As always:
What a crazy, busy, month it’s been!
We moved, finished another year of residency and survived the 500 year flood.
We didn’t have a lot of time last year to find a place to live. Also, as Ikuko reminds me, we weren’t sure if we’d be living together so I had insisted on finding a place in IC with a rent of only $500 in case we’d be paying on a mortage too. That left us living in the ghetto of IC with open drug dealing, shootings, no heat or AC, mold growing on all the walls, etc. Ikuko would have booked soon after moving in, but being a tightwad and too lazy to move again, she suffered for a year.
But now we have a new apartment (I’m still too tired to buy another house) and it is fantastic. Location is perfect as it is right across the street from our daycare and local coffee shop. Parking is excellent with a covered garage, which we’re using for storage. The appliances are all brand new and high quality from the fridge with built-in ice cube maker to the ceramic top stove to the in-apt washer and drying. The AC and hot water work perfectly. It’s clean.
This last month the Iowa River overflowed its banks drowning many cities in the area. IC was only partially flooded (and we were completely spared) but many people lost their homes, a dozen university buildings were closed and at one point only one bridge across the river was open and was under threat of closure. While many people suffered greatly (one resident had no flood insurance on their new home), we only had to endure detours and traffic jams.
Finally, we’re finishing another year of residency. For me, this means moving onto my final year with only two months of call. I will be losing a lot of elective time as the program is changing the curriculum and the seniors will have to suffer to help with the transition. Still, one year left is quite a milestone. Ikuko has finished her preliminary medicine year and will be moving on to her first year of pure neurology. I expected her to be happy, but she seems more apprehensious about the amount of work she is expecting on her call nights. She will have to cover all neurology consults at both hospitals, manage stroke codes, field outside calls for help and requesting transfers and generally attempt to survive. Their program also lost an intern (and his replacement) so she’ll end up being on call every 4th night instead of every 5th for the year.
Time marches on, but it just keeps getting better.
