I got to deliver two things last week: a best-man toast … and a baby. To my surprise, the culmination of spending 2 weeks on L&D to the actual hands-on delivery of a baby was pretty anti-climactic in retrospect. I experienced no big epiphany on the wonder of life – just slimy baby sliding out with lots of smelly bodily fluids splattering about. In contrast, toasting at my friend’s wedding this past Saturday was a lot more nerve-wracking than I had imagined. Despite all my experiences teaching classes and giving seminars over the past few years, I still get the butterflies whenever I speak publicly. It didn’t help, of course, that the videographer’s got his bright-ass spotlight on me the whole time. Fortunately, it was over in a cinch. Now that the groom is happily married and honeymooning in the Greek islands, I’m gonna have to embark on another pain-in-my-brain study week for the Ob-Gyn shelf exam this Friday.

I’ve watched the World Series of Poker on TV, and even played some poker with friends in the past. But sitting down at an actual Texas Hold’em table in the Poker Room at Foxwoods Casino was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. This past Saturday, a few guys and I took a good friend down there for his bachelor party. Rather than splurging on alcohol or strippers, we instead put our money into something with an actual chance of positive return. Mind you, this was no 25¢ slots or even the $5 blackjack table. There were no old ladies with buckets of quarters, but guys with hats and sunglasses dropping $100 chips. Though we only played at the $1-$2 table, each pot easily ran in the $100-$200 range and made for some very stressful playing. The games also went so quickly, that I lost a good chunk of money early on when I actually miscounted a straight hand. Fortunately, blind luck helped offset my lack of skill, and I cashed out at the end with enough to cover both food and the hotel room. Though the bachelor boy didn’t get to be the big winner after almost 10 hours of total playing time, the two-day trip gave us a chance to roll like the big boys.

The best thing about being on the Gyn-Onc team is realizing how benign the regular Gyn service is in comparison (pun intended). My days literally went from an average 16-hour work day, to a comfy 11. The second best thing about Gyn-Onc is chocolates – boxes and boxes of chocolates. It seems that cancer patients really like to give chocolates to the house staff. That means Godiva truffles and Russell Stover assortments, all free for the taking. I wasn’t too worried about the calories, though, since we rarely had time for lunch or dinner. In other news, wedding plans are still in the works. I’ll hopefully have time soon to put up a wedding website with further details. In the meantime, I’ve finally posted photos from our Spain trip in our travel page for your viewing pleasure.

After 6 weeks of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital, my first rotation back has finally come to an end. My last week was spent on the neonatal floor, where I saw my first delivery in the OR, and got to change a diaper for the very first time. And believe me, it is no cakewalk. On Wednesday, I took my first shelf exam. For those of you not in the know, it’s a standardized test with old Board-exam questions to evaluate our performance in the subject. It’s actually been more than 4 years since I last took a test of any kind, and it didn’t help that this was probably the hardest I’ve taken since P Chem in college. Anyway, I’m now in the midst of a mid-week session before my Ob-Gyn rotation begins. Despite being called “mittleschmertz”, it’s actually quite lax, and should give me a chance to catch up on errands and wedding plans.

I just realized that $6 for dinner in the cafeteria can go pretty far if you know what to order. Last night, my dinner consisted of a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich ($2.10), a small bowl of soup ($1.50), a side of mashed potatoes ($1.00), and a side of string beans ($1). For drinks and dessert, I just grabbed juice and pudding from the patient kitchen. That’s like a 5-course meal! I feel bad leeching from the kitchen though, especially since my recent track record on the new general pediatrics service hasn’t been that great. Of the last 4 kids I admitted, one ended up in intensive care, and 2 are being transferred to the in-patient psych ward. Hey, at least I’m discharging my patients … whether by getting them sicker or driving them crazy! 🙂

It appears that my review article has finally been published online at Nature.com. It’s particularly exciting this time because there are several reviews on the same topic in this focus issue, and ours is the featured article! I’m actually not sure what this means, but I’ll just assume that it means that mine is better! 🙂 Unfortunately, I haven’t read it over yet since work’s been busy as usual. Of course, I’ve also gotten my hands on a new toy recently, which adds yet another distraction to work. Actually, the Wi-Fi feature is absolutely amazing with Tetris DS. So if anyone’s a tetris fan, I’m definitely up for a challenge!

