Lemon Chiffon Yoghurt...

Ran late today; moving as slowly as I accuse Angel of doing. Got my laptop packed up, something for lunch (Spanish rice, no meat, no time to find meat), and staggered out the door. Damn, but my legs hurt. Grabbed my PanOptic, belatedly, since today is the Opthalmology Afternoon. Friday afternoons are supposed to be free, dang it. Even if he has won the "best teacher" award several fimes for his one afternoon of teaching, I don't really want to spend the afternoon at school. Got out of the house at the last possible moment for getting to school on time. Go a half-dozen blocks and realise two things: (1) I don't have a contact case to put a contact in while we're playing with eye-dilating drops. (2) I forgot to brush my teeth. Tooth-brushing...well, I have Listerine ickystrips at school so I can at least make my breath smell better. The contact case, on the other hand, is essential. So I swing around the corner, turn around for home, and hit every fucking light, morons driving 5 miles an hour, etc, etc. Felt like I was trying to leave the set of the Truman Show. Grab the case, brush my teeth (I'm home, why not? I like clean teeth), and run back out. My legs are killing me, and the back steps nearly finish the job. Ice. I should salt again. No time. Head out, down Harrison to downtown and up to IPFW. If there is something that could get in my way, it gets in my way. A truck, stopped behind a stop sign, decides that I -- who have no stop sign -- am plenty far away enough (one block, at 45 in a 30 zone) for him to creep across the street. Even with me slowing down to 15 by mid-block, he is still less than halfway across when I arrive at the intersection. Damn truck. Don't you know that you should be waiting for me to go through? I feel stupid, waiting for him to finish his manoeuvre, and then...then I see that he is crossing the street only to stop for a schoolbus immediately on the other side of the road. With barely enough room for him to even fit without blocking the intersection a little longer. Argh. Gun the engine to lower my testosterone levels (nothing says "I'm an idiot" like racing the engine of an '87 Accord, and I know it), and take off the instant the street is clear, just in case he wants to Back Up And Make Me Even Later. I hate trucks. There's a surveyor in the road on my way. He moves to the side, lights a cigarette, watches me pass. I briefly entertain thoughts of running him down. "Smoking kills, you know." Stop at the yield sign to let a caravan of cars go by -- and still swing around the corner to Lake (why do people stop for that turn? It's a smooth Y turn, left becoming the westbound lane, right becoming the eastbound, no traffic potentially coming from either direction unless they're going the wrong way down a busy road) in time to make the inch-out-on-green to turn-left-on-the-last-half-second-of-yellow left turn onto Anthony. From there, save for all the Assholes who drive with their Lights Off in the Early Morning when it's Still Not Light Out, it's smooth. I get crept over on by a van at the circle turn entering IPFW, but Michel-Ange wins the balls contest and the van cedes that I am currently Taking Up Space in the Right Lane, rendering Scooting Over to Occupy the Same Space as Me a physical impossibility. In the back of my mind, motion registers. The snowplow on the fourth floor of the parking garage is dumping snow over the edge of the parking garage, down four stories, and onto the place where the bushes would be, if it were summer, and the bushes weren't covered by Giant Piles Of Snow -- whose origin, being as they are in the middle of the unplowed lawns , I had surprisingly never before now thought to question. I did not run to class; my legs will not run today. Three flights of stairs carrying a heavy backpack were bad enough. I was only ten minutes late.

Enneagrams...

Despite what the website said, I have two with identical scores:
free enneagram testThe Caring, Interpersonal Type: Generous, Demonstrative, People-Pleasing, and Possessive (The Histrionic Personality Disorder and Factitious Disorder) Basic Fear: Of being unwanted, unworthy of being loved Basic Desire: To feel loved Profile Summary for the Enneagram Type Two Healthy: Empathetic, compassionate, feeling for others. Caring and concerned about their needs. Thoughtful, warm-hearted, forgiving and sincere. / Encouraging and appreciative, able to see the good in others. Service is important, but takes care of self too: they are nurturing, generous, and giving — a truly loving person. At Their Best: Become deeply unselfish, humble, and altruistic: giving unconditional love to self and others. Feel it is a privilege to be in their lives of others. Average: Want to be closer to others, so start "people pleasing", becoming overly friendly, emotionally demonstrative, and full of "good intentions" about everything. Give seductive attention: approval, "strokes," flattery. Love their supreme value, and they talk about it constantly. / Become overly intimate and intrusive: they need to be needed, so they hover, meddle, and control in the name of love. Want others to depend on them: give, but expect a return: send double messages. Enveloping and possessive: the codependent, self-sacrificial person who cannot do enough for others — wearing themselves out for everyone, creating needs for themselves to fulfill. / Increasingly self-important and self-satisfied, feel they are indispensable, although they overrate their efforts in others' behalf. Hypochondria, becoming a "martyr" for others. Overbearing, patronizing, presumptuous. Unhealthy: Can be manipulative and self-serving, instilling guilt by telling others how much they owe them and make them suffer. Abuse food and medication to "stuff feelings" and get sympathy. Undermine people, making belittling, disparaging remarks. Extremely self-deceptive about their motives and how aggressive and/or selfish their behavior is. / Domineering and coercive: feel entitled to get anything they want from others: the repayment of old debts, money, sexual favors. / Able to excuse and rationalize what they do since they feel abused and victimized by others and are bitterly resentful and angry. Somatization of their aggressions result in chronic health problems as they vindicate themselves by "falling apart" and burdening others. Key Motivations: Want to be loved, to express their feelings for others, to be needed and appreciated, to get others to respond to them, to vindicate their claims about themselves. Examples: Mother Teresa, Barbara Bush, Eleanor Roosevelt, Leo Buscaglia, Monica Lewinsky, Bill Cosby, Barry Manilow, Lionel Ritchie, Kenny G., Luciano Pavarotti, Lillian Carter, Sammy Davis, Jr., Martin Sheen, Robert Fulghum, Alan Alda, Richard Thomas, Jack Paar, Sally Jessy Raphael, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Ann Landers, "Melanie Hamilton" (Gone With the Wind). and "Dr. McCoy" (Star Trek). And the other: The Busy, Fun-Loving Type: Spontaneous, Versitle, Acquisitive, and Scattered (The Manic-Depressive and Histrionic Personality Disorders) Basic Fear: Of being deprived and in pain Basic Desire: To be satisfied and content — to have their needs fulfilled Healthy: Highly responsive, excitable, enthusiastic about sensation and experience. Most extroverted type: stimuli bring immediate responses — they find everything invigorating. Lively, vivacious, eager, spontaneous, resilient, cheerful. / Easily become accomplished achievers, generalists who do many different things well: multi-talented. Practical, productive, usually prolific, cross-fertilizing areas of interest. At Their Best: Assimilate experiences in depth, making them deeply grateful and appreciative for what they have. Become awed by the simple wonders of life: joyous and ecstatic. Intimations of spiritual reality, of the boundless goodness of life. Average: As restlessness increases, want to have more options and choices available to them. Become adventurous and "worldly wise," but less focused, constantly seeking new things and experiences: the sophisticate, connoisseur, and consumer. Money, variety, keeping up with the latest trends important. / Unable to discriminate what they really need, become hyperactive, unable to say "no" to themselves, throwing self into constant activity. Uninhibited, doing and saying whatever comes to mind: storytelling, flamboyant exaggerations, witty wise-cracking, performing. Fear being bored: in perpetual motion, but do too many things — many ideas but little follow through. / Get into conspicuous consumption and all forms of excess. Self-centered, materialistic, and greedy, never feeling that they have enough. Demanding and pushy, yet unsatisfied and jaded. Addictive, hardened, and insensitive. Unhealthy: Desperate to quell their anxieties, can be impulsive and infantile: do not know when to stop. Addictions and excess take their toll: debauched, depraved, dissipated escapists, offensive and abusive. / In flight from self, acting out impulses rather than dealing with anxiety or frustrations: go out of control, into erratic mood swings, and compulsive actions (manias). / Finally, their energy and health is completely spent: become claustrophobic and panic-stricken. Often give up on themselves and life: deep depression and despair, self-destructive overdoses, impulsive suicide. Key Motivations: Want to maintain their freedom and happiness, to avoid missing out on worthwhile experiences, to keep themselves excited and occupied, to avoid and discharge pain. Examples: JFK, Benjamin Franklin, Leonard Bernstein, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Elizabeth Taylor, W.A. Mozart, Steven Spielberg, Federico Fellini, Dr. Richard Feynman, Timothy Leary, Robin Williams, Jim Carey, Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Bette Midler, Chuck Berry, Elton John, Mick Jagger, Gianni Versace, Liza Minelli, Joan Collins, Malcolm Forbes, Noel Coward, Sarah Ferguson, Larry King, Joan Rivers, Regis Philbin, Howard Stern, John Belushi, and "Auntie Mame" (Mame).

