Ketchup

I can't believe I've already had an entire week of surgery at Salem.  Really, it just feels like one 120-hour day to me.  And during those 120 hours, 75 of which were spent working, I've learned a few things.

Most importantly, I've learned that teleportation does exist.  In fact, our government has known about it for years but for some reason have decided to keep it from us.  You see, the Salem VA Medical Center is one giant campus, with each building connected by underground tunnels and overhead passes.  However, unlike normal building complexes like our own UVA Health System built based on a normal blueprint, the Salem VAMC is more like a real-life MC Escher drawing.  More than once, I've walked through a doorway and end up in a different hallway on the floor of a building that I could have sworn was on the opposite side of the campus.

I have also learned that my hypomania has its boundaries.  The motto at Salem is "Work Hard, Play Hard."  We generally have to up by 4:30am in order to have enough time to pre-round on all of our patients.  But if I want to do any studying for the cases the next day after exploring the surprising amount of interesting places in Salem after we get off of work, I won't be in bed until 12:30am.  If only Charlie Sheen would share some of his Tiger's Blood with me...

The only reason I've survived this first week at all was with the help of the other students in my block.  And with a group that has assigned itself nicknames from the NATO phonetic alphabet like Alfa, Golf, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, and Zulu, how could you possibly go wrong?

EDIT: This note has been edited by the author.