the first one

Exactly 1 year, 11 months to the date of being hired, I lost my first patient. I'm not sure how I feel right now, except pretty surreal. We were doing a crazy, complex case involving putting the woman on heart bypass, taking her liver out, perfusing the liver while resecting a huge tumor, and putting the liver back in her. We actually had the liver back in, the anastomoses made, and the organ reperfused, but then things went south. I could go all clinical and tell you what happened, but I think her son-in-law said it best when he said that she didn't want to live with the tumor any more, and when we put her tumor-free liver back in, she was ready to go.

rest in peace.

peace and love,

m

birthday week!

Yes, that is right, this is my birthday week! I'm going to be the big 2 dozen on the 12th--I'm thinking of it as my double golden birthday ;) I mean, come on, nothing exciting comes with 24 [still can't rent a car without the dumb underage fee, and AARP benefits are many years away--not that I'm counting down the days to those anyhoo], so I decided that I will make it exciting by having a birthday week and a double golden celebration!

Now I'm sure you're asking, what does a birthday week and double golden celebration entail? I admit, I'm not quite sure of all the details yet, but I do know that it means not feeling bad about buying 2 pints of Ben and Jerry's! And it also means going out on Friday night with the cool people from work, and it may or may not lead to dancing on bar tops :)

peace and love,

m

girls' weekend had me a blast!

This past weekend, Grandma Z; Aunts Chris, Nancy, Kay, and Lynn; cousins Tracy, Andrea, Danielle, Lindsey, and Jaime; Mom; and I traveled to Madison for our annual Ziegler Girls' Weekend. <--yes, that's 12 women under 5'5", watch out! I had such a wonderful time! We packed a lot into 48 hours--mostly on Saturday.

Before I arrived Friday night [after a very speedy trip from Milwaukee, hehe], they went to Olbrich Gardens. My aunts are very good at gardening and love flowers...and my Mom is trying very hard to join their Green Thumb Club. I'd say her black thumb is halfway on its way to being green :) We relaxed in our hotel rooms [yay adjoining rooms!] with the Brewers game and beers...and trying to get the damn widget out of the Guinness bottle, and calling Uncle Mark at home to see if he could get it out! Lynn: "Put it in a paper bag, and smash it in the basement. You have a hammer!"

On Saturday, we got up early, grabbed continental breakfast [I still think my Cheerios tasted like sausage, but at least there was coffee], and headed to the Farmer's Market. Half of the group didn't grasp Farmer's Market walking pace and speedwalked around the Capitol. The other half of us had a lovely time sampling goat cheese, pesto, fresh strawberries, etc. Then we headed down State Street, hit up the Irish Pub for drinks before noon [5 o'clock somewhere], and lots of interesting people watching. We had lunch on the rooftop of Monona Terrace, where we also saw 2 weddings...one of which had like 7 couples, yikes! The view of the lake was beautiful. After lunch, we headed to the Zoo, where the animals were very...frisky. Summer lovin'!!!! Following the Zoo, we returned to the hotel for swimming/napping/reading and showers before going to dinner at the Great Dane. Hooray big beers! Then we went to hear Fedora at the Hody Bar, and got a song dedicated to Grandma :)

On Sunday morning, we packed up and said our goodbyes. Mom and I went shopping and to Parade of Homes. I picked out some birthday presentsl--I mean, what birthday presents?!! hehe. I got back to Milwaukee around 8 pm to a very happy to see me kittycat.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the weekend because my camera batteries died, and the replacement batteries Mom gave me were also dead, but I didn't know that at the time and thought my camera was completely toast. Of course when I got home and tried fresh batteries in it, it worked. Grr. Oh well. I'll have to get copies from people!

Off to work!

peace and love,

m

see more Lolcats and funny pictures