Oh, hey February!

I'm sorry that I left this blog on such a negative note. I'm not having the worst time ever, but it has been a rough couple of weeks at my placement. I feel like I hit the bottom a week ago when I ended up in tears in my coordinator's office. I think my biggest challenge has been that I don't feel like I really have an ally or even a mentor in this whole thing. I want this to be a stepping stone towards something, you know? And I have been feeling skeptical about that being the reality. I'm three months in -- that's a quarter of the way through my term! Things should not be this bad!

With all that said, this week has actually been a little bit better. I'm coordinating an after-hours nutrition class for March (National Nutrition Month!) that will include a meal - food will hopefully bring people in. If it goes well, we're going to continue to hold classes, hopefully some a little more focused on certain populations, like possibly something re: diabetes management, hopefully something on GROWING healthy food, something kid-focused, etc. So, hey, keep your fingers crossed for me there.

I'm also attempting to assist our community outreach director in her part of putting together a health fair in April. I'm currently recruiting some nutrition/hunger-fighting/food access/etc. people to come out to talk to people not only about the importance of eating well, but how to make eating well a possibility for them and their families. Noticing a trend? I'm becoming more interested in nutrition & food justice and trying to pursue that interest within this position. We'll see how this all comes together.

Related to this, Michelle Obama recently launched her Let's Move campaign against childhood obesity (in her launch speech she said "food desert"!) and is tackling a lot of issues around nutrition, including school lunches. I recently learned that nearly half the population of DC school children qualify for free lunch (with another ~30% qualifying for reduced lunch) and after reading this six-part series looking inside the kitchen of a DC school kitchen, I was left pretty uneasy. Keeping things centered around children could be a good idea - parents want their kids to be healthy, right? Mamas and papas might be more inclined to take a second glance at a bag of apples if they knew it could help prevent disease in babies as opposed to just thinking about themselves, no? I'm processing all of this information and trying to think about how I can create something within my clinic to contribute to Let's Move or at least something like it. My first step was to request a TON of materials from mypyramid.gov, many of which are kid-centric, to put up and around the clinic.

I've been dreaming a little bit about how to start a vegetable garden at our facility and have some families work and eat in it. This is the first summer I will ever spend outside of Indiana and away from my dad's veggies. My heart, trapped in the frozen post-snowpacalyptic tundra, breaks at this realization. So in addition to wanting to help my community be healthier, I selfishly want to get my hands in the dirt and get some AC hours for it.

In addition to these things, I'm also tackling a big, long term quality improvement project to shorten the cycle time (time spent from the moment a patient walks in to the time they walk out) which currently averages 2.5 hours but on busy days is much, much more. The other day, trying to help things go a bit faster up front, a man yelled at me and asked if this was a f**king third-world country. Gosh, if that doesn't say something about health care, what does, right?

Life outside of work is going well. I'm in a new book club and have become the de facto leader, which I somehow tend to do in social situations. I'm working on some solid friendships with other AC-ers, roommates and fellow Hoosiers who are in DC. I'm a killer vegan (oxymoron?) and have made some ballin' food in the last few weeks. The snow storm helped with that! I've also been good at being active, walking more, going to the gym, etc. We're doing a Biggest Loser competition at work and I'm not trying to toot my own horn... but I've lost 10 pounds in the last 6 weeks. I've been working on being well and I feel good about the progress I've made.

My next outside-of-work mission: start looking for a post-AC job. Ahhhhh!