Here I am

Well, I have had quite the hiatus; I will now attempt to recap the past while.
As noted previously, I am DONE WITH CLASSES! Which is crazy, yet it brings me great joy. Of course now all I remember are the good aspects of being in class all day everyday, with the same people, in the same room, fighting to stay awake, fighting to remember things long enough for an exam every week, and the constant pressure of keeping up, and always feeling the need to do better than everyone else....maybe I don't miss it too much. :) I do miss my good buddies, but we keep in contact every now and then.
Due to a slight mishap, I ended up actually having time to spend with friends, family, Ryot, and myself. Ryan left me for Maryland (stupid National Fire Academy; can't be that important), and I was fairly productive. While I didn't cook (maybe once), I spent a ridiculous amount of time cleaning things and organizing places that have not had that done for ages (like 2 years). I also took a little outing by myself to Ikea, which I feared would be a huge mistake, but I am surprisingly smart so I handled it without having a seizure. As I first walked in, I had a quick stroke and the words "my version of hell" came to mind because it is SO huge, and there's always people there. I was pretty confused temporarily, but quickly adapted to my environment. I hunted down an employee who spoke english to ask where I would find the exact item I had found online that I went there for, found it, and then was told I'd have to go to the "self-serve" area (or whatever it's called). Ok, no big deal, I thought. Then, I saw some fun kitchen items, and decided to buy a wedding gift for someone while I was there. So looked around kitchen stuff for awhile, then saw the fabric area, bathroom area, organization area, lighting, plants, etc, and so on and so forth for about 3 hours. They are so darned sneaky (and smart) to literally force everyone to walk through the maze of the entire HUGE store to get to what you actually want and actually need. As I walked through I kept thinking, "hey! I totally need a huge knife", and "hey, I totally need a metal magazine holder" etc. But I did in fact find all sorts of cool stuff that I promise I needed :)
All that to say, I did buy the bookshelf I went there for. I assembled it solo, and beautifully arranged all my sweet syllabi and books from the past year. I am so organized. And it shows.
So, it is so nice to be out and about among the world. I started at th Mountainlands community health center in Provo almost 4 weeks ago. It's crazy how fast it's going by! I only have 4 more weeks there, and the rest of my rotations will pretty much all be 4 weeks each. The clinic sees from uninsured and homeless to insured patients, but the huge majority are working folks who can't afford insurance. It's pretty cool in a sociologic aspect, but also quite a bit more interesting (in my opinion) than a regular for-profit clinic because we see a lot of sicker people, with weirder things, and we have to be creative in how to treat because if they need a specialist, a crazy procedure or surgery, we have to figure out what else to do because most likely they can't pay for whatever they need. I'm also learning what meds are the least expensive, and how to prescribe them so they cost less. A lot of times we just give the samples the pharmaceutical reps leave because the pts can't afford to buy them; but then if they still need the meds and we have no samples...you know, that can cause problemos. So there's that, but also, I habla espanol todo el dia! The entire staff of the clinic is Hispanic, but my preceptor doesn't speak spanish. I see all my own patients anyway, but he's happy to let me take all the spanish speakers (which is probably 80% of our pts each day). It adds a little to my anxiety and feeling inadequate, but I'm definitely learning so I'm glad I'm there.
In addition to the ~4 Drs, 2-3 NPs and 2-3 PAs, the clinic has a dental office (with I think 2 dentists - we sometimes use their XR machine for fingers because all other xrays we have to send to el hospital), and 2-3 psychologists (which is REALLY handy; we refer any and all psych pts to them to be seen before we start on any hardcore, controlled-substance psych meds).
Now that I'm basically updated, I will try to write about some of the fun people I've seen and cool sweet procedures, and really embarassing mistakes I've done!
PS-weather update: it's COLD (like 60 degrees in the mornings). Soon it will be officially fall. BUT----I (i.e. Ryan) bought a snowboard monday! Woo hoo. Bring on the snow (let's hope I have time for that this year).