What I'm up to

     I have not blogged in ages. I doubt anyone has noticed. However, the neighbors have been asking me a lot lately what I'm up to. I don't think they are used to seeing me around so much in the daylight hours, and are probably wondering A) who's that guy with Lindsay's kids? or B) maybe Lindsay's husband got kicked out of medical school.
     In any case, with the completion of my 3rd year in June, life has changed a little bit. The third year of medical school is generally the year in which you rotate through all of the core specialties: Internal Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics, Neurology, OB/GYN, Psychiatry, Primary Care. It was a grand yet entirely painful year. I rotated through 4 hospitals, saw many hundreds (thousand(s)?) of patients, listened to countless hearts/lungs/bellies, "performed" a myriad of rectal and vaginal exams, learned and saw the use of hundreds of medications, delivered 8 babies, worked with the mentally ill in a psych ward, took care of a handful of terminally ill children, learned how to wield a slick reflex hammer, sewed up a bunch of surgical wounds, put in a ton of foley catheters, removed CSF drains out of brains, screwed on pieces of skull, got yelled at by arrogant residents exactly 3 times, worked anywhere from 100 hrs/wk on neurosurgery to 45 hrs/wk on psychiatry (not including studying time), and generally felt dumb and/or inadequate about 50% of the time along the way.
     Now that it's 4th year, I get to decide on the rotations I want to take. Naturally, I choose the ones where I get to be home more:) Granted, I'm writing this at 2 am from an office in the MRI building at the hospital as I download images of liver tumors from the hospital server for my research--but in general I've enjoyed the last few months, getting to spend more time with Seth, Ada, and Lindsay.
     In my "free" time, I've been preparing my application to residency, which I actually submitted today (which is I guess yesterday now). My first job application as a doctor. (I'm going to be a Radiologist, which requires 5 more years of training--an intern year in Internal Medicine, and 4 years of Radiology training). I applied to 19 internal medicine internships, and 40 radiology residencies from here to New York. It should be a hectic Winter of interviews. I will know where we end up in March, so quit asking.
     Anyway, that's what I'm up to.

Also, Lindsay and I actually went out without the kids last week. On a boat in the San Diego Bay with friends.  It was awesome.