A firm decision to do or not do something.

My resolutions for 2013 are straightforward:

1) Take better care of my teeth.
2) If I wear make-up during the day, I must wash it off before going to sleep.

And by "straightforward" I evidently mean "peepholes into my true life as a slob and possible redneck."

I forget how messy I was am. Throughout college, my roommate, Disturbingly Potent, was meticulous and very upstanding when it came to home making. Think pastel hued gingham with navy madras accents carrying a book on manners whilst wielding an acerbic wit and you have the jist of her persona. So of course she was tidier than a 1950s housewife.

In an effort to make up for the fact that I was am incapable of getting up when my alarm goes off and therefore ruined the majority of her mornings with my snooze hitting, I tried to keep my areas in check. No clothes on the floor. No dirty dishes.

At least, no dishes dirty enough to grow things.

As soon as I got to med school and had a room of my own again, the clutter came screaming back, albeit a little reigned in because Manhattan isn't a place too conducive of hoarding, at least not on the amateur level. I certainly rivaled the pros in terms of incapacitation due to mental illness, but even though I couldn't get out of bed in the morning, by God I could still aim and throw things in the trash.

Having said all that I don't think my hygiene has ever been out of check, save for the few years in elementary school when I was the smelly kid.

It had to have been around fifth grade after we moved 3 hours away from the only home I'd known and I implemented a bathing strike to make my displeasure known. Malodorously.

But I've found that when your time is crunched, like say, if you're enduring an on-the-job equivalent of water boarding and come home after an 80hr week unable to function in society, non-essential things go by the wayside. And now that you realize teeth brushing and face washing fall into the "non-essential" realm of life, you can see what dire straits we are dealing with here.

Residency: don't let it happen to you.

Critique

Yesterday I had my Sub-I exit interview with the Sub-I director and he said I needed to work on not carrying my emotions on my sleeve. APPARENTLY my face is rather expressive and that can be a detriment because it tends to transmit when I have no idea what in the world I'm talking about. Evidently this does not instill confidence. Patients prefer to have a practitioner that seems comfortable with medical knowledge. Who knew.

So in my room for improvement section? It says familiarize self with literature and get control of face. Terrific.

Hope that makes it into my dean's letter.

One of the riskier things I do on a daily basis, besides of course pursuing a medical degree as a twenty-something single woman in NYC thereby ensuring hundreds of thousands of dollars are indebted to my name while my ovaries rapidly wilt, is walk away from an open Gmail window.

Typically it happens because I need to go to the bathroom, refill my tea cup, or scramble outside to the street to elbow swipe tweens out of the way of the Gossip Girl episode filming (true story - today!), but whatever the reason, it's just a dumb idea.

Were someone to gain access to my Gmail account they would essentially have an unadultered view of my psyche. And not just my psyche, my psychoses.

Cue the slasher music.

Gmail has become what my blog and actual paper diary are not: a repository of my inner most thoughts and neuroses. I write multiple times daily two to three line freakouts, observations or idiotic jokes to my nearest and dearest.

I compose long winded blow by blows of how this guy I liked this one time almost kind of looked in my general direction and I swear I'll try to ask him where the bathroom is the next time I see him to go ahead and jump start the love affair I know is brewing. Stuff like that.

Or, rants about so and so's new profile picture  on facebook or OMG can you believe what this or that wrote on his or her wall?

It's my place to unleash all the superficial, honest, humiliating truths of my life.

Basically what I'm saying is Gmail is my direct line of communication with Disturbingly Potent and if anyone other than her was privy to my inner workings, sweet Lord. I don't even know what I'd do.

Embrace a denial more powerful that that exuded by many a public pooper, I expect.

I'm on Peds now.

Yesterday I saw a 9 year old girl with abdominal pain. As I examined her abdomen I asked if it hurt when I pushed. She said yes. I said, Okay, scale of 1 to 10, how much does it hurt? She said 8.

She was completely well-appearing so I then backed up and said, Okay, scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being a paper cut and 10 being a train just sliced off your legs.

She got wide eyed and said 3.

Her mom asked if the real doctor could come in then.

I've had this in my head for 48 hours straight.

Knowing my life I'm going to be asked about rectal carcinoma in my oral exam today and will be unable to stop myself from saying (not for the faint of heart):



It will be an experience not unlike the time I accidentally wore sequined shoes to an Ivy League medical school interview.

Evidently this is acceptable behavior.

