Happy New Year!

I must apologize for my hiatus from blogging for the past month. You all know how Decembers can be and this one was no exception. I hope that you all had Happy Holidays. I thought of many of you over the past few weeks and lamented that I didn't send cards out but my goal next year is to do that! If you're reading this, please keep sending the Christmas cards my way because I love hearing from everyone!

For the month of December I was working in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit taking care of some pretty sick kids. I enjoyed the challenges related to treating very complicated illnesses and children but stressed out a little bit over the on-call problems which tended to be more in depth and serious than my previous months. I learned a ton, however, and by the end of the month felt a whole lot more confident about managing complicated medical problems. Overall, I liked it better than a lot of months I've been on. Not enough to want to take care of intensive care patients for the rest of my life, but it sort of reaffirmed my interest in taking care of sick (vs. well) children. It will be nice to take care of sick kids but to know that if they get really out of control, there's a place to send them where they can be managed (i.e. an intensive care unit).

After working all month, I finally got back to Iowa for Christmas on Dec. 30! My parents were generous enough to hold off on most of their Christmas until I got back and that's where I still am enjoying both a holiday break and a week of vacation at the same time.

The part of my month not spent working was nice too. I did some gift exchanges with some friends from Indy and even got out to our Christmas Holiday party and to see the play, A Christmas Carol which is done by the local theater every year.

Finally, some New Year's resolutions! I hope that by putting them on here, you all can periodically check in on me and see if I'm actually following them.

1. Exercise, eat well, yada, yada, yada. Okay, no originality here but it's always a good thought after the holidays, right?
2. Continue my new budget! I started it about 4 months ago and have had some ups and downs with it. The first couple months went great, but the second couple months got significantly side-tracked when I had that little hit and run experience I talked about earlier. Turns out the police can't/won't do anything more and since the damage was at my deductible + the cost of a rental car when I got my car fixed, the whole $600 fell to my expenses. I guess the good news is, if I hadn't been doing the budget, I would have been in a whole lot worse shape. Anyways, so aside from that setback it's going well. And last night, I finally put the whole thing to an Excel spreadsheet so I'm going to be able to keep track of things more accurately!
3. Umm, get Christmas cards out next year!
4. Try to focus less on myself, and more on other people. I feel like in residency, it's really easy to get wrapped up in everything that's going on in my life and forget to give my tine and attention to other people, which is really what's most important. So in short, be less selfish.

there you have it, that's my last month in a nut shell. Drop me a line if you get a chance!