If the house is $79,900, and we make no down payment at all, then house payments on a 30-year mortgage come out to $503 a month. That...isn't too bad. For some reason, in my head, buying a house is more like paying thousands and thousands of dollars a month. Money we couldn't afford. But maybe we can... Found a few cute little places. And Jim knows a realtor who works with HUD a lot, and so maybe, just maybe, she might be able to find something cute and cheap, say on a foreclosure or a distress sale. Going to call her, I think. And then...then, José, the darling, the wonderful, the wizard of Financial Aid, sent me back an e-mail:

[Names Withheld] from Bank X in Indianapolis have worked with our students who are not employed, but have financial aid. It is a difficult situation for an underwriter, but having people like them that understand the student loans, helps...

So I asked for their contact information. Because with me not working and my student loans, even though Angel is working, it might get a wee bit shaky. Things move so quickly, suddenly. And now I'm thinking about when we could do all this. Can we buy a house so that it's all done by the beginning of April, so I can do finals and Boards and then move in mid-May? Can it all go so fast? I don't want to have to do clinicals and house closings... And then, fencing. I'm so sore. So out of shape. But I had such a wonderful time. They demo'd sabre and epée for us, made us run around in circles, learn footwork, and lunges. Very much fun. A couple of high school kids there, a pair of anarchist-style Hot Topic-inspiring works in combat boots and ripped pants, Eric with a green mohawk, Jake quiet and blond, a little chubby. I want to take a picture of them, write a story about them. They were really sweet, interesting kids. Good humour. Reminded me of Jeremy, who took a bottle of JD to class with him one day, who carved a swastika into his arm (Eric had a swastika with the little "no" circle around it inked on his pants), who shaved his head after I told him I liked his hair. Jeremy with the six-inch boot knife, who used to call me in the evenings, and talk to me until his father started screaming, then hang up so I wouldn't hear him getting beaten up. I wonder how they think. I wonder.

O, happy day....

It's now 4:50 PM. I have all of today's Pathology notes typed up. I'll work on the lab notes after Fencing Tonight! We signed up for a fencing class with the FW Parks Department. I can't wait. I took fencing once, a long long time ago, when I was in France, but I eventually quit because I couldn't hear anything through the helmet well enough to comprehend the French. I loved it. It's a workout, though, which is just precisely what I want. Plus, it involves pointy objects. It starts tonight. In other news: Angel and I were throwing around the idea of renting an apartment further north. Then we threw around the idea of renting Dad's house over on North Anthony that he moved into just after my parents got divorced. Seeing as how it's empty right now and all. And then...we mentioned it to Mom. And she said "Why not buy a house?" Because we'll be in Fort Wayne for the next five years, assuming I don't do something unbelievably stupid during my clinical years. Meg and Dr. Blusys say I'm a shoo-in for the F.W. Family Practise Residency. And then, maybe, I might do my payback at the Neighbourhood Health Clinic, where the CEO sings alto with me in the choir. Or maybe not. But we'll be living in Fort Wayne for the next five to nine years. And it makes sense, almost, to buy a house at that point. Doesn't it? There's so much to know. Mortgages and payments and insurance and closing costs, and where-do-you-want-to-live, and all that. We have a couple of thoughts...I'll post links one of these days when we start seriously considering places. (I'm so unbelievably picky...) I want a house with more than one story; a bi-level will do, or a tri-level. I want a house that's bigger than a matchbox; at least 1200-1300 square feet. I want a house with a big front room (for roleplaying in, of course), two bedrooms at least, and Angel wants a house that's closer to the north end of town. And I want it to be cute, and I want it to have appliances, and I really would like one that nobody's ever lit a cigarette inside. And central cooling, and a garage...the list goes on and on. Why do I have the feeling I'm going to have to sacrifice?

