On Call For Life

First day fun

2009-07-10T19:58:00.003-04:00

So ... as luck would have it, I may well have chosen the right career after all. Hm. Today was pretty damned awesome.

Some favorite bits of my 12-hour first day of surgery clerkship:

Hearing a little girl who was running out of the elevator say, "I love the moving stairs! THEY ARE AWESOME!"
Being reminded of how different the patient's perspective is when I heard patients try to describe their surgical, imaging, and medical histories. "CT scan" means nothing to a large portion of the population, but describing being stuck into a giant tube gets a good response.
Time passes strangely without bathroom or lunch breaks.
Taking my first real history with a real patient for a real doctor's visit and then discussing what we thought was going on with this very real patient. In reality. For real. WOW. IT WAS REAL.
Finally feeling a part of a team - this sounds stupid, but I really like working with people to achieve good things for other people. It makes all the happy bits of me happier because I can go home knowing that life improved for someone else, and I got to be at least a teeny-tiny part of that. And someday, my part will be much larger.

Medicine is arguably the coolest job ever. Even though many aspects of med school suck. At least, that's my first-day impression.

So ... yeah! Hi! I am alive again! How are you?

Phew.

2009-07-01T09:17:00.002-04:00

Well. Now I have time again. And what do I find myself doing, now that my exams are over?

I sleep in as much as I'd like. I eat when I'd like, whatever I'd like. I am reading a book for pleasure, although I'm having a hard time remembering that I can do that. Once you fall out of the habit of reading books and into the habit of reading blog posts, it's hard to remember that you can do both sometimes.

Or maybe that's just me.

I am slowly recovering ... my brain still feels like it's made of jell-o and I've been klutzier than usual lately, but I am getting better each day. And now I have chocolate chip cookies to eat! I baked them yesterday and didn't burn myself once. That that is an accomplishment is a testament to my incredible klutziness lately. Really. I have been a threat to myself.

Thank goodness the first two years of med school are over. Even if I failed USMLE and have to retake it, I 0nly have to do that. I don't have to go back and redo the two years of class. That was (hopefully) my least favorite part of med school, and now IT IS OVER.

PHEW.

The bigger picture

2009-05-21T23:30:00.004-04:00

The last time they saw moving, the Ex packed up and left as a surprise to all of us. The last time they saw this, one of their people never came back again. While they've never liked moving, it is worse for them this time. They are anxious, milling around me, begging for attention with renewed intensity. They need to rub my hand NOW. They need to play fetch NOW.

I think about the impact the Ex's departure had on me, but it doesn't occur to me to think of the cats as grievers. But when they beg and whine and look up at me with those big eyes, it's clear that they worry there might not be a tomorrow. They need to be petted NOW in case I don't come back.

Overall, we're all happier now, but we all have the hurt of being left behind. All three cats and me.

Sometimes

2009-05-20T23:01:00.002-04:00

When the day has been a struggle for entirely different reasons, I sometimes begin to doubt myself for having had a failed marriage. Never mind that I understand why it failed, why I entered it, and what I've learned from it. Never mind that I couldn't be who I am today without having had that experience, and for that, I really am grateful.

On days like today, when I judge myself harshly, this is one of the things on my list. This is one of the things for which I fault myself. I ask myself why the next relationship will be different, why I think I could one day succeed at a marriage. I doubt my ability to be in a successful marriage.

It's not fair to myself, I know. It's not fair to my experience, my strength, or my insight. It's not logical and it doesn't make me pretty.

But ultimately, deep down, it is something which calls into question who I am as a person. The kinds of judgment calls that led to that marriage and the divorce are calls which lead me to doubt myself.

It's not fair, and I know that I've grown a lot since then, but still: I did that.

On days like today, that is hard to live with, even though I know tomorrow I will feel better about it. Tomorrow, I know it will be less of a struggle. Tomorrow is always better on days like today.

Tonight I will go to bed early so tomorrow can come sooner.

It's the imperfections that make us perfect

2009-04-15T14:53:00.002-04:00

I am at the bottom of my class in med school. Going through the marriage I did when I did made everything ten times harder for me. Additionally, I'm not as smart as some of my classmates. As much as that pains me to think (because I'd rather be the smartest! The best! I want to be super-awesome!), it really is true. I have classmates who outperform me regularly by studying a quarter as much as I do.

