May 21, 2007 5:02pm

I'm feeling nostalgic for something I've never had.

Recently, I've been missing my dad. I've had these moments where I think about how great it would be if he were alive to share it with me. I wish he was around so I could talk to him about something. I wish he was there to see all the awesome cooking I've been doing. I wish I could share a museum or art gallery with him.

But when he was alive, I was never able to do those things with him. He was a difficult man and we didn't always get along. Most conversations ended in an argument, and it was rare that we shared a friendly moment.

So why am I now missing something that I never had? Maybe I just answered my own question.

May 15, 2007 12:59am

A professor at my school died over the weekend. He was young, it was sudden, everyone is in shock.

For some strange reason, nobody will tell us anything about why or how he died. He leaves behind a fiancee and 2 children from a previous marriage.

Yes, it's all very sad. What is annoying me is that students seem to be using this as an excuse to act even more bratty than they usually do. Shouldn't this be one of those moments when you say, "Wow, my life really isn't so bad. Maybe I should start appreciating more."

No, apprently not.

It's just a continuation of their favorite hobby.....bitching.

Bitching about everything and everyone. Bitching about having to be here, bitching about having to be there, bitching about assignments, bitching about tests, bitching about schedules.

They all think they already know better. Hey, how about having an open mind and maybe, just maybe, when someone who has been in practice for the last 15 years tells you something you consider that it just might be worth listening to. Let's just go out on a limb and say that maybe someone who has never set foot in a hospital other than as a visitor really doesn't have a fucking clue what goes on and this is supposed to all be a learning experience for them. Dashing in with all these ideas of "well, this is how it's going to be when I'm there...." will just make you look foolish.

Know what else hate? People who seem to be confrontational or argumentative about everything I say
For example:
Me: I'm having a hard time with this particular subject. I hope I did well on the test.
Other person: I'm sure I did well. This isn't difficult.
Me: Medical school isn't difficult?
OP: No, it's mostly just common sense.
Me: Well, I like going to class
OP: It's just a waste of time.
Me: I'm looking forward to starting rotations and being able to start using some of the skills I've learned
OP: They better not criticize me because I'm not gonna take any of that shit.
Me: Constructive criticism isn't so bad.
OP: I know what I'm doing already. I have a plan. My life fits into a plan. I know where I'm going
Me: Well, I do too, I think. I mean school is going well and it looks like I've got that whole career thing mostly figured out for now.
OP: Well, there's no point in you having a relationship because there's no reason to get married?
Me: Wha?
OP: Well, by the time we finish school you're going to be too old.
Me: Old?
OP: Yeah, I mean, after residency and stuff you'll be like 30.
Me: Right.
OP: Well, I wouldn't want to have, like a retarded kid, and that's what you get after 30.
Me: I've been getting tutoring from Dr.xxx for board review. It's been helpful.
OP: I think he's an arrogant ass.
Me: Well, he's been really helpful.
OP: He thinks he's really smart
Me: Well.....he is, actually.
OP: Yeah, I hate him.

How can you hate someone you don't even know? How can you have a dislike for someone so strong that you can call it hate for someone who you only know from the 1-2 hours/week they have lectured to you? How is it possible to have so much extra energy that you can have an opinion on absolutely EVERYONE and EVERYTHING?!?!?!?!?!

Mind you, this is a abbreviated form of several conversations I have had with someone.

Sigh.

And this someone is a friend.

Not that long ago, I was in a really, really dark place and I hated it. I hated that I couldn't enjoy every second of my life (well, nobody enjoys every second, but you get the idea). I hated that I felt useless. I hated having no energy, no happiness.

And now I'm in a completely different place. I'm excited for every day to come. I look forward to tomorrow, and the next day.

So why the hell am I made to feel guilty? "made" is aprobably the wrong word. I don't think anyone is trying to make me feel guilty. But whenever I don't bitch about everything and everyone, and have a hate for everything and everyone, I have to hear from everyone else about all the stuff they hate and all the people they hate.

