Pontificum Scriblerus

Oh insomnia, old friend, how I've not missed you...

Looks like after 3 whole days of summer, we're back in November - but in September. Absolutely black skies are spewing forth bucketfuls of water, and all is sad and dreary. My long awaited "friend" finally arrived (read: I got my wretched period, 2 months too late). As tends to happen, it brought with it cramps, backache and epic moodswings. On the other hand, "Epic boobs" are back to normal. Thus, a new cycle begins. Tamoxifen is in the mail. If I get a PE or have a stroke, you'll know, because I'll stop posting. Otherwise, I'll chronicle every pimple, every gained pound and, recent moodswings notwithstanding, every future moodswing, as I expect to have many more.

I'm starting to fear my commute. Forget the two car accidents, that is not why I fear it. It's because I do some of my worst thinking in the car while I'm driving. It's a half hour to forty five minutes of me versus my brain, and the brain usually wins. Yesterday, I had this fleeting thought: I can't wait to switch to my next rotation. And along with this thought, I imagined my old hospital, and a whole other service. A general medicine service. Then, something spoke up and reminded me that I'm doing GI, and there will be no switching. So, I tried to picture myself as a practicing gastroenterologist, and I realized that I have no picture of it in my head. At all. Will I be seeing patients in clinic? Will I be scoping 2 days a week at a surgi-center? It all felt completely alien. Even as a resident, when I was DYING to get into GI, I had an idea of what I would do when I fisnished: I thought I'd do liver, and deal with cirrhotic sickies. But that d...

In other news, I went to my mom's girls' birthday party today, and one of her friends got stung by a bee. She was sitting next to me. First, she developed a huge welt at the bite site. Then, she developed a diffuse urticarial rash like I've never seen. I was sitting next to her, so she showed me. I went in search of Benadryl, but found only Neosporin. Then, she started to complain that her lips were feeling numb and swelling - which they were. Amazingly enough, another one of my mom's friends was actually this one's real-life PCP! Plus, there were two nurses present, both VNAs, who had bags of medical stuff in their cars, which materialized promptly. There was blood pressure taking, and listening for wheezing happening on the stoop in my mom's kitchen. Soon enough, a medrol dose pack materialized as well. It's good to be connected. I offered a rectal exam, but no one took me up on it.

I have been toying around with many creative ideas about what to write next. For example, I was going to discuss the diurnal nature of my moodiness, stealing Kaverin's idea of the Hourglass man - losing my shit slowly throughout the day such that by night I'm a downright mess, and overnight am forced to stand on my head to get back to normal. There were other ideas, just as interesting - to me, at least, but this blog is about me, so... But all I can think about right now are my boobs!! And this is not some sort of auto-erotic or exhibitionist effort. And if boobs make people uncomfortable, don't read further. This is all about biology. Inflated and heavy, like water-filled ballons ready to pop, they are exerting compressive force on my ribcage, causing restrictive physiology, which makes me short of breath walking up the stairs. Clocking in at two pounds each (I imagine. I mean, I tried to weigh them, but it's difficult), they're causing painful shoulder and ...

I know that the last post was hasty and very hatefully negative and childish, and has been here for days. I keep opening "new post" windows, but unfortunately, I'm afraid I don't have much good material with which to fill them. That is not to say that there aren't thoughts teeming in my head, because my head has been ready to tip over and splash out in the last few days. It's just that I have been a hysterical tachycardic ball of nerves and anxiety since that Thursday morning, more or less, and I have just not been able to formulate a sentence that makes sense. I've been driven to tears every single day in the last 4 days, sometimes twice in a day, leading me to be really unfair to everyone around me on the one hand, doubting my everything and expecting to be fired on the other, and really hating just every thing and every one on the third. Sometimes, like when I try to wrap my head around various injustices and inconveniences, I get this angry feeli...

I'm feeling black and nasty. So, I hate everything. This is a list of things I hate this morning: 0.5 My messy dirty cat-hairy apartment 0.75 My hairdryer 1. Commuting 2. Traffic 3. Roadwork 4. Road cops 5. SUVs 6. Cramps in my abdomen 7. Facebook 8. Thursday because it's not Friday 9. Prospects of being on call this weekend 10. Parking under construction and not enough space 11. iTrip and poor connection resulting in staticky music 12. My car's crappy suspension and bumpy roads that bruise my kidneys 13. Arctic AC 14. Outpatient procedures 15. Family practice residents (what do you mean, "You don't do taps?!") 16. Dictating 17. My boobs 18. Dumbass music they play around here 19. The age 30 20. People trying to talk to me, and having to be nice 21. ...I'm sure there will be another thing....

During that one summer, when I was six, and we were vacationing in Western Ukraine on the Azov (the one when I got really sick with tushenka), something happened that I think set the tone for basically the rest of my life. Of course, when I tell this story, sobbing, wringing my hands, and asking, "Why!! Why!!" my mother groans and rolls her eyes, calls me alternately Sigmund or Freud, and starts reminding me of all the times that I witnessed grandpa tearing wings off flies and how that's made me a sexual deviant. "Yes," she says, "It's all about your mother. That's why you're such a fuck up, DOCTOR." (Of course, I'd never met Grandpa, he died 10 years before I was born, I've yet to see a true definition of sexual deviancy, and for those who are slow to respond to sarcasm, that last statement implies that because I am a doctor, I am not at all a fuck up, therefore, the mother is not to be blamed.) But the story is such. As I said...