Most patients would probably never want to hear about my academic record before seeing me. They would probably hear about the classes I barely passed and cringe, thinking me inadequate as a result. Or at least thinking that I wouldn't know my craft as well as someone who'd gotten all As.

And honestly, in the old medical system, they would be right. It used to be that doctors were paternalistic know-it-alls. Doctors had all the answers, and if they didn't, they were bad doctors.

But there's a lot we don't know, and the role doctors have with their patients has changed a lot. Doctors are still well-educated and required to continue their education (after all, we get the MDs and the patients don't), but we are moving closer and closer to having a society wherein doctors are more like advocates for their patients than medical overlords to be obeyed. Patient autonomy is something we are learning more and more to respect whenever possible, and we're trained to encourage patients to make their own decisions.

This past year has been especially hard for me. I've had to confront a lot of personal weaknesses head-on. Despite my lower grades, I think this will ultimately make me a really great doctor. I know a lot of the real-life stuff my patients will be going through. I understand imperfection intimately. I've been a caretaker; I'm intimately familiar with the stress of being responsible for someone else, especially when that someone else is assumed by everyone around you to be a functioning adult.

In short, I've been there. A lot of "there". I've done a lot of "that". I will have a deeper understanding when my patients can't explain their pain to me - my classmates who are smarter and less experienced will miss that. There are sighs and ways your shoulders get bent that just don't mean anything if you haven't been there and done that.

So while my academics leave a lot to be desired, I keep telling myself that they're not the full story. The same way I know I'll see patients who won't be able to verbalize all that they are going through, my academics are only part of the story. I know the tendency is to want a doctor with the best academic record, and by the same token, we all want a patient to walk in and say, "Doc! I seem to have a pheochromocytoma, not a heart attack or panic attack! Please treat me correctly!"

I'll work hard to learn the things I don't know already. I'll study my ass off. But in this very human world with very human difficulties, the doctor we need is the one who will understand us, be respectful, and help when we can't help ourselves. I hope to be that doctor.

Love Thursday

2009-04-02T10:48:00.003-04:00

Love Thursday is a tradition I've seen a lot over at Woulda Coulda Shoulda. I've decided to pick it up, at least for this week. We could all use a little more love in our lives.

My Love Thursday is dedicated to the Boyfriend, who very patiently waited through the divorce proceedings until things were legal and who has been very supportive ever since I met him (which was after the Ex had left and my life was pretty thoroughly chaotic).

BF has been the victim of one of my biggest character flaws: I have a complete inability in some moments to see the bigger picture. I am a detail-oriented person, and this can be a great strength when it comes to studying medicine and understanding the intricacies of how things work. I use this ability to focus on tiny things to maintain concentration when I study. I use it to understand how ingredients will cook and be able to predict how they will interact with each other. I use it to find ways of comforting people.

But then there are the days when it becomes a curse. Like a few days ago, when BF ate out of one of my non-stick pots with a metal spoon. For the five millionth time. And of course, the only thing I could see was my frustration with this (really very insignificant) transgression. The cost of the pots! It is so high! And I have told him to use a bowl when he cooks at my place! There were clean bowls! And the pot is mine, not his, so I'll have to pay to replace it if he breaks it! And the metal spoon could scrape off the teflon and give me cancer! Or Alzheimer's! Or a bad day!

It was truly the end of the world, I will have you know. Obviously.

The thing is, that's about the only bad thing I can say about BF: he can't remember he's eating from a non-stick pot. That's it. It's truly terrible, I know. Probably the worst fault a person could have.

Just last night, after a night of horrible sleep the night before, I fell asleep on his shoulder. He let me sleep and did absolutely nothing (didn't want to disturb me) for 30 minutes. I woke up again all of a sudden, convinced I hadn't been sleeping because I couldn't remember it, and then promptly fell back asleep for another 15 minutes.

In other words, he sat still as a human pillow for 45 minutes with no book, TV, or internet to occupy him. And then I didn't thank him, because I am really sweet like that. When he finally had to go to work, he commanded me to stay in bed and then tidied up the living room before leaving. Again, not much thanks from the semi-conscious Emily. I stumbled around the apartment a little bit because I had to clean out the kitty litter boxes and I insist on not letting BF do that for me (he can wipe down my stove but scooping cat poop? THAT is where I draw the line! We aren't living together, you know!)

My point is that he gets the big things right. He takes care of me when I need him and respects my token bits of independence. He keeps my best interests in mind. He's literally the shoulder I can lean on.

