November 22, 2009
· Filed under Life, Pregnancy, Running
I thought my morning sickness was pretty much done a week or two ago but apparently that was just the baby having some fun with me. It’s come back with a vengeance ever since I started taking call again. Given, it’s still nowhere near as bad as it used to be. I haven’t thrown up in 3 or 4 weeks but I have felt extremely nauseous and uncomfortable. This weekend has actually been great. I’ve finally started to feel hungry and can actually eat a reasonable amount at meals. I’m on call again tomorrow so we’ll see if this lasts…
Amazing to think that I was actually starting to get a little worried by the fact that I hadn’t gained any weight, but this week I’m definitely starting to get a little stomach. You still can’t tell when I’m wearing regular clothes, but I definitely notice that my jeans are tighter. I’m sure I’ll eventually be very annoyed by my large stomach, but at the moment I’m very excited.
In running news, I had a great time running a turkey trot today at Breakheart Reservation. We run this race every year, and I highly recommend it because a) it’s free and b) they raffle off turkeys at the end. The very first year I ran it, I won a turkey so now I’m hooked for life. I do not, however, recommend this race for setting a PR. It’s a 5K and extremely hilly. I can’t emphasize that enough! Very hilly! Given my pregnancy, I knew there was no way I’d be setting a PR this year, but I was still very pleased with my time of 34:28 since my non-pregnant time last year was 32:48. Not bad at all given how slowly I’ve been moving lately. Plus, it felt really great to sprint at the end and pass a bunch of people. Definitely makes me more excited for the official turkey trot we’ll be doing on Thanksgiving day.
Now that we’ve finally told pretty much everyone about our pregnancy, I decided I could make public all the posts I’ve written as we’ve gone along, so feel free to go back and look at them. Not that I know who’s actually reading this. Lately it seems to be a forum for people who a) are dizzy while running or b) have had trouble with knee replacements. Speaking of which, I haven’t been dizzy at all while pregnant, and my mother continues to struggle with her knee replacement. She recently went back for a “check up” but the surgeon was totally unhelpful and told her everything looked great even though she’s in terrible pain. hmm. The other scary thing is that now her other knee is starting to really bother her, but she’s not sure she can face another surgery given how much trouble she’s already had. I think she’s worried that she won’t be able to keep up once the baby’s born. If anyone has any good recommendations for orthopedic surgeons in Boston, please let me know!
September 28, 2009
· Filed under Life
Three tomato plants and one very rainy summer, and this is what I have to show for it:
Yes, that’s right, I’ve managed to produce one tomato. But let me tell you, that was one tasty tomato. Here’s hoping for more luck next year.
September 7, 2009
· Filed under Life
There are times when life just seems perfect and this is one of those times. I’m sitting on the front porch with my cat enjoying an iced coffee and the beautiful weather. I just got home from a fabulous call, and I’m looking forward to a fun labor day barbecue this afternoon.
Have had a very nice weekend that started with dinner with Eddie at Steve’s (our favorite Greek restaurant) and then a very nice walk down Newbury St on a gorgeous evening. Even stopped in at Border’s and (amazingly) found an Agatha Christie book that I’ve never read. For those of you who don’t me, that is quite a feat since I was pretty certain that I had read every Agatha Christie and probably own ~80% of them. Saturday morning we met some good friends for dim sum. Saturday afternoon was very productive. I cleaned the apartment, filled out some forms for this lawyer we’re meeting with, answered a bunch of emails and went running. Saturday evening we met friends for dinner who happen to be 37 weeks pregnant, and it was fun to see how happy they are and how excited (and nervous!) they are about the baby. Yesterday I was on call, and it was pretty close to the perfect call. Pretty busy during the day which helps make the time pass and then absolutely quiet from 8 pm onward so I got plenty of sleep and even got to do a little teaching. And now I’m relaxing on my porch.
Fall is definitely my favorite season. I love the cooler temperatures and the sunshine. It’s so nice to sit here on the porch and listen to the activity of the neighborhood while starting at the blue sky and green leaves. Perfect.
