Arg.

I was just going to write something really amazing, but my stupid pager is being stupid again. I just picked it up, because I brought it in Monday for being stupid. I thought it was smart now, but nope! Still stupid.

AHH!

#*$PMS*(^&#

I'm tired and I'm hungry, and I don't like my upper level, and my patient keeps crying (why, oh, why do people feel the need to tell me all their troubles?!) and my other patient smells like poo, and I have to go to a stupid 3 hour training, and my head hurts and I have NO ONE TO COMPLAIN TO.

Ppbbblllltttt.

To Do Lists

This weekend, I made an all-encompassing "To Do" list, with the dream of accomplishing everything on it before Monday. Pipe dreams, of course, but I had to give it a shot. Knowing that one particular friend would read the list, I included the task: "Get a Date" just to be funny. Then there was a party Saturday night, and I decided to at least try to check that one off. (Me trying is generally not that effective) Anyway, I turned my full flirty force on two different lucky guys from our class. Totally harmless, and a lot of fun, really...

So, today we started new rotations - I'm in neuro, on the stroke service for two weeks, then on general neuro. (by the way, for anyone keeping track, 2 of the 3 people who hate me have completely DISAPPEARED. I SWEAR I had nothing to do with it!!!) The two aforementioned boys (men? am I that old yet?) are on a different team - together. They were on rounds this afternoon, and came to the floor I'm on. I was then faced with a dilemma which I have never experienced before: how to flirt with two guys at once. Or really, since we were technically at work, and full-force flirting is not really highly encouraged, how to not let either of them think that I was paying more attention to the other. It was quite a sticky situation. I felt like Marcia Brady. With curly hair and glasses. You know what I discovered, though? It's kinda fun! I think I should just keep up the flirting, and never actually check that task off the list...

I'm going on a cruise! Today begins the "Cruise Body Quest" That should include going to the Y to work out, but...I don't wanna!! I'm tired, I slept horribly last night, I need to be in by 6:30 tomorrow, and it is already past my 6pm rule. (Home by 6? Y by 7) So...I'll stick with the less food leg of CBQ, and hopefully I'll have time for the gym leg tomorrow. Is there another leg?

I haven't seen FNI in many, many days. Otherwise, I could potentially have 3 males to balance. Oh what a topsy-turvy world!

Movie Review

I love movies.

Just saw The Terminal starring Tom Hanks this weekend. It was a fantastic movie. I really enjoyed it, even if it was a full 128 minutes long (plus the 20 or so previews our theater insists on showing - 5 previews: good; 8-10 + commercials: just too many). I just discovered that this story was loosely based on a real person! Some guy has been living in the Charles de Gualle airport in Paris since 1988. I was 10 in 1988. Don't believe me? I'm not quite sure if I do... but check it out here.

Ah...I fear my internet may be about to crash on me... And I have dinner coming up, so alas, I must depart.

I'm going on a cruise in August! Yippeeeee!

The Rebellion Begins!!!

All technology is revolting against me! First my pager, then my computer. I'm a little frightened of going home to see what disastrous events will greet me there.

Argh.

Thankfully, all I needed for the test was a #2 pencil. I wonder what would really happen if I took a test with a #3 pencil...

Work-a-holics 'R Us

I have never understood how people in 'business' (generic term for any industry that I know nothing about) could spend 80 hours a week at work - it is just paper and numbers and junk. At least that's my perception of it - I don't want to offend anyone...Gretchen... :) I had felt the same way about doctors, too. Why not just leave at the end of the day - it will all be there tomorrow, after all. After a mere 8 weeks of medicine, I feel differently... It is really bothering me that I don't know what is going on with my patients. I actually considered going on rounds again this morning, even though yesterday was our last day. We're working with people's lives here. We have so much responsibility. (Well, not me personally, but the team does) Already, my own needs seem less important than figuring out why a patient is in renal failure, or making sure that another patient's hemoglobin rises appropriately after blood transfusion. As with everything in medicine, there has to be a balance... Someday, I'm sure I'll find it.

