It's been almost three weeks since my first official day at MD Anderson Cancer Center as a fellow. It's been an odd adjustment to say the least.
I thought I'd give you a little mini tour so you can see the lovely space we are calling home these days. It is truly HUGE and very much a lovely space to be.
Living room
Our "bistro set" in the space that we aren't yet sure how to utilize best :)
Our galley kitchen with a HUGE pantry
Adler's play room
Our home office (that is utilized SOOOO much)
Our gardening/laundry/work out room --it's truly a utility room with lots of uses!
Addie's room:
Last but not least, our master suite that is truly a suite! We got a "big girl bed" as Adler calls it. A real, solid, beautiful bed-frame that Adler can easily get on/off the bed with because it has a built in "adler step" :). Our bedding is en route (Thank you aunt Ann for replacing our out-dated duvet cover). With covid of course the bedding is delayed, but it's not a huge deal because it's so HOT that we don't need much more than a sheet.
Moving on to one of my favorites: our backyard! We got a lovely patio table (thank you to Grandma Bowler for the amazing gift!!).
Everyone I've talked to has alluded to a phenomenon called the "deceleration injury" where you are used to going so fast and you end up going slow at the start of fellowship and it's remarkable how "slow" it feels even when you're working full time.
That has certainly been the case. It's sort of like how this cockroach felt after our exterminator came by and treated the house!
Even our morning routine has changed
significantly since I don't have to rush off to work at the crack of
dawn. We have so much space in our new home we have essentially a "yoga
room" where we do yoga each morning prior to taking her to "school."
It's a fun new routine for us.
We haven't seen very many people but we did get to meet the one-and-only Claire and Reagan :) The twin girls that are the same age as Adler. Exactly the same age. Born on 1/7/2018 between 5:45-6:15p.m.They are slowly becoming best of friends. We are so grateful! They are the daughters of my co-fellow, Katherine who is in her 4th year in the program.
Tom has been busy since we arrived with virtual iron man races. Now, one might ask, how is he doing this while he is living in a climate with >90 degree temps and tons of humidity? To be honest, I have no idea. But he's racking up some serious swag and some P.R's in the process!
And, he's honing his BBQ skills for sure. I think we've had a meal over the grill for approximately 85% of all of our meals since we arrived. I don't see that changing any time soon. (except that we do have DOUBLE OVENS now to be able to create all kinds of things!
My day is usually made up of >6 hours of online training modules/meetings. It is A LOT of screen time. Now, this wouldn't be the case if it weren't COVID times of course, but in this time when I'm not allowed to go into the hospital, it's what my reality is. I got to see my "office" once, but I haven't been able to go back since.
I am quite certain that life is going to change, but it doesn't feel like it's going to any time soon! COVID is definitely real. It is definitely causing a lot of fatigue. Fatigue of my own home office (which, by the way, is LOVELY and I'm very grateful for) and fatigue for the daily grind that is taking such a different tone.
I miss seeing patients. I miss going into the operating room. I miss seeing my colleagues face to face. But I am so grateful that I get to see SO MUCH MORE of this face :)
I've also been able to enjoy a perk of my colleague-- she lives in an apartment complex with a pool that is perfect for Adler and is really a safe zone to socially distance while outdoors!
And we did get together as colleagues, just once, on a porch, outside, for a distanced dinner.
My job for these next two years is to do research related to ovarian cancer. Specifically, I'll (eventually) be in a lab doing a mouse-model study. I will be "treating" mice with ovarian cancer and studying the effects of different chemo-therapies and studying how their tumors can become resistant to chemotherapy. The jury is still out as to if I'll be able to get in to do this work until August, 2020.
Either way, I will be starting my master's degree program to earn a masters of science in biomedical science at the end of August. Until then, I have a LOT of work to do, just a different kind of work than I have been asked to do for years! I have a lot of reading to do to get up to speed on a whole vocabulary of terms I don't really know anything about (or at least I haven't heard of since undergraduate biology class!).
Until research projects get underway in a more realistic sense, we're embracing our new normal, our new groove with morning yoga, all home cooked meals that we share TOGETHER, and both of us being home for both wake-up and bedtime.
I even had time to read a book for fun :) I'm taking recommendations for some good (non-fiction of course) books to read!
Sending our love from Texas! A land of lizards (aka gecko's)
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