The Shoe, The Zoo, and The countdown(+small pleasures)

I have never had a "traditional" family. There is my mom's side and my dad's side. So last week I went to the zoo with my dad's family, where we lost my niece's shoe to the zebras. The good news is that the zoo keepers were able to retrieve it a couple days later and it looks almost perfect!

This week I went to the zoo with my mom's half of the family in celebration of mother's day. We had a blast! With 2 energetic children, we were able to see every exhibit and catch a couple of shows. The little ones loved the animals, but not the walking.

On Surgery
Last night I completed my 2nd of 5 thirty hour calls that I will complete over the next couple of months. Making it 14 days down and 47 days to go before I finish up with my final core rotation and get closer to being back in the ER. I have decided to make the best of my time while I'm on surgery, relearn some anatomy, and reenforce why I chose Emergency Medicine over Surgery(not a difficult task). As I was standing in my 6 hour surgery last night, I considered renaming this post "Surg-1, Katelyn-0" but instead I decide the point goes to me. While my feet were killing me about half way through, I made it and that is a victory. We resected cancer out of a man's colon and that is definitely a victory for everyone. And the case confirmed that I was never meant to be a surgeon, mostly because I don't have the attention span.
I will say overall on surgery, the days don't seem as long as I thought they would, but the mornings do seem just as early if not earlier than I imagined. If their days started a couple hours later than they do I think it would be much easier on my body.  So while I've decided to make the best of it, I am also going to countdown the days.

Small Pleasures
One of the pros of being so busy during your core year of medical school is you remember to appreciate the small pleasures in life. For me that includes listening to music during my drives, diet mountain dew, a full night of sleep, taking a walk, and catching up with old friends. I'm pretty sure that the only thing that kept me going through the last hour of last nights surgery was knowing I had a diet mountain dew waiting on me when I finished. It is the little things in life!