And that's really worth a few pots.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone.

Bouncing all around

2009-03-31T10:13:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I was feeling discouraged, today I'm feeling happy. I think a lot of it is tied to how many hours of class I have. Yesterday was a really long day, and today is a much shorter, more doable day. I can use today to help get caught up. That always makes me feel better.

Emotions are funny things, aren't they?

Healthy Emily 2010

2009-03-30T14:15:00.003-04:00

In school today, we discussed a thing called Healthy People 2010, which was a ten-year plan of national preventive health care objectives. We are very close to the year 2010, but we're very far from achieving the reductions in HIV transmission, new diabetes patients, obesity rates, etc that were set as goals in 2000. The idea was to increase the community's overall health through education and preventive medicine.

In a weird way, I identify with this failure to meet goals. I had a set of goals, too. I wanted to be kicking ass at medical school and happily married. I wanted to be thinking about starting a family. I wanted to be saving for a home or retirement.

Those goals have pretty much all failed. I'm surviving in med school, but I'm nowhere near ass-kicking status. I'm definitely not happily married, although I am in a good relationship. I'm back to square one when it comes to families and homes and retirement.

It's really frustrating to think about how much of a setback in terms of my overall life goals that marriage was - why couldn't I have just dated him? Why did I think it was a good idea to marry? What was my big problem?

I don't have great answers for those questions, and while I mostly focus on the silver linings and stay positive and realize that I've learned a lot, blahblahblah, I am still sad at having all my goals squashed. I don't feel victimized or helpless - I know I screwed things up myself, and I take full credit - but I do feel sad that this is how things all turned out. Shitty circumstances + shitty decisions = damn, that was shitty.

Oh well. There are now Healthy People 2020 goals, and I have a new life that I am setting up, slowly but surely. Rebirth, right? Spring is good for that. Reorganizing. Pulling yourself together and getting your butt in gear.

So I stick my tongue out at my old life and old mistakes. It all frustrates me, but SO WHAT. I am moving on. SO THERE.

It's done

2009-03-25T10:33:00.001-04:00

My marriage is officially over. It ended at 9:30 AM on Tuesday. I was even able to get to my 10 AM class on time. Divorce is convenient! Who knew?

That day and the day immediately afterward were odd ones for me. I have felt discombobulated, relieved, sad. I am letting go of something that I used to define my life for a long, long time. Even if it feels fantastic to let go, it's still hard to release that part of myself.

Things are good here. I'm slowly feeling more like myself again. I am switching my name back legally, and taking that court order around to the BMV and social security office and school administrative offices provides a strange kind of closure, encased in red tape.

However you get it, though, closure is good.

Happy Divorcing Day!

2009-02-14T12:24:00.002-05:00

This is the first Valentine's Day that has nothing to do with the Ex since 2001. Valentine's Days from 2002 to 2008 were spent pretending that there would be some kind of nice celebration. Sometimes we'd go to dinner, but when money's tight and the relationship isn't that great anyway, it's hard to celebrate.

I suppose I could be discouraged today, but instead, I feel recharged. I can be happy for my life as it is now and for the layers upon layers of lies that have been lifted. Valentine's Day in the past has been a holiday on which I grimaced and tried to be happy, despite my reality.

This year, my reality is happy. I am smiling, and I mean it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

When did I get old?

2009-02-05T18:01:00.003-05:00

I tutor a third grader through America Reads. We chitchat, we read, and we talk about vocab words. I'd love to say that we stay completely focused on reading the stories that are assigned each week, but she is a third grader and there are only so many times you can care about Ramona's New Baby Sister.

During our session today, my student broke into song. "I will survive," she sang. "I will surviiiiiive ... "

"Hey, hey-ey!" I finished for her.

She looked up at me with eyes as big as saucers. "You KNOW that song?"

"Yup! It's a great song."

"Who sings it?"

"Gloria Gaynor."

"Oh." The name seems to go in one ear and out the other. But now we are talking about music and Ramona's sister is completely forgotten. "Do you like Selena?"

"Sure."

"It was sad. She got shot because of her fan club. That was in 1995."

"Yeah, I know. I was alive then."

"You were?" She looks up at me as if she is picturing me singing backup for Selena, probably alongside a pterodactyl.

"Yeah. I saw that movie about her life when it came out in the theater."

"That was a theater movie? Whoa."