A quick quiz, before bed...

You are not European.

What's your Inner European?
brought to you by Quizilla All caught up with Pathology notes, yay! Now all I have to do is catch up lab, and keep caught up. Cardiology...bah. I'll study that on Monday night, before the Tuesday exam. I'm riding high in Medicine still from the last set of Medicine exams (over the class average on every single one, baby!). And now...now to bed.

Lifted from class notes:

• "If you get any more comatose, I'll have to do an autopsy on you for the class."
• "What is a baby? One big head."
• "Here's a guy who's eighty-nine years old, they want to keep him in the hospital for three days. Do you know what's going to happen? He's going to get sick."
• "Iron deficiency anaemia. Finally, a disease." Page five of the notes, an hour of lecture after we started the unit.
• "They've got everything in those choker [vitamin] pills. Serum rhubarb, porcelain..."
• "Curved nails. But we here in the medical community call it koilonychia, so our patients don't get insulted."
• (Singing and dancing): "Infectious...Aaaaagent man!"
• "Now that...is one big cell. I mean that cell's going to sneak out of the body and attack Cleveland."
• "Clostridium Welchii. That's the stuff they put in grape juice." (A note: Clostridium is the group of bacteria that contains C. botulinum (botulism), C. tetanii (tetanus), and C. perfringens (gangrene).)
• "Transcoblamin I and III...they have no useful function in the body..."
• "There have been repeated attempts to make me a yuppie..."
• "And I look at Michael Jackson...and I think, 'My God, he's trying to imitate a scleroderma death mask'!" (This is probably only funny to us med students. We were literally falling over laughing.)

Two pages to go and I'll be all caught up on notes, can do lab work tomorrow!

Midnight Star

The following will interest very few people, except, perhaps, those who want to know the background of my D&D character this time around. Midnight Star, part 1 Magical aptitude, perhaps, Sekkyro' thought to himself as he stalked through the manor. But who wants to be a mage when he can have cold steel at his command instead? Certainly not him. The swords on his hips glittered with reflected heat to his vision, marking each drow as he passed, each one skittering to stay out of his way. And little wonder, that. He was marked for a beating after his latest transgression: refusing to go to the city, to the wizards' school, despite his demonstrable ability in magic; and he was on his way to receive it with ill grace - as he always did. At least (Lloth alone knew why) it hadn't come to the snake-headed whips of the sister-priestesses yet. There was always that. Staring down the door guards until they scuried aside much like all the other drow he'd passed, he stalked in through the door, facing his Matron's cold glare with a smirk. Perhaps his attitude only made his punishment worse; he didn't care. Sekkyro' was long past caring how hard or often he was beaten for his insolence - Arkan had not yet been refused permission to teach him, and so long as he could work blades with the house weaponmaster, he was content to kneel and take the Matron's abuse as often as she cared to vent her spleen on him. Even when, as of recently, it seemed to come on a weekly basis. After all, the arrogance and expectations of drow women, their anger at any transgression, their pride and haughty demeanour made it all the more savoury to bring them to their knees in fear. Sekkyro' was a great fan of bringing drow - preferably drow women, but any would do - to a fuller understanding of their frailty on this mortal plane. Without waiting to be ordered, idly wondering how many of the sister-priestesses in the House would be able even to find the courage to whip him, he stripped off his shirt and knelt before the Matron's chair. He knew the disturbing sight he presented to drow eyes - black-skinned, as black as any drow from head to toe, even his hair an ebon queue down his back in sharp contrast to the normally white hair, his frame more strongly muscled, even now as a youth, than most seasoned drow fighters. The only pause in his shadow-hues came from the serpents tattooed in silver up his arms to twine their tails - one pure silver, the other only an outline - at the nape of his neck, disappearing beneath his hair. His serpents, his sign; a defiance nearly half a century old, the source of his first lashing - when he had been in truth the arrogant pup Arkan still named him - without even the strength to back his rebellion. The matron had thought to beat it out of him then, teach him to bend spirit as well as knee, to never wear a sign other than the moon and blade that marked house Slyan'ssun, but she had succeeded only in laying the seeds of hatred in his soul, feeding them with every mark of the lash. Those scars, like every other he had earned in the half-century since, had been a lesson well-learned in patient fury, a lesson that had brought him in slow, painful steps from the pup he had been to the man he was now. Still a youth by drow standards; he knew that the distinction was merely a technicality. He was a hunter born, bred to roam the fathomless tunnels of the Underdark. He cared nothing for the drow outpost or the city it guarded, only for the chance that patrolling gave him to hunt, away from the ceaseless law of the Matron and the constant need to reassert his independence of her teachings. "What shall I do with you this time?" the matron hissed, breaking into his reverie and facing him with a determined anger. He shrugged, letting his smirk fade into an expression of studied nonchalance. "Beat me bloody, like you do every week, so that everyone knows you're angry with me. Then piss off, and let me get back to patrolling. I have better things to do than play your petty games." At her indrawn hiss of fur, he steeled himself against the crack of the whip, letting out no sign of the searing pain as it came down across his back again and again, each lash undergoing a transfiguration from agony to raw, cold anger. This pain, opening up the barely-healed wounds of the previous, meant to break his spirit and devour his soul, would instead train him - forge the weakness out of him, make him a weapon without emotion, without mercy or sympathy or grief to get in the way of his hunting. This pain was as vital as the pain of being struck with the flat of Arkan's blade - and like that pain, it would be repaid in blood one day. Those who knew or any flaw in him were the ones who would forge it out of him - and then they, too, would be expunged from his life as neatly as the stroke of a knife. After a while, he ceased to notice the matron, the bite of her whip no more painful than a fleabite, her fury finally expending itself on the coal-black back before her, sending rivulets of blood down the silver lines of his tattoos. He remained kneeling, gathering his strength until it was clear that she was done beating him, and then stood, flinging his shirt over his shoulders to stop the worst of the blood, walking out without a word. He made it as far as the training room before the loss of blood and pain combined to overcome him. He sat, then sprawled out on his stomach, waiting for the dizziness to pass. When next he was aware of his suroundings, rough hands were cleaning and bandaging the welts on his back, not being over-careful to avoid causing him pain. "Go back to your room, boy," Arkan's voice growled, sounding as angry as he always did when Sekkyro''s insolence earned him a sound drubbing by the weaponmaster - an event coming more and more infrequently as Arkan found it increasingly less easy to administer. "Go back and get some rest. No lesson today; we'll see about tomorrow." To be continued...

