See title. Goodness.
So, sorry about that last one folks. I contemplated deleting it and as I said at the intro to that post, didn't even initially post it, but then left it for the sake of honesty and completeness I suppose?
I asked my mom for her opinion, and it was like, med school/residency is the ups and downs, which is a point for leaving it up. Then I'm like, this is a very specific situation for which it's hard to imagine anyone looking for advice. Grenada's rock fever with study darkness with fulminant breakdown? Sure. That's at least half the student body and everyone that has a medical school related meltdown feels like they're alone in it and everyone else is succeeding. Same with residency. Normal stuff. We laugh about it now at work because we were all in various stages of it without knowing the others were suffering it. Doctors seem to be bred with a specific blend of arrogance and self doubt that starts a spiral of "I'm smart and med school/residency shouldn't be hard. I am struggling. Therefore, I am stupid and everyone around me is smart and ohmigod."
This peculiar blend of impotent rage I feel intermittently in this really specific situation? Not so much relatable. At least I hope not.
But enough of that. Tonight was really really good. We had a mini spontaneous surgical pathology girls' night bitch-a-thon, and it was a bunch of fun with great people that did, I admit, involve some poking fun of surgeons. Lighthearted, I assure you. My mom sent me a hard drive that I got today that has all of my diving pictures and California pictures and the like salvaged so I did not lose those, and that was really incredible. The response of you guys, as I've mentioned, has been fabulous, and it helps me quite a bit. Surgical pathology ends in three working days (but who's counting) and I'm pretty excited about it. While being the bread and butter stuff, it's really work intensive, so it'll be great to have a break working more normal hours. I am getting a lot more of the diagnoses and have a general idea of logic and workflow, which I've mentioned before.
Good stuff. I'm planning a trend of increasingly positive blog posts to follow, but right now, I'm crazy tired. Night all.
Showing posts with label bad days. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bad days. Show all posts
Jan 28, 2012
Jan 27, 2012
Good few days, bad few days
Okay, I wrote this yesterday night when I was in a *really* dark place, so I almost didn't post it, but figured it's honest, so I'd go ahead. I'm feeling better now, I am. It's almost the weekend; people are being nice to me, I pulled doctor-card on a surgeon and John Legend got properly replaced by Nina Simone, but DAMN, was I feeling nasty yesterday, so:
So here's the reverse.
Call it PMS. Call it delayed anger. Call it whatever, I'm feeling it. Maybe I'm just feeling tired, and I'm at the culmination of two months of surgical pathology...
I've been getting really nasty sleep lately, hence the 1 AM post, worse than usual. The week after the fire, it was nightmares and anxiety dreams, and I could pinpoint and be like "Yes, that dream I had where the insurance company repossessed the rental car and yelled at me was likely stress related to this situation" but lately it's just like "Wake up for no reason at 5 AM sucka!"
So I try to wind down again, and I miss lecture AGAIN and I wonder how my eval is going to go with all that crap missing, and I struggle to make it from new home in new car on time to at least get my duties done.
This morning, I got my first speeding ticket since I left for Grenada. My fault, of course. I overslept (again) because I couldn't sleep (again) and was racing to work (again) so I could make sure I was there for frozen sections and I got busted.
The whole where are you going in such a hurry, and I don't even really make eye contact with people or emote anymore because I DON'T CARE, so the second I hit "I'm a doctor and..." I get the instant cop-black-out, the "rich doctor", the "I'm the problem with health care" and nothing else I have to say matters like "my pager is going off" and "I'm in scrubs" and "This car costs less than yours" and "The address on my license is no longer valid because that address burned down" (he asked if my license info was accurate, and when I said 'no, it was burned', he got busy writing down... my old address.
Fine, ticket, whatever. My insurance company needs more money anyway. They just took a 13 thousand dollar loss.
