Tired of being tired...

I am officially half-way through my intern year, and all I can talk about lately is how tired I feel. This month I am doing Internal Medicine..it's ok, but I wish I had more time off.

Today I decided to try baking, and made banana bread but as muffins instead of a loaf. Muffins cook so much faster than a loaf.


I put cream cheese icing on them, and now they look like cup cakes!

I have been meaning to post pictures of our front room with our new couch and curtains. This is the front room where the pool table use to be. Eventually we plan on getting another couch, and possibly putting a television on the wall.




Rex has been very busy with his job, but we did add more insulation to the house about a month ago. Not really an exciting photographic moment so no pictures to post.

Livin' it up in the NICU

November is officially Neonatal Intensive Care Month in the Bradley household. I included some pictures at the end, but they are pictures I found on the internet as I would never photograph patients at the hospital. However, I feel like they could be photos I took because I tried to find pics that illustrated what's going on right now.

So-NICU this month and emergency medicine next month. I am working on Christmas..no big shocker there, but I am still clinging to the idea that I will get to be off on Thanksgiving; although, the official word on that has yet to be spoken. I really don't think I will delve into too much commentary about this month. It's only week #1, and I'm already rather depressed. We go to some of the deliveries on the labor and delivery floor, and I think I will leave it at that....

Things around the house are shaping up nicely though. We bought a leather couch to put in our front room to keep our lonely coffee table company, and we purchased curtains for that room as well. Sadly, they are currently on back order at this time. Stay tuned for photos when it all arrives.

I feel like I am finally getting a sense of how I want to decorate the house. For so long I have been so uncertain, but now I feel like I am beginning to have a "vision" for our house.

Rex is doing well. He is so busy with his job, but he still manages to keep the house in working order, and take care of us. He is doing an awesome job, and I can't wait for the day he can retire early and do it full time.




**************NICU PICTURES--STOP NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE**************





Premie in an isolette..they kind of look like aliens in little pods. I know that sounds mean, but their skin is rather translucent.



Tiny baby....the babies are so small! Ok- they aren't all this tiny, but some of them are... It's weird to move them around so you can examine them. When I see a new born full term baby now I feel like they look HUGE!



Baby with gastroschesis...there are a couple of malformations that are similar to this... we have 2 on our service right now. They put the intestines in a silo and they slowly go back into the abdomen.

No Pictures..No Problem

I am finally enjoying my 1st weekend off this month. I have ONE day of OB-GYN left...needless to say I am positively ecstatic!!! I am so over looking at hoochie coochies and smelling some of the foulest smelling discharge roaming the planet! Harsh much? Yeah-maybe a little, but it wasn't all bad, but I would never go so far as to say it was mostly good.

So, what's up next? Pediatrics (yuck-call q4, but who is counting!!)..but lets ignore residency for a bit, and delve into my personal life.

Rex is doing well. He is doing an awesome job taking care of the house-cooking, cleaning, tolerating my insanely bitchy moods. He even let me get a puppy!! I love our new puppy. I have been wanting a smaller dog now for awhile..someone small enough to hold and pet as well as lay on the bed-and presto!! We got Charlie last week. He is a Boston Terrier. We named him Charlie like from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"...anyone recognizing Frank's name while I am at it? PS-we love you Danny DeVito!

The shed now has some roof pieces. I feel like any day I will walk outside and it will actually be a building.

So lets see...Husband is good-check. Animals are good-check. Me? Well not exactly "check" but things are in the works to make things better as far as residency goes. I finally got a pedicure this month so things aren't all bad!

