Qian Zheng, Surprises That Rock Edition

What did I tell you about this year pulling straight? A sizable chunk of student loans are gone, another will be gone by the end of the year, the other debt is nearly gone and won't be gone by Chinese New Year (according to tradition!) but will at least be erased by the end of February. What else? I LOVE my clinic shifts this term, especially the pain clinic at Venice Family--the integrative setting is so exciting and I'm learning so much from what the biomed docs, nurses, chiros, and translators have to say at our weekly meetings. I can't wait to find a setting like this for practice! At school, my stage IV lung cancer patient is doing extremely well, my infertility patient is finally pregnant this week (she's taken about 4 pregnancy tests to be sure even though her PCP assures her she's quite expectant) and while my amenorrhea patient still hasn't gotten a period she's made tremendous strides toward making decisions about getting her life under control and wouldn't you know her anxiety is improving to boot? So all that feels pretty inspiring.

The Premiere Oncology internship is looking promising, and I've been looking into ways to work toward helping get the Hinchey Bill (the bill that would get acupuncture added to the Medicare and Federal Employee Benefit Plan schedules of benefits) passed, since it looks like it actually has the best chance of passing in years. And yeah, the debate over whether or not it's a good idea to join a system that is so broken goes on, but that's another post for another day.

The coupe de grace came this morning in the form of a certain pro cycling team which had been considering me for soigneur work (and then declining to get back to me even to tell me they'd gone with someone else) calling me this morning to offer me the job! I go in tomorrow morning to sign the papers and make it all official like. I'm still in the pinching myself stage, but there it is. All the things I was looking forward to--new professional contacts, plenty of bloggable experiences, not to mention my Escape From LA fund are to be mine after all.

I really can't express how good it feels to be so excited about my life again, to feel more securely rooted and focused than I have ever been, to be getting it right, to finally be winning, to just be so happy I laugh out loud for no apparent reason and to be so delighted with the beauty of the world around me all it takes is a bike ride to Lopez Lake under a clear azure sky to feel high as a kite. I can hardly wait to see what February will bring--Tour of California, here I come!