Open season on interpretations: "shadowsong"

Shadow's song,
             come along,
      sing the story low
                 Night and day,
shadows play, 
          midst the winter snows

  Cross the night
                   in shadows' flight
            far from seeking eyes
       Dost thou know
                    here below
Why the shadows cry?
             NsB 27.01.03

Waiting for it to be 2:00 and Dr. Smith to come and lecture for the afternoon lab. I don't want to be here. I so don't want to be here. On the other hand, McBride did his lab on male genital system in something like 20 minutes, especially the gross specimens. Especially the invasive squamous cell carcinoma of the penis. Big Scott: Is...um...that a post-mortem specimen? McBride, squirming: No, actually, it's a surgical one. Scott, turning pale: They just...cut it off? Big Scott: That must've left a hole. McBride: Well, unless they had some left over... And from there, it turned into the Typical Male Jokes. We were laughing so hard.

So I was explaining Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" to Jim. Scott: I've always wondered what human flesh tasted like. Me: Weren't you the one who wanted to try cocaine? Scott: Crack, actually. Jim: Come on over to my house tonight, Scott. We'll smoke crack and eat babies. It dawns on me suddenly that reporting these conversations is not the way to encourage faith in Your Future Doctors...

Pathology Exam 1 Score: 78%.

Sufficient unto my needs, but I would have liked to do better. I can cross my fingers and hope for a curve, or I can get my shit together and study the stuff I know is going to be on the lab exam. And keep up on the notes for the next one. Exam next Tuesday, on Cardiology. Heger writes it. Too bad we have no fucking clue what he's going to pimp us on, since he's not the one lecturing. And then a lab exam the Monday after that.

I don't agree with the over-acting line, Chavaling. But I do happen to find Dave Barry's review of The Two Towers to be very funny. From last night, my response to this page (posted by another friend of mine): *reads link, gags* Excuse me. I need to go purge my eyes now from that masterwork of bigotry and demeaning language. I should put a rainbow flag on my page. I should write something to announce to all of those closed-minded, frivolous, would-be-Christians out there that if they wish to stand on their podium of free speech and proclaim that it's perfectly fine to discriminate against the GLBT world because "they chose to be gay"...stop a moment. Wait. Think. You have the right, as someone who *chose* to be Christian, to practise your religion and your beliefs and your lifestyle without being discriminated against. You have that right. You have the right to religious freedom. You have the right to raise your children on a blasphemous corruption of the Word, to teach them hatred and hellfire, to clothe yourselves in hypocrisy and speak with serpents' tongues. You have the right to lure them into your world, to bring them (as I have seen so many times) to believe that their errors have earned them no forgiveness, only pain and penance, only death. You have the right to take an infant and teach it that to love is wrong. You have the right, because you have *chosen* the religion you have, to name your God whatever you want, and to teach them to worship that being without question or consideration. You have the right, when your little girl comes home from school frightened and questioning - you have the right to throw her out of your house, tell her never to come home again. You have the right. And yet you would seek to deny James, deny Eric, deny Ally and Melissa and Michael and David and Brandyn and Eleanor and so many, many more. You would seek to deny them the right to hold a job without fear, to know that if they die, if they are injured, the people that they love and care for, the people who uplift them and guide them, the people who give them the family that their parents and their so-called-friends are willing to throw away - to know that those people will not be left desolate. Because they "choose" to be gay. Because you "choose" to be Christian, you should remember the centuries of persecution and murder, the endless trials and torments and abuse that *your people* suffered because of their choice. If you desire to stand up and fight for your belief in the right, then fight for it. You have that right; you have that privelege. If you desire to worship your judgmental and condemning God, your Christ who turns his back on the weak and the suffering and the lame; if you find your path to be good and true and just, then worship it. Follow it. You *have* the right to make that choice. But is the cloak of hypocrisy you wear light and comfortable, you pharisees? Are you comfortable with the law you are creating? You have no more right to protection than those you seek to cast into the pit. You have made a choice, and you enjoy the privelege of legal protection. You cannot be discriminated against because of your choice. If you seek to strip that protection away from the gays and lesbians of the world because they have "made a choice", then be prepared to throw away your own security blanket and return to the days when Christians were stoned and burned and torn apart by lions. Are you strong enough in your faith to face that den, Daniel? Can you look into the flames and say in perfect security, 'My God will protect me; I will not bow down to the idols of the world', Shadrach? Because that is what you are asking for. Fight if you want. Condemn if you want. I will serve my God, a God of justice and love, a God whose Christ walked among the poor and the lame and the suffering of the world and lifted them up, taught them by the example of perfect love to walk in the light. A God who has walked with me in every step, every day of my life. A God who I believe has inspired the gay members of the church I grew up in to provide a leadership unlike any the church has ever known - that has brought more people into the church than would ever have been anticipated in a church that's part of a denomination with largely static membership. And I will walk, humbly with that God, knowing that -all- have sinned, and fallen short of glory, knowing that all the same, there is -always- hope. Make your choice. And no, I don't expect everyone to agree with me.

Grammar lesson...

From bash.org:

< CrazyClimber > top dangling modifier of the day: < CrazyClimber > "A jet going 100 m.p.h. slammed into a deer, which ruptured a wing fuel tank and dumped 70 gallons of gas on the runway. " < CrazyClimber > i knew about cows and methane, but... < me_tew > Dammit, when are they going to REQUIRE that fuel tanks on deer be moved away from the wings.

