Weekend Update!

I have just finished my 3rd month of my intern year. I am officially 25% of the way through!!! It has been going very well. This first month I was on the general medicine ward. It was very busy but a great way to get broken-into being a "real" doc. The 2nd month (August) I was in the MICU (Medical Intensive Care Unit). This was one of my favorite rotations to date. It was extremely busy but that kept me from getting bored. I was on call every third night for a 30 hour shift along with normal days in between. Needless to say, I didn't really sleep much during this time. I was able to do a lot of invasive procedures like placing central line catheters and arterial lines along with doing lumbar punctures and endotrachial intubations plus many more. We had about 20 beds that were full most of the time. This last month I was on the GI service. It was nice because it was a consult service so I never had to spend the night and got the first weekends off since starting (4 in a row!!). I mainly did the consults and reported back to the attending so that they could do the colonoscopies and the EGD's (looking into the large intestines and stomach with a camera) along with the many other procedures that they performed. This is my last weekend off before starting wards on Monday.

It has been a lot nicer here weather wise. It has been cooling down into the 70's at night and the storms are over so the sky has been amazing. Here is a pict from the stairs outside my apartment looking towards downtown. Unfortunately my camera was not capable of capturing the true brilliance of the sky but this can give you an idea of what it looked like (use your imagination to fill in the bright orange/pink in the clouds).



Have a great weekend everyone!!

Camelback

This afternoon I went to Camelback Mt and hiked to the summit. I have been trying to hike either this Mt or Squaw Peak Summit at least 2 times a week. It is the best in the evenings. The sunsets are amazing from the top. Today I went mid afternoon though because it was only in the 90's today instead of the usual triple digits. Here are a few picts from the trail.







This is looking down the trail on the way back. The "trail" is just walking in that general direction and watching out for the occational markers on the rocks to tell you that you are still waking in the right direction.

Below are some pictures from the top. You get a panaramic view of Scottsdale, Tempe and Phoenix from here. It is relaxing to find a nice soft rock and just sit down and enjoy the view for a while. (my apartment is just to the right of those rocks in the pict below which is Papago Park)

This is looking towards Scottsdale

The peak in the distance is Squaw Summit which is my other favorite hiking spot. (man, that looks really small from this angle!)

This is looking at Tempe an ASU.


Unfortunatly there are no good shots of the peak from the trailhead which starts on the backside of the mountain but here is a shot from the front.

Monsoon Season Comming to a Close

Since Monsoon season will soon be ending I thought that I would post one more Monsoon related page. Here is some live video that gives you an idea of what the storms look like at night. I do not have a video camera so I had to borrow this clip from the internet but this was taken during a storm a couple of weeks ago.