Finally a Fourth Year!

Good mornin all!

So I woke up this morning a fourth year med student! YES! It is scary to think I will be trusted on my own in just under a year. Although it feels as though we are in school forever, I just hope I have learned enough to take care of patients well.

Today I am in Maine, and have been the last week. I spent the first several nights at my good friend Abby’s camp up in North Windam… right on Little Sebago. It was a blast!!! The weather was rainy, but it was nice sleeping upstairs in the loft with the windows open so I could hear the loons and the water of the lake slapping the beach. There was even an occasional thunderstorm that made an appearance. It was just what I needed. This week has flown by… we have been in class from essentially 730a to 5p just about every day. Abby and I would have to leave at 630a to get there, and it just made for long days… but we enjoyed stopping by a cute little coffee shop a couple of the nights… The Maine Bean.

Thursday night our med school band played… they are awesome!!! So we rocked out at a bar in Biddeford, and then I stayed with my dear friends Meg, Caleb, Anne and Beth. Yesterday we had our last day of classes which was all HAZMAT and decon emergency stuff, and then went to the Fortunes Rocks beach…. came home took a nap and shower and then to dinner in Portland with Lisa and Romeo, Shawn and Suz.

I guess I like blogging this stuff because I can read it later and remember what a good week it was… full of the sights and smells of one of my favorite places in the country… Maine. The thick fog, the moose on the side of the road, the smell of the ocean, beach roses, green trees and grass, the ocean…. how I’m going to really miss this place. …. hmmm.

Last Day!

Today is our LAST day in Watertown! We had a great lunch lecture and we were able to say goodbye to all the folks at Samaritan… I have some great pics

Now we are just taking a break on the couch, Yonder Mountain on the radio. We have been filling up the truck and getting ready. It is really, nastily humid today… there is a haze everywhere and it’s 84 degrees… DISGUSTO! It has been really humid the last couple days… we are praying for a thunderstorm to clear it all out.

All we really have left is our kitchen stuff, which we will most likely donate to Shann, because she is staying here. We pick up D’s friend Jon tonight from Syracuse and then we will leave at some point in the morning. D to the west and G to the east. It will be hard, but we will hopefully see each other soon…

Things are going well so far!! Hopefully we will get to see a lot of you on our journeys.

Much Love,
G&D

Camping, More Camping and Sailing…

Hey folks…

Sorry for the delay in blog-age… we have been so busy these days! My surgery rotation is just about over… it has been great, but the days are long. Like I said in a previous post… 14 hour days on my feet all day in the OR or up on the floor seeing patients.. then it’s home to see Dennis, eat, pack a bit for our upcoming move, and study for my 2nd set of boards that are coming up August 13th. Yowzers.

But! We have made time to explore just a bit more before we leave this area. 3 weeks ago we decided to go camping near Ithaca in the Finger Lakes National Forest… there were TONS of bugs!! There were caterpillars paratrooping from the sky… they would land in my hair! You could hear them raining onto the ground… eww! We spent some time in Ithaca itself and there happened to be the Annual Ithaca Festival going on! Lots of fun vendors, etc. It was a blast!

Here are some select photos:

Camping with our creepy crawly friends!

Downtown Ithaca:

Cornell University.. In Ithaca…

LAKE PLACID Camping:

The weekend after our Ithaca adventure, we ventured over into the Adirondacks to Lake Placid with our dear friends Andy and Danielle (firefighter and paramedic couple).. they are great!! It was so much fun. We stayed right on a lake in the High Peaks region in Lake Placid… there were trail heads in every direction. We went out on one in the heavy rain that took us to Rock Falls. It was so much fun!! On the way back, we got snaps of the old Olympic Village from the 1980 Winter Olympics that were held in Lake Placid. The crazy, intense Ski Jumping jumps were still there… it is hard to see the steep and gigantic scale from these photos.. but to imagine sailing down these is unbelievable!!!

SAILING on Lake Ontario with Dr. Johnson, the cardiothoracic surgeon at Samaritan, my fellow med students: Pierre, Erin, Michelle and her hubby Dave and Dennis…. it was a perfect day!  We haven’t been out in the sun in so long!  Dr. J had me sail the boat to begin with while he was getting all the sails in order… then Pierre, then Dennis… who did spectacular job sailing (even mentioned by Dr. J) and got us all the way up to 7 knots! The fastest out of all of us!   It was such a great time..

But first a pre-sailing breakfast with our other great friends.. Shannon and Pat!!!