Lub-Dup

So we're doing the heart now in lab - echocardiography is the official name for ultrasounds of the heart. We're learning the different views of the heart, and how best to achieve them around the inevitable rib shadowing and lung interference. I'm enjoying it though, because I feel like I can actually see the heart and I'm not searching around in vain (most of the time) for the organ I'm supposed to be examining. It's a quick feedback kind of thing...there's no mistaking the heart for something else, like the liver or kidney.

We've concentrated on two views, the parasternal long axis, which looks something like this:



And the parasternal short axis, one of which looks like this:


I'm pretty good on those. Towards the end of lab today though we tried out the apical views. First of all, as a scan model these hurt. The sonographer had to really push on the rib, and it was not at all pleasant. The image is supposed to look something like this for an apical 4 chamber view:



But mine looked more like this:


It is definitely not easy. I hope with some practice I'll get a little better.

Hey, how'd you all like the Oscars last night? I think the only dress that I hated was that woman that wrote Juno...what was her name? Oh yeah, Diablo Cody. Not feelin' it at all. Her and Tilda Swinton, worst dressed for me. Everyone else looked fabulous I thought. We so like that the Oscars are live on the West Coast, so we get to watch the whole thing and it's over by 8:45. We haven't seen any of the movies that won awards though so we have some catching up to do with Netflix when they all come out.

Organization

Our closet was a mess. It's a big closet, but filled with junk. Mainly clothes but also boxes with stuff in them that we still hadn't unpacked and shoes and purses and games and more boxes and hats and just all kinds of crap. So I spent the day going through everything and putting together piles for goodwill and piles to throw away, and piles to keep. Then I washed and folded the keep piles and moved everything else out. Unbelievable how many tshirts Jason has, and the sheer number of jeans was astonishing. Wait until he sees how many he has when he gets home. But the closet is much better now and I don't hate going in it quite so much.

After I was done I cooked up a big batch of grilled asparagus tossed with olive oil, kosher salt, grated parmesan and tomatoes. Kelsey and I ate the whole batch - oh my god, so good. And relatively healthy too :-). I'm full now and tired from closet cleaning so I think I'm ready to veg out for a while. Maybe if Jason comes home at a decent time tonight we can watch the Brad Pitt movie about Jesse James that came in the mail today.

Cardiac, Schmardiac

Oh my gosh, my new echocardiac class has started and I don't like it at all so far. Our teacher is really new and I think extremely overwhelmed by it all. By the end of the day today it looked like she was ready to cry - and everyone was pretty easy on her as far as questions go, at least compared to how the class usually is. She did an echo exam right in class though and that was pretty cool. She's definitely good at doing the exam because she moved from view to view without any effort whatsoever, while we're still just trying to find the first view and what buttons to push to make the picture better when we do our exams. I just hope it gets better. At least the book and workbook are easy to read and understand so that definitely helps.

We were supposed to have our Physics final tomorrow but it looks like we'll just have part of it now....the teacher that is doing the other part is out on leave because her mom just passed away this week (very sad) so she didn't write her part of the exam and says we'll have it sometime next week. So that's three tests for next week which is a bummer but I was pretty studied up for the Physics part anyway so maybe it won't be so bad.

I got an email from an old friend from Exel today and he told me that one of the guys I used to work with died last fall from a heart attack. I was very sad to hear that, because I always liked him for the most part, and he was really nice to me when we had the fire in the house on Heatherfield. He had a house fire the year before and we compared insurance and reconstruction stories. That's such a shame. Just one more reminder to make the most of your time while you can because you never know how long you have.

Everybody hug your loved ones extra hard tonight.

How long will it last?

Beaglehaus decided to come alive again, but we're not sure how long it will last. According to the resident computer expert, it either needs a relatively cheap motherboard that we have to order from somewhere special or a complete overhaul of everything with will be very pricy. I'm thinking of moving my stuff to blogger just in case everything goes kablooie and it's all gone.

So, what's been happening? I know you were all as thrilled as we were when a beagle won Westminster. First time in 100 years and well deserved. It's about time something other than a stuck up poodle took the prize.


Good looking dog, but still not as cute as this:


So what else? Hmmm..school is going well, very intense but moving right along. Meg is also doing well in school, keeping her grades up, working, and generally becoming more comfortable in Seattle I think. She's already registered for next quarter when she'll take 3 classes instead of 2 so it will start to get harder, but I have no doubt she'll do great.

Kelsey is on mid-winter break right now so she's off all this week and is very happy about it. I think her plans involve a lot of doing nothing.

I have spring break starting March 20, when I am off to Austin to enjoy some warm sunshine and meet my new niece. I am so looking forward to that - and it will be nice to have a whole week when I don't have to be studying! I also have trips booked to Baltimore the first weekend in May for Robert and Kristin's wedding, and then in August back to Harrisburg to visit with the family for a week. Thank you IRS for your generous refund check :-).

Jason was supposed to go snowboarding with his officemates last Friday but his knee has been bothering him so he decided to skip it rather than take a chance on aggravating it further. Which is sad, because he so likes to snowboard and probably won't get another opportunity this year.

That's all I can think of to tell right now. We're in the midst of a gray Seattle winter when hibernation is the order of the day, so we don't have much to talk about other than mundane life stuff. The sun is shining today though so we may actually venture out to Greenlake for a walk with the pups. If we can manage to get dressed.