Kari is here!!!!!!

This weekend marked the arrival of Kari, the next derm resident who I will be working with. She and Doug will overlap a week and then it's just me and Kari. I actually knew Kari before coming here and I LOVE her. She is Wisconsin friendly at it's best.

Back in Philly I had the opportunity to shadow at the STD clinic and Kari was working that day. She was so welcoming and I learned so much from her and Dr. Intracaso (the attending). I couldn't believe how nice they were.

A month or so later I was invited to a dinner for residents in the global health track. Knowing no one except Dr. Kovarik (the head of the vulvar cancer study) and being a lowly medical student (and a first year to boot...the peons of the peons), I was pretty terrified. And sure enough, the resident sitting next to me pretty much lost interest right away when I disclosed my lowly status (I should have been wearing a scarlet S on my head for student). When Dr. Kovarik had to get up, the resident turned his back and started a conversation with someone else so I was stuck with no one to talk to.

When I grew tired of cursing the back of his head, I couldn't decide whether I should take out my phone (and risk looking rude and disinterested) or to stare into space with a dumb smile plastered on my face (and make it patently obvious that I had no one to talk to).

All of a sudden I heard a friendly midwestern accent: "Hayley! Come sit here!" I have never been so relieved to hear my name. It could have been Jack the Ripper and I'd have heeded the call- anything to ameliorate my loser-dom on display. Luckily it wasn't a 19th century serial killer- it was Kari and she remembered me from STD clinic (tangent- I hope no one is skimming this and reads just this paragraph because "she remembered me from STD clinic" isn't a phrase you want taken out of context). Even though she's a 3rd year resident (and chief resident at that) and I am merely a peon, she was amazingly friendly and introduced me to all the residents she was sitting with and included me in the conversation.

I saw her a few more times since then and I was psyched that she was coming to Botswana. When she arrived (sans luggage...ugh) Dougie and I scooped her up and took her to Madikwe game reserve in South Africa. I'll show the pictures in the next post. Bottom line...Kari is here and I'm so psyched. Everything I've suggested she's like "Sure! I'll do that!" And she said that she'll fully indulge my nerd-ery...we've already looked up the whole Porphyrin cascade so we could understand Porphyria cutanea tarda. It's gonna be a great few weeks.

Team Derm at Madikwe!