Excellent news, readers. Until last night I wasn't exactly sure how I would pass this medicine shelf today. But thanks to the illustrious example of a potential vice-presidential nominee, now when I happen upon a question I can't answer I will just tell my course director I'll try to find specific examples and bring them to him later.

Brilliant.

Typical

Today we had to meet in small groups with the chief of internal medicine whose office is literally larger than my apartment. He was very welcoming and gave us each a chance to relay our spiel to him about where we came from and why we chose medicine.

I told the chief of internal medicine that I kind of wanted to do something important sort of once and because I didn't know what else to do I wound up at medical school. And now that I'm here well, I don't really know what to go into since I hate science to my very core and I've found I don't like working with sick people, so that seems to limit my options and oh yeah, I want to have a family someday too. But I do know I'd like to do something that enables me to pay off my loans sooner rather than later by practicing as little clinically as humanly possible.

I said that, aloud, and did so far more inelegantly than I've typed it out just now.

To the chief of internal medicine.

To the chief of internal medicine at my very self-important school and perhaps actually important affiliated hospital.

It was kind of liberating to feel that bullet fire through my foot.

It's true.

"Patient X, I'm very sorry, but I'm going to have to pull this needle out and try for a different vein."

"You're a very bad nurse."

So aghast I came back to blog it

While waiting for our noon medicine lecture:

Me to Female Classmate: "So yeah, I guess it's supposed to rain a lot tomorrow... Hannah's coming to town."

Female Classmate to Me: "Why is it Hannah? Why not Hank? Henry?"

Me to Female Classmate: "I used to know back when I wanted to be a Weather Woman.  I thought there was a reason they were either a boy or a girl name. Maybe it just alternates?"

Male Course Director to Us: "When I was a kid all of the hurricanes were named after women. That sure changed... when the seventies happened... and hey, that's why you're here."

So I'm taking The Boards tomorrow...

I'm hoping when I show up to the testing center there will literally be someone holding out a hoop, waiting for me to jump through.

Maybe the dumbest thing I've ever read

Or at least the most annoying to come across while I am spending six weeks busting my butt studying. Well, studying and uh, posting articles onto my blog...

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_17/b4081104183847.htm

I love you and miss you.

I'll be back in June after I take the boards... or, in Business Week terms, after I solidify my own contribution the our nation's looming shortage of physicians.

Officially Compartmentalized

I ate a yogurt cup during a lecture on diarrhea today.

I think this means I'm ready for my M.D., yes?

Merry Christmas

"Do you want some nog with lunch?"

"Sure!"

"Alright, well, we've only got egg. I hope that's okay."

Hard Nut to Crack

You know, if you look at it objectively, The Nutcracker is pretty weird.

A family has a party... the crazy uncle arrives with dancing life-sized dolls and he gives the little girl of the house a nutcracker. Is that supposed to be some sort of domestic, gendered statement? If this was a modern story would he be giving her a cuisinart? I mean, a food processor doesn't lend itself as well to anthropomorphism, but it pretty much boils down to the same thing. And quite frankly, if mutant rats are attacking, I think I'd rather have spinning blades on my side than a wooden novelty utensil.

***************

So, we made it. Thirty posts in thirty days.

I don't think I'll be able to keep up that pace for always and, let's face it... I probably shouldn't. The quality of the things I pound out at 11:45p trying to eek under midnight just aren't worth the blogosphere space. The English language doesn't deserve to be bastardized so.

There were bad days and there were worse. There were cop-outs and there were photos, but by and large I accomplished what I set out to do in making navapants a cozy new writing home.

Wake up little Snoozy, Wake up

There are few moments that horrify me more than those where I realize I'm training to be a physician.

As in, this is for real.

Hypothetically, I am going to walk away from this experience with a license to practice medicine. Uhm. Yeah.

I don't know if I can really explain it, but there's a stark difference between going to the lecture hall everyday, kicking around ideas in PBL, writing ridiculous throw-away papers on health systems, aaaand actually treating patients. Or, well okay! That explained it pretty well. Patients are not scantron sheets.
These things that I cram into my head in order to pass quizzes and exams will one day be information that I need to apply to real life human beings. It's... unsettling because never before in my life have I been expected to be accountable in any REAL sense for learning things. Or at least accountable in any way that would affect anyone besides myself.

We start physical diagnosis sessions tomorrow in which we will be in small groups with a preceptor examining patients.

Patients... weird.

