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....