Oh, man. You know you're old when movies you've seen in the theater are relegated to TV-only in the minds of the younger generation. Ouch.

Detox

2009-02-01T15:31:00.002-05:00

The weekend after the exam is when we all let our hair down. Unfortunately, I am still sick. I can't seem to shake this damned cold! I thought I'd be able to sleep much better once the exam was over and I had time to myself, but my coughing wakes me up every few hours.

Oh well. I guess sleep is overrated, right? I will tell myself this until I can manage to get a solid 8 hours again.

So this is what I have been up to since Friday: NOTHING. I have spent some time with friends and played a few games of Boggle and so on, but otherwise I have been doing NOTHING productive.

This will have to change tomorrow, but for today, I am enjoying my freedom. I won't know for another 18 hours how I did on the exam, so for now it doesn't exist, either.

Freedom feels good. See you tomorrow, world!

The time when I least like myself

2009-01-29T23:03:00.002-05:00

The 24 hours that immediately precede an exam are the time when my self-esteem is lowest. I begin to doubt that I've studied enough. I doubt my ability to understand the questions. I imagine all the things I don't know, and think that maybe those are the things the professors will test us on and I will be the only one who isn't ready.

The thing about med school is that you can never know everything. It's designed to prevent that. You can only hope you know enough of the right things and have the balls to go in and take the test anyway.

Having the balls is my real problem. Exams intimidate me. Before college, they never did. I was always confident, always tested well, always got the As. College was harder, but I learned to do well even there. Medical school has been a whole new kind of challenge.

I'm sure it didn't help that, when I entered, I had a bipolar spouse who wasn't stable. There were more days than I can count when I was just too tired to learn anything, tired from having to soak the emotional fallout of a mood disorder, tired from having no money, tired from broken promises and stale anger.

The way the Ex left shook me again. I had figured things out a bit better last year, by the end of it. I knew how to study just enough to get through, and surviving was plenty of success for me. I didn't need bells, whistles, awards, recognition. The As were long gone, and I was okay with that.

But when the Ex vanished, one of the constants in my life was suddenly variable again. The person I'd been with for seven years was gone. For better or worse, in hypomania and depression, through times with debt and times without, the Ex was at least THERE. When I first came home to my semi-empty apartment, the not-thereness was overwhelming.

Classes immediately after that time did not go well. I survived that particular struggle again. I got through it. Ah ha! I said to myself. I can pick myself up and move on after all! I can do this!

Only now there is an exam tomorrow. My least favorite 24 hours are currently ticking by, and my self-esteem is once again at rock-bottom. I doubt myself. I doubt the things that are constant. I doubt that I can do this.

And it becomes, as it always does, a question of having the balls to show up. The balls to say that I've studied for hours upon hours over days and weeks, and whether or not that's enough, I'm going to try to do well. Despite not having things that are constant, despite the train wreck that has run through my life over the past few months, despite my sense of self being in flux.

I will show up, and I will try. Self-esteem? Never heard of it, never wanted to. These 24 hours, these horrid seconds that seem to simultaneously drag and fly by, these minutes will just be another test of endurance.

For this test, for these hours, I will have the balls.

Been there, done that

2009-01-10T12:21:00.004-05:00

It's easy to make lists and hard to write coherent and entertaining English, so here are some lists that will help get me back into the swing of posting and get you caught up with some of the particulars of my life.

Things I should probably fix about myself:

Sedentary lifestyle. I spend a lot of time sitting around and studying, of course. I should play more DDR (Dance Dance Revolution, not Deutsche Demokratische Republik - although that would be pretty awesome to play!)
Coffee. I drink a lot of it. Way too much.
Cheese. I eat too much of it. I have a thing for cheese ... almost an addiction, really. I could eat nothing but cheese and fruit and be a happy (if anemic) person.
Studying habits. I should study more and procrastinate less. Of course, that's what I always say, but it's still true. I am doing better on this point, at least, even if the others are unrelenting problems.
Cleaning. I hate cleaning, particularly tidying. It just seems so nitpicky! This is why I hate knickknacks - they must perpetually be tidied and dusted and dealt with, and that just gets on my nerves. The next time I move, I will try to cut down on my apartment size and number of possessions, and I'll do it in large part because I hate having to clean.