New medical term I learned this week: "squirrel." Refers to a patient who is faking pain or other symptoms. We had a squirrel on service this week. She seemed like she was really having symptoms (nausea/vomiting and severe abdominal pain) even though tests showed nothing. After they kept her NPO for two days, she miraculously felt better.

I have a test this afternoon. Blech.

Yesterday, I was sitting outside Jason's Deli waiting for Susan. One of the high school-aged employees came out for a smoke and a phone call. She told her friend on the phone that she'd been waiting over an hour for a cigarette, and was so riled up that she'd actually slapped a fellow employee. Slapped! Because she hadn't had a cigarette! Does she NOT see something wrong with that? Good grief, people. If not having something makes you a raving lunatic, maybe you should try to give it up. Grr. I wanted to slap her myself! But, then, it had been a while since I'd had caffeine... ;)

Rambling, rambling, rambling...

If I Only Had a Brain...

That song just popped into my head. Ominous for my test Friday? I hope not.

Time to check out. Not that I'm leaving. Of course not. It's CALL NIGHT!!! And we have room for 9 patients. That's after being fully-capped for like 3 weeks. Ugh. Well, at least my last call night on gen med won't be boring.

Oh, I would tell you why
The ocean's near the shore
I could think of things I never thunk before
And then I'd sit

and think some more...

I would not be just a nuffin'
My head all full of stuffin'
My heart all full of pain
I would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If I only had a brain


IF ONLY!!!

A message for a new tomorrow

Former President Bush is to jump from an airplane tomorrow. Twice. (Obviously, he's parachuting, not taking Kevorkian's ethics to the skies.) His mission is to send out the message that "just because you're 80, that doesn't mean you can't do fun stuff or interesting things." Fun stuff or interesting things. I wonder how many 80 year olds are interested in parachuting? I mean... I am, but I'm 26.

Anyway. It's 11:30, and I have to be back here at 5:30, so I'm going to go find out if I can go home yet.

I tried (and missed) my first lumbar puncture today!

Confessions of a Psycho

Okay, so yesterday was my birthday. Yay for me, blah, blah, I'm old and all that jazz.

Now to the real matter at hand: the question of my sanity.

So. My very first week as a third year medical student, I worked with a team that was entirely male (11 males and me on rounds...odd experience) They were only there for a week, but during that one week, I let myself become slightly obsessed with one of the males on the team. The only reason for this was that he was single. To this day, he is the only single resident/intern/attending that I have worked with - male or female. Well, there was one other guy, but I'm 95% sure that he's gay, so he doesn't count.

Anyway. The intern. He has kind of a fun name (which I'm not going to post online - I'm not that dumb), so it is kind of fun to repeat it in my head. Much as one might repeat the phrase "Hearken to the bananas soliloquize rhapsodically." I was sad when said fun-named intern left the team. He was a nice guy, after all. And single, which appears to be my only qualification at times...

I knew that I could potentially see him around again, though. He was doing outpatient stuff for a month, then would be back at the hospital. I didn't know where, though. Then. My first day on general medicine, fun-named intern's brother is on one of the other medicine teams (he's a fourth year med student). I overhear that FNI is working in the MICU. Since then I've seen FNI's fun name on several charts of patients that get sent to us from MICU. But I had no occasion to actually go to the MICU to take care of some spy-team spying.

THEN. Yesterday, one of the nicest patient's I have had went in for a colonoscopy to look for GI bleeding. During this, the doctor managed to tear a hole in her colon. Yeah. Now it's bleeding. Darn... I feel very bad for this patient - BUT - guess where she is right now? Go on! Guess! That's right. She is in the MICU! I just went to see her. AND!!! FNI was there! I couldn't come up with an excuse to go talk to him, and I'm not 100% sure that he saw me...but. It was still fun anyway. :) I went to the cafeteria to get a Diet Pepsi to celebrate. Though...after more than a month... I'm starting to think that maybe I should shift my attentions to FNIB. That's fun-named intern's brother, who also, incidentally, has a fun name.

