Vodka

Again, I couldn’t sleep.

Not that anyone in steerage class ever sleeps on those long international flights. (Not well, anyway – I mean, how can you sleep when you’re herded into seats barely wide enough to fit your rump, along with the rest of humanity, and the guy in front of you decides he wants to recline his seat into your lap, all the while –just on the other side of that fabled curtain – you can see the folks in Business Class, whose seats transform into huge beds with 600-count Egyptian cotton sheets and feather-down comforters and fluffy pillows, lounging around in their jammies. Makes you wonder what happens up in the First Class area. Maybe some kinda deal where the cute stewardesses give massages or something. But I digress.) So I shifted and paced and ate and drank and watched a movie and listened to music and stared at the ceiling. I finally decided I had enough and I took a sleeping pill.

An hour later, I was still awake.

Wide awake. With bad movies on, no one to talk to, and hours until the next meal. Now, I’d like to point out here that one of the weak areas of the education at Flinders is Pharmacology. That said, I still should know better than to do what I did next. And it wasn’t just that I took a second sleeping pill.

It’s that I washed it down with one of those little airline bottles of vodka.

The rest of the trip is a bit of a blur; I *think* I changed planes in San Francisco; coulda been Tierra del Fuego for all I knew. Somehow, I made it home to Washington, DC, where I got to enjoy our nations’ capital for about 20 hours before I boarded a train to Philadelphia to take another one of those joyous USMLE tests, this one a practical exam. At least I think I took a practical exam.

Either that or 12 innocent people had some rather invasive exams they didn’t expect…

On Monday, I head off to New York City to start my first US rotation; Trauma Surgery at Harlem Hospital. I found housing via the internet; thanks to everyone who made suggestions and phone calls to help me out. And following years of Mom complaining about me being so far away, and wishing I could be closer to the ol’ homestead, after New York I head to Cleveland for 8 weeks – 4 in emergency medicine and 4 in orthopedic surgery.

As you always taught us, Mom: Careful what you wish for; you just might get it!

And with that, it’s the weekend. I need to head off to West Virginia for a wedding - I figure since Dad is from West Virginia and so is the bride, that I am related to her somehow. I’ll also be packing for a month in New York – not to mention trying to get the cap off this little bottle of vodka…

As always, Love to All and keep working on your 101 List!
Bryan