Things I've been doing pretty well, if I do say so myself:

Getting the divorce moving. I've been the one to handle all the paperwork for that, and I think I've done splendidly. We're on track to be divorced within about six months of the day that the Ex moved out. That's pretty quick, when you take into account two sets of lawyers, the courts, and medical school.
Financials. Aside from a brief snafu with my student loans this semester, I've been doing quite well for myself in my apartment. I haven't had to break my lease or make any drastic changes.
Creating a new life for myself. I set up regular Friday night get-togethers. I've been spending more time with friends. I'm learning that I'm terrible at bowling, but I am determined to gutterball my way to glory anyway. I've discovered the joys of baking more than one kind of cookie, and then the added joys of bringing in those cookies to class and having nobody be willing to eat them because they are ALL ON DIETS. I am not exaggerating here.
Preserving my own sanity in the face of med school, a failed marriage, and upcoming Boards. I really think I deserve some kudos for all of that. So far, no funny farm for me, and I have yet to succeed in my quest to fail out of med school. I wish there were awards for things like this, because it'd be nice to have something to put on my wall that says, "Life woke up one day and decided to pick on you. But you didn't die! HOORAY!"
Health. I had this weird reaction thing on my left wrist that the doctors couldn't figure out, and I finally managed to properly diagnose myself after months of fruitless visits and useless meds. It was a hypersensitivity reaction to the heat from my computer! How weird! But I figured it out! I am Dr. House!

And there you have it. I'm still getting the hang of regular posting again. It's hard to build up momentum again once you stop for a while, but I will work on it! I really do miss posting regularly, and I have a feeling it will help my sanity to write here when Boards get closer.

For now, though, I am off to class to learn how to do another tiny part of a physical exam. We are learning tiny pieces at a time, which means that I still have basically no job skills, despite a year and a half of med school that is under my belt. It's a bit ridiculous.

Maybe today we'll learn reflexes and I can practice hitting people with hammers. I'm hopeful.

I wanted 2009 until I got it

2009-01-05T10:44:00.003-05:00

Thank goodness 2008 is gone, but 2009? You are going to be a tough one. This year promises major exams up the wazoo, the court date for my divorce, and the beginning of my career in clinical medicine.

Not like there are high stakes or anything. You know. Heh.

Life has been unbloggable for a long time because it can be hard to not be snarky when I discuss many of the major events in my life. Since I don't have much of a life, the snark-inducing stuff is really the most interesting and I'm left with nothing to say here.

Things have settled down quite a bit around here. I live a reasonably quiet life these days. This is, in fact, the first time I have ever lived alone.

Well, if you ignore the five animals, anyway. They think I should include them in my tally and then immediately open three cans of Fancy Feast and pop a bag of popcorn. What can I say? My cats and rats know exactly what they want in life.

As it all turns out, these past few months have been very useful for me. I've been able to figure out a large number of things that otherwise would have taken me longer to understand. I can distill what I want in life down to a paragraph. It makes things a lot simpler to know what is important to you - just ignore the rest of the BS, and there's a lot less to care about.

So although it seems strange to say it, I do feel thankful for the Ex in a big way. I don't feel thankful for all the circumstances that we found ourselves mixed up in, but the Ex ultimately made a very mature decision (albeit in a horribly immature way) and it has had a very positive impact on my life overall.

And there you have that. Back to regular programming, of which there will be some here. Really. I will post. Maybe even every day.

It's good to be back in the world of blogging. I missed you, Intarwebs. See you later, hm? We'll do lunch.

2008-10-17T15:46:00.003-04:00

A person who used to be my husband is standing in the living room, sorting through boxes of stuff that I packed for him. He's looking for W-2s so that we can get divorced.

The strangest part is how normal it all feels.

I've been avoiding talking about this ...

2008-10-08T17:46:00.001-04:00

... but now that everyone in real life knows, I may as well blog about it.

Hubbers and I are getting divorced. It's for the best, and it feels very freeing. I think we're both relieved.

So now he shall be The Ex.

I will write more about this later.

A couple of completely unrelated things that bother me

2008-09-13T13:05:00.002-04:00

Thing one: the vendor at the farmer's market who was smoking and holding a lit cigarette as she measured my mushrooms. Just ... ew.

Thing two: the fact that my doctor didn't actually give me a diagnosis. I am able to figure out that the lack of obvious fracture on my X-rays means that I likely have a stress fracture that is too small to show up, but you should have said SOMETHING other than telling me to keep popping ibuprofen like candy and asking me to come back if it still hurts in 3 weeks. This is my foot we're talking about! What kind of shoddy doctoring do you think you're doing? No instructions for what to do to help it heal, no hint of a diagnosis. Lovely.

