It begins!

It hasn't even been a full week of "work" yet and already so much has happened! It's a good thing I have all this online training to do so I can have an alternative activity to do like catching up on this blog while I'm "listening" to the required training. Now, before you get all worried that I'm a slacker, bear in mind that this is training for the medical record called Epic. This is the same system I used for 2.5 years as a scribe, and countless times as a medical student. So, yes, I can truly multi-task and have two windows open while it's running :)

First off, Tom got appropriately oriented to his new surroundings in Providence by heading straight for little Italy. 

It was his reward for traveling all 3300 miles by himself (particularly after discovering the smashed window to the car on the day of departure!)

We were stuffed to the brim.  But we always have room for dessert right?

 Just down the road from our house is a place called the Newport Creamery. It is home to a famous "drink" called the Awful Awful (stands for awful big, awful good.)

It's like a milkshake but better, and yet different at the same time. It was our lucky day because it was buy one get one free when we were there!

 

The next day I had an "intern grill and chill" event where Tom got to meet my co-interns anda  lot of the "WIMPSS" (Women & Infants Medical Partners, Spouses, & Significant others). We dined at the home of an intern that is soon to be a second year. It was a great atmosphere complete with chickens that were settling in for  the night, all cuddled on the fence line. Here you can see my co-intern Chi-Fong along with her wife, Karen on the left, as well as the wife of my other co-intern on the right. Chi-Fong's face summarizes how we all felt about how soft the chickens were :)

Check out the home made mac-and-cheese the residents made for us!

The next morning we took a walk around our neighborhood and Tom learned that he was a magnet for bugs. Not sure yet if they were mosquitoes or not but he reacted in a big way (as usual). Remember when he got bit on his first week in Atlanta on the forehead? Well, these were just as big, but not on his forehead thanks to the hat!

After all of that, I turned 29. I went to orientation activities on my birthday on Wednesday and figured that would be about all the unexpected events for one day. Boy, was I wrong! I walked out of the hospital to meet Tom and he said he had a surprise for me. Little did I know just how big of a surprise it would be. My (ok, our) good friend from medical school, Danny was in town! He was in Boston for a wedding but came a day early and made the trek down from Boston.

We dined on fabulous Indian food at a restaurant that was conveniently named India.

When it was all said and done and we said our farewell to Danny I almost felt like I had never left home! It was so nice to kick back and relax with my new birthday present :)

 

Then the real "work" of orientation began. We all enjoyed getting mask-fit testing to protect us from airborne diseases like TB as we reminisced about how the experience was different than our own medical school's way of doing it. Normally they made us all read this rather bizarre poem to test that the mask fit well no matter what words you said.

At the end of Day 1 we were led to our resident lounge that included our textbooks, our white coats and the "intern room" that we share as a group. Obviously we had to take a group selfie. Here they all are: Nick, Julia, Fei, Meri, Leanne, Andrey, and Chi-Fong.

 

I brought the starkly white coat home and tried it on and it was a surreal experience that's for sure!

Around this time I realized that not only was there an MD on my coat, but also a Brown logo. You know what that means? I'm technically a member of the Brown University School of Medicine faculty because I will be responsible for teaching medical students!

Here's a better photo of all of us in the lounge. You'll see a lot more photos about all of these folks over the next 4 years, I'm sure. Back row (left to right): Nick, Julia, Meri, Andrey. Front row (left to right): Fei, Leanne, me, Chi-Fong.

 

The selfies continued once we all tried on our white coats!

 

As the first week of orientation came to an end, we all decided to go out and take in a Providence tradition called water fire. We started with coal fire pizza

 

And ended downtown along the Providence river.If only I took a video so you could hear the music being played over the loudspeakers all along the river. It was a beautiful sight. The photos do not do it justice.

 

There were boats all along the river with tour groups passing through that sort of added to the ambiance. But, you can see how many people lined the river front.

 You can't really see us all, but it was a great get-to-know-you event as we sat and chatted along the river.

 This was kind the "end" of the water fire display, at a larger open point of the river, right down from the Mall that you can see in the background

What a weekend! Today, more online training to go (although writing this blog has helped pass the time a bit). Yet to come this week: more orientation from Monday through Thursday. Tomorrow is expected to be particularly rough and mind-numbing as we do classroom based medical record training. As you might expect, we will be a little burnt out at the end of it, so we're planning to go to the AAA Pawtucket Sox baseball game. 

Then, the terrifying/exhilarating/exciting/anxiety-producing work begins officially on Friday.

I will be starting on the obstetrics service. So, I will be working on the labor and delivery floor. Iwil essentially be starting work around 5 am each day and leaving around 7:30-8PM. Thankfully, that's just for 5 days a week unless I'm on call. I'm on call the first Sunday after I start work on Friday.

Still to come: photos of our new home that is ALMOST put together, but you can imagine there are a ton of little things that we have to get done :)