If you're a close reader of the comments here, you'll have noticed that the tests turned out as I hoped, not as I feared. And another scary chapter of my life is finished. But the pessimist in me mutters as I write that "the book is not yet finished." The good thing, I guess, is that I'm fairly aware of the different ways you can get a needlestick.

And as I noted yesterday, I am away from the hospital until the new year. Probably the last break I'll have before internship, so I intend to enjoy it. Posting will probably be light over that time, but I'll be starting up with neurosurgery in January, and that should be fairly story-rich. No, this is not out of a new-found desire to be a neurosurgeon, it is simply a relic of the fact that my school assigns lottery numbers to students as we pick our required neurology rotations, and, as is already evident, I'm not particularly lucky.

An oddly bright moment today was opening my mail. On my last ward medicine month, I had really clicked with a patient, who then proceeded to offer me a week at his beachhouse out of thanks. I never took him up on that, but I did get a Christmas card from him, addressed to "Dr."

Almost, almost. And it is wonderful to know he's still doing well.