I laughed so hard.... Got Lilo and Stitch back from Mom today. My craving for cute and fluffy is finally sated. Notes are all typed, for the studying tomorrow (read: cramming in panic). Seeing as how I was flat-out exhausted after typing them up, so I played Diablo instead of going right into reviewing them. So I'll be making notecards all freakin' night tomorrow in a desperate attempt to memorise everything. Cardiac medicine, 27 pages. Done. Vasculitides, 24 pages. Done. Lung, 21 pages. Done. Male Genital System, 15 pages. Done. Question breakdown for the exam: 12 questions on blood vessels (vasculitides) 12 questions on cardiac 15 questions on lungs 6 questions on the male genital system =45 questions. Going to die, going to die, going to die. And to make it worse, Chicago is playing tonight and tomorrow night...and I didn't know in time to go tonight, and I can't go tomorrow, I have to study. I have to, really I do.

Roe v. Wade v. the rest of the world..

I'm tired of watching e-mails fly across the school-wide mailing list regarding abortion. The pro-choice organisation of med students apparently decided to put on some events "celebrating the 50th anniversary" of Roe v. Wade. And someone took offence to the word "celebrating". And someone else got offended by their (very nicely worded) email. Et alors, et alors, et alors... We're fucking medical students. You'd think we could at least engage in a reasonable debate rather than petty flame-war sniping, no matter what our opinions may be. Why is it that certain topics seem to bring out the ravening neolithic hunter in so many people?

Quotes, 24 January

• GM: I should give you a bonus to AC for the rivets on your nipples. Bri: Don't piss me off, I'll run at you full-speed.
• Bri: He's going to be a bard. Angel: We have a nance!
• Dash: Because you have a thing for drow boys. Completely platonically, of course.
• GM: Don't cast Ray of Frost on elves. Those nipples are deadly.
• Me: I'm outfitting the boy. Properly. Angel: If you start picking up levels of cleric, I'm going to be worried.
• Angel: Yes. I'm making confession. Of a drow priestess in training. Dash: Forgive me, Father, for I have fucked every man in existence. GM: When you're done, he goes to have a cigarette, then comes back...
• GM (to Bri): Hey, glittertits! Bri: I'm going to have to go look that up in the Tolkien dictionary online. Dash: I seriously doubt 'tit' has been translated into Elvish.
• Jeff: Hi! What are you doing on the surface? Me: Buying clothes.
• Me: Would it make you feel better if I were trying to kill you?
• Angel: Frank's Emporium of Expensive Crap. GM: Wow. It's Pier One.
• Dash: Well, if you're going to call her 'Glittertits', I think she can call your NPC's 'Atrocious'.
• Me, gesturing: She's 'Glittertits', you're 'Notits'.
• Bri: I've been wounded by an asterisk!
• Dash: I ask the two rangers - You are both elves, are you not? GM: No, actually, he's a human. Dash: Oh, well, forget him.
• James: Would any of my L-- GM: No.
• Me: What are these? Coked-up gas station attendants? GM: Funny you should mention gas...they're actually ghasts. It's a ghast station...get it?
• Insert far too many "ghast" puns for me to be willing to replicate.
• Bri: I'm going to kill someone, and it's not going to be who I'm aiming for.
• GM: Do more than four points of damage. Dash (rolling dice): Nope, two. GM: Awww.... Dash: Look, I hit something. Work with me.
• James: Every now and then I fly off. Bri: I'll be nice and not reach for my bow. Dash: Pull!
• GM: You hear rustling in the trees. James: I look up. What does it look like? Me: Leafy.
• GM: It's a plus-one, flaming rapier. Angel: Yeth. GM: Why was I expecting that?
• James: I yell 'Hi'. Bri: You're such a cheerful little daemon.
• GM: You can, you're a second level bard. Dash: No, I'm a first-level bard. GM: You're second-level now. Dash: Oh. I wish someone would've told me. Bri: Guess what? GM: You feel spiffier. And nancier.
• Bri: I finger my short sword. Dash: I know you might be out in the woods all alone, but using the short sword might be a bit extreme.
• Me: Seventeen on the move silently. GM: You're a breeze. James: I'm only hitting thirteen. GM: You're a clunky breeze.
• Me: I listen for mimes. GM (rolling dice): You hear one.

Ishamael

I remember my first pair of wings. Feathered with softly gleaming light, a rainbow of colours enshrouded in a veil of pallid smoke, as ephemeral as the creature they had come from -- barely more substantial than the air and fire that had composed its form, not even enough to offer resistance to my blade's true stroke. They were as light as the illusion they seemed, as light as nothing; pieces of a cloud. Beautiful wings, so beautiful that for one brief moment I felt a pang of regret for the violence of my actions. It was only a moment, though, and the shimmer of my sword's blade brought me out of my reverie with a silent curse. The blue-white blade of ice was coated with a shimmering fluid, iridescent, clinging to my fingers with an electric thrill as I touched it. Angel's blood, sticky as anything. I used the wings to wipe it off; they were surprisingly good at soaking up blood, for ornamental fluff. Folded them into a neat little packet of smoke and shadow and stuffed them into my bag. It was then, sheathing the sword of ice, feeling its weight--the swords, at least, had more substance that the creature they were meant to cleave--as a counter to the blade of flame whose hilt perched above my right shoulder, that I felt complete for the first time. Nothing that had been offered me, by angel or daemon, had given me the feeling that sheathing that second blade--committing myself to the path I had been so long in choosing--had finally done. The subconscious click of things at last falling into their proper places, the mantle of Crusader that slipped from my shoulders with startling ease, the sudden absence of guilt and doubt that left me lighter, less burdened, than I had been in long centuries. Feri-el's voice, bell-like even in its aggrievement, lingered in my mind; its words of shock and dismay as I'd drawn the blue-veined blade of ice and held it out in a so-familiar stance: "El-Ishamael, what hast thou done?" Not el-Ishamael, no longer, I mused to myself. Neither el-Ishamael nor al-Ishamael, now. Perhaps the angel had been right; its skill with its sword suggested experience, and experience suggested a knowledge of Mikael's true intentions. Perhaps it was impossible to serve two masters. But I served only one, in truth: the blade, the war between Heaven and Hell. I served the twin blades on my back alone, freed of all ties that had bound me, even as A'al had promised in offering me the blade of ice. Freed as well, however, of the stigma and the curse of serving Lukifer. The war between the two immortal realms had taken on a life of its own, chosen a champion to serve its purpose, and named him Ishamael.

