hospital and in this new position. Overall, it's getting better... but every day is different. Some are good and some are really bad. Mostly, I'm exhausted and frustrated and confused at work.

This is my last week of being off before I take a week of call starting this coming Friday. Those weeks are rough. Not looking forward to it.

We try to squeeze in as much FUN as we can... last weekend, we went to the beach finally! we drove down PCH, in the late afternoon, found a parking spot by the shopping area in downtown malibu, and walked to the beach. it was wonderful. just the PERFECT temperature and we relaxed in the sand, played briefly in the water, took a walk to the pier, and had dinner at Duke's of Malibu. I've always wanted to try this touristy trap but I have to say... it was fairly disappointing as far as the food goes, but the VIEWS are amazing. gorgeous. We felt like we were on vacation!

The next day we went to the Willard Wigan exhibit in Hollywood. He's a "micro-sculptor"... and makes these microscopic sculptures that you view through a microscope like the one below... this is a picture of the special lighting and on that yellow ellipse is the sculpture, suspended at the tip of a sewing needle.

This is a scene from Alice in Wonderland. He made special tools to do his work... and he paints the sculptures using hair found on flies...

This one of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is my favorite, but came out blurry... they were all AMAZING.

I'm still alive

I know you had your doubts, but I'm still alive... we made it to LA just fine and then everything was so whirlwind... fellowship started... armand's job started... catching up with friends and family with the little time that I have.

I just finished up a week of being the inpatient fellow, taking care of the 15 or so hospitalized patients on the oncology service. It had its moments but overall, not as bad as I was thinking. but that's only because I was bracing myself for the worst... because this past month has been the most difficult month of my medical training, thus far.

Every day, I feel like an idiot. I just finished my pediatric residency, and after 3 years, even though I know there's still a lot to learn, I felt competent. and confident.

Now? Every day, there's so much that I don't know and the expectations are so much higher. So that's been hard... going from knowing a lot of general pediatrics, to knowing basically nothing in hematology/oncology. I know that's why I signed up for this fellowship, to be trained, and all, but it just doesn't feel that way when I show up to work.

The other challenging aspect is that the hospital I now work for is completely dysfunctional and the way our department is set-up, with all the budget cuts, etc., is also very dysfunctional. I can't even get started...

To say the least, I really miss Chicago and the University and all our friends back "home." It's been great to be back in LA, but I do miss Chicago a lot.

The good news that I got yesterday was that our paper has a conditional acceptance to our first choice journal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I still can't believe it's true... I keep checking the email to make sure. :)