oh the weather outside is frightful

So to everyone back in NYC right now, I hope you are well-bundled!  Apparently the city has been murder free for a week due to the below-freezing temperatures (the last streak sans murder was shortly after Sandy, and before that was 2010).  As a side-note, NYC is leading the nation in crime reduction of 75% in the last 2 decades, attributed them shifting tight money from the prison system to put more cops out on the streets, also saving about $1.5 billion/year from the resulting decrease in incarcerated criminals.  

Anyways, here is the heat of summer on the edge of the Amazon jungle- hitting 90s everyday with full humidity.  Thankfully, we sleep with ACs set to about 77, which keeps it dry and cooler.  Yet at the hospital, only a few rooms (some clinics, the director's office, the room holding a broken MRI machine, and possibly the ORs) have this luxury.  Needless to say, our office does not, nor does the main room of internal medicine- one holds 20 women in 2 rows, the other holds 20 men.  The other day Jackie reported back after lunch "the men all have their shirts off and are lying sideways on their beds". 

The other day I was taking blood of one patient.  I got 2 tubes with my first stick, but I must have perforated the vein changing tubes (we attach the vacutainer tubes directly to the double-edged needle) and I needed one more tube.  We use straight needles, without butterfly handles or a flash, so it's a little trickier, and drawing blood under pressure can always be nerve-racking.  So there I continued on, sweat dripping off my face, my scrubs changing color from my back to my shins as they absorbed more sweat, large gloves plastered oddly to my hands.  After two more sticks, I called it, and found someone else to do it.  By the time I settled down, I looked and saw white lines streaking my entire thighs as if my scrubs were cleverly whitewashed.  And white dots all around the collar.  My sweat had crystallized on my scrubs!

No one can have it all (though I tend to remember Pomona's dry Southern Cali weather as quite perfect), but would you take the hot or the cold?