V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N!

My neurology rotation ended today! I have definitely learned a lot and feel far more comfortable performing and interpreting the neurologic physical exam, which is something that I will use a lot in the future.

I think I'm swinging back toward family practice career-wise, though. When I close my eyes and think about being a physician five years from now, I really see myself as a family doc.

Now I have three weeks of "research." All of us are required to do 12 weeks of research in our third year (mine is all split up) and end up with something of publishable quality. I am working with a classmate and one of my favorite professors on a psychiatry project. In a nutshell, we're going to be looking at the relationship between anxiety disorders and implanted cardioverter-defibrillators. Once the project gets approved by the IRB (ensuring that we are properly protecting our research subjects), I will be doing interviews with patients who have just received ICDs. This will be both interesting and much more mellow than having clinical duties all day every day! So it's like a mini-vacation, which I definitely need after working hard (and not sleeping a whole lot) through the first three rotations of the year.

We're taking advantage of this brief window of scheduling freedom to take a couple of trips...we'll be in Maine for a family reunion next week, and then the weekend following will meet Lucy and Steve (my very best friend since we were six, and her terrific husband) in the Wisconsin Dells for some outdoorsy fun.

Jasper is learning a new command: "down" to lie down. We figured this would take advantage of his natural inertia! Once he gets it a little more solidly, we'll post another video clip. I'm hoping to have more time to work with him in the next few weeks...Alex has been responsible for teaching him this new trick.

It's gotten very chilly and gray here the last few days. I actually broke down and turned on the furnace yesterday (don't tell Alex). There's a thin rug on the living room floor where Jasper always sleeps, but I was concerned that he would be cold, so two nights ago I dragged out his dog bed and put it in his favorite spot. He's never shown much interest in it before, but he seemed to be content enough when I set him down on it. Yesterday when I got home from work, however, the bed was all bunched up under the table, stripped of its zipper and with the batting falling out. We've been finding little pieces of zipper around the house ever since. Now I'm trying to decide if a much classier LL Bean bed would be suitable or if that would just end up getting shredded as well...