12 Days On...

...and finally a day off!! Well, off from work on Saturday that is. This month I am doing OB-GYN and I have to get up every morning at 3 15 am so I can drive to Charlotte. It's going ok. I have delivered 10 babies so far, but probably could have an additional 5 if some of my pages would go through a little quicker. 2 more weeks of OB and then I start pediatrics which will hopefully not require me to go in so early. I am on call again on Sunday, but I am so happy to be off tomorrow... I am going to sleep in and relax all day. Mmmm...sleep :)

The Table has Landed

A couple weeks ago I finally gave in and ordered the coffee table from Restoration Hardware I had been looking at for the past few months. I called the customer service line to see if it was available to purchase in-store, and found out that ~1,000 tables had been restored to sell. It was enough pressure to cause me to finally make up my mind....I knew if I didn't make a decision eventually then one day all the tables would be gone.


My "before" photograph. I posted photos of the room earlier, but we had not put the rug back.



I love my new coffee table! It is an old cart from a furniture mill/factory that was used to move fabrics. Now all we need is couches, but that probably won't happen for a while. It's hard to hurry up and decorate a room that we will probably hardly ever use.

Dr. B is sad today

I don't usually feel a lot of emotion towards extremely ill patients. I hate to sound callous, but it kind of comes with the territory.... I have also never prayed for a patient that I have provided care for. Today has been an exception to both of the previous statements. 2 days ago I admitted a woman to the hospital. She is a young woman with 4 children. Despite her serious illness she has a great personality and is very witty. She has been an absolute joy to care for. Today I had to transfer her to another hospital to have a surgery which she has a very poor prognosis in terms of survival.

Please pray/channel your positive energy towards this person. She deserves to hang around a little longer, and shouldn't leave us just yet. The light is darkest before the end of the tunnel..

Long Weekend

Rex and I were both off on Friday so we kicked off the long weekend by celebrating my first paycheck! I have had pay checks before, but this is my first pay day in my chosen profession. It was a great Thursday...even though I had a couple of crazy patients in clinic that day.



Our big plans for the weekend were to sell the pool table and paint that room. After celebrating my first pay check on Thursday, we went to Home Depot and bought the paint...we had settled on a color called "antique red." I really wanted this orange/pumpkin/nutmeg color, but sometimes one has to compromise.

Below is a picture of the room we painted when we first bought the house. Aside from painting, we had already replaced the ceiling fan (the old one was too small), but we also bought new sconces on Saturday to replace the old ones.


Ta-daaa!! I couldn't get an accurate photo of the color of the walls. I think this looks too bright (and the next too orange), but it's probably a result of the flash on my camera. The painting was a breeze. We decided to buy the premium paint (instead of buying primer and paint), and it only took 2 coats. It was faster to paint this room than our TV room which is smaller!!



We also bought new sconces. We have never been very fond of the old ones, but I love the new ones. They were on clearance for only $11, and we found dimmable fluorescent light bulbs. It was unfortunate that the light bulbs were almost as expensive as the sconces, but we are happy all the same. The picture below makes the walls look very orange even though they are not!


Today Rex and I were discussing what to do next regarding home improvement, and we decided that we definitely want plantation shutters in the "red room." After that- I think we will put up shades (probably Roman shades) in the guest bedroom as this is our "extreme weather" room. We sleep downstairs when it is either very cold or very hot, and currently we have blankets for curtains, but real shades would be nice. After the shades- we will probably paint the kitchen and install more plantation shutters. I have no clue what color I want to paint the kitchen...

We still need so much furniture it's insane!


Rex has been working very hard at building the shed, and it looks great! We need to go get more lumber so he can finish the walls etc. We had to special order the windows, and they have finally arrived ( the first time they came they were broken) and we bought the door. I can't believe the shed is half way done. When we first started--it seemed like it would never be completed. I know that's hard to tell from the picture, but it was very difficult to level the foundation, and we dug up a ton of gravel for the foundation which was exhausting (we have a bunch of gravel in our backyard so we did not have to buy any).



I'm not sure who to thank, but you can see the large quantity of gravel we have in our backyard. We raked a bunch of it into piles (after moving what we needed for the shed)... sometimes I would like to pinch the person who decided to put all that gravel down!!


It seems like a chaotic weekend when I blog about it, but we had a great time...and we even got out to see the new Transformers movie.