It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks. Post-Thanksgiving brought all the assignments mentioned in my previous post. I managed to eek an op-ed out of myself and, with much reluctance, submitted it for publication. I knew they wouldn't publish it, but the thought of anyone reading it was simply horrifying to me. Op-eds are very much not my medium of choice for getting my thoughts out there.
On the last day of classes we had a meeting with our program director. This program is pretty cool because they really take our feedback into account. It was fun to get to see the 2nd year students at that. They're all about to head out for their practice experience so we likely won't see them as often. They were very excited to be done with all their coursework; it was weird to realize that in one year we'll be where they are, finishing up classes and theses/capstones before heading off for several months of internship.
In the evening we had our department holiday party at a professor's house. They have a couple of big dogs, which Mal was a little nervous around initially but soon became very excited about and followed them around all night. He even told me at one point, "Mommy, I want a dog. I want that one." Both boys love the food - latkes (Ryan had never heard of latkes before! Can you imagine?!) and chicken wings. The program director kept giving Mal chocolates that I assume he brought back from one of his many travels. Gareth hung out with the GCPD director's kid all night as they're just a few years apart in age. We all had a pretty good time then headed home to get the kids to bed. I went to bed as well so I could get up early and get lots of work done on my metabolism final.
A few hours later Ryan woke me up to tell me Mal was vomiting. So I jumped out of bed and poor Mal was sitting up in bed, shocked and upset. I got him to the bathroom and bathed him (vomit was everywhere - in his hair, on his hands, on the floor, blankets, etc) while Ryan started stripping the bed. As I was getting him in the tub he said in such a forlorn voice, "I'll never eat again!". It was so adorably pitiable. We realized the floor behind the bed needed mopping, so we moved Gareth to the basement to sleep, moved the bunk bed, and had Mal sit in the living room while we finished cleaning the room and Ryan made the bed.
The whole middle-of-the-night vomit thing is new to us. Gareth has thrown up once in his life (outside of baby spit up, which he was quite prodigious with). And the last time Mal threw up was when he was in his crib still. In the end, we all got back to bed around 2 and eventually I crashed on the couch because Mal kept waking up because his stomach hurt. Thankfully by Saturday evening he seemed to be doing better.
Unfortunately, by Sunday morning I realized I'd probably caught the bug. It's not a fun one, at all. And being sick all Sunday night and into Monday morning meant I missed my Epidemiology final Monday morning. I emailed the professor Sunday and thankfully he said they'd figure something out. The whole thing threw my planned finals week awry, but I managed to get my Metabolism final turned in on time still and got everything else done by Thursday evening. I'm so glad the Epi final was the only in-person test, otherwise the week would have been much more difficult to sort out.
Now it's all over and I'm a little shocked that I actually managed to get everything done in those last couple weeks. I have a feeling that will be a recurring feeling throughout the program. It was exhausting and difficult, but I've learned so much this quarter. Next quarter will likely be even more intense since we no longer have any 1-credit classes, which really helped balance the load this past quarter. But that's something to deal with when I get there. Until then, I'm going to enjoy the break!
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