Back from the Luau I think I spelled that correctly. Wait a second, let me check the dictionary.... Awesome, I got it right. Who ever would have thought that a word in English would actually be spelled like it sounds. Oh, wait. That's not English.

Did you miss me? I was out of town for the weekend. My mother was celebrating the 15th anniversary of her 29th birthday and I was invited (or is the word OBLIGATED? Just kidding).

So, on saturday morning I went up to the hospital EARLY and checked on my patients and made sure there were no more admissions overnight that needed to be seen (which there weren't, thank goodness) and then I skipped town for a weekend of fun in the sun (well, shade actually), fruity drinks, and family and friends.

My mother has this obsession with all things tropical. If you ever want to buy her a gift, anything with a flamingo or tropical fish would be just great. The problem is, I'm starting to run out of tropical-type stuff to buy for her. It's really quite frustrating.

So I'm headed back to my home-town for this anniversary party, but I have to make a quick side-stop and pick up my girlfriend. She has spent the past 6 weeks in a small west-texas town doing rural family medicine. She is also (unfortunately for her) living in a hospital room. Yeah, suck, right? I decided to grab her and rescue her from her torture for a weekend.

After I pick her up, we head to my parents' house, where the luau is taking place. We're several hours early, so we get recruited to help set it up (I should have known better than to get there early... promptness, dammit!). Oh well.. I have a little fun anyway.

Finally, the shin-dig (small-town speak for "event") gets under way and people begin arriving. After awhile, about 20-30 people are there and we're all hanging out and talking.. and talking.. and they're drinking fruity drinks or beer or their drink of choice. I'm drinking coke because I didn't feel like fruity drink or beer. But we're talking.

Finally, it gets to be about midnight and I go inside to go to bed (remember, I was at the hospital around 0530, so I've been up for a long time by this point). I felt like a wuss, but after 20 hours (with the last 10 outside in the heat and mosquitos) you get really worn out. Maybe I should have been drinking water with DEET or something :) My H/H is probably 8/25 today after all the blood I've lost. I think I need a transfusion. I just hope none of those little suckers (literally) gave me West Nile...

Anyway, this morning, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with consciousness. I think I finally woke up at 1100 and even then I could have slept for about 4 more hours, easily. I've been so tired lately. I think I might have a sleep disorder - I have way too much daytime sleepiness to be getting proper sleep at night.. of course, now it's 0130 and I have to be up in 5 hours.. But that couldn't have anything to do with my fatigue, could it? hehehe... this site is a bad influence on me.

Anyway.. so now I'm back. You can quit missing me, since I'll be posting again after my short reprieve over the weekend. I'm going to finish my post for pre-meds tomorrow and then I'll post a bit more on EM and maybe critical care (which I've been contemplating for quite some time now...), so stay tuned and don't touch that dial. Because (if you remember this, you're a real champ), after these messages we'll be right back!

more to come (I promise - because you can't stop me!!)...  ¶ 10:32 PM