August 10, 2009
· Filed under Life, Medical, Running
No, I don’t actually have any excuses for my lack of posting lately. We got back from Ireland at the end of June and I ran a very disappointing half marathon, finishing 2 seconds slower than my previous half. Of course, as Eddie points out, I had been quite sick for the week prior, and it was a ridiculously hilly course so he thinks I should be quite pleased with my finish. If I really think about it, given the course and the bad bronchitis I had, my finishing time is not bad. But given how much I trained for it (and how little I trained for my first half), I remain quite disappointed. So, I’ve decided enough with these long distance races, I’m going to train for a 5K. My husband has been trying to break 20 minutes in the 5K for a while now, and he’s been making excellent progress so I’m excited to start training for mine. My previous 5K PR is 28:19 in 2004, followed by 28:34 this past March. So my current goal is sub-28 which I think should be pretty easy, and maybe even sub-27. We’ll see. To accomplish this, I’ve been running about 20 miles a week with a 9 mile long run and 1 day a week of intervals. I’ve had some trouble with my left foot for the past few months, and I was worried that intervals would exacerbate it, but it seems to be holding up fine.
Enough about running. As of July 1st, I am now officially a 3rd year resident. I started off the year with the wards, which is probably our toughest rotation. Thankfully, I had a fabulous intern and managed to survive a very busy month with a significant amount of anxiety but also a good amount of learning and fun. I followed that with a 2 week away rotation in pediatric oncology because I’ll soon be applying for a fellowship, and I’m trying to get a sense of the different programs. I’m not looking forward to writing yet another personal statement…
I survived the exciting milestone of turning 30 and celebrated with a fabulous barbecue at our place. As a sign of my age, about half the people at the party brought babies with them. Soon, everyone I know will have kids!
June 23, 2009
· Filed under Animals!, Life, Pictures, Running
Monday, Eddie got to experience the thrill of driving on the left side of the road for the first time. We stopped off at Hertz to pick up our car. Amazingly, Ireland is one of the most dangerous countries in which to drive in the world. As a result, our credit card, which normally provides insurance when renting a car, does not have this coverage for a select few countries, Ireland among them. So, we paid 15 euros/day for the car and ~26 euros/day for the insurance. Phew. Obviously we only elected to have one driver and given my total inability to judge distance, Eddie was the obvious choice. He did an amazing job, and we started out on our trip across Ireland. Our first stop was the Rock of Cashel which is actually a very cool combo of a fort and cathedral:
Gorgeous views of the Irish countryside. Notice the cows in the distance.
From there, we went on to the Castle of Cahir which was awesome because you got to explore almost all the rooms. If only our condo had a “murder hole” so that we could drop rocks on unsuspecting salesman as they tried to approach.
We finally arrived at our bed and breakfast around 8 pm and headed out for a quick dinner at the nearby Sailor’s Bar. This is the view for our dinner. Note that at this point it’s probably close to 9 pm and still full daylight.
Tuesday morning, we debated a good bit whether to check out the Ring of Kerry (a popular tourist destination) or the Dingle Peninsula (awesome name, but farther away). We ultimately ended up going with our host’s recommendation and driving around the Beara Peninsula which was absolutely gorgeous with amazing views of both the ocean and mountains. This beauty was interspersed by moments of pure terror because apparently someone decided it would be fun to make very windy and narrow roads, just wide enough for 1 car, and then set the speed limit at 80 kmh. Luckily, Eddie was driving, and I just let out frequent squeals of terror.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have love animals, so we frequently stopped to try to entice the cows and sheep to come closer. Apparently the cows loved me:
But the sheep were quite fearful. Here is one running away from us:
Here’s one example of some of the amazing views.
Notice the crazy winding road:
Unfortunately, I’ve been rather sick for this entire vacation so I haven’t been able to get much running in. I’m actually starting to feel better, but I’m left with this horrible hacking cough. Lovely.
