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.”

Oh, hi

Many varied things have held me back from blogging of late. Not least of which is the fact that as of July and the onset of my third year of medical school, my world has turned upside down and inside out. Sometimes very literally.

I now routinely place my finger into the anus of patients.  I have cracked ribs and mushed viscera in an effort to save my patient’s life.  I have realized that more often than not, I’m paying $70,000 to perform the tasks of a glorified secretary. All of this in exchange for the promise of a career I’ve never been entirely sure I want.

The past few months have been surreal. From finishing my time in the classroom in April to taking The Boards in May to entering the hospital every single day as if I belong there… it’s been a whirlwind.  I’m trying to figure out how to process it all.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been engulfed in something completely and wholly unfamiliar. Nineteen years in a classroom will do that to you. But I’m experiencing something unique and, fine, I’ll just say it: precious, and I think it warrants documentation. If for no one else but my future self.

My future, God help us all, physician self.

One of the things I’m learning is how quickly and abruptly one has to desensitize and compartmentalize in order to handle the day to day dealings of life and death.  I’m scared of becoming a robot.  Or worse, a Republican.

I’m scared that if I don’t remind myself of who I was when I started all this that I’ll lose sight of the trepidation and awe medicine usually deserves. We’re dealing with human lives. There are people attached to these lab values and diagnoses.

Right now I think I’m closer to being a patient than a doctor and I’m hoping that keeping a log of the transformation from one to the other will enable a coexistance of both rather than a dissolution or sacrifice of the other.

I’ve been cautious in approaching the interweb with all of this beacuse oftentimes I want to come home and CAPS LOCK SENTENCES ON HOW ANNOYING THIS PATIENT WAS or HOW ANGRY THIS ATTENDING MADE ME or WHY ON EARTH DID I EVER THINK THIS WHOLE THING WAS A GOOD IDEA FOR CRYING OUT EFFING LOUD. Also, HIPPA. Also, my own privacy. Also, my free time should probably be geared towards oh I don’t know, learning the practice of medicine.

So… we’ll see. I’m here now. I’ve missed this.

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.

So I balanced my check book today…

Dear Bank Account,

I’m sorry.

Love, Pants

Can you smell that smell?

Dear Neighbors,

I sure hope whatever the hell it is you cook that makes our apartment reek like rancid ass tastes better than it smells.

Or, alternatively…

Dear Landlord,

I would like to request a maintenance investigation of a shared air duct wherein I’m very nearly sure some small creature who dunked itself in fatty diarrhea, rolled in the McDonalds’ refuse around the corner and rubbed the toenail clippings of a seventy-three year old man with fungal issues all over itself, has crawled into our apartment vent to consume a snack of sauerkraut before keeling over and rotting for dead.

Love, Pants

Food for Thought

Dear Erotic Cake Baking Company,

My, aren’t you clever. I particularly enjoyed the “To Have and To Hold,” inscription available for penis bachelorette cakes. There’s something so appropriately inappropriate about a pun scrawled across an edible Johnson that appeals to me (I think it’s my repressed writer-dom). So much so in fact, I ordered a “Mouthful,” for my cousin’s upcoming night of debauchery.

When the receptionist who took my order said, “Alright ma’am, I’ve got one ‘Mouthful’ down, would you like that to be coming?” I knew you meant business. I bet all your bakers wear business socks. You know, dedication to their art and all that.

Despite how impressed I am with your commitment to your jobs, I think you should seriously reconsider your web design. Specifically, you might want to relocate your “More Options,” cakes to a different part of your web page. When I consulted Mean Bean Green about which phallus was most appetizing, she asked to see the “More Options,” listed.

“Oh, you don’t want to see those. It’s all other specialty cakes, like Harry Potter and stuff.”

“HARRY POTTER?”

“Yeah, I assume for kids’ birthdays or something.”

“A CAKE OF HIS PENIS?”

“No, no no, I mean, they do cakes other than erotica evidently.”

“Ohhh… I was gonna say, how could you tell? Was there a lightning scar on it?”

Love, Pants

I’ll have to clean the bathroom for this.

Dear Mean Bean Green,

Nowhere in our housing contract does it indicate that living with me requires you become a utensil taster. Last night you went above and beyond the call of roomie.

Even though we were at a restaurant that was way out of our league, or perhaps, because of it, you willingly checked to see if the tines of my fork really did taste like straight up metal. You affirmed that yes, there was a reason my meal tasted like pennies. Thank you.

I knew it wasn’t just me.

Love, Your Roommate

A Fool for April

Dear April,

So. I hear you’re quite the wannabe. The Internet tells me you’re proffering a challenge, you saucy minx. A challenge that is uncannily similar to November’s proposition.

You too are attempting to entice bloggers to post every single day, although this time you’ve upped the ante. You’ve got a theme. Well. Aren’t we high maintenance, all hoity toity with imminent showers and promises of flowers.

Your theme is letters. Be they correspondance, typography, interesting signs… you just want letters. You remind me of me in the second grade when I tried to accrue as many pen pals as humanly possible because I was desperate to get mail. Although, I’d venture you’re a little more desperate, what with the whole soliciting the entire blogosphere and all.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to meet your needs, April… my second year of medical school is ending next week and then I’ll be descending into a hell of my own creation, better known as studying for the boards. These are things that demand time and, were I responsible student, all of my attention. But you are intriguing, April… I don’t know, something in your taunting overtures makes me want to try.

30 letters in 30 days, eh? I’ll give it a whirl… even though it is probably the last thing on Earth I should be doing with my time this month. You’re worth it. You boast the best birth stone of any month in the calendar.

And should I fail, I can always chalk this up to your yearly joke.

Love, Pants.

p.s. I realize Christmas doesn’t fall in your month… a more appropriate header is in the works.