Christmas Craft.

I found this craft online at Martha Stewart.com. When I found out a needed on the few presents for extended family I kicked into gear. No sew bag. All you need is fabric, iron on vinyl, duct tape, stapping, and a stapler. Super easy to make!
Please excuse the pj's I have been too busy crafting to get dressed this morning!

Shameful

The only way I can post this in good conscience is knowing that you will enjoy this in the privacy of your own home. With your spouse.

Replay. It's catchy.

Cakeballs

After making them a couple times I finally perfected my skills. Jedi Cakeball makers beware.



Cakeballs like most everything in the pastry world are an undertaking to create. But the result is these cute lil bits of yumminess that my husband (and more importantly) Mother in law can't get enough of. What have I done!

By the way if you want my tips on making them flawlessly message me.

Reflections are always better in Blog Form

As an assignment for our Psychiatric Rotation we had to go to an AA meeting and write about our experience, our thoughts. I had never been to anything like this before so I guess what I was expecting was all from movies. I expected a circle with 5 or 6 people sitting around drinking coffee and sharing their stories. I was surprised to walk into a crowded room with probably 75 people sitting in rows that faced forward like a church or assembly meeting. The meeting was standing room only, and there was piping hot coffee, the smell filled the room. The meeting started and someone got up to share her story. The whole meeting was one lady sharing her testimony of what she called "what her life was like then, what happened and how it is now." The meeting really reminded me of church, except without the Hymns. It was a group of people who shared a common goal: Sobriety. They were relying on each other for strength and being very real about their struggles. I felt like on outsider. But I guess that was because I did not share their same struggle.

After going to an AA meeting, I worked my shifts at the Psych ER and there I met a patient whose life had been torn apart by alcohol. He was 49, but he looked twenty years older. His wife had left him and he had two grandchildren he could not see. He was trying to quit and presented to us after suffering from horrible withdrawal symptoms. He had been drinking 15 beers a day since he was 13. His kidneys were failing, too. He so badly wanted help and rehabilitation. I have frequently heard the statement but it was this patient that made me realize that alcoholism is a disease. I think resources like AA would obviously be a long way in this man's future but I hope he gets there. I hope one day he is at an AA meeting standing up celebrating his sobriety day, with his family and friends around him.

There are so many resources like social worker, drug and alcohol therapists, and abuse counselors that I was introduced to on my rotation in Psychiatry. I was so amazing to see them all in action working to help rehabilitate patients. I had this idea that most of the time when someone walked into the ER they must be having the worst day of their lives but most people I encountered in the Psych ER where just living another day. Some didn't have family, friends, or even an emergency contact. I am glad that I got a glimpse of all the resources that are out there in the fields of social work and drug and alcohol counseling so that I can make it available to my patients. There is so little time in one appointment or one ER visit to do things like keep someone accountable for their alcoholism and these tools are necessary to give people as they start to rebuild their lives.

Phone "Christmas" Tree

I love blogging and having my friends blog because it is a virtual way to catch up.

However, ! I miss talking on the phone with you (and you, and you). I am always jealous of Mr. because most of the people who are close to him are here within a 30 minute drive. All my friends are (successfully :) scattered all over the nation Arkansas, Nashville, Indiana. I would love to fly all over the country and see all of you for the holidays. Or better yet invite you all to fly in to an awesome party at my house! But we are not millionaires ... I know the holidays are hectic but I would love to just talk for a couple minutes and see what your year has been like and how you are doing. I understand that it may have to be after the new year!

That is what I have been thinking lately. I am going to attempt to call cause I would love to reconnect. That is my Christmas Wish!

Christmas Season!

I am getting in the christmas spirit. I am making christmas cookies for the neighbors
Here is my before:


And the after: (I couldn't get the icing to turn black for the faces so I had to use orange... weird huh?)


Lastly this is for Mr's Office party tomorrow. He requested cakeballs and said "just something easy..." Yea right. I hope the office likes em...

A gift for Nayeli

A friend of mine is having a baby. A sweet little baby girl due in February. This has been a while in the making inspired by another friend's recent thread bending.



All I need to to now is add the buttons. Then I will be ready for the next friend to get pregnant... any takers? ? ?

Psychiatry in Review

I spend my Pseudo last day on Psych in-patient today. (my Dr. is off tomorrow so it was my last day with him and my next to last day on the unit). I have enjoyed this rotation so much more than I anticipated. I enjoy the work. I enjoy seeing patients and knowing them in a more in depth way than other medical rotations.

I feel like most people go into medicine because they want to spend their life in service to others making other people's lives better. Sometimes I think in other aspects of medicine it is easy to appear (to the patient or the outside world) like we, practitioners, spend our life interpreting lab values, prescribing expensive medication, running tests, bearing bad news. But in Psychiatry you get to know someone. You get to feel with them the darkest moments of their life, things they try to keep secret from everyone else. You go with the patient on a journey (sometimes extremely painful) toward wellness. You sit in the pain. And then you work to move the patient through it. It is amazingly gratifying to see the whole process. For the first time in my medical career I really feel like a healer. I feel like a listener, I feel like I go to work everyday and see people on the worse days of their lives and help them get better.

I see myself in almost all of my patients. A woman came in after a suicide attempt and she was an upper middle class lady who immediately regretted her decision to seek help. She felt she did not really want to hurt herself therefore she did not need psychiatric treatment. But when she started talking about her sleeplessness, lack of energy, and her lack of appetite that were crippling her, she was moved to tears and decided she really did want help.

I also was able to witness the course of a man who was catatonic, unable to move at times due to his bipolar disorder, and through his ECT treatments became mobile, resumed grooming himself, even laughed with me today while talking about his grandchildren. It is a beautiful thing.

Treating people's UTI's, and telling a kid's mom that his behavior is normal four year old behavior is nice but bringing someone out of such a dark place is powerful.

I feel truly blessed to have had this opportunity to be at the wonderful hospital that I am at working with the amazing team of doctors and nurses that I worked with. I will never forget my time there.