Big CHO news

Hey everyone,

Just thought folks might be interested in the big CHO news this week. Ted has decided he wants to have more clinical time and also head up Summit again, so he stepped down as Residency Director. Jim's taking over as Director and Pam will be Associate Dir. I guess we have the legacy of being Ted's last class. :) Also, they decided to build the new hospital essentially on the current site here in Oakland. Kara's in Hawaii and David's on service, so I'm left to my own devices- enticing folks to the office with candy, occasionally singing or talking to myself to keep myself entertained. :) But, with all the news around here it's certainly never boring. Take Care all! -Heidi

Natalie send me your latest email

This is just for natalie, or anyone else who wants to contribute to the blog. Send me your emails so I can re-invite you.

Reminder for Out of Staters

Hey guys, this is for the peeps who are no longer in California. It is easier to keep your license inactive/active rather than letting it expire. If you let it expire, you will be have to go through all that licensing BS again. So, go to the California med. license website : www.medbd.ca.gov and follow the instructions to renew your license online. Bad news it costs $815.00.
Good news, you can do it online in 10-15 minutes. IF you have already taken care of this, ignore this post. Hope this helps.

Blog Master

ha aha aha hahhhhaaa. I have changed my title from blog administrator to BLOG MASTER.
if you are changing your email, keep me updated, I will edit them on the blog accounts so that you may continue to post. Natalie, send me your latest email so that I can invite you as an author. I can do that b/c I am the BLOG MASTER. sorry guys for being so silly, I just finished going over fatty acid oxidation defects. And then to exemplify the need for such cycles in our bodies, I inhaled a bunch of french fries. UMMmmmmm...gotta love those fatty acids. No evidence of LCHAD here. although if I don't stop eating these fries, I better join boot camp with fatima and debs.

Yo Lasutu - where you at???

I hope all is well in the nether regions of the world, and your bodies. David, Heidi and I are holding down the CHOfort. Testing each other on syndromes of the week, enjoying more candy than we would allow our patients to eat, and planning events like Ice Cream Day (all Heidi's doing). One interesting phenomenon that I would not have anticipated is that we are having a hard time getting some people to actually use their e-mail accounts...

We miss you all! Come by for candy! Come by for hugs! Come by for gossip! I'm not sure we have any, but I think that's always a good reason to stop by!

back from the Dominican Republic

Hello! By now I've gotten to see many of you who have stayed behind in the bay area.. I just wanted to share some photos from my trip.

The medical work was good-- I had 2 Creighton 4th-year med students working under me, and they were both competent and fun, easy to precept. And they both wanted to do internal medicine, and allowed me to see all the kids. The clinic (the 3 of us as physicians, my mom as the nurse, a pharmacy student, and a dental student) ran exceptionally smoothly, seeing a lot of skin infections, asthma, back pain, hypertension, and intestinal parasites. And I gave the village matriarch a crash course in medicine (she's really sharp!) so that she could continue to treat illnesses, injuries, and chronic conditions after we left.

I don't have many photos of the clinic (I was busy working), but we worked from 8 a.m. to around 1 p.m., then had the afternoon to hang out with the people in the village. Arroyo Blanco is in the norther mountains, and is a campo of about 100 people. We saw patients from miles around, obviously. There was a river that ran through the town, with 15-foot waterfalls and a 25-foot relatively clear pool about ten minutes away. With the river, and being up in the mountains, it was much cooler (90-97 degrees) than some of my previous trips, like when I was on the Haitian boarder with temps around 105, no water anywhere, and no breeze. This was much nicer. Enjoy the photos! -- Sean

some of my patients... we got this girl's asthma under control

some small waterfalls, not the big ones by my campo

the jam sessions at night

a Dominican passtime... dominoes

The other Dominican passtime... beisbol. Of course we played in a cow pasture. In a rare display of athleticism, I think I hit a double in this picture.

la clinica dental

random pig, running through town

Me and my father, Leon. We spent an average of about 5 hours a day talking about politics, health care, philosophy, cacao farming, pig farming, you name it. But mostly we talked baseball. This man's knowledge of baseball was impressive, indeed, and he kept me informed of the Chicago Cubs progress as he listened to baseball news on his AM radio nightly.

naked baby, playing in the cacao beans

The oldest building in the New World, built by Columbus in 1502. Supposedly he's buried there.

Beach time with Nicky! We tried windsurfing (and fell down a lot), ate lots of good seafood (a huuuge lobster for $9, among other things) and discovered some very remote, beautiful beaches. And consumed lots of rum, beer, and good cigars.

I miss you guys!!

Hi everyone. I haven't checked this blog or posted anything in so long. I apologize for not being a better blog administrator. Oh Hung- you can just send this blog address as a link to Courtney or invite her yourself. I can also do it for you.
I hope everyone is doing well. I can't believe how much I have been working. I agree with Soma in that fellowship is VERY humbling. It is much more formal here at the U of C, with white coats and calling everyone Dr. this and Dr. that. We unfortunately have a lot of abuse cases here. =(, but the Jim Crawford equivalent here is a doc named Jill Glick who is a good friend of Auggie's and she is awesome so its nice interacting with her.
Its funny, I am finding a few U of C and CHO connections. I met an anesthesiologist who used to work at CHO, but she was a total biz-natch, so I am not counting her.
I miss the bay even though the summers here are awesome. I also miss the camaraderie (sp?) of residency. All the wedding pictures look amazing. Congratulations to Mary and David. I hope everyone is doing well, all my love from Chi-town. I am so happy people are posting.

