Gone But Not Forgotten

Hello group!  It’s been over a month since I’ve blogged and I’m sorry for that.  I have been incredibly busy doing a million and seven things getting ready to graduate.  Here’s a brief recap of some stuff off the top of my head:

1) Job stuff is coming along awesome.  There may be an announcement soon.  No promises but I’m on the edge of my seat!  (Been looking pretty cute on interviews too.)

2) I see my absolute last patient as a student today.  I can’t believe I’ve made it through 15 weeks of  prenatal counseling and a whole year of other types of counseling.  This schooling has been some of the toughest I’ve ever endured but I know I couldn’t be a counselor without it.  I am ever grateful for the experience.  No matter how many times I griped…

3) With all this emotion going around (finishing up school, getting ready to graduate for the last time, trying to find a job, balancing school work, taking [and acing] a cumulative exam, etc. –> you get the picture) it is amazing how easily I am reduced to tears now-a-days.

4) I made a new friend recently.  Maybe I’ll introduce you to him soon.  This may depend on the results of #1.

5) Salads and I have been really close lately.

6) Besides #2, the only thing that stands between me and my graduation is finals week.  I have two: one on Monday and one on Tuesday.

7) Thanks to my awesome boyfriend, I have been enjoying massages to keep me sane these past couple of weeks.  Oh he is good to me.

8) Speaking of Jack, we went to a Thunder this year and saw some incredible fireworks.  What a nice day to relax and take a break.

9) I've been studying in my pajamas a lot recently.

10) I got a cute new purse that I absolutely love!  Cute orange crossbody.

In short, it’s been nuts.  I hope to blog more soon as school wraps up and I graduate.  From there I think big things will be happening.  I definitely want to keep tabs on those for you!  Have a super weekend everyone and I’ll catch you soon.

Questions: How has your month of April been?
What are your plans for the weekend?

Empty Lots, Too Full Crocks

When you leave a hospital and the parking lot looks like this –>

You know you’ve been around for a bit too long.  I made it up to myself today but stopping at Trader Joe’s for some pick me ups in addition to a few soup vegetables for the crockpot vegetable stew I’m making tonight while I sleep.  By the way, the chocolate was recommended to me by my good friend Mary.  She raved, I bought.  =D

Now, let’s do some What I Ate Wednesday action huh?

Breakfast this morning came in the form of scrambled eggs after my HIIT workout at 6am.  I topped some them with some salsa, sour cream, and nutritional yeast.  On the side was an orange for some fruit goodness.

Sadly I got hungry in the middle of class and didn’t get to eat until I was in the car on the way to the hospital after getting out of population genetics.  I chowed down on an apple and some carrots/celery in the car to curb my appetite.

Then when I arrived at clinic I heated up some defrosted salsa chicken and poured it over a big bed of spinach and a few drops of blue cheese dressing for an extra flavor punch.

It doesn’t look like much but I promise it tasted really good.  Thankfully this propelled me through a chaotic afternoon of patients and ultrasounds.  One of my scheduled patients didn’t end up needing counseling but my second scheduled patient did so instead of two I only got one today.  That means I’m one behind for the week.  It’s crunch time peeps!

I snacked on some cheese and yogurt before sitting through some critique and doing some maneuvering schedule wise with my supervisor.  On my way home I surfed the radio channels for new music with little success and I called my momma to talk. When I got home I spent some time taking care of a few emails and then I made dinner since it was already late.  I had a vegan Boca burger with pepper jack cheese, mustard, BBQ, lettuce, and relish on cloud bread (an experiment let me tell you!).

Some celery on the side with spinach dip (homemade and clean) rounded out the meal.  Yummy all around.  The spinach dip needed something, maybe Parmesan and pepper… Next time, next time.  Full of savory, I broke out the sweets for dessert.  S’mores anyone?