After my 4-year hiatus, returning to the wards has been an exciting yet daunting transition for me. It didn’t help, of course, that I started with pediatric cardiology at Children’s Hospital, which isn’t exactly your typical patient population. I mean, I may not know how to care for a baby with fever or diarrhea, but if the kid has tetralogy of Fallot, I’m your man. In fact, after 2 weeks on the service, I was beginning to think that hypoplastic left heart syndrome was an epidemic in Boston. Unfortunately, just when I was getting to know what I was doing, when I finally figured out why the interns laughed when they called me a Bidirectional Glenn, I was switched to another service. It’s kind of weird going into general pediatrics now. Knowing little else, I think I’ll just have to put congenital heart disease as the top differential for every patient.

With the blink of an eye, our month in North Carolina has come to an end. I had originally imagined having lots of time not only to study and work, but also to go out and explore the area. But alas, with the free central AC, cable TV, and cable modem access at the apartment, I found myself vegging indoors most of the time. Nevertheless, I did manage to generate some pocket money from freelance work for Kaplan, and also teach some techniques to a collaborator at Duke. The warm weather also allowed for many refreshing trips to the outdoor pool in the afternoons. But after dinner, the back-to-back line-up of Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, and Law & Order: CI episodes kept us on the couch for much of the evenings. This nightly lull was broken only by the introduction of another addiction: computer games. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion is the 4th chapter of a popular role-playing game series. Whether we were shooting at trolls, stealing food, or collecting ninroot, the game offered a vast world of adventures which kept us entranced into the wee hours of the morning. We ate out several more times on our last weekend there, only to be disappointed again. We did, however, enjoy a visit to the Magic Wings butterfly exhibit at the Museum of Life and Science, where the friendly insects happily sat on our fingers for various photo-ops. Our drive back up was much more adventurous, with a bird flying into the side of our car, a speeding ticket from a Virginia trooper, and a sesame oil spill in the trunk which made for a messy cleanup. However, we did get to enjoy a delicious Chinese banquet-style engagement dinner my parents threw for us in New York. Now back in Boston, I’ve got about a week to run a bunch of errands before I start with Peds in July.

This past weekend, we took a short trip down to Atlanta to visit the Georgia Aquarium, which had just opened last November. The drive took almost 7-hours, though it was hardly monotonous when we got caught in a rainstorm so heavy we had to pull over to the emergency lane. The aquarium itself was quite impressive. Today the largest aquarium in the world, it features a variety of petting ponds, tide pools, and an enormous deep ocean tank housing the only whale sharks in captivity outside Asia. For lunch, we ventured into Sweet Auburn for some oh-so-delicious barbeque ribs and pork neck bones at Thelma’s Kitchen. Mmmmm… how I can still savor the taste of juicy pig on my tongue. =P After the meal, we toured the World of Coca-Cola and the CNN Studio Headquarters, both of which were essentially hour-long advertising campaigns we had to pay for. We spent the late afternoon at the Martin Luther King memorial park and Underground Atlanta, a historic district of old Atlanta which became sealed off from the surface with the construction of viaducts in the 20’s to accommodate automobile traffic. Today, it has evolved into a garishly ghetto shopping mall. We drove back up on Sunday, but stopped along the way for clothes shopping at an outlet mall, some locally-grown peaches and strawberries from a fruit stand, and a new toy from a monstrous flea market. Back now at Research Triangle Park, I hope my second week here will be a bit more productive. Anyway, I hope y’all secular heathens enjoy the day of the devil. I hear there’re gonna party like there’s no tomorrow in Hell.

My past few weeks have been filled with wonderful events that only now am I finally free to write about. Perhaps the first and most important is that Melody and I are engaged! It happened a few weeks ago at the New England Aquarium, one of the first places we visited as a couple. It came as a surprise to her when I popped the big question mainly because she didn’t think I had the time. In fact, I was surprised myself that I was able to put it all together amidst preparing my NYAS talk, writing for Kaplan, TA’ing pharmacology, working on manuscripts, and writing my thesis. I actually found the whole process of diamond shopping quite intriguing, though doing it in NYC meant that I had to sneak down to the city several times to have everything properly done. Fortunately for me, Melody said yes and all the preparation was certainly worthwhile. The second important event is the final completion of my PhD career. After working in near-isolation for several weeks writing my thesis and preparing the seminar, I successfully defended my PhD dissertation last Friday afternoon. It was an exciting weekend with friends and family visiting from out of town. Friday evening concluded with a big feast followed by pool at the old hangout. On Saturday, I celebrated my graduation with my lab over more delicious seafood, and with my parents over a fancy dinner. Finally, we departed Boston Sunday morning to drive down to North Carolina, where Melody will be spending some time working on a clinical research project. In the meantime, I’m just going to kick back at her one-bedroom apartment and enjoy life as a free man … that is, until I return to the wards in July.