it's wicked cold

so i'm sitting at a coffee shop at a big table, and right now this kid, he's about 9 years old, fat jewish looking kid, runs to my table, makes a sliding stop and plops down at the chair across from me, with his apple juice box and i think he has adhd or something or maybe MR. he's kinda making funny robot or goat noises and doing the worm dance sitting down. funniest shit ever!! his mom is across the coffee shop saying 'chris...' over and over in that tone that you always know as 'be good or else'. anyway.

so what a great weekend! friday was a good day at the hospital, oh mygosh. i really wanted to write about it then but i didn't have time to make it to a computer. i thought it was gonna be a hernia friday- was going to scrub into 3 hernia cases. which i was excited about. after the first case, i'm at the elevator, starving and running to grab something to eat, when my chief comes by and says 'haane, come with me. we have a patient with a rigid abdomen'. which in surgery land, means straight to the OR for an expoloratory laparatomy (ex lap- open up the belly and look for what's going on.) he takes me to the peds ward. the patient is 16 years old, and i knew very little about her at his point, but later learned. so apparantely, this 16 yr old girl who had had a lap appendectomy at 10 years old, came in 10 days ago with 3 days of belly pain, 7/10, diffuse, and never vomitted but had really bad nausea. they worked her up and told her she had gastroenteritis (infection). sooo...she's taking prevacid, and her pain goes away, then slowly starts to come back for 10 days, get's really bad so comes back to the ER. she gets admitted, and she looked fine, then overnight...she got really really sick. vomitted, nausea, became pale, hypotensive, belly was rigid in the morning. she had tons of other clinically worrying stuff going on, but i won't go into it. on top of all of this, her mom is affiliated with the hospital and is very difficult to work with, refusing xrays and cat scans (very essential to diagnosis). she also didn't like the first surgeon so she requested a second surgeon. which is totally her perogative, but her daughter is also really really sick. and time is of essence right now. anyway...she ends up going to the OR after her mom agreed to a CAT scan and ends up she only has 90 cm of small intestine that's viable (normal people have about 300 cm) . the rest is dead. apparently there was a fibrous band from one of the ports of her appendectomy that strangulated her bowel. basically she's going to eventually need a small bowel transplant (you need a small bowel to live). and she's only 16! i feel so bad for her and her family...

anyway, so i ended up finding a kick ass deal on tickets to the broadway musical Wicked that night, and caught the shuttle home, bundled up (it's like 20 - 30 degrees- holy shit), and met my exboyfriend bill at the gershwin theater on broadway near times square. i'm so excited to be there at this point! it was good to see him, we hadn't really seen each other since college (when we dated), except for a split second of time two years ago after i took my step 1 board exams and i was a lunatic, so we caught up on everything. we go into the theater and our seats are 5 rows from the front, on the right side! we're so close! it was awesome. the show was incredible, from the set to the costumes to the dancing, the performers themselves, and being so close up, i couldn't help but look at all the detail- the costumes, the makeup, the setting. the story is about the life of the wicked witch of the west from the wizard of oz. i won't say more but i highly recommed it if anyone is in a city or goes to s city where it's showing. totally worth it. basically our seats were worth $200 each and i got them for $66 each!

i'm pretty hungry at this point so we go to this restaurant near nyu and washington square, called Otto Enoteca Pizzeria, where the chef is Mario Balati-one of the chef's on food network. it was 11:30 at night and this place was happening! new york really doesn't sleep. we ordered yummy pizza with mushrooms and good old margherita. but this shit is good! it's not classic new york pizza, by far, but it's excellent. we finished the night with milk chocolate chip gelato. mmmmm!

i was going to head home at this point, ready to have a full day ahead then get a text from dave my friend from guam and ended up freezing my way, i mean, making my way to meet him and his friends at a bar near his house in union square. then i went home. the bar was kind of a blast from the past, it was basically an old beauty salon, so they still had the chairs with the old school hair dryers over them, and behind the bar were the mirrors and chairs lined up. in the back there was a dance floor with wierd projected checkerboard pattern lights on the walls and they were playing 80s pop. the only thing is that it smelled like as and it was really crowded...so we left and went to this much more open bar playing good hip hop, with more room and a better crowd.

i woke up the next morning (saturday), headed to the gym quickly, then came back and got ready for the day. my friend from the hospital was gonna pick me up at noonish for lunch and shopping in soho. on the way back from the subway after going to the gym, i stopped into this hair salon, because i badly needed a hair cut especially since my interviews were going to be piling up, and the sign said 'cut and shampoo- $23'. which isn't bad- i pay $14 to 16 in hawaii at supercuts, so it wasn't that muchmore. i stop in and my columbian hair stylist spends 20 minutes talking to me about my hair, what he wants to do, why he wants to do it. he loves, LOVES, his job. i get my shampoo- aaah...so nice- hot water, head massage, especially in the cold, and get my hair cut. the hair cut itself took 15 minutes then he spent 20 styling it. he had such attention to detail, i couldn't believe it. i almost got ansy but then calmed down realizing that hair and fashion are one of NYC's claims to fame. i guess. anyway so i walked out of salon with a very styled hair cut. natural and flowy stil, thank God, but i felt so 'hip' especially in my gym clothes. ...

anyway, so i get ready and ryan picks me up and takes me to this malaysian place in chinatown. now driving in the city is CRAZY! i seriously thought he was gonna pick me up- he drove from new jersey- then was gonna park his car so we could take the subway around the city. anyway, we drove downtown- from 100th street at my place to around 9th street in chinatown/soho, parked and went to noynya, this yummy malaysian food place. we had shrimp puffs- shrimp wrapped in bacon, pad thai, coconut rice, ginger tofu, mango shrimp and thai iced teas. the food is a mix between thai and chinese, but different. i can't explain it. i was so glad i went to the gym- i go to the gym (or have been) so i can eat my way through new york. haha. anyway, we wandered to soho, cruised through urban outfitters, steve madden, this great shoe place called michael k- awesome old school nikes and pumas. there are tons of stores like this in soho- and it now makes sense why everyone in new york is wearing old school nikes (and boots on that same note). ended up stopping for coffee and sitting down to hide from the cold, then back to the car. the sign said '$10.14/half hour, and i was scared to hear the grand total. we were there for a few hours!. endedup being $30 for the few hours, which is still a lot, but not like $80 which is what i expected. anyway, ryan had been a gentleman, cool cat, this whole time and paying for everything, but i still felt bad!

he drops me home last night and i'm exhausted. i have my interview tonight/tomorrow, so i did laundry, packed, and just chilled, went to bed early and here i am at the coffee shop. my flight to providence leaves from la guardia at 1 pm, so i'll be getting a cab around 10:15, 10:30 (it's about 8:30 now). when i get to providence, it'll be around 2:30, i'll go to the hotel, then go to the dinner with the residents around 7pm. i was gonna try to do something this morning- walk through central park or something- i haven't done that yet!!. oh well...

great weekend:)

oh and my friend teresa is going to be visiting!