This one was made with a honey graham cracker, two marshmallows, 72% dark chocolate, and a smear of peanut butter.  It was for serious delicious!!  I wanted another one but instead I set my mind to chopping up veggies for my vegetable stew inspire by this recipe.  I decided to add mushrooms and spinach, sub in sweet potatoes for the regular ones, one each yellow and green pepper for the red one, and veggie broth instead of chicken broth.  In terms of spices, I used only Italian seasoning along with some pepper and minced garlic.  My crockpot was literally almost overflowing!!!  I hope it cooks down tonight while I sleep.  I’ll treat you all to a picture tomorrow when I see it all mulled and mixed together.  Can’t wait to wake up to the smells.  Nomnom.

Questions: What is your favorite kind of stew?
Create your perfect s’more for me!

Curls

All this moisture in the air is making my hair curl!  It would be nice if frizz didn’t come along with the curliness though. Oh well.

Today’s eats included a last minute breakfast thanks to my complete absentmindedness and morning rush.

I made a smoothie at home and then walked right out of the apartment without it.  I realized this well on my way to class so I swung through a Starbucks and picked up a protein box.

I really needed to eat something because I had already taken all my vitamins for the day.  When I do that on an empty stomach I get real sick.  Now why would you have taken them this morning without eating you say?  I honestly thought I’d be having my smoothie in all of three minutes when I got to my car.  Then I forgot it, and my stomach turned.  It was all I could do to keep from hurling before I managed to shove an apple slice into my mouth.

I enjoyed the hard boiled egg with some provided salt and pepper and squeezed the peanut butter all over the biscuit thing.  Finished just in time for class.  I made it through 3/4 of our first class today then had to skip out and make my way to my clinic site to give my presentation to the medical residents.  All in all, it went well.  I was pleased.  Probably even more so pleased that it was done!  Lunch came after.

I made a huge loaded salad and had it with a honeyed greek yogurt dressing with lemon pepper seasoning.  This kept me full for a bit but after seeing my first patient I needed an afternoon pick me up.  Protein to the rescue.

After all I had lifted for close to forty minutes today and burned some calories while building muscle this morning.  My body was probably entirely too thankful for the protein kick in the four o’clock hour.

Even did way better on my body weight matrix this time around.  By like a minute or more!

By the time I got home around six I applied for great looking prenatal/reproductive job that was literally just posted.  I was so excited.  I couldn’t even take the time to eat dinner just yet. I held myself over with pickles as I finished up my cover letter.

Only after I had submitted my CV and such did I have dinner.  Leftover sweet potato cauliflower bisque with a sandwich on the side of edamame hummus and sundried tomato spread.  Really good food.

A perfect night I’d say.  Well, that is until I started writing my patient letter.  Or should I say bumbling through my patient letter.  I should probably go and focus on that huh?  Yea, off I go.  One more patient tomorrow!

Questions: Ever tried sundried tomato spread?
What is your favorite kind of pickle?

Scan Now? Scan Later?

The last two days have been some hard times in clinic.  It’s never easy to give bad news.  You can relish in the sessions you get to reassure patients and say your risk is less than 1 in 1000 but when they’re that one, the odds don’t matter.  Plus, the recent events have made me wonder whether, in the prenatal setting, it is better to have patients go to ultrasound first, counseling second…or to counsel them before their ultrasound.

There are some indications for referral that lend themselves easily to having the patient be scanned first.  For instance, if they’re coming to you because on a previous ultrasound the sonographer saw something abnormal, sure, it makes 100% sense to make darn sure that on the high level ultrasound we can see the abnormality too.  However, there are other things that seem a bit more ambiguous, like first trimester referrals.  Most people are aware that the first trimester can be a poignant time for miscarriage.  Lots of women don’t even tell anyone about their pregnancy until they are “out of the woods”, so to speak.  The risk of miscarriage never really goes away but it certainly decreases after the first trimester.  So when we counsel women during this time about their testing options and such, they sit through these sessions, are open and receptive to the information (most times), and make decisions about how they want to proceed.  Then, just as easy as not, they could go into ultrasound to find out that their baby has miscarried.  In that case, most everything we have just talked about is, sadly, a moot point.