Before the end of our neuro course a few weeks ago we performed neurological exams under a neurologist's watchful eye. That was the beginning of my wake-up call. My first alarm if you will, and between then and now I've been mid snooze cycle

While it's very obvious to a certain degree, it took that experience to really slap me in the face and make me recognize that we will be responsible for producing the clues we use to make diagnoses. There will be no big PBL leader in the sky that passes out the history and physical of a patient. We won't be handed the pertinent findings upon which we can flex our analytical logic. We have to PRODUCE that stuff. That's what's scary.

I have to know when I hear certain things or observe this or that what it all means clinically. I'm going to have to have enough confidence in myself and my skills to trust my judgment. I don't think it's too self-aggrandizing or melodramatic to say peoples' health will depend on it.

Granted, it won't until many years in the future that I'll be doing it all on my own, but... a person's health is their everything.

Their EVERYTHING.

But, for tomorrow, I'm just going to concentrate on not hurling on anyone and save the rudest awakening for another day.

Forget Santa, Disturbingly Potent is coming to town!

From: Disturbingly Potent "DisturbinglyPo4U@emailplace.com"

To: Pants McSlacks "ItzPantzYo@emailplace.com"

Date: Nov 26, 2007 1:24pm

Subject: Christmas in the City Weekend

Dear Abby had a column today about the holidays being a "blue" time of year. She said you shouldn't overindulge in alcohol and/or spending to make yourself happy.

There goes our weekend plans...

Wussie Baby NaBloPoMo Post

I got my haircut. I look like a soccer mom. I would post a picture, but then it's available on the Internet for ever and ever, and that just won't do since blackmail is similarly timeless.

Doing something that requires original thought and a mild time commitment each and every day is a quick way to hatch resentment. Practice makes perfect? No. It makes exasperated, creatively empty individuals who feel as if they're going no where.

The End.

Red Power?

Uhm. Pretty sure this should be White People Tea if they're gonna go w/ the whole victory motif.

This is what I think about at 8 in the morning during PBL.

For my birthday a few months back Prom Queen Best Friend gave me a Disney Princesses hot beverage travel mug.

It is all kinds of pink. On one side there's a picture of Sleeping Beauty/Aurora, Belle and Cinderella. The other features the word "PRINCESS" in hot magenta, ornate letters.

People ask me if I'm going into Peds a lot.

She bought the mug as a way I think to spice up my studying life... I can only assume that when she couldn't find one featuring buff, nude cowboys, she decided appealing to my inner small child was a better, and perhaps more early morning lecture friendly, way of infusing some life back into me. Cause we all know the tell tale sign of someone losing their grip with reality is the use of one of those silver missile mugs to house their morning coffee. Those are just so intense.

My mug on the other hand... I don't know. I love it, I do, in fact the only thing I'd change is to add more glitter or perhaps bedazzling gems, but when I drink coffee out of it I feel... iconoclastic.

I feel like I'm violating their pure goodness with my raw, lurid beverage.

I feel like I'm scandalizing the princesses.

I feel like I'm sipping vodka out of a baby bottle.

Oh geez, HI!

Hello everyone! Whoopee! It's nearly midnight!

I remembered just now that I'm doing this whole write on my blog every damn day thing.

EEDIOT.

Okay so. Uh. The bulk of my day has been whine whine whine, bitch bitch, moaaaaaaan, whine whine. You aren't missing much.

I've been fighting people for a single washer all night long, they're far faster than I am getting down to stake their claims in the laundry room and are GREEDY LITTLE BUGGERS when they do... uhm... I have no desire to be in class right now because I am so effing burnt out from the last course... I should probably do work over Thanksgiving, but I just know I won't.

Oh. Here we go. It really annoys me that people are leaving early tomorrow, some even peaced out TODAY, for the holiday when we clearly have school scheduled until 1pm tomorrow. What makes you special? What makes you above the schedule? I look at the schedule and I see things scheduled until 1... to me that means I have to stay here until 1. It does not mean schedule a flight for 11a and then throw a tantrum when I'm going to be penalized for missing something mandatory.

I mean, ugh, okay, really I'm just jealous that I can't leave too, because I couldn't find a flight home under $600 (RIIIIIIDICULOUS) for tomorrow, but if I'm going to be here suffering through the world's slowest pharmacologist detail at a rate of six words per minute how this or that receptor was discovered in the 1800s, THEN I WANT YOU ALL TO COME DOWN WITH ME.

Okay, love you, bye! Hopefully I'll learn how to time manage soon. Also, if you have any requests for topics or I don't know, questions you want answered, let me know and I'll try to blog about that. If I have a proper topic in mind I think I'll be less likely to repeat this performance yet again. Oy.