Sane or no? You be the judge. I'm off hearkening to those lovely bananas.

Odd things

1. Boys.

2. How does the ink know to move up in a ball point pen? Is it all gravity?

3. My sister. Actually: both of my sisters.

4. Time.

5. Boys.

6. Life and people.

7. People that start smoking when they're adults.

8. Me, of course.

9. Ice.

10. Boys.

Comical interlude or just annoying wait?

I'm waiting for check out rounds. So far everyone has shown up. Just not at the same time. They peek their head in, then leave when they see that no one else is here. This has been going on for an HOUR. I'm starting to get annoyed. Maybe I'll leave.

Match.com

A personal statement I would never respond to:

I am someone with an inquisitive mind who views life as a course of daring adventure. blech! Being open to new things and striving to live life to the fullest is very important to me, as I still firmly believe that life is essentially what you make out of your finite time in this world and I believe that was a horrible run-on sentence that MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. I constantly try to learn something (both from good and bad good and bad whats? oysters?) and like to immerse myself into deep philosophical debates in other words: I think I'm smarter than almost everyone and generally connect well with those who crave for deep meanings of life and understand that there is more to life than making the ends meet from one peroid to another in other words: I'm poor. I am open minded and don't want to preclude anybody I'd give this guy ten dollars if he could actually give me the definition of "preclude". I believe we all offer something to learn from each other in a certain way for instance: I could teach this boy some grammar. If you are looking for an adventurer with an eclectic range of interests and zest for life as long as he's ZEST-fully clean, I would love to hear from you. Thank you! You're welcome!

Week the Last

Tomorrow is the first day of my last week as a 25-year-old. I liked being 25. It went by awfully quickly, though, and I feel like I missed most of it. 26 is freaking old. I'm going to be in my late 20s soon. Aren't I supposed to have more...stuff? Houses and cars and beach-front property? And...kids and all that jazz? I don't feel old enough to be that old. Not that 26 is old. It is just older than I feel. I feel 17. That was a good age! But then I'd be like Doogie Howser or something. (Which, by the way, was just added to TVland's line-up)

What is the appropriate way to spend one's last week of 25-dom? Any suggestions? And what is the best way to usher in the onset of 26? My plans right now consist of me singing Happy Birthday to myself. With a cupcake. And a candle. And maybe a margarita. Or a Diet Pepsi.

Good-bye-oh O-hi-oh

Ahh...the end of a three day weekend. How sad. I went to Ohio! I'd never really been before (besides the Cincinnati airport). I was in Dayton visiting a friend who goes to school there. Here is a short list of the things I did:

1. Saw three goats get their heads stuck in a fence (don't worry - we saved them!) and had some great ice cream.

2. Saw Supersize Me, a very entertaining documentary about a guy who goes on a McDiet (all McDonald's, all the time). I definitely recommend it. The movie, not the diet.

3. Went on a bathroom shopping spree. Think pink.

4. Threw my back out by sneezing.

5. Ate at Skyline Chili, an Ohio original.

6. Learned that the Wright brothers did all their work in Dayton, Ohio and merely used Kitty Hawk, NC as a good spot for wind. Also saw bunches of neat old planes at the United States Air Force Museum.

7. Saw The Day After Tomorrow. I love movies like this, even if they are formulaic (i.e. divorced couple realizes that they still really love each other when faced with a huge meteor/earthquake/ice age; rogue scientist gets to show that they were, indeed, correct in predicting the demolition of mankind; etc.)

8. Discovered that West Virginia is quite a beautiful state.

9. Ate a funnel cake. I love funnel cakes...

10. Drove for a totoal of about 15 hours in three days. Cool. I love my truck. It still doesn't have a good name, though. I kind of call it "Silver," like the Lone Ranger's horse. It is kind of boring, but does work...

My back hurts, and I'm tired and hungry, and this list was only going to be three things long, but then I get started, and can't stop!!!

I do have a pager again, in case there is anyone out there just dying to page me.

I'm leaving now.