My life is a veritable ant farm of activity, especially as of late. As of late, it is as though someone stuck a stick right in the middle of the antfarm, and all the the little ants are going around absolutely crazed trying to figure out what to do about the stick and how to get rid of the dead bodies. It's total overload, inspiration wise. I want to write and write and write, the graphomania is just gurgling and bubbling over the top, but which thing gets the honor of becoming a story? I start something in my head, and immediately forget it, and have it replaced by something else. I need an out! Remember before fellowship, when I had interests and friends who were not yet abandoned and who also had interests, and sometimes those interests resulted in delicious dinners? I seem to recall I used to cook and be not bad at it, according to some (awful, according to others, but I think those others had inferiority issues of their own). Well, first year has ended, and I've been ...

It's because I got the iPhone, and I can Shazam and buy songs on the spot! Suddenly, I'm all about discography and lyrics and artist bios of bands and songs that have been around for ever, and I never thought twice about them. I get into things very quickly, and then try to stop me, I'm like a goddamned run away train (pardon the pun, Soul Asylum). Take Song 2 by Blur. Released when? I may have still been a teenager. When grunge was grunge and men were men. Actually, I think this is just after the grunge era. The song is very well known, and according to Wiki, their most recognizable in the US. And yes, I used to drive with BCN blaring (RIP, dear old friend), and yell out "WOOO - HOO!" along with the music, and yes, it's been played and played, but only the other day, did I put that funky iPhone right up to the car speaker and Shazam the darned song and find out who wrote it and try to figure out why they did. Let me just confess, Shazam has migrated ...

Immigration was, of course, a lightening bolt, a doorstop, a derailment for me, as a developing human, and for my parents, as humans cruising along. I can't believe I haven't written more about it. I should be capitalizing on it; I should be producing personal statement after personal statement about how I've overcome the odds as a self-made daughter of poor immigrants. (That's tongue in cheek, because I'm anything but self-made) But aside from the fact that I've always felt that's cheating, I just don't think I could find words, phrases and structure to write about it in a cohesive way that wouldn't be boring and cheesy. Plus, what aspect immigration do you pick to write about? What about it? It was fun? It was tough? It was stressful? It was hungry? Maybe just some notes? 1) Bribing To the soviet Russian, nothing ever happens on its own. You know that old saying, if you want something done, do it yourself? I'd change it to "if you want som...

When we were in immigration, that surreal and wonderful 4 month hiatus from either real life, be it Russian or American, we ended in Vienna during the week between Christmas and New Year. It was an absolutely magical week. Vienna, to us, freshly released from the cinder block world of communism, was in and of itself magical. We arrived, we got dropped off at the pension in the middle of the night, we fell asleep - still soviet. We woke up - free! We looked out the window to see "Kindermoden" children's fashions and "Mondo" supermarket. We went outside without hats or boots because it was 15 degrees Celsius in middle of December, and the streets were squeaky clean. We purchased baking yeast because we thought it was butter, and we bought a pastry to share between three people: it was the best thing we'd ever tried... Everything glittered. It was Christmas season, and the city was decorated, but not only that, there was also crystal everywhere. S...

...and it looks a little something like this... extra points if you can guess where I'm sitting.

Starting a new hospital today! I was just reminiscing what it was like to start a new rotation every month without a clue of what to expect as a medical student. I was not a very good student - unless I was really interested. I was never, and still am not, very good at faking anything. I was a good resident, though, mostly driven by the need to impress and keep up with my peers. I distinctly remember thinking that I don't really care if the attendings don't like me, as long as I perform and run a tight ship and know what I'm doing in the face of my co-residents. An attending could have rolled his eyes or been straight up unhappy about service to my face, and I'd let it roll of my scales. But then, there would be a day when I'd sign out the MICU service post call, go home, then call in later in the afternoon to see how my folks are doing, find out that one of them had a seizure, experience a bona fide anxiety attack that I failed to take some sort of preventativ...

I'm sick of talking about Tamoxifen and how much I hate Fruitless and Fabulous. Also, I'm sick of work-related autoflagellation driven by my own apathy and their subtle abuse. How about a post about a song? Generally, I will learn the first verse, and then my short attention span takes over and I start talking on the phone. But if there is a song I really like, then I am apt to look up the lyrics, learn them, and then try to figure out what they mean. Which is kind of pointless, because a lot of the time, lyrics don't make the song per se. But I'm like that. In fact, it used to piss off my mom back in the day; we'd watch a movie together, or I'd read a book, or we'd see a painting, and I'd say, "Oh my GOD, this is obviously so symbolic, but what does it MEAN!!" She'd always say, "Maybe it doesn't have to MEAN, maybe it's just enough that you realize it's symbolic!" By the way, and off topic, about my mom. It...