I was following a car most of the way to work (before the ticket) with a bumper sticker that said "God doesn't believe in atheists". I haven't put similarly anti stickers on my car because A... I haven't had a car that's lasted more than 3 months, and B... people who put stickers like that on their cars are assholes and I'm trying not to be an asshole.
Things God believes in in Charleston:
-Shooting a 5 year old in the face
-Burning down three houses and killing a cat
-Letting an arsonist go free for NINE YEARS with dozens of fires
-More unsolved homicides than Dexter has to clean up in Miami
Things God doesn't believe in in Charleston:
-Me
Cool, we've nailed God's priorities. God doesn't have to like me. Lots of people don't like me. God seems to like the Patriots. I'm thinking of putting *that* sticker on my car, but I'm guessing someone would then cause yet *another* insurance hit on it if I did.
This whole asshole thing has been eating at me. When I got my new car, I went asshole mode because I was honestly so livid about having to shop again that I didn't care who I offended, and in doing so, managed to circumvent the type of people that would try to eke an extra two grand out of an arson victim.
It's a weird title to wear. As I left the parking garage today, having had a last minute surgeon dumb of specimens that kept me three hours late, I decided that in lieu of jumping off said parking garage, which crossed my mind, I would put in one song on my iphone... put it on repeat, and BLAST it. just freaking BLAST it.
That song turned out to be Stereo by John Legend. Is it a good song? I don't know. Probably kind of. Do I like it? I don't know. Does it have a really loud obnoxious baseline that you can jar the city with for no other reason than you're an asshole? Yes it does.
So I did that. No "I hope I'm not bothering anyone" or that crap, just one song, on repeat, for 25 minutes. Loud enough to hurt. Loud enough for people at home to have a brief moment of irritation and rage and assume that I'm a 16 year old ethnic kid outside, and I can say "I'm causing that feeling in you because now I'm the one with power and you're not, and I'm tired of being nice".
Amazing, that is. There's a truly almost zen moment where you can look at everyone else and go "Hmmm... nope, don't care".
That seems to lead to enlightenment or flipping out. I'm not sure which path I'm on
Our landlord is being fined by the city to tear down his eyesore. No one has contacted us. No one seems the least bit curious as to why we'd want to see if we had anything left. I found out our landlord is trying to tear it down by hand because of our local yellow journal. People are in the comments section saying "Just bulldoze it!!!" That's OUR STUFF, motherfuckers, why don't you go bulldoze your pets? Why don't you go bulldoze your face. John Legend in your house, how's that? Like the bassline on that?
It's just stuff! It's OUR stuff. Clothes and pictures and memories and niceties and handiness and long nights talking and playing Mario Kart stuff! Just stuff. Not just their stuff.
Did you have renter's insurance? NO. I did not have renter's insurance, so fuck me. This is the first question, which they might as well rephrase into "Is this your fault?
Wow, that sucks, well your parents' homeowners...
WHAT DID I JUST SAY?
"Mmep. Oh"
People are being different levels of helpful. There's pure help: "Hi, here's a hug/check/gift card. I'm sorry this happened. See ya" There's the Monday morning quarterbackers.. Gods are there... why didn't you get insurance? Why didn't you put your external hard drive in a safety deposit box? Why did you live in the ghetto? Why were you speeding? Why didn't you set your alarm sooner??
That voice already lives in my head. It's called "Crippling self doubt" and it's an old war buddy of mine that likes to sleep on the fold out. Crippling self doubt doesn't need your help. We go WAY back. Crippling self doubt has been with me from the start, and you have no hopes of taking his place, so you might as well just put yourself on Team Supportive and stop giving me advice that isn't advice. "You should have" isn't advice. It's superiority seeking.
I'm half contemplating hulking out at my court date, since now the arsonist and I both get one, but I don't want to go to jail because my toilet wine always lacks complexity but there's a huge part of me that says "Everything in my life has turned to shit since I moved to your town. Transport me somewhere safer, like back to Brooklyn."
But that's that, I suppose.
So here's the reverse.