*****

Time changed, slowly, speeding back up until once again I moved at the same pace as the rest of the world. Time flowed, passed, allowing me to rejoin the mortal world, no longer clad in the armour of a soldier, my swords invisible to their eyes. I felt the familiar twisting inside me, the desire to cling to that slowed, stretched time of angels and daemons, the world within and around the mortal realms. There, I could lose myself forever in the infinite beauty of a raindrop crawling from cloud to ground, take the time to savour the flow of sap from branch to leaf, appreciate the infinite echoes of a single heartbeat. It was the time of love and hate, borne by the angels, their wings the only substantial part of them, and usurped by the daemons; a time I was slowly learning to claim for my own.

Et alors...

Et alors: a construction often over-used as punctuation by French children, translating roughly to "and then". I ran a little bit late this morning, getting out of the house. Almost forgot breakfast. Et alors... I had to brush the snow off of Michel-Ange, but at least there wasn't ice. But it was so cold out. Wished his heater would warm up just a little faster, so I could drive without gloves. Et alors... I got up to Lake and Anthony, about 5-10 minutes from being parked and inside the school building, at 8:15. Closer than I like to cut it. Et alors... I tried to start moving, when the little leftward-pointing-green-arrow lit up. I forgot I was in third gear. Et alors... Shifted to first, cranked the engine on, and gave it gas. Rooooar, chugga, chugga, sputter, plop. Et alors... So there I was, in the left-turn lane of Lake, engine flooded, and my blinkers wouldn't come on. Cranked it again. Et alors... Turned the car off, ran around it to tell the lady behind me to go around, got back in after unlocking the door, which I'd unconsciously locked, and the blinkers came on at least. Cranked it again. Et alors... Forgot that when it is bone-numbingly cold out, Michel-Ange drains from being flooded very slowly. Cranked it again, several times, until it started making the 'rowr-a' noise that means the battery is getting low. Call home. Nobody answers, cell or landline.Et alors... An angel in a green winter coat, twenty-something, cute, knocks on my window. "Can I help you push?" I love him. We push it, in reverse, into the gas station until the upslope defeats our strength. His boots are skidding, but I'm out of the left-turn lane. Et alors... I go into the gas station, buy a cup of horrible coffee, and go back out. Try cranking it one last time. Chugga, rowr-a, rowr-a, rowr, rowr, row... There's no more power in the battery. Call home again, silently praying. Angel answers this time. He'll come get me, jump the car. Et alors... I call school, call Lowene. It's 8:30. Tell Dr. Smith I'm having car troubles, I'll be late to class. "Okay," she says, and offers sympathy. I wait. Drink bad coffee. At least, now, I know it won't be flooded when next I get it started. Et alors... Angel calls. "Where are you?" Lake and Anthony, at the gas station. "Oh...I thought you said Anthony and Wayne..." He pulls up five minutes later. My gloves are actually keeping my fingers a little warm. We get my hood popped (never did it before now), he digs into his trunk and gets his jumper cables. Et alors... They're still tied together with you-don't-want-to-use us plastic thingies. Angel tries to saw them open with his key. I take them away from him, into the gas station. Do you have any scissors? "I'll look," says the mid-twenties guy behind the counter, his Arabic accent showing strongly. He comes up with a box cutter. A part of my mind collapses in ironic laughter. It's dullish, but I get the ties cut, thank him, go back outside. Et alors... Angel's hood appears to be frozen shut. He can't pop it. I finally wedge a key under it and pull up while he pushes the button. Click. Whew. We connect the cables. I crank the engine. Chugga-Rooooar. Et alors... As I'm kissing Angel goodbye and pulling out, the thought crosses my mind: How long do I have to keep Michel-Ange running to prevent him from dying again? So I call Daddy, and idle another 5 minutes in the parking garage, on his suggestion. Arrive in class at 9:15, to Dr. Smith's assurance that I only missed one joke, and that of questionable funniness. Et alors... 9:20, he catches me laughing at one of his comments. "You're in a better mode than I would be." I have to laugh, or else I'd cry, and crying never solves anything. Et alors... Medicine was two hours of pure boredom. He was young, cute, and soft-spoken. He talked a mile a minute (32 pages of notes; 96 powerpoint slides in 1:50), and nobody understood anything he said. We had to constantly stop him to ask what the acronyms he used meant. But I did get the opening to Ishamael done. Maybe I'll post it later, see if I ought to continue writing it. Et alors... Home, finally. Sleepy; I went over to Jefe and Lily's to see M and her man last night instead of going to bed at 11. It was worth it. We've decided that M will attempt to provide plot and inspiration for The Story from Australia, while I attempt to write more of it, via IM and e-mail. Because it would be a shame to see The Story die. And so far, that's been my day. I did learn, a day or two ago, that I apparently inherited my lack of gag reflex from my daddy, who also has a very subtle and not-easily-triggered one. Must finish notes.

I want I want I want...

Excerpted from an e-mail from Dell Customer Care:

Thank you for contacting Dell Customer Care. I checked the status of your Axim order and found that it is estimated to ship at February 27. There has been an increase in demand for the Axim since the holidays. This has increased production and has thereby delayed shipment for the said items. I apologize for this inconvenience. Do not worry, it is scheduled to be shipped and there are no other current problems. Regards, Ramon

FEBRUARY? *sobs* I want the thing now!

What a day for a daydream....

