Rogers Cup

I saw Roger Fed at the Rogers Cup on Saturday!!! It was my first time at the Rogers Cup and I got to see Roger play! I can't believe how lucky I was...who could have predicted that the one ticket I purchased, I'd get to see him play. It was phenomenal, thrilling, unforgettable and perhaps once in a lifetime. So lucky!

We wore Nike headbands and pink shirts to show our allegiance for Roger and it paid off, cuz he won - a tough 3-setter. Just awesome.

Subconscious surfacing

This past month has been very difficult on my sleeping habits. Working very long days and sleeping few hours has really heightened my awareness of this topic of sleep hygiene. As health professionals, we emphasize how important sleep is to one's well-being. Low energy? Get more sleep. Problems going to sleep? Don't watch TV before going to bed, turn off all lights and don't do anything one hour before going to bed that will stimulate your mind. Trouble staying asleep? Don't drink water before going to bed. If you don't have to get up, try not to open your eyes and look at the clock. Simply go back to bed.

But how do you control your dreams? This is my personal dilemma. For years now, I have noticed themes in my dreams that seem to re-surface. I don't know what exactly they mean, but I often wake up with a feeling of negativity and uncertainty. It usually means a sombre start to my day. My personal nightmares usually involve having to run to catch someone or run away from someone and I can't move my legs. I am known for my speed, so it's actually very distressing in a dream to not be able to run. The other involves going up a very high and long escalator, always with a feeling that I am going to fall down. The strange thing is that I am not afraid of heights!

Anyway, I've been having really bizarre dreams lately. Ones that don't leave you with a fuzzy feeling. And I'm thinking, if only there were a way to have more proportionately happy dreams. How can I achieve that? Interestingly, I feel more positive about my life in general, but why can't I shake these scary dreams? Should I look deeper into these dreams, to analyze them for a significant meaning? Perhaps, it's just the scary ones that leave the lasting impression on me...not that I only have bad dreams. I'm wondering if there's someone out there who offers dream re-shaping...if there is, I'd like to have a talk with them.

Budget Diet

I am always so perplexed at how people with little money can eat so unhealthy. There are a number of confounding factors, yes, but on the whole, it should not be that difficult to eat natural, unprocessed foods. A bag of green beans from the grocery store recently cost me 93 cents! And if you use reusable bags, you save 5 cents on plastic bags.

Simply put, junk food just tastes damn good. Gourmet food also tastes damn good, but uses a lot of butter and sometimes makes use of the deep fryer. In today's day and age, we seem to struggle with eating healthy, appetizing food and maintaining a healthy body image and size.

Since I haven't been exercising very much in the last few weeks, I devised a new diet. It's what I call the "budget diet". If only to prove that you can diet by watching your pocket book, I hope to prove the point that you can eat healthy, even if you don't have a lot of money. This ultimately means, spending less money on crappy food, eating out less, and portion control...all can be achieved by reducing the amount of money spent on food per week. And at the end of the day, there's more money to be spent on other things. Like bills.

Some people.

I have to complain about my neighbours. Considering I live in a 28-storey condo, there are many different people that I "interact" with every day. I have been living in this building for 2 years already, and I have never had any issues with my neighbours, but for some reason there has been a cluster of incidents in just the last 2 weeks.

1) Running to get into an open elevator, I put my hand out to stop the door from closing. I got onto the elevator with my sister and her bf. Sister's bf also held the door for someone behind us, whom opted to take the next elevator. The lady who already occupied the elevator was obviously ticked off by the extra 30 seconds she had to wait for the door to close and lacking inhibition, she said in a very hostile tone, "there are other elevators." Wow. Not only did she direct that comment towards us rather passive-aggressively, she made the elevator ride up the 17 floors very awkward. Needless to say, I did not ignore that comment, and gave her a classic Lesley cut-eye...if only to remember her face for the next time I see her. Some people are inconsiderate.

2) Don't you hate it when you are opening the door for one person and 5 people walk through? Well these hooligans decided to bust through the doorway after I opened the door to my condo for someone. Since they didn't make eye contact with me, I knew they weren't even going to thank me for holding the door, so I decided to walk through. And these losers tried to squeeze by me as I held and walked through the door. Of course, they didn't thank me for holding the door. Some people are spoiled.

3) There have been building issues with people expecting our concierges to buzz through residents. The concern being that concierges feel obliged to buzz people in even if they do not recognize people as residents. To prevent any trouble, there is now a policy that the concierges will not buzz you through, even if they know you. Yesterday I was walking into the building and tried to catch the door to come in before it closed, so as not to have to use my buzz key, even though I had my key in hand. The lady coming out of the door actually tried to close the door on me so as to not appear as though she was letting me through. So I had one hand on the door handle and she's physically trying to close it on me! She looked like an idiot because she had to struggle against the door which had one of those hinges that has some resistance to closing. I just looked at her like she was crazy, waved my keys at her and told her the concierge knows who I am. Some people need to use better judgment.

