Laundry, Matchmakers and Admitting Defeat

Of all the household chores that I do, laundry is my very least favorite. I love cooking. I know how I like things to taste, and can generally make them taste that way. I don't mind cleaning, but perhaps that because I don't do too much of it. If you let things get grimy enough, then its very rewarding to clean them and see the dramatic difference. However, laundry is the bane of my existence.

Fortunately, being a surgery resident, I can wear scrubs almost every day at work. Those go in the hospital laundry hamper and are cleaned by someone else. Its a very liberating thing. Upon beginning my residency, I very quickly learned that I ran out of socks and underwear first, and was therefore forced to do laundry by the lack of those items. Fortunately, that problem was easily and economically remedied by simply buying enough of those items to last a month at a time. This therefore reduced my trips to the laundromat to once a month.

The necessity of those trips was now dictated by the presence of clean dress clothing in my wardrobe. Every Wednesday morning is deparmental Grand Rounds. This is a mandatory dressup occasion. That and church attendance are my two dress up events in the week.

I don't ever iron anything. I'm not good at it and I hate doing it. Generally specimens that I iron have areas that are very neatly pressed, and other areas that look like I was playing a game of twister. This therefore accentuates the "twister" areas, rather then making people realize that I at least made an attempt at ironing.

When Bethanie, my sister, recently visited me, she asked if I had an iron somewhere. This drew a blank stare. After a bit of a search I discovered the thing. So anyway, my pants and shirts aren't necessarily the most tidy things ever seen. That is until recently.

The other Wednesday morning after Grand Rounds I stopped by the trauma intensive care unit to get a cup of coffee. This is my general custom in life, and serves to make both me and the remaining day more interesting.

My wardrobe generally has a hierarchy. The pants that are neat and non-wrinkled are worn first. As the time to do laundry again comes ever nearer, I resort to wearing more and more rumpled clothing. Shirts are irrelevant because collars are generally wrinkle free and the remaining cloth can be masked by a sweater.

The pants that I was wearing that day had not been treated mercifully by their experience in the washing and drying machines. They looked a little bit like they had been in a trailer that was destroyed by a tornado. However, they were the last pair of clean pants that I had so they had to do.

The trauma unit is staffed mostly by 50'ish year old women who sort of fill an aunt like role in the lives of surgery residents. I walked into the break room to fix myself a cup of coffee. Their first comment upon seeing my garb was, "Hans, we need to find you a wife."

Given that sort of threat, I decided that my days of washing my own pants were over. I settled on a solution somewhat less complicated than getting married, as suggested by the trauma nurses. Though it goes against every Mennonite gene in my genome, the local laundry/dry cleaners has a new customer. Its money well spent. Shoot, I might even be able to get away with doing laundry every 2 or 3 months now.

End of Year Festivities

So the year is now winding down. It is one of the best and most melancholy times of year. The chief residents are nowhere to be found most days, already absent from the hospital in spirit. Of this year's class, 2 are doing plastic surgery fellowships, 1 is doing a colo-rectal surgery fellowship, and one decided that the surgery residency thing was all a big mistake and is doing an anesthesia residency instead.

While all of us are very excited to be advancing on into the next year, it is sad to see these guys leave. I've spent three years with them now, and they become some of your best friends. Its a friendship forged by spending many long nights together hovering over the bed of some critically ill patient, mucking around in someones innards, or just hanging out in the lounge. Its kind of like being at NYP, where you periodically get a new staff crop rotation.

In any case, I'm excited to be starting my fourth year here. Practically speaking, it means that I will now be a "senior" resident having graduated from being a "junior" resident. It all means more time in the operating room, less time in the emergency room, fewer pages from nurses whose main motive is to write "MD aware" in the chart, etc.

So far I have been away from town when the new residents arrive. There is definitely a transition that takes place from being a medical student to being a resident. Most people take about a month or two to make that transition. This year I'm assigned to be on one of the busiest general surgery services for the month of July. It should be fun.