It's been a very long day. Not enough sleep last night, too many carbohydrates this morning, all of the above...hard to tell. In any case, they all conspired to send me spiralling off time and again today into elabourate fantasies that I couldn't distinguish from the class. It was as if there were two realities, superimposed on each other: the one in which Dr. Smith was lecturing on small-pale-cell anaemia, and the one in which Scott asked him a question, and the entire class wound up in a discussion of what sort of party we were going to have on Friday night. And that was the problem: these fantasies were so real, so believable. Hypnagogic hallucinations. I don't know if I learned anything this morning; I don't know what I really heard and what I imagined hearing. It all blended seamlessly together; the words coming from peoples mouths were simply not the things I heard them saying. I had entire conversations today without opening my mouth, dialogues and discussions. I played games, got drinks, studied and asked questions. But I don't know what was real and what wasn't. The only reason I'm aware of it at all was that I would occasionally wake up, and snap out of it, realising I was completely out of sync with the rest of the world. The afternoon went better, mostly because I had to focus on hearing heart sounds, and that somehow kept my mind awake. On the other hand, I did hear everything I was supposed to, and I'm sure that the conversation with Lowene in which my ENT exam grade got changed to 100% really happened, as well as the one where we got credit for at least one of the pulmonology questions. And I wrote a poem. Do not deprive the dancing girl of morning We must depict her lightly in the moon Though daylight comes and takes her with its dawning The dancing girl won't fade away too soon. The summertime is slipping through her fingers, She seizes at the morning like the dew And clad in vapour fine that dies with sunlight She dances lest the winter winds blow through O dancing girl of mist and summer shadow We paint your raiment lightly in the dawn For though the winter sunlight steals your substance Your dance, your summer's music lingers on. 23.01.03 - "Morning Glory"

Those were the days, my friend...

Well, Radiology wasn't so bad today. He asked us how the last one had gone. We told him - pretty bluntly - that it had been two hours of not seeing anything he pointed at. He grins and says "This should be better." And it was. He pulled the 8 or so of us who were there over to the light boxes and handed out films. "Go ahead, put them up. No , no, which way do you think is up?" And then had us try to read them, find the anatomy, look around. I learned something today. I learned a lot of things, remembered where others were. Discovered that you really can see the kidneys on an X-ray, if it's done right. And kidney stones. And colon cancer. Today was a good day.

Preliminary (before the curve) scores on the Medicine composite exam:

Anaesthesia (2 points): 100% (big surprise there) Allergy and Immunology (4 points): 83% ENT (4 points): 82% Pulmonology (22 points): 82% We'll see how high it gets curved. Last year pulm. had a 7-point curve. In any case, I'm still high-passing.

Sense and sensibility...

Got out of the exams early, after only about 40 minutes or so. As always. Walked into the lounge and Rachel the first-year was there. It seems she took her PET scan to IU, for another reading. And they say she might be in full remission after all. Still going to have a consult in Nebraska, and another PET in 3 weeks. But it might be okay. I hope so. She's taking the leave of absence for the year and planning to come back next year, seems to be in much better spirits. Pray for her. The exams... Well, I know I got my two anaesthesia points. And my four ENT points, most likely. As for Pulmonology and Allergy, I feel confident that I exceeded the 54% target score by a significant amount (despite the utter rape indicated by the first few questions in the allergy exam - who knew we were going to have to know the test acronyms?), so probability whispers in my ear: I'm still high-passing. Kickass. Now for the Pathology exam on Monday that's so going to make me its bitch. In other news: I have a Permanent account on LJ now, having discovered that (a) they had them for sale briefly and (b) I could transfer my year's paid account to Angel so we didn't lose the payments we'd made. Seeing as how I use the bloody thing all the time. I've also been pulled into getting a user account on HP. Radiology this afternoon. Must find something to work on writing, else I will wind up taking a 2-hour nap again. When the first professor comes into the room and says, "I write the test. We'll have a review session in which I'll do everything but tell you what letter to put on what number," it kills any motivation at all that I might have had to keep my eyes open and on the screen while radiologists put up grainy black-and-white slides of X-rays ("and right here are the kidneys, and you can see the sigmoid colon here, and the small bowel with air in it here...") that hold none of the detail that they are so enthusiastically outlining with the laser pointer. It kills any reason at all for me to even attempt to fathom why he's so sure that this grainy black area on the ultrasound is a bladder, when it looks like a bad test pattern to all sixteen of us. I kid you not, boys and girls. Sixteen medical students looked at these slides and thought privately, "I hope nobody else sees anything." And most of us just flat-out fell asleep. Jim and company are planning to skip lecture; I think that sounds like a lovely idea but can't bring myself to be so rude.

Meh.

Wednesday Medicine composite exam:

Allergy and Immunology: 30 questions, 4 points. Pulmonology: 50 questions, 22 points. Anaesthesiology (open book, take-home): 15 questions, 2 points. ENT: 11 questions, 4 points. (We were given 6 questions of the 11 in advance) Guess what I studied tonight. Medicine total available points for the year: 350. Medicine current points: 40.96/46 possible. Required score on tomorrow's four exams to maintain a 75% (Passing) average: 54%. 51.8% if I count Anaesthesiology as a guaranteed 2 points. Required score on tomorrow's four exams to maintain an 84% (High Pass) average: 76.75% Required score on tomorrow's four exams to achieve a 92% (Honours Pass) average: 96%. Okay, now I feel better. I'm going to sleep.

What am I supposed to be learning?

With spirometric measurements volumes are plotted on the horizontal (X) axis and flows on the vertical (Y) axis = flow-volume loop. The flow-volune loop allows the assessment of additional flows such as FEFmax, FEF50%, FEF75% and FIF50%. The decrease of mid-expiratory flow rates is a typical finding in COPD patients and is an expression of flow limitation. Two mechanisms explain expiratory flow limitation in COPD patients: an intrinsic mechanism, i.e., decrease of the caliber of the small airways (inter diameter of < 2mm) by inflammation, fibrosis, and mucus plugging; and an extrinsic mechanism, one due to lack of parenchymal support of the peripheral airways as a consequence of disruption of the elastic network of the lung. An enhanced collapsibility of the flow-limiting airways.

If that made sense to you, congratulations. Because I don't hardly understand word one. Stupid pulmonologists...This woman talked for an hour and a half, and we left dumber for it.