4) Some guy moving his stuff was told he couldn't wear rollerblades in the building. Unfortunately, he didn't have any shoes to wear so he had to take them off and walk around in his socks. My poor friend was in the same predicament when he came over to my place wearing his rollerblades. This guy decided to warn my friend that he would be told to take off his rollerblades upon entering the building. At least we thought he was trying to warn him...turns out he was actually complaining to us. When my friend tried to discretely rollerblade past the concierge to the elevator, I heard this guy rat on my friend to the concierge, whom then ran after my friend to yell at him. Some people are so immature.

Knee Update

No time to write.

Last you had heard, I was set back by an MCL tear. Turns out, by MRI, that I have a complete rupture of the left ACL. Bad news, cuz it has been months since I have been able to play sports. I played softball on Sunday, half-assed, but I'm probably playing at about 60-70% right now. Pretty soon I'm going to have a discussion with my surgeon about possible surgery, hopefully in March! Maybe I can have it on the anniversary of my injury.

Residency matching is beginning. I'm playing heads or tails right now...

Heads = PS
Tails = FM

On the flip side.

So I had an eventful night, finding myself having unexpected free time to write. I just came back from the ER. My first time there as patient. In other firsts, I had my first X-ray (5 in total). The reason for my visit was to check out my left knee. I was playing football and having a pretty good game. I already had one touchdown and I was going for a second when something bad happened. As I stopped to catch the ball, my first slipped outwards on the turf as all of my weight was going downwards - then *pop* - my knee bent inwards, probably looked really disgusting, and popped back in. Then excruciating pain, hyperventilation, nausea. Surprisingly, I didn't really cry. I thought I would have been bawling from the pain, but that didn't happen. Thankfully my knee joint was not dislocated and I just chose to wait out the pain for a few minutes. The pain was really intense for about 20 minutes, as I watched the rest of the game. Really at that time, I contemplated not going to the emerg because you're looking at a wait of 4 hours...but we decided to go anyway. Could we pull any strings with the docs to get fast tracked?? My teammates were great! I had a personal dresser, a carrier and and ice-fetcher.
My friend had a car and two other teammates came along to go to the ER. As luck would have it, the ER was really quiet and it looked as though we wouldn't need to pull any strings (though it would have been awesome to see in action). I was in and out of the ER within 1.5 hours. I was interviewed by a CC4 and it was pretty cool to be interviewed by a fellow student in a real situation. He did a good job! Anyway, long story short, the X-Rays were negative, just a slight effusion and likely a partial MCL tear. Now I have to ice, elevate and take anti-inflammatories. I probably won't be on my feet in regular condition for 2 weeks. And the football season is almost over. The next thing to worry about is when I can get back to the hospital and be an effective team member.
Oh I forgot the redeeming part of the story. I still got the touchdown! It turned out to make the difference too cuz we won by 1.

q4years

Everyone has been talking about this day, Feb. 29th, as a special day because it only happens once every 4 years. I thought, why not blog on this day - what the heck, it's a special day! Unfortch I didn't even realize that it was the Leap Year until the day had arrived. I was on-call yesterday and one day blended into the next. I noticed it when writing the date onto charts. It didn't immediately strike me as out of the ordinary to write the 29th onto a chart (not like writing the 32nd), especially with surgeons-in-training breathing down your neck for not setting up the effing chart cart when you're post-call or trying to constantly be mistake-free so as not to be chastised. I was thinking the other day about how weird it is to be chastised by someone who isn't your parent - it's like being told you're a bad kid...except that didn't happen often as I was growing up so I certainly wasn't used to it. I think I'm getting the hang of it now, you just smile and nod, try to tell yourself it's for your own good. In a way mistakes are good because nobody ever hands you a manual that outlines what to do. In some ways it is better, maybe even necessary, to make mistakes (harmless ones of course) in order to learn how to do things the right way. Everything is an experiment. Everyone is also your parent. But you can't roll your eyes and talk back.

Anyhow, had I been more prepared I would have tried to do something interesting on Leap Year Day. I heard on the news that by some old Irish tradition, women could propose marriage to their man. I bet many a boyfriend went into hibernation today haha. But on the flip-side, a man only has to celebrate this "anniversary" once every 4 years. Perhaps a wiser man would actually get married on this day. OK, ok, I am being too hard on men.

Is it true that Leaplings only celebrate their birthdays every Leap Year and not have a surrogate birthday every year? Truly, that would suck for those 4 million out there. It would be awesome to have my Obs rotation right now and deliver some Leap Year babies though. Those are the kind of experiences that are memorable!

The only memorable Leap Year moment I had was: thank goodness it is still February, I can still use my TTC pass today.