medicine-medicine-medicine-wedding-medicine-medicine-NFP-medicine

That's what my life has consisted of in this last month of absence from blogging.
I have been moved to a hospital 1.5hrs from my house, so I only get to come home for the weekends. I am studying surgery at the moment & so have seen lots of varicose vein, appendix and gall-bladder removals, hernia repairs, blood clot extractions, stents put into people's arteries, and some cool major stuff like repairing a soon-to-rupture abdominal aorta (the big artery running down the middle of your tummy) and a partial pancreatoduodenectomy (Whipple procedure, where they remove some of the stomach, all the pancreas, all the gall bladder and all the first part of the small intestine) (usually done for cases of pancreas cancer) (see pic).

Anyhoo, it's all very interesting! I'm also a total wizz at taking blood and putting in male catheters..!

The days are still pretty long; ward rounds start at 8am, and then by the time everything is done it's usually getting on for 6pm.
But that really doesnt matter cos my accomodation is a small room in an empty appartment, so I'm usually in no rush to get back!
There is no internet access in any of the rooms, and so all students have to fight for the 7 computers in the library! Needless to say therefore that the luxury of typing out a blog-post is not one that I can indulge in!

Luckily though my 5 weeks in that hospital ends on Nov 11th, and then I am back here till February (when I get sent back for another 5 week stint!)


Stuff is going slowly on the wedding front too!
We have now booked the venue for our wedding reception; it will be in the golf course place on Sunday 30th July 2006 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are getting married in Chris' home church in his parish up north and his Uncle/God-father will preside over the wedding mass (he's a priest).

I should be coming back from the hospital mid-week this week in order to go to a wedding dress fair.
I have been looking for dresses online, but I'm never certain how trustworthy these places are!
Plus most of them are based in America and so the postage costs are really high.

While I'm not toooo picky about my dress, I do have few 'it must-have..' conditions:

1. it HAS to have sleeves. I'm not really a major fan of the sleavesless/shoulderless style of wedding dresses today. Plus I dont think it's at all appropriate it go to mass & recieve communion dressed that scandalously. (I have also included a notice on my wedding invitation informing the guests that their wedding attire must not be above the knee, or expose the shoulders...!!)

2. I want it to have a bit of a train at the back...just to fulfil my little-girl fair-tale dreams!!

Something like THIS would be nice, but unfortunatly none of the shops in my area supply it.


The invitations are still in the process of production. We have designed the front and back of the invitation ourselves, and we sent it off to the printers for a sample........2 weeks ago.........
We put a picture of the Holy Family on the back, so I'm excited to see what that will look like.


And finally, I have started doing NFP charting.
After reviewing all the literature on the various methods avaliable (including the Billings Method, the Creighton Method etc) I decided on going with the Couple-to-Couple League's (CCL) stuff.

To be honest, they are all really really good and work on 99% of the same principles. I just chose the CCL because a married medic friend of mine practices NFP as taugh by the CCL and she recommended it to me. Plus they have an awesome book out which is SO thorough.



Basically it involves charting your mucus and basal body temperature changes during a cycle, and cross-checking them (i.e. ensuring they both indicate you are out of your fertile phase before you resume marital relations).

For those not in the know, countless studies have shown the effectiveness of these methods and even the World Health Organisation did numerous studies showing they have a 99%+ effectiveness rate of being able to indicate when a woman is in her fertile phase, (...and so if she is postponing pregnancy, then she would abstain from intercourse during that phase).

hmmm, maybe I should write a post on how to practice NFP one day...




Oh, in other news....I HAVE A NEW FRIEND!!

Go have a look at WINTERR'S WORDS!!!


I guess that is all from me for now!

-x-