Thing three: the professor who can't speak English who put a table in his powerpoint that is too fuzzy to be legible AND is upside-down, to boot! Someone needs to teach our professors how to teach and also how to speak English.

Open Letter to Senator Obama

2008-08-31T16:23:00.003-04:00

Dear Senator Obama:

I love you. I'm sure you know this by now, or you would if I had replied to any of the 10,000 emails you send me each week. "Dear Emily," they say, "It's time for change." The sheer volume is flattering. You really care about my opinion, don't you? Either that or you're stalking me.

Ahem. Let's just say you find my money and opinions to be KEY in this election and leave it at that.

I agree with you about things needing to change, and there is one particular aspect of your Perfect Plan for Change (TM) that I haven't heard you mention lately. Namely, your promise to shift the focus of health care to preventive medicine.

You had a great idea when you said those words, Senator Obama. It would have been a completely perfect idea if you'd prefaced it with "Dear Emily." But there's one slight thing I have yet to hear you mention: paying primary care doctors enough that they will be able to take care of Medicare and insured patients.

Medicare pays PCPs next to nothing for their time, and since they pay so little, insurance companies have seen fit to follow suit. PCPs deserve better. I would swoon ever so much more when I saw your picture on the news if you could just mention that you will support PCPs in being paid for ALL the work they do.

Especially if you prefaced it with a "Dear Emily."

Hugs and kisses,
Obviously your most important voter in the whole USA

P.S. I don't delete ALL your emails after reading the "Dear Emily." I just delete MOST of them.

My First Trainer

2008-08-28T17:16:00.003-04:00

The first thing she did was to push the up button labeled "Resistance" on my elliptical trainer. She pushed it many times. My resistance went from level 6 to 11 and I began to huff and puff as I hadn't done in a long time.

"It's fine if you only do 30 minutes of cardio, but you have to really work in those 30 minutes," she told me. "Now it looks like you're really working."

Yes, I certainly was. The fine line between thinking you're going to fall off the machine and feeling proud of yourself for surviving each second wavered in my mind. I debated sneaking my finger to the down button and getting my resistance back into the humanly possible range.

The program started giving me a break, so I kept my fingers to myself and got through my measly 15 minutes. We moved on to the weights.

"The key is to not leave anything on the table. It's a war, you vs the machine, and you have to win!" She punched the air for emphasis.

Then she piled on the weights. 40 pounds for some muscles, 50 pounds for others.

"Failing is succeeding!" she crowed.

Believe you me, I failed plenty. I'd get to a point where the bar just wouldn't move. The leg refused to extend. The arm was stuck halfway up. By the time I was done, I'd made every major muscle group fail on me.

But now, I have a plan. I have a weights workout that is going to produce some real results. I can already feel the pain that means progress. I cough, and my abs yell at me. I lift my backpack and my biceps start taking names. My butt feels bruised.

That could also be from sitting on my butt too much. Ahem. You know, because all I do is sit in class and study at my desk. This would be the reason for needing the ass-kicking.

I'm finally looking forward to incorporating weights into my workout routine. It's incredible that one personal trainer session could accomplish that, but what can I say? My trainer is worth her weight in gold.

Just don't ask me to lift anything heavier than pen today or I might cry.

There ain't room enough in this chair for the two of us.

2008-08-26T08:23:00.003-04:00

One of the funny social things med school students do is obsess about which chair they sit in. I planned to arrive 30 minutes before my first class on the first day of this semester so that I could claim My Seat. I'm fourth from the right, second row. Last year I was third from the right in the second row, but this year we bumped over to allow a classmate to join our side of the second row. It was quite an adjustment. We spend all day in these seats; the lecturers come to us in our classroom, one after the other. Our seats, in some ways, define us.

The kids in the back don't pay attention or came in late. The kids in the front are gunners. The kids in the middle are in the middle in terms of caring about the lectures. They're pretty reliably there but can thin out at a moment's notice before a disliked lecturer takes the podium.

In the third row is a seat that is still empty. It belonged to the kid who died last year, a classmate who barely got to start med school. I don't know if it was on purpose that his seat was left empty, but I'd like to think so.

Or maybe I'm the only one who is this anal about my seat in class. But just you TRY to take it away from me! I may be a pacifist, but all's fair in love and seats. I'll fight for mine to the ... well, to the lost 30 minutes of sleep. And that's a lot.