Why can't anyone find something positive about their life? Why do the people who really don't have ANYTHING truly negative (illness, major financial problems, family catastrophe, etc) spend so much energy finding things to be angry about.

Walk in the door to find a family member unexpectedly dead. There's something to be angry about. That's life-changing.
Find out you have a brain tumor. Nothing will ever be the same.

But finding out that you have a test scheduled for a time that turns out to be inconvenient for you does not give you reason or the right to then be in a shitty mood for the rest of the week.
Seeing that you didn't do as well on an exam as you thought you did does not make the teacher an evil, evil person who deserves your disdain. If you're required to drive to some out of the way location to see patients with a rural doc one day, and your friend only had to go to the office across the street, it does not mean that there is a vast conspiracy against you. If something in your schedule doesn't work out the way you want it to, you can probably rest assured that it was not done simply to piss you off.

You are not that important. Psychos of the world are plotting assasinations and mass bombings. Nobody at any school where they are responsible for 300+ students in 4 years of classes is sitting at their desk in Mr. Burns fashion and plotting to destroy you by having a mandatory luncheon right at the time when you want to go grocery shopping.

This is true in general life as well. Granted, there are some lousy people in this world. Some of them really are out to get you for one reason or another. Some people just might try to destroy you or your career somehow and for some reason. This is terrible when it happens, but it qualifies as one of those life-changing things that someone has every right in the world to be pissed off about.

The dude who took the parking space that you really wanted at Wal-Mart did not arrive just at that moment solely for the purpose of ruining your day.

And if that's all it takes to ruin your day, then you need to remove the large boot that has been shoved up your ass.

I recommend a colonoscopy. Without sedative.

May 9, 2007 9:10pm

Tonight I officially turned over the Internal Medicine Club to a new president and other officers. I'm a little sad because, being the micro-managing control freak that I am, it means that it's one less thing I am in charge of.

Oh well, the food at the Mexican restaurant where we went for our transition meeting was yummy. Unfortunately, there was a Mariachi band there and it made it a little difficult to talk.

I had a peach margarita, so the noise didn't really bother me much.

I've been starting my heavy board reviewing. Spent some time today at The Wild Bean, a coffee house in town, a studied for several hours. It was nice until about 4:00 when all the high school students got there and it became incredibly loud.

I'm going home to Jersey on the 25th. Yay!

May 3, 2007 2:20am

So tonight I went to a first year student's house for a discussion group I joined on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). It's something I'm really interested in and have been doing quite a bit of personal research on.

My interest stems from not wanting to get sick. I've been given a shitty genetic mixture and I'd like to not end up with the miserable health problems my dad had.

I recently bought a kick ass text book called Integrative Medicine. It outlines all the standard and alternative treatments for various diseases. Unline some other CAM-related books, it has no problem citing actual studies to back up the effectiveness of treatments and also citing those studies which show no effect (or possibly a harmful one) for other treatments. I really like that it integrates what we consider traditional "western" medicine (ie drugs, surgery, etc) with alternative therapies.

But here is why this all makes for an interesting story. Remember I told you all about Nathan giving me crap about my food and recycling and all that other stuff?

Well, tonight I came face to face with what I refuse to become.

I arrived at this house to meet with our CAm discussion group. I was offered cucumber water, which I learned is just plain water with slices of cucumber floating in it. I had expected some sort of weird slurry, but was pleasantly surprised.

I was the only person who didn't take their shoes off at the door. I don't know why. I wasn't entering a mosque, so it never occurred to me that shoes were not allowed or even optional. Granted, I was wearing my Birkenstocks so that might be as close to shoeless as one can get in the Hippie world without actually not wearing shoes.

We all introduced ourselves. I was only 1 of 2 2nd year students. There were also 6 1st year students and 2 faculty members (both clinicians). Everyone gave a brief introduction to why they were interested in this topic. Some things I learned......