June 21, 2009
· Filed under Life, Running
I had a lovely to start to my vacation. My official first day was Wednesday but I was post from working overnight in the ED and then I had to work another overnight on Thursday to pay someone pack. Prior to going to work on Thursday, I managed to wake up and run my last long run (of 14 miles) prior to my half marathon (coming up on 6/28!). The first 10 miles felt great, the next 2 miles didn’t feel too bad but the last two were rather painful. I did have some left foot pain which has been bothering me off and on for the past few weeks. Also had some right hip pain which is new. Anyway, after this, I rested for a bit and then did some laundry and packing for Ireland. I got to work and discovered that there were ZERO patients for me to take care of. Awesome. And somehow, miraculously, made it through the whole night without a single admission. I did have some trouble sleeping because I always have trouble on call and because I’ve been working nights for a while. I left work around 8 am and went home to finish packing and drop our cat off at “cat camp,” which is how Eddie and I refer to Cat Whiskers Inn. Finished cleaning up the condo and then headed to the airport around 4 pm to catch my 7 pm flight to Ireland.
The flight went well: there was both dinner and tiny TVs for each person. Shockingly, I didn’t actually sleep at all. We landed in Shannon around 12:30 am US time (5:30 am Ireland time). I had a 1 hour layover there and then finally made it into Dublin around 7:30 am. Got through customs very quickly and took a bus to our hotel and arrived by 9 am. Eddie was at his conference so I got unpacked and then wandered down to the lobby to send him an email and let him know I was there and, wouldn’t you know it, there he was. Excellent. We walked down O’Connell street and found our way onto Grafton Street where I bought 2 of the best scones I’ve ever eaten and a very peculiar (yet tasty) iced coffee. From there, we walked through St. Stephen’s Green and then I walked him back up to Trinity College to go back to his conference. I wandered back to the hotel and took a nap from about 1 pm to 3 pm and then met up with him again. We went running along the Liffey and then met up with some of his friends and headed over to the Market Bar for dinner. Turned out to be a Tapas bar and was very tasty. There were four of us and we managed to sample a cheese plate, meatballs with potatoes, 2 types of salad, chicken skewer, fish pie, and olives plus Guinness and Krombacher (surprisingly tasty). I was sad to find that the Guinness here tastes exactly the same as in the States. After that, we wandered around some more and then I succumbed to some very strange ice cream concoction at Burger King. We finally made it back to our hotel around 11 pm, just as the sun was setting. So cool to be at this latitude.
Despite our best attempts, we didn’t wake up on Sunday until close to 11 am, and even then only because the cleaning people knocked on our door. We hurried out and grabbed a scone and croissant at a convenience store (1 on every block!) and then dropped off Eddie’s laundry. Then we walked over to Trinity College and went on a very cool tour that ended with the Book of Kells. From there, we headed over to the Queen of Tarts for a delicious lunch. We stopped off and saw Dublin Castle and then checked out a very over crowded street fair before picking Eddie’s laundry back up and heading back to the hotel. On the way, we found some Guinness Foreign Extra Stout. This stuff is amazing! Why don’t they have it in the States!!!? Eddie went for a run, but I’m tapering so I stayed at the hotel and planned our driving route for the next few days.
We grabbed dinner at a takeout fish and chips place called Leo Burdock’s which was delicious. Then we stopped in at a very touristy bar where you could pour your own beer. As it turns out, they also had some excellent Irish singing and dancing. Very cool to see. Now we’re finishing packing so that we can leave tomorrow to check out Kenmare on the southwest coast.
Pictures to follow…
May 10, 2009
· Filed under Life, Running
I am unofficially part of the Somerville Striders which means that most Thursday nights (when I’m not on call) I head over to run a race with them. I used to just run these races as a regular run but now that I’m training for a half, I’ve started treating them as tempo runs which works very well. This past Thursday I had an especially motivating tempo run because I was pushing my friend’s 10 month old who decided it was time to eat about 1 mile from the finish. His cries were a great reason to pick it up. As a result, I ended up running a 9:42 pace which was actually a little faster than my goal pace of 9:55. Excellent.
The evening got even better when Eddie and I decided that we should catch the new Star Trek movie. I thought it didn’t open until Friday but our local theatre started showing it Thursday night. I was really hoping to see tons of people dressed up like Star Trek but we actually only saw one. Anyway, it was a great movie. I highly recommend it.
