Happy Super Fat Tuesday

in case you live in a sad, pastry-less cave and are unaware...the above is a paczki (pronounced "poonch-ski"). it's a polish doughnut, traditionally served on fat tuesday (or fat thursday, in some parts) as a last minute treat before the Lenten fast begins on Ash Wednesday. it involves sugary goodness fruit or cream filling and a pastry crust which is sometimes enhanced with powdered or cinnamon sugar. the sweetness of the whole thing is cut with plenty of lard. so, if you're like me (and i know you are), today you indulged on paczki's, mardi gras booze, and sexual deviance as you prepare to settle in for the cold, dark, prudish months of february and march. i am giving up sugary foods starting tomorrow. it will be painful. perhaps more for those around me than for myself. i've been in a wicked crabby mood all week. this dark, gray, ecky weather gets me down. it feels like winter will never go away and the sun forgot us. (melancholy song inserted here). :(

and this last few days at the hospital has been kind of hectic, too. they've been long days and we've been busy. not only at the main hospital, but in out-pt dialysis units, the MD's clinic and another hospital in town, too. i'm learning so much, so quickly, but by the end of the day, my brain is mush. i have pages and pages of scribbled notes that i've taken as he's lectured to me. fluid and electrolyte formulas squished along side drug doses, differentials for different types of acid-base disorders, types of dialysis catheters and when to use them, what qualifies as chronic kidney disease versus acute and when to consider it kidney failure, what minerals to worry about at what levels and how to fix the abnormalities, how to determine exactly where in the renal system the failure occurred and the presumed causes, how to replace lost water volume, lost blood volume, etc, etc. ack.

and i so hate being wrong. and now not even having a good guess sometimes. the doc is so smart and so good at what he does, i'm often perplexed by his body of knowledge. his understanding of physiology is incredible and his recall of names, lab values, etc, is uncanny. he's often over my head, but i try to keep us. i think i'm putting a permanent wrinkle between my eyebrows as i constantly use my "i'm fascinated by what you have to say and you definitely did not lose me many minutes ago as you showed me how the Pythagorean Theorem explains that funky urine coming out of the lady in bed 303" furrowed eyebrow gaze.

i'm just tired. and grouchy. and now off of sugar. nice move. :)