Eleven Four Oh Six / Los Angeles II

Hi Everybody!

Ahh, this is the life ( that's what I usually say when I'm not in the hospital)... though, I am feeling mildly feverish and have a slightly scratchy sore throat coming on - sadly, it is part of the perils of working in the ER where continuous streams of people come in and cough on you... but it's all part of saving lives :) I'm gonna take some extra vitamins and drink lots of OJ...

Hmm, let's see, what's happened since I last wrote... nothing hugely momentous, rather lots of small enjoyable events. I'm getting a little more used to living in Los Angeles - getting to know the area a little better, knowing when to avoid the traffic, finding good places to go eat (the best so far is this little oxacan place where the waiters only speak spanish and I was afraid my car would get broken into the entire time I Was eating - but the food was awesome!), friends visiting. Yep, LA is starting to feel a little more like home. The weather continues to be beautiful and sunny, though now with a little chilliness, during the mornings especially. I may have to get a little space heater for my room...

I recently finished up a month the in the cardiac intensive care unit at Cedars-Sinai. Before starting, I was quite terrified of this rotation, mainly because my role was to be the senior resident on the rotation - which means I would make most of the decisions on the patients when they came in - and these were sick people or else they wouldn't be in the ICU. But overall, it turned out to be quite good. I enjoyed leading the team and being able to impart what little knowledge I have to my interns and medical students, and while our team may not have been the smartest, we probably had the most fun. The Q3 (sleeping in the hospital every third night on call) was kind of rough though, and I'm glad I don't have to do that much more.

But what really made the month was that I met two very cool people, both visiting from other hospitals. Leanne was from Bakersfield - a very real and very interesting girl from the Bakersfield ER program. At first she thought I was really serious because of my poor quality ID badge picture, but we quickly cleared that up :) She is a big fan of the outdoors and we're hoping to go fishing and maybe to the Burning Man Festival someday. And now I have someone to visit on the way to Vegas or SF (oops, I mean someone ELSE besides you, Kiemanh :) The other was Linda, a medical student from Wisconson - she's is going into ER so I gave her some advice on different programs and applications and in the course of our talking, we became friends. She's got a highly infectious laugh and is a lot of fun. She drew all over herself as a gypsy for halloween, but I think she had more fun dressing up her cousin as a big nerd. Hopefully, we'll get to hang out again when she comes out for interviews.

Unfortunately, I'm still not getting to hang out much with the other residents in my program. I suppose we're all busy and have our own things going on... but we did have our one day "retreat". We (including myself, I'll admit) didn't really plan so well with the day so we ended up just going to Ari's house and BBQing... lucky his house is right on Manhattan Beach so we wandered down and did some surfing and lounging and a little beach football... man, that was exhausting.. but a lot of fun.

I did take a trip up to San Francisco for about three days. For whatever reason, all the random factors aligned and we had great weather, friends were able to come up to the city and it was essentially perfect. We wandered around in the park, took the alcatraz night tour (I think it's probably the same as the day tour, but it does add something to be wandering around this hollowed out prison at by the amber glow of electric lights), ate great dim sum from a counter bakery in chinatown, had a few drinks at a bar in the tenderloin district (whiskey is horrible, I don't know how you can drink that stuff), sat around and watched Moulin Rouge, went to the Ferry Building Farmer's Market and to the renovated De Young museum... all in all, an excellent weekend and a good getaway from the world of of LA. All in all, I think I may have to move up to Berkeley some day...

My friends Barbara and Lin came to visit, which was wonderful as well. Despite me being on call in the CCU, we managed to explore the town, eat at a couple fun places, hung out with Dana, hit the beach and pier at Santa Monica [where they got a very compromising picture of me on a pink bike (Lin's) holding a blue purse (Barb's)]. We also went out to Miyagi's in Hollywood and played poker with cheddar cheese goldfish til three in the morning. And our friends, Greg and Allie, came out from New York city. They were quite impressed with the sunniness of California and we had a great time showing them around. We went to all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ (kind of ridiculous amounts of meat), hit the beach, walked on the stars in Hollywood and saw the Prestige (definite must see)... I think they may move out here some day, if just for a short time.

And other brief adventures: went to the tofu festival in Japantown, twice to Friday evenings at the LACMA where they have outdoor jazz and free admission, had our house warming party, went to a halloween party, met a new friend who is an aspiring actress, my parents and older brother went to Australia and Bali... Good times, I tell you :)



Hope everyone is well. As always, if you get a chance let me know how you are!