So which is better: counseling first or counseling second?  I’m not sure, still, even after thinking about it for a while.  I do know that one of my prenatal rotations coming up later, as a rule, scans their patients first before talking to them.  It will be interesting to see how that type of appointment works on a across-the-board basis.  And, to be fair, counseling second exclusively also brings its own challenges.  Sometimes women come in for routine counseling sessions and end up having some sort of finding on ultrasound that you have to immediately talk to them about.  That means the counselor needs to be real up on their game and able to adapt easily.  Perhaps there really is no right or wrong answer in this…

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As far as eats go these past two days, they’ve been cheery.  Breakfast on Monday was a protein cake inhaled at the speed of light in order to get to class on time.  Today’s morning meal was a great oats in a jar experience.  Chocolate protein oats with chia seeds and bananas in a not-so-empty jar of PB.

Lunch on Monday was leftover chana masala with an apple in the car and today’s was a tuna salad sandwich (tuna, edamame hummus, chipotle mayo, green onions, garlic powder, salt, and pepper) with pepper jack cheese, pretzels, carrots, and an orange.  I ate with the counselors though, so no picture of today’s masterpiece.

I have found that snackage is key during prenatal.  Those afternoons are long without some pick me up in my system.  Sweet potato wedges and sunbutter = awesome letter writing fuel.

As for the last meal of the day, I have been developing a whole new outlook on it.  It’s a completely different experience to come home at 5:30 or 6p and just be utterly wiped from the day.  Then you realize that you have to make dinner.  Blah.  Who wants to do that?  The answer is, me, I do, sometimes.  Like last night I was craving salad hardcore so I made myself one with all sorts of veggies, beets, chickpeas, cranberries, and goat blue cheese with a honeyed greek yogurt dressing.

But then there are night’s when I just don’t have the energy for much of anything that takes longer than a minute in the microwave.  Today was one of those days so I heated up chana masala and mixed spinach with olive oil and lemon pepper seasoning.

Done and done.  Sadly, I wasn’t overly satisfied so I grabbed a banana, split it in two and then four, and had half with sun butter and half with almond butter.

Now with eats out of the way, let’s play the life update card.  It has been really wet around here lately.  I walked into the parking garage this morning and there was fog in the basement.  How weird?  I’m not sure the picture does it justice but I walked through the fog to get to my car only to see that the whole thing was covered and I couldn’t see.

So not only did my friend move to China but my cousin moved to Germany.  Another city added to my phone’s world clock.  And, I must admit it is very weird to be coming back from the gym at 6:45 in the morning and realize that your friend has already lived her entire day (that you’re just starting) and your cousin is eating lunch (when it isn’t even light outside where you live yet)!  Just so interesting…

Also in the news, gas prices were scheduled to shoot up today so I busted out a gift card and loaded up yesterday.  Paid with the $25 card and then added another $12 on my my pink credit card to top off my tank.  Good thing I did too, everything was a good 20+ cents more expensive today during my drive.

And finally, I have been obsessed with candles lately.  I lit a few last night and just stared at them.  Then I realized I should do work so I just let them backlight my homework session.  How soothing.

All told, I hope your first two weekdays were a little more encouraging than mine.  Tomorrow is hump day (Wednesday) and I have two patients as well as class.  I also have to give my presentation on AEDs and epilepsy in pregnancy to a bunch of pharma and MFM residents and doctors.  I’m a wee bit nervous about it.  In fact, I should really go and time myself.  I’ll make you a deal: dessert first, presentation second, bed third.  Ready, go!

Okay, well, Tune Tuesday first.  This week’s offering comes from my Vampire Diaries obsession as of late.  I seriously love this song.  It sounds like slow motion, like silk.  Enjoy it.

Question: How do you prepare for presentations?