It's already July 6th, which means half of my summer break is already over! Here's what happened in June:

Shadowing. Instead of spending 8 weeks doing a family medicine program, I spent 4 weeks shadowing an internal medicine doctor in a predominantly outpatient setting in Sunset Hills. After about 3 full days of literally being a shadow -- not getting to do much other than stand in a corner and watch my mentor doing everything from taking the patient history to doing the physical exam -- I decided shadowing can be very boring. The most I got to do was listen to irregular heartbeats maybe 10 times throughout the 4 weeks (that's out of 40 times 4 = 160 hours worth of shadowing, which means maybe one heartbeat listening every 16 hours... wow). However, I did get paid about $1k for 4 weeks, which isn't what I would get paid doing summer research but it was still better than nothing (which is what shadowing usually pays). Despite the boredom, I did experience a few epiphanies (remember, these epiphanies are from someone who had nothing to do other than stare at people all day):

• The side and frontal view of a person's face can be dramatically different... I would observe a patient's side view mostly until they went up from the chair to the observation bed for the physical and wow, sometimes I was shocked by how different the two views were.
• Women like to color their nails, whether you're a 20-something working person or a 50- or 60-something grandma.
  
• As men get older, they develop man-breasts... I guess as you get older, skin in general sags and droops (see first line of third verse in the "Dr. Seuss on Aging" poem, which actually was posted on one of the cabinets in the doctor/nurse section in the back)
  
• My most insecure body part are my fingers - I've found that some men's fingers are enormously thick and huge so that I ended up comparing my fingers with theirs.
• On Tuesdays I would get out of clinic around 6:30pm - just in time for 7pm basketball nights at the church gym.  I would dream about playing basketball ALL DAY.... My favorite sound of the moment was the "nothing but net" sound you make as you make a nice, clean shot.
• I got exposure to a lot more of the South and Southwest side of St. Louis - this is the intersection of a large Catholic population that STL is known for as well as the suburbs and boonies - so the patient population (mostly white, no surprise) was still somewhat diverse in geography... although everyone was insured (I never saw a single uninsured patient during my shadowing!)
  

Moving from CWE to Shaw Neighborhood. So before I joined the 3 bedroom APT in the Central West End, there were originally 3 WashU med students. One of them ended up going to South Africa for AIDS research and I filled that open slot. Now that he is back, there are 4 of us and we needed more room if we were to live together, so we ended up finding and renting a 4BR home in the Shaw Neighborhood near Tower Grove Park and the Missouri Botanical Garden. I have to say it's quite different going from the WashU bubble for 4 years of college to the chic Central West End (lots of professionals and students) to now the Shaw neighborhood - each have different angles of the same city with very different feels to them. Whilst moving, I realized a few things:

• I can be very controlling and my type A personality can come out... a lot
• I love to fix and build things... if I had more experience I would like to do it more
• I had Taco Bell for the first time in years (ever since WashU shut it down my sophomore or junior year due to protests by the "worker's rights" group and complaints about tomatoes being unjust) and it was very delicious
• One man's trash is truly another's treasure - I picked up a few more books that one of my roommates was throwing out, as well as a USB cable I've been looking for
  
• Packing and unpacking can be kind of like solving a puzzle
• The best part of moving was having to hoist a queen bed frame onto the second floor (it would not fit up the stairs) and all the planning and excitement that went into it

What I love best about our new place:

1. It is literally a few blocks walking distance from the Missouri Botanical Garden
2. No more elevators!
3. We were up on the 11th floor, so there would be this constant windy sound, esp during stormy season in late spring and early summer... well, NO MO!

I have reached a point where getting married to a U.S. citizen won't speed up my destiny towards a U.S. citizenship.  In 2 years, I will be eligible on my own accord.  Looking forward to that day!



From: http://www.uscis.gov/files/nativedocuments/M-480.pdf