Aloha from Tripler!

Yesterday, after a very long day of flying (hour and a half to Atlanta, nine and half to Honolulu), I arrived in Hawaii, got my two very large bags from baggage claim, climbed into a taxi, and checked in at the Tripler Lodge. During the flight, I met another HPSP student, Dan, so it was nice knowing one person on the island at least. After unpacking all the stuff I need for the month (and calling Adrienne and bragging about how sunny and warm it was), I discovered that there is no food to be found on base on Sunday nights. So Dan and I hopped on a bus toward Waikiki, wandered around the touristy areas for a bit, and had dinner at a nice Thai restaurant before heading down to the beach for a bit (can't arrive to Hawaii and not go to the beach on the first day, after all). I took pictures, but they're on my phone, and I discovered this morning that I grabbed the wrong sync cable to connect my phone to my computer, so until I get another one, no pictures from the phone.

This morning started the same as every other Army rotation: wake up, eat breakfast, wander around the hospital for a couple of hours in-processing. Then I met the chief resident of Internal Medicine and got a tour of the medicine department before he took me down to the allergy and immunology clinic. Turns out, the attending who was coordinating my rotation is now deployed, and forgot to share with the other attendings that I would be coming. Oops. So we laughed about that for a few minutes, then I went and started seeing patients.

Other than seeing a couple of patients a day in clinic, I have morning report every morning at 0730 and noon conference at 1215. There are no calls (yay!) and no weekends (yay!), so I have the evenings and weekends to myself. So far, that means I did (well, I'm still doing, technically) some allergy reading tonight, and called the dive master Daniel Christian recommended. My first dive in Hawaii is at 9 on Saturday morning, and I'm really excited about it.