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.

When the Bough Breaks

Yesterday I was gloriously excused for a few hours from my (minimal)(laughable)(let's face it, largely fake) responsibilities in the neurosurgery OR for a good ole fashioned GYN appointment. Anymore when I see a physician for any reason I find myself in an odd position: I'm the patient. It seems spending the past six months on the other side of the drop sheet has afforded me new insights into my own health care. Specifically, I am now determined never to be sick or require medical attention ever. Ever ever ever. I don't want to be in a hospital EVERRRRR, MY GOD. And doctors on the whole frankly freak my shit out. But! The root of these notions are stories for a different HIPAA laced day.

So anyway, the times when I do have to suck it up and go to the doctor I find myself surveying things with a short white coat sized grain of salt (AKA I can probably convince you I know what's going on while having absolutely no idea).

My doc's waiting room is arranged such that a whole host of chairs forms a U shape facing a central wall. On said central wall there are four or five large bulletin boards teeming with pinned up baby face snapshots, all staring out with empty baby stares in a kind of an eerie way, eliciting a creepy feeling from passerby not unlike the spook I imagine supermarket employees get walking down the Gerber food aisle after the customers have gone home.

I couldn't help but... question... the decor from a, I suppose, social sensitivity standpoint.   I mean, really? Baby faces? Obviously they are the cooing mugs of past deliveries, but... they're the successful deliveries.

Am I being  a freak thinking that such a display might alienate or off put patients who came in uncertain about their pregnancy? Or even less politically/socially/religiously charged, an infertile patient coming in for consultation? Or the patient who comes in for an anatomy ultrasound and learns the fetus has been lost?

I just... I don't know... was surprised.

Some of you I'm sure will commence eye rolling, but others will maybe understand  why I think doctors can be a little too focused on the science sometimes. Detrimentally so.

Second Floor, Going Up

Everybody in medical school is very busy and important. The pace at which people walk and the number of exasperated sighs released in a day are but two of the many ways outsiders are clued in.

Medical students' time is the most valuable, the things they do in a day the most taxing, and pretty much they're just the most put-upon entity in society. Or excuse me, the world.

No where is this made more apparent than when one is waiting for the elevator in an apartment building that houses med students.

It doesn't matter if one is standing in front of the elevator bank, having just pushed the up button and clearly waiting for the car to come down to the lobby. Once a medical student enters they must BLOW by one and hit the up button six, eight, nay, twenty times. Not just because it makes the elevator come faster, but because they need one to know THEY'RE IN A HURRY. Clearly not as big of a hurry as one. One is a layman. One is ostensibly lacking a white coat and therefore does not matter hurry.

As one patiently stands, perhaps with one's arms full of groceries, the medical student paces, mentally berating the goddamn elevator that is just bringing their entire schedule down. This is beyond unacceptable. Doesn't that car KNOW who they ARE? They have an exam this week. This extra forty-five second interval was NOT budgeted into their study schedule.

They tap their foot. They cross and uncross their arms. They push the up button a few more times for good measure. They anxiously stare at the numbers coming down, letting out an affronted grunt as each successive number lights up... 8... then 7... it is just not fast enough to meet their unparalleled need to BE ON THAT ELEVATOR NOW, AND THEY MEAN NOW.

One quietly shifts one's armload of groceries to the floor, patient. Unmoving. Comfortable in the knowledge that yes, the elevator will get there eventually. The medical student seems less assured.

One sees them eye the security desk and one can observe the mental acrobatics playing across their face as they decide whether or not to report that the elevator is broken, because... how could it not be!? IT SHOULDN'T TAKE THIS LONG. THEY ARE VERY BUSY AND IMPORTANT. HOW DOES THE ELEVATOR NOT UNDERSTAND THIS.

They start penning a letter to the deans in their heads, enumerating the many different levels at which this insult is unsatisfactory for not only their day, but their medical education as a whole.

The elevator arrives.

The medical student springs through the threshold and has an overzealous trigger finger assaulting the "Door Close" button before one has even mobilized one's groceries.

One slips by the closing door, causing it to re-open for a whole extra twenty seconds, at which point the veins in the medical student's forehead leap across the elevator and attempt to strangle one. How could one ruin their life so. Doesn't one KNOW who they ARE?

They punch the button for the fourteenth floor.

There are few things in life that would be as satisfying as reaching for the fifteenth floor button and dragging one's hand down the length of the button columns to the second floor -- where one will promptly get off.