Call it PMS. Call it delayed anger. Call it whatever, I'm feeling it. Maybe I'm just feeling tired, and I'm at the culmination of two months of surgical pathology...
I've been getting really nasty sleep lately, hence the 1 AM post, worse than usual. The week after the fire, it was nightmares and anxiety dreams, and I could pinpoint and be like "Yes, that dream I had where the insurance company repossessed the rental car and yelled at me was likely stress related to this situation" but lately it's just like "Wake up for no reason at 5 AM sucka!"
So I try to wind down again, and I miss lecture AGAIN and I wonder how my eval is going to go with all that crap missing, and I struggle to make it from new home in new car on time to at least get my duties done.
This morning, I got my first speeding ticket since I left for Grenada. My fault, of course. I overslept (again) because I couldn't sleep (again) and was racing to work (again) so I could make sure I was there for frozen sections and I got busted.
The whole where are you going in such a hurry, and I don't even really make eye contact with people or emote anymore because I DON'T CARE, so the second I hit "I'm a doctor and..." I get the instant cop-black-out, the "rich doctor", the "I'm the problem with health care" and nothing else I have to say matters like "my pager is going off" and "I'm in scrubs" and "This car costs less than yours" and "The address on my license is no longer valid because that address burned down" (he asked if my license info was accurate, and when I said 'no, it was burned', he got busy writing down... my old address.
Fine, ticket, whatever. My insurance company needs more money anyway. They just took a 13 thousand dollar loss.
I was following a car most of the way to work (before the ticket) with a bumper sticker that said "God doesn't believe in atheists". I haven't put similarly anti stickers on my car because A... I haven't had a car that's lasted more than 3 months, and B... people who put stickers like that on their cars are assholes and I'm trying not to be an asshole.
Things God believes in in Charleston:
-Shooting a 5 year old in the face
-Burning down three houses and killing a cat
-Letting an arsonist go free for NINE YEARS with dozens of fires
-More unsolved homicides than Dexter has to clean up in Miami
Things God doesn't believe in in Charleston:
-Me
Cool, we've nailed God's priorities. God doesn't have to like me. Lots of people don't like me. God seems to like the Patriots. I'm thinking of putting *that* sticker on my car, but I'm guessing someone would then cause yet *another* insurance hit on it if I did.
This whole asshole thing has been eating at me. When I got my new car, I went asshole mode because I was honestly so livid about having to shop again that I didn't care who I offended, and in doing so, managed to circumvent the type of people that would try to eke an extra two grand out of an arson victim.
It's a weird title to wear. As I left the parking garage today, having had a last minute surgeon dumb of specimens that kept me three hours late, I decided that in lieu of jumping off said parking garage, which crossed my mind, I would put in one song on my iphone... put it on repeat, and BLAST it. just freaking BLAST it.
That song turned out to be Stereo by John Legend. Is it a good song? I don't know. Probably kind of. Do I like it? I don't know. Does it have a really loud obnoxious baseline that you can jar the city with for no other reason than you're an asshole? Yes it does.
So I did that. No "I hope I'm not bothering anyone" or that crap, just one song, on repeat, for 25 minutes. Loud enough to hurt. Loud enough for people at home to have a brief moment of irritation and rage and assume that I'm a 16 year old ethnic kid outside, and I can say "I'm causing that feeling in you because now I'm the one with power and you're not, and I'm tired of being nice".
Amazing, that is. There's a truly almost zen moment where you can look at everyone else and go "Hmmm... nope, don't care".
That seems to lead to enlightenment or flipping out. I'm not sure which path I'm on
Our landlord is being fined by the city to tear down his eyesore. No one has contacted us. No one seems the least bit curious as to why we'd want to see if we had anything left. I found out our landlord is trying to tear it down by hand because of our local yellow journal. People are in the comments section saying "Just bulldoze it!!!" That's OUR STUFF, motherfuckers, why don't you go bulldoze your pets? Why don't you go bulldoze your face. John Legend in your house, how's that? Like the bassline on that?