Amusing Medical Factoid

2008-08-25T14:16:00.002-04:00

Human tears and mucous can make some bacteria blow up. The bacteria have a little cell wall, and the tears and mucous have an enzyme that breaks it down. Once the bacteria have lost their protection, they fill with water and explode!

Never thought I'd think so highly of mucous. I've been all about the tears ever since finding out that they drain down into your nose, which is why your nose runs when you cry, but I didn't know mucous could also be so cool.

I think this year will be more fun than last year by a long shot.

I'm all set. Except I'm not ready.

2008-08-24T13:06:00.002-04:00

School starts tomorrow. I'm sad, frustrated, angry, irritated, and not at all ready to submit to another year of complete insanity. I've set up my school things. I'm typing this on my new studying table. I'm sitting on my new studying chair. I'm completely prepared.

And not at all ready. The sacrifice of personal life, the complete monopolization of my time and energy, the test anxiety. I'm not ready.

Where the hell is the pause button when you need it?

Parking Pass: A Comedy of Errors

2008-08-21T22:10:00.003-04:00

At my medical school, parking is a complicated thing. When a med school student wants a parking pass she is obligated to haunt the Parking and ID Office. Normal offices keep normal hours: 8 AM to 5 PM is the gold standard. The Parking Office keeps no such hours. It opens in the morning, perhaps at 10 AM, and then remains open and available long enough for the person staffing it to become bored, at which point it closes.

It doesn't close for good, however. There is a carrot dangled in front of the waiting students as they stand in line: "Back in '5' minutes." They actually put a quote around the number five. It may be five minutes, it may be an hour. It's "5" minutes. Is that five human minutes? Galactic minutes? Will they find my body in three centuries, still waiting for my parking pass?

Today I arrived to find the dangerous "5" minute sign up on the door. Since my old pass expired on May 3rd, I decided to wait. Better to wait than to get a ticket, I reasoned. Those tickets are $50 a pop.

Five real minutes passed. I stood and waited. Five more real minutes. Some professors and classmates walked by.

And then I saw him! The guy! Strolling back to the office! Salvation!

And then he told me: the passes are being mailed to us this year. To our homes. Which is something that the university can't seem to figure out about me: WHERE DO I LIVE? Do I live in another city? Do I live here in this town? Where am I? Where should they mail things?

The fun part is that the university frequently picks the wrong address. I get mail months late, important forms from Financial Aid included, because they are rerouted through a defunct address in another part of the state. I have corrected this online, over the phone, and as many ways as I know how, but my old (defunct) address persists in the system.

And they are mailing the parking passes. They'll start ticketing cars Monday. I'm not the only one with these address woes. The system is notoriously bad at figuring out that we all live IN THE TOWN WITH THE MED SCHOOL IN IT.

So now, the stupid system is probably going to mail my parking pass to an address that hasn't been mine in over a year, an address that is 150 miles away. And then they will ticket my car.

Oh, med school. You do find creative ways to try my patience. Not only do you torture me with insane classes and unendurable exams, you also give me petty bureaucratic bullshit to entertain me during my last days off.

Thank you for reminding me why I feel so strongly about you, med school. I had almost forgotten.

The small favors

2008-08-18T08:48:00.002-04:00

I've started to feel the pre-school anxiety. It's natural: I have exactly one week before classes start. One more glorious week of freedom, then studying all the time. And the thing that makes me extra-anxious is that I know I didn't do as well as I could have last year. I can and must do better this year.

The pressure is on. I could chew the tension swirling around my head. It would taste like morning breath after a night of bad sleep.

I have, in fact, stopped sleeping through the night. I wake up at around 4 AM every night, totter around for a little bit, and settle on the living room sofa. Last night was special because I made it back to bed after an hour. Most of the time I just end up sleeping on the sofa instead.

The week before school has always been hard for me, so this isn't unexpected. My sleep deteriorates. My breathing shortens. Every day becomes a study in NOT thinking about school starting.

I've done my best to set myself up for success next year. There's not much more I can do now but wait. Seven more days until school. It rings around in my head and I just want to scream, "ACK! MAKE IT GO AWAY!"

I am not excited for the start of school, but if I haven't gone stark raving mad within the next week, getting to be past the anticipation phase may well be a relief. Thank goodness for small favors, right?