Birkenstocks are probably the only thing I share in common with these people
I was likely the only person in the room who has consumed meat (aka animal flesh) in the past 5 years
I was likely the only person who felt like 10 minutes of meditation felt like 3 hours of agonizing silence
Sarcasm is not appreciated by those in the free spirit community
Finding inner peace and being able to project that healing feeling onto your patients requires you to wear gaucho pants.

I will now discuss Gaucho pants. I don't like them. I don't need something to make my legs look fatter than they are. However, I was the only female there not wearing some variation of the Gaucho pant. From what I could tell, very loose fitting pants are necessary to achieve some level of Zen/Scientology/Level IV Dungeon Master excellence. The only practical reason for this that I can figure is that it makes it easier to do that meditation sitting position where your feet are crossed over the opposite thighs and you're sitting up. I don't know who popularized this barbaric position, but I bet they spent some time in Haight-Ashbury.

We meditated. I didn't sit in the funny position, but others did. Every minute or two, I opened one eye at a time and glanced around that side of the room that I could see through the corresponding eye. They were all depp in a trance except for me. It was 10 minutes, but I was just aching to say something. Maybe silence makes me uncomfortable. Maybe I was amused by the funny stomach noises coming from the guy across the table from me.

We then made a list of topics we would like to cover and determined that we would pick a new topic for each week. The vote was that next week's topic will be on the Macrobiotic Diet.

I'll keep going until I leave for the summer. It's interesting and will make for a fun social experiment. :-)

I am crazy tired right now. Goodnight.

May 1, 2007 5:44pm

Had a wonderful weekend with Roger here. We went up to Buckhannon where I'm moving this summer to start my rotations. I signed the lease for my house. On the ride there and back, I educated him on some fine American music he was never exposed to. One just can't go a lifetime without hearing some Miles Davis and John Coltrane, really.

Monday night, Nathan came over to study OPP. This made for an interesting night when he saw all my new and improved organic, toxin-free stuff and the text book on Integrative Medicine that I bought.

He put his head in his hands and said, "You've gone liberal blue on me! You've gone liberal! I can't believe this."

Well, that's not true. But it was funny seeing him freak out. Especially since our friendship began in Anatomy lab when he looked over our dead body and asked, "Are you a flaming liberal?" I said no, I wasn't. From that point on, we've gotten along great.

I'm trying my best to not be annoying to others in my new green phase. I remember when everyone I knew was either on Weight Watchers or the Atkins Diet. Going out to dinner was a nightmare because they all wanted to tell me how many points my food was worth, or how many carbs I was eating. I really didn't care, and I found it annoying that someone felt the need to tell me that.

So, I'm keeping it to myself (except, of course, with Nathan, for whom it seems to be a point of irritation and, therefore, entertainment for me).

That aside, I wanted to mention a point that BBM brought up in a comment. She's right, all this crap is expensive. It sucks. I don't get it. Well, I mean, I kinda do. There's less of it and less of a demand for it so it's more expensive. The only way organic and hormone free food would become cheaper is if it became the only way to produce food. But right now, commercial farms rule the industry and they can manage to produce a massive amount of food, while smaller farms have to make less at a time.

And I don't know how a family manages to afford it. For me it's not too hard. It's just me here so the amount of food (and cleaning products, and paper products, etc) that I need to buy is rather limited. Since I pay more for the stuff, I am more conscious of what I am spending (a good thing) and I try to not let things spoil and waste (also a good thing). But I don't know how this would be managable for a family that is already counting every penny. An extra $2 for a half gallon of milk is a lot when you go through it in a day. It doesn't make that much difference when I buy a quart at a time and it takes me over a week to finish it.

It sucks, but unless there is some massive revolution in our eating and buying practices, I don't see it getting cheaper.

Just like it's really convenient for a movie star to buy a pimped out hybrid, when the average person is just hoping that the muffler on their 89 Toyota with 200,000 miles on it doesn't fall off.