It's just stuff! It's OUR stuff. Clothes and pictures and memories and niceties and handiness and long nights talking and playing Mario Kart stuff! Just stuff. Not just their stuff.
Did you have renter's insurance? NO. I did not have renter's insurance, so fuck me. This is the first question, which they might as well rephrase into "Is this your fault?
Wow, that sucks, well your parents' homeowners...
WHAT DID I JUST SAY?
"Mmep. Oh"
People are being different levels of helpful. There's pure help: "Hi, here's a hug/check/gift card. I'm sorry this happened. See ya" There's the Monday morning quarterbackers.. Gods are there... why didn't you get insurance? Why didn't you put your external hard drive in a safety deposit box? Why did you live in the ghetto? Why were you speeding? Why didn't you set your alarm sooner??
That voice already lives in my head. It's called "Crippling self doubt" and it's an old war buddy of mine that likes to sleep on the fold out. Crippling self doubt doesn't need your help. We go WAY back. Crippling self doubt has been with me from the start, and you have no hopes of taking his place, so you might as well just put yourself on Team Supportive and stop giving me advice that isn't advice. "You should have" isn't advice. It's superiority seeking.
I'm half contemplating hulking out at my court date, since now the arsonist and I both get one, but I don't want to go to jail because my toilet wine always lacks complexity but there's a huge part of me that says "Everything in my life has turned to shit since I moved to your town. Transport me somewhere safer, like back to Brooklyn."
But that's that, I suppose.
Jan 17, 2012
A good few days
I'm kind of cautious about characterizing my days, because there are some spectacularly good ones to spectacularly bad ones and it's not always easy to tell which they are.
This weekend, new Roomie made chili qualified as "f'ing amazing". I got my Xbox, which was my "thank goodness this was belated" Christmas gift, so we set up with work friends and played Just Dance 3 for an embarrassingly long time. Which was awesome. Last night, Rock Star contacted me to see if I wanted one of his guitars since my beloved Takamine solid top got turned into firewood, so I met him downtown for tea and now I have a guitar so I can start work on the "Ratboy blew up my economy car" blues. It's gonna have four chords, all of which are 7s, and start with "I woke up this morning". Wait for it to show up on Pandora soon.
I've been putting off and rehashing an HLA presentation for about two months now. Pathology is difficult and studious and such. Blood bank is confusing, immediately consequential, and has a lot of letters and numbers. HLA beats up blood bank every day and hangs it on a locker by its underwear.
So I had a five minute presentation that was killing me. I did a first version of it about a month ago, which was extraordinarily bad, and I didn't know any of the case details. I got last minute belled out of doing it, and then was hacking some stuff together (which also sucked) which then got burned up by the fire. This last one I did on an extended weekend sleep deprivathon that was more my MO in college.
Unless my colleagues are being really forgiving, which is likely, it didn't suck. Despite my rambling it on 4 hours of sleep. So then I had sign out, but my attending got detained at the main hospital for over an hour and I didn't have many cases anyway...
So I propped up a chair to put my legs on in the sign out room and threw my sweater over my face. The accessioner pops her head in at some point where I'm halfway to Edward Norton's house, and I startle up a bit and act... I dunno, normal?
Her comment? "You know these lights have a dimmer switch?" and dims them.
Guys, that is as close to authorized naptime as you can get without having a yoga mat on the floor.
So nap at work. Frigging awesome. And almost no real work to do in the afternoon so I could get caught up on my other stuff. It's going to get me back tomorrow though. I'm getting all the breast cases in the land.
What else... music at work is interesting because a lot of us listen to music while we're grossing because we can. I'm included in that. It gets weird when we need an attending to come help orient a specimen, but we don't turn the music off because I am not laying a greasy Hep C liver covered finger on my precious iPhone.
