Snowpocalypse!

Seventeen inches of powder!

Pros: People snow-shoeing and cross-country skiing down the middle of the road. Kids sledding down Negley hill. Kids at Hopkins being snowed in, therefore completing my survey! Being snowed in = getting 5 pages of my senior report done yesterday!

Cons: Mass transit cancelled. 100,000 without power including the water purification plant - leading to requests to minimize water use. Cars buried in snow like giant white mushrooms lining the curbs. Shoveling. Being unable to go to a birthday party. Since I'm "emergency personnel", I have no excuse to miss work tomorrow. The next week is going to be a disgusting mess of blackened ice piled up everywhere.

It's Superbowl Sunday!

Things I'm proud of this week:

• making dinner or eating leftovers every single day
• bringing lunch all days but Friday (when I left my packed lunch on the kitchen table) thereby only spending $5 on food ALL WEEK (not including groceries)
• exercising 4x despite working almost 60 hours and getting an average of 4 hours sleep per night
• learning a LOT in the NICU.

Thoughts from the NICU this week:

• There is more continuity of care than in any other specialty, since the 24-week premies essentially stay in the hospital for the 4 months they were supposed to remain in utero
• People are resilient. People pick themselves up and go on with their lives after being told their baby is not going to live, or that their baby has severe neurologic deficits and will never be normal, or that their baby has a devastating genetic condition and will live no longer than x days/months/years. And they have the grace to smile and thank us. And somehow, we pick ourselves and go on, too.
  
• People make ugly decisions. They request that every attempt be made to resuscitate and continue their child's life, then after the child is stable and they are faced with the reality of lifelong health needs and financial strain, decide they "didn't sign up for this", and abandon the child. It is hard to think that sometimes, it's better for all involved to let a life end.
  
• Teeny tiny fingernails are a wonder.
• The human body is amazing in its sheer motivation to adapt, grow stronger, and live
• I do not want to be a neonatologist.

With a time-intensive and emotionally straining rotation, and a 15-page culmination of 4 years of hard work due in a week, it's ironic that the most stressful thing in my life, keeping me up at night and gnawing a pit in my stomach, has nothing to do with either.

Just gotta keep swimmin'. Just keep swimmin'.