Boot camp, session 1 ends

I know yer all dying to know. Fatima and I finished our 6 weeks today (LE did too, but she was too tired (read: overdid the wine'in and dine'in last night) to come and get her ass-essed). 1.5 mile timed run, and we both shed about 3 minutes off, woohoo! Yesterday we proved that push-ups and sit-ups are a piece of cake for us (okay, I'm totally lying, those still kill) and Fatima will happily show off her amazing waist any day of the week now. I'm not sure that I actually lost any weight, but I think my pounch converted to steel., or at least nickel, even if the numbers of the fat calipers don't reflect this. But whatev, I know that BMI and those pinchers are not the best measurement of my fat percentage. It's all about the jiggle when I wiggle.
Look out for the cute tees. Session 2 starts Monday, bring it baby.

Hi friends,
While Kara deciphers Unknown #1-3, I am now privy to the secret worlds of Admin Rx and Medical Records committee. . . Committee: Did you know that many residents re-write the same orders multiple times??? Heidi: Well yes, actually, pharmacy often pages us to tell us we're silly. . . Committee: Oh, really? Etc. All of those faces in the cafeteria suddenly have a job I never realized existed and know my name. . . which is kind of scary. They're probably thinking back to all of those silly repeat orders that I used to write and giggling internally about the time they reviewed it in Admin Rx. :)
Here's a pic from our recent trip to Ecuador. . . it was fun to see my parents navigating Latin America and introducing them to Diego's relatives and friends. Miss you guys. Hope all is well in your corner of the world. We're having fun back here at CHO.

Kingfish is calling you!

Find our 3 classmates in this word search.

Things are well in Oakland; Hung and Aaron are currently talking about taking over Temescal, in their first step towards world domination.

On service tomorrow, looking forward to taking care of active Tb, decubitus ulcers, unknown # 1, unknown # 2, and unknown # 3. I spoke with a past chief today, who tols me to not burn out. He suggested cocaine. Anyone know where I can get some?

More weddings... ahh, wedded bliss

So here are my few photos of DVL and Lena's happy day. Unfortunately, the photos don't include any actual wedding ceremony pics, cuz, well, I just was enjoying sitting in the woods, contemplating. Then I left the camera at the reception, so, hopefully DVLena and the Cielos have more to share. For those not in attendance, we stayed in a cute cabin down in Pescadero, were transported on a big blue bus (and then a SF trolley driven by a crazy asian man), into the woods for their lovely ceremony. Then back (on said crazy trolley) to a reception at the "camp" site. Think camping for yuppies. And a huge hot tub (sorry, no pics, but use your imagination).




Since i know yer all dying to know how boot camp is going, we have 1 more week before our assessment of progress. Will I run faster than 15:45 to complete the 1.5 miles? How many sit ups and push ups in a minute? All these answers await... but I must say, regardless of any other change, the best part was making KDB envious of my 8 mile run with LE this past Saturday. And my quads, they are Steel. Touch them and weep.

Wedding Photos Galore

Hi Everyone!

Getting married was so much fun! The most common comment that we received was "your wedding went so smoothly, did anything go wrong at all?" Joe, being the typical oblivious male says, no everything went perfectly, according to plan.

Actually there were tons of little things that went "wrong" but in the end it didn't matter. We were just so happy to be surrounded by our friends and family and of course to get married to each other!

Highlights of the wedding for me were for those of you who missed it (I know you were all there in spirit):

1) Father and Daughter Dance-My dad told me that he didn't know how to dance but he'll do the for me. I've never seen my dad dance before and it was true! He didn't know how to dance at all, and it was so funny. Whenever I look at those pictures of his attempting to dance I start giggling.

2) During the pyebaek ceremony (korean version of the tea ceremony- except we koreans use soju- of course.) how our parents kept throwing the chestnuts and jujubes into my skirt (the number you catch represent how many children you will have) and they wouldn't stop throwing. I think we caught about 20! And my mom when asked to give marital advice, she says "Be fruitful, and multiply!"

3) The dancing! My siblings and cousins dancing so sillily. Joe's dad who is normally the quietest man was really getting down on the dance floor. And when YMCA and the macarena- two songs I asked them specifically not to play but someone requested it- played, it was actually fun to dance to.

4) I was pleased with myself. I was so afraid that I would somehow ruin the ceremony by coughing incessantly (my asthma coughing peaked the day before the wedding.) or by falling walking down the aisle. or by giggling awkwardly as I tend to do when I'm nervous. or by crying too much during the vows as to be incomprehensible. I am proud to say that I did none of those things. I am far more mature than I give myself credit. Even though my sister started giggling after my father makes some weird noise, I kept my composure.

5) My nephew as the ring bearer. He's just 14 months old so we weren't sure how he'd do. He did a fantastic job of running down the aisle.

6) Of course being married to Joe.

So for pictures! The photographer posted his pictures on www.pictage.com
just search under "rhee" and choose the event on july 14th 2007 st. mark's lutheran church. There are tons of great pics on this site.

I am also posting up pictures on my picasa public site at http://picasaweb.google.com/maryrhee as I collect them from other people and I will put up the professional photos so you don't have to pay $6.00 a picture if you want to print them. I will also post up photos from our honeymoon to bali (we are leaving august 20th for 2 weeks).

I am leaving you with the non-professional photos from the ceremony. (I hope this works!)



and photos from the reception.