Leading to this:
Attending: Okay... the stitch is here, so... this.. yes, this is anterior
Shirley Manson: I'm waiting... I'm waiting.... I'm waiting
Attending: So if we whip this around like this, I'm thinking this is the uncinate process
Shirley Manson: I'm waiiiiiiiting. I'm waiiiting.
Attending: And we can dissect the pancreatic duct from this axis.
Shirley Manson: I'm waiiiiiiiiiiiiiting
Attending: She's waiting.
Greasy finger exceptions are for F*** You, White America, and ANYTHING by Tenacious D. Jack Black is killing me. An hour of Pearl Jam goes by but the second I need an attending, I start to hear the beginning of "Ya don't always haveta f*** her hard..." and I'm going "Excuse me! Hold on... gloves off... fast forward!" "What was that?" "Nothing!"
I do really like my new car guys. It's all RRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrRRREEEEEEEEE when I take off in traffic.
This weekend, new Roomie made chili qualified as "f'ing amazing". I got my Xbox, which was my "thank goodness this was belated" Christmas gift, so we set up with work friends and played Just Dance 3 for an embarrassingly long time. Which was awesome. Last night, Rock Star contacted me to see if I wanted one of his guitars since my beloved Takamine solid top got turned into firewood, so I met him downtown for tea and now I have a guitar so I can start work on the "Ratboy blew up my economy car" blues. It's gonna have four chords, all of which are 7s, and start with "I woke up this morning". Wait for it to show up on Pandora soon.
I've been putting off and rehashing an HLA presentation for about two months now. Pathology is difficult and studious and such. Blood bank is confusing, immediately consequential, and has a lot of letters and numbers. HLA beats up blood bank every day and hangs it on a locker by its underwear.
So I had a five minute presentation that was killing me. I did a first version of it about a month ago, which was extraordinarily bad, and I didn't know any of the case details. I got last minute belled out of doing it, and then was hacking some stuff together (which also sucked) which then got burned up by the fire. This last one I did on an extended weekend sleep deprivathon that was more my MO in college.
Unless my colleagues are being really forgiving, which is likely, it didn't suck. Despite my rambling it on 4 hours of sleep. So then I had sign out, but my attending got detained at the main hospital for over an hour and I didn't have many cases anyway...
So I propped up a chair to put my legs on in the sign out room and threw my sweater over my face. The accessioner pops her head in at some point where I'm halfway to Edward Norton's house, and I startle up a bit and act... I dunno, normal?
Her comment? "You know these lights have a dimmer switch?" and dims them.
Guys, that is as close to authorized naptime as you can get without having a yoga mat on the floor.
So nap at work. Frigging awesome. And almost no real work to do in the afternoon so I could get caught up on my other stuff. It's going to get me back tomorrow though. I'm getting all the breast cases in the land.
What else... music at work is interesting because a lot of us listen to music while we're grossing because we can. I'm included in that. It gets weird when we need an attending to come help orient a specimen, but we don't turn the music off because I am not laying a greasy Hep C liver covered finger on my precious iPhone.
Leading to this:
Attending: Okay... the stitch is here, so... this.. yes, this is anterior
Shirley Manson: I'm waiting... I'm waiting.... I'm waiting
Attending: So if we whip this around like this, I'm thinking this is the uncinate process
Shirley Manson: I'm waiiiiiiiting. I'm waiiiting.
Attending: And we can dissect the pancreatic duct from this axis.
Shirley Manson: I'm waiiiiiiiiiiiiiting
Attending: She's waiting.
Greasy finger exceptions are for F*** You, White America, and ANYTHING by Tenacious D. Jack Black is killing me. An hour of Pearl Jam goes by but the second I need an attending, I start to hear the beginning of "Ya don't always haveta f*** her hard..." and I'm going "Excuse me! Hold on... gloves off... fast forward!" "What was that?" "Nothing!"
I do really like my new car guys. It's all RRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrRRREEEEEEEEE when I take off in traffic.
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