Into the Great Wide Open

If you dont know by now, this is an official announcement that the Hammonds have moved northward to Vermont. We have settled into the little town of Hartford which is right on the border of New Hampshire where I am now working as a medical resident at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Internal Medicine. This was originally sent out in email form, so if you didnt get it that way, I probably dont have your email and would like it.

So, first of all, Casey is now 20 weeks pregnant and you get updates all about her and our baby at www.thehammerherald.blogspot.com . She is doing very well and adjusting to life up here well, except on the job front. Surprisingly, there are virtually no jobs even for nurses up here, but needless to say she is staying busy with all the great outdoor activities and new friends. Jamie, our dog, is also loving it up here because she gets to go hiking all the time. It is so crazy to have great hiking trails and swimming holes within 5-30 minutes from our house, some right out of our back door. If you come for Octoberfest this year (October 1-3!!!) you willl definitely get to experience them.

As for my work, I started on June 26, and yes, that was a Saturday. I took that as an sign for things to come, starting on a saturday. I started in the ICU where I came in on a team of 3 residents covering 11-14 patients. That means when one resident is having their day off, we each cover about 5-7 patients which was a little overwhelming. There is overnight call in the ICU also, and when I was overnight I was the only one around so I got called for everything on our patients. There was a Critical Care Fellow also there on call who I contacted when I was in trouble and that was a lot at first. I got used to it pretty quickly though and it actually started to be kind of fun, except the minimal sleep part. Being at Dartmouth, you are bound to run across some big name at some point, and I did without realizing it and got into a bit of a tiff with one the nationwide blood transfusion gurus on his first day as our attending physician. We smoothed things over after I made subtle comments about unresolved conflict interfering with a positive work environment. My next rotation starting tomorrow will be quite different. I am on a community health block working with an outpatient doc in a small town about 30 miles from here. I will only be working 4.5 days per week so we are planning to take full advantage of the summer weather.

One of the other reasons (besides the outdoor activities) that we moved up here, really a reason I moved up here, is for all of the great beer. There are more microbrews per capita in Vermont than any other state. Last weekend we went to Burlington for the Vermont Brewers Festival which was awesome. We stayed with some cool people, John Adams and Sarah Coonrad, who we met through a friend Marc from med school. I mention their names because I love that he is named after a president and she just has a fantastic last name. I may or may not have had a decent amount to drink at the BeerFest and the French Canadian dish called La Poutine (french fries with melted cheese and gravy) may or may not have been a very bad idea afterwards... We had another beer festival yesterday here at the Harpoon brewery with some sweet Bar-B Q vendors from all over the region. There were actually some really good barbqers there who had some pretty impressive awards from nationwide competitions, even in the southeast.

Well, thanks for reading. I hope you are well and would love to hear from you too. Peace out