Today was my first day counseling prenatal patients. And boy, did I just in with both feet [and an anchor]… More on that in a moment.
My day started off at 5:45 in the morning. It was much too early, honestly, however I still got my booty to the gym and lifted in accordance with Stage 4 of NROLFW. This stage, being a repeat of a previous stage, is kind of mindless which is nice though I admit that I haven’t increased much weight in the exercises. Instead I went from two sets to three sets of everything. Technically the whole stage is 2-3 sets of 8 reps per exercise. Since it had been almost a month since my last lift before I started this stage, thanks to the holidays, I started with my finishing weight from the copycat earlier stage and only did two sets of all. I then moved up to three this week, exactly halfway through the stage. I think it’s working out well so far. After doing my weights workout I rounded out the morning with a ten minute HIIT session on the elliptical.
Once I got home I showered quickly and then made myself a fast breakfast. I wanted to get into school fairly quickly because I had some things to print off before class. On my plate around 7:30 were two waffles topped with peanut butter, cottage cheese, and cherry jam. Delicious as usual but not photographed given my bit of a rush. Once at school I made myself pay attention through three and a half hours of classes. Molecular Genetics was fairly boring, a lot of review, and Population Genetics was taught by a substitute professor who was not prepared to tech this class. She was a last minute fill-in and obviously uncomfortable in front of the class. All in all though we got the information we needed which was the whole point. Best of all, we got out early!
After class I had a few moments to start an Excel spreadsheet to track my job inquiries, responses, interviews, etc. Hopefully I’ll have a bit more to fill it in with soon. I especially felt behind the ball when one of my classmates mentioned that she just got an in-person interview with a job in her prime location. Am I jealous? Yes. Am I proud of her? For sure. Am I surprised? Heck no. She was the one of us who got into every single graduate program she applied to. Can you say superstar? Post spreadsheet creation, I had my lunch in two parts. Part one was my chipotle mayo egg salad sandwich at my desk since it was the messy part.
Then I had part two, my orange sides of carrots and whole grain Cheeze-Its, in the car on the way to my prenatal rotation location. Yay for cup holders!
I arrived at the hospital 50 minutes before my first pregnant patient. That gave me enough time to check out the records and see what I needed to prep. Turns out that the referral I prepared for was, in fact, not the referral I was going to counsel on. Nice little change of plans for my first time around, huh? I still felt kind of comfortable with what the referral ended up being so I went through with it. I handled the entire session alone. For the most part, it went well though there were certainly things I could improve on. For one, my flow really sucked. I was talking about cell-free fetal DNA testing and realized there were four conditions I really should have talked about prior to actually getting to testing options. I was really proud of my psychosocial skills though. I think I handled the emotion in the session like a pro. I held on to that as my strength while being critiqued after by my supervisor. That part NEVER gets easier.
Once I wrapped up things with my only patient of the day, I headed to Walmart for some grocery shopping. I had been building my list for a few days so I was ready to hit up the store.
I started with the buying of the iron. I figured that would take the longest since I knew the least about them.
Sadly, I knew a little too much to justify spending over $10 on one. In the midst of googling and such on my phone, I remembered that I had a Bed, Bath, & Beyond gift card that should probably be used. So my solution turned into put off the purchase, go and learn more about brands of irons, and hit up BB&B in the future. With that decision made I moved on to the food part of the list. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Great Value has crossed over to the greek yogurt side of things.
I know I can make my own greek yogurt by straining, but it was real hard to pass up this full container. I looked at the stats and with only ten more calories than Great Value regular yogurt and double the protein, I couldn’t say no. Also, after thinking about it, one tub of regular makes about half a tub of greek through straining, so if I multiplied the regular yogurt price by two, this was cheaper by about a dollar. Score. While I was in the yogurt section I noticed a glorious thing: Chobani bites!
These babies are fairly new and in some great flavor combinations: fig and orange zest, pineapple and caramel, coffee and dark chocolate, and raspberry and chocolate. I nabbed a pineapple and caramel foursome with plans to grab the fig and orange zest variety the next time. Can’t wait! Next up was garam masala. I have plans to make chana masala from scratch at home next week so I was in need of the Indian spice blend.
I had found some online for price X which I noted in my grocery list so I could compare. Walmart beat it, just barely. On my way to the register I walked through the pasta aisle to grab parmesan cheese and came across the exact sun-dried tomato spread I needed for the skinny cajun pasta I’m making this week.
Figured I would just grab it when I saw it instead of banking on Trader Joe’s having it. With the jar in the cart I checked out and drove across the street to the TJ’s. When I walked in, I was taken by the cheese wall, like usual. I picked out the smallest hunk of blue goat cheese I could find. Oh my! Can you say super?
I then went to look for what I actually came for: nut butters. The sunbutter was easy to find but the almond butter was sadly gone from the shelves. There was some unsalted crunchy but that’s not my style. Not willing to give up I asked the employee who was actively performing restocking and, wonder of all wonders, he said they had just gotten a shipment of the salted kind. He went into the back room and emerged with a jar all for me. How sweet of him!
On my way out I grabbed some more curry powder, for the chana masala next week, and paid for my things. I then headed home only to unpack my stuff and find a funny thing going on with my spices. Check it out, two jars of curry powder, two very different colors.
How interesting? I know that curry is just a spice blend, not an actual “elemental” spice if you will, but I never thought there would be such variation! Today I learned… Shortly after I stored everything I sliced up some sweet potato to roast them as wedge leftovers for the next few days.
While the baked I made myself dinner: black bean soup with rice mixed in and blue goat cheese on top.
Fantastic dinner, which was only outdone by my delicious dessert. I had a rice krispy treat topped with a hefty smear of sunbutter.
Gosh it was heavenly, sinful, perfect, you get the picture. Great way to end the first day of prenatal. Here’s to one patient down, a million more to go. By the way, if you haven’t noticed, I added a countdown clock to the blog in the top right corner to help me keep track of just how much longer I have until I am a genetic counselor! Excitement abounds. G’night all!
Questions: What is your favorite kind of cheese?
What is your favorite nut butter?
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