After staying up late Thursday night to watch Star Trek, I was pretty sleepy at work on Friday but I actually managed to get a lot done and got out early and snuck in a nap before heading over to Cambridge Brewing Company for their 20th anniversary. Woke up reasonably early on Saturday and got in my 13-miler which actually wasn’t too bad despite the humidity. We spent Saturday evening celebrating an early Mother’s Day with my mother. For whatever reason, she decided she wanted to go to Friendly’s, and we actually had a great time.
Today, I spent most of the day outside doing yardwork, and it was a perfect day for it: low 70s and sunny. Managed to dig up a TON of weeds, mow the grass, buy bark mulch, put down grass seed and put down the mulch. Awesome. Also spent the afternoon eating delicious food at a friend’s BBQ. Overall, an excellent past few days.
April 30, 2009
· Filed under Life, Running
Not sure quite what’s come over me lately that my posts have fallen off. I think part of it is that I’ve had some very stressful shifts at work lately with some very sick kids, and it’s hard to post about it here without violating confidentiality, so I just end up not posting.
I’m actually on a relatively easy rotation but I’ve been very busy with other things including trying to write two case reports, working with a plumber to install everything for a washer/dryer in our unit, trying to get my full license (so painful!), working with an advocacy group for our big end of year event, and trying to work on our garden/yard. Phew. In running news, I’m very proud to announce that my husband ran his first marathon (Boston!) a few weeks ago. It was tougher than he expected but he still did very well. Of course, now he wants to do even better. Within 10 minutes of finishing the marathon, he was trying to figure out which fall marathon he could do. And now he’s been talking about how precisely he can qualify for Boston. Poor boy, he’s got it bad…
My running has also been going well. I have a rather interesting training plan for this half I’m running on June 28th which involves a rather rapid increase in miles followed by a few easy weeks (during which my schedule makes lots of running impossible) and then a second ramp up before I finally taper. So, this means that I ran 12 miles for my long run last week. I’ve obviously run 12 miles many times before, but this was definitely one of the tougher times. Not sure why, other than it was fairly warm, and I didn’t have enough water. I actually stopped at a convenience store and bought gatorade which was very helpful. I’ve also been adding some speedwork which so far has consisted of tempo runs and striders. They’re actually pretty fun to do. I’ll probably throw in a few track workouts and hill work toward the end.
Amazingly, I’m nearing the end of my second year of residency which is pretty exciting. Sadly, next year won’t really be any easier than this year. In fact, it might actually be harder but I’m still looking forward to it. I get more responsibility which is always both fun and terrifying. What I’m most excited for at the moment is that I get two weeks of vacation at the end of this year, and I’m spending part of it in Ireland with my husband. Should be awesome!
March 31, 2009
· Filed under Life, Medical
I would like to write about a child who recently died, but it’s difficult to express myself well. It was a very difficult and surreal experience. Part of this was because when I first met him, he was intubated and unresponsive, so I never knew him as a person. The other part is that I didn’t have time to mourn him or even think about what happened because there were other kids that needed to be taken care of.
One of the definitions for surreal that come up on Google described it well: “characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions.”
It felt very unreal to me to go from doing chest compressions one minute to mundane unimportant tasks the next. I feel my life should somehow be inextricably liked with his, but I never even met his parents. I want them to know that I am thinking of them and mourning him with them. I wish they could have held him before he died.
March 29, 2009
· Filed under Life
As you may know, this blog originated from my running of the Boston Marathon and my desire to write about it. And I would NEVER have run Boston if it weren’t for two things: 1) Steve Runner’s Worldwide Half Marathon Challenge which gave me the courage to try a half marathon and 2) the Tufts Marathon Challenge which gave me the support I needed (and an entry blank!) to run Boston. The Tufts Marathon Challenge is organized by Larry Bacow, the president of Tufts University. I ran with the Tufts team during 2007, and my husband is running with them this year. He absolutely love it. One of the other runners organized an informal team dinner at Redbones tonight. We went there and enjoyed delicious food with about 30 other runners. Amazingly, the president of Tufts actually called Redbones and told them that the bill was on him. How amazing is that?? That would never have happened at a certain other school I attended…