To understand these shape variations of the flow-volume loop, it is important to consider the pressure gradient across the walls of the airway during inspiration and expiration. First, breathing through an external orifice of 6mm reduces peak flows and produces plateaus on both inspiration and expiration. During inspiation the extrathoracic airway has a transmural pressure favouring narrowing because intraluminal pressure is subatmospheric while extraluminal pressure is approximately atmospheric. In variable extrathoracic lesions, during expiration intraluminal pressure is positive relative to extraluminal pressure, thus tending to dilate the airway and obscure the presence of the lesion. When a variable lesion is intrathoracic in location, during inspiration extraluminal pressure (equivalent to pleural pressure) is (-) relative to intraluminal pressure so that transmural pressure favors airway dilatation. During expiration extraluminal pressure is positive relative to intraluminal pressure so that airway narrowing occurs.

WHAT?

I bet you wonder how I knew...

Stopped off at the liquor store to get sake for the sushi we're going to try for. "Heard it through the grapevine" came on. I started singing along, soft-like. Forty-ish black woman behind the counter looks at me, shakes her head, and goes "Oh, no, honey, you're too -young- for that kinda jive." Me: "I grew up on this stuff!" She just laughs. "You got good parents." Damn straight.

Revelation and consideration....

If I ever flunk out of medical school, maybe I can make a living as an ENT test patient. Today's session: ear, nose, and throat physical diagnosis. Very interesting, mind you, but it was quickly remembered from Neurology last year that my gag reflex is low to absent. Specifically, you can shove a tongue depressor down my throat and follow it up with a little mirror, and even if you mess up and bang around on my palate, uvula, tongue and tonsils with the beast, I won't gag, nor will I cough. I'll just sit quietly while all fifteen of my classmates tug my tongue this way and that, so that everyone but me gets a good view of my vocal cords. "Oooh, say 'eeee' again! I saw them move!" "Eeeehhhhhh" "Cool! Hey, Jim!" "Hey, Rachel!" "Here, Iwona, practise on Nykki. She doesn't gag!" My tongue is numb. My throat is dry. But I have the awe of all my classmates. I got to look down Iwona's throat, briefly, and Kara's, after I gagged her ten times with the tongue depressor. Press...and scoop. There's an art to it. An art I do not possess. But I'm pretty decent at peeking into ears. Jim's malleus is hyperemic - it's a big red line down his eardrum - and he has otosclerosis from ear infections as a child. I can see Kara's incus, which is pretty darn cool, and I even got to blow air in and see her eardrum move. Iwona's nose is most interesting - she has a giant hole in the middle of her nasal septum. We all had to look at that. It's like the two sides of her nose are connected. Jim's cracking jokes about how she must've used cocaine back in Poland - because cocaine use can lead to septal perforation. We had a meeting today, the AMA kids, talked about the CSAE and the resident work-week. Those of you with political activist leanings: call your representative people. H.R.3236 has 72 co-sponsors. S.2614, its companion bill in the senate, has only 3. Both bills call for an 80-hour cap to the work week, no more than 24 hours per shift, with 10 hours between shifts. No more than a 12-hour straight workday for ER residents. It may not seem like a big deal - but treating patients after 110 hours of work is not good for the patient, nor is it really conducive to a learning environment. The CSAE, on the other hand, is more of an internal issue. If you would like to see the details regarding this proposed exam, it's here on the AMSA website. The National Board is not listening to the students' concerns at all, and we've been forced to go the the state medical licensing boards to fight it. I think it's laid out pretty clearly on the site. It's been an interesting day.

Nicaragua....

I found my journal from Nicaragua: 04 January 2001 Meeting with the Procuratduria para la defensa de lose derechos humanos (the ombudsman for human rights). He said we were all angels and promised the support of his office if we should ever need help getting into the country. Quel surprise! It appears at least he recognises that our mission is above politics. --- CENIDH: The press are here. It's a wild interview--Ed gets asked some pointed questions by the journalists; about abortion, what we want the the gov't to do, whether Clinton knew about the sudden nationalist streak (Ed: I haven't asked him.), where we were going... Wild times. Crazy times. I've never been in the middle of an international incident before. Health care is a political issue here...we as a medical delegation have to try hard to stay politically neutral. 05 January (There's a drawing here, not much of one, a sketch) and a lake like crumpled steel, flat and grey - still like a blackened reflection of the blackness of the mountain, only a glimmer of the blue of a bright and clouded sky. Granada. --- A young girl - 12, perhaps, with the slight pudge of the well-fed, dressed in a brief tight top and short skirt, lips rouged, eyes blue and violet, slanted, almond-shaped. Her breasts are young, her hips still straight. She and her two compatriots, wild young girls with their long black hair caught back by nets, black and beaded, in skirts that reach their knees, like two children and a young-old whore... 06 January Very little to write this eve. Much has happened, but I am sore and unhappy, so I sleep early. Got a faceful of tree on top of the cattletruck. Split lip and bruised. Dust in my eyes, nearly losing a contact, and then kicked in the head. It's been a helluva day. 07 January Today: got up bright and early for breakfast at 7:30. From there: strict orders to be ready to go at 8. 8:00 comes and goes. We play euchre. We lose, Kent and I. Twice. I'm bad karma. :P. 9:00 comes and goes. At 10:30 we load up. I get a spot on the front of the camion, the cattle truck, Thus much joking about how I want the other half of my face to match the left. It's healing nicely. I got a look at it in a mirror this morning, and I look like a battered girlfriend, but most of the bruising is inside. Had a lemony thingy today and OW. Citric acid on cuts hurts... Anyway. Breakfast was rice, refried beans, eggs, and tortillas. Same as dinner. Same as lunch/dinner today. Not as bad, but I have to go easy on the tortillas --they're very heavy. --- I'm already all over dirt from yesterday. It wasn't so bad until I met a branch at 20 miles an hour and had to come down, so I could spit blood. They made me suck on an antibiotic wipe to clean it out. I have rarely tasted anything so foul. Yuck. So as I'm leaning out the back of the truck to spit, I get a cloud of dust in my eyes. I spend the next 45 minutes blind and in agony, until I give up and pop my contacts out. I drop them onto a damp Kleenex. And knock one off. I'm blind. There's a half-inch of road dust on everything. I find it (with Terry and Steve looking too) by sheer luck. Margo donates her contact case to put the contacts in. I still haven't put them back in. So despite all this, a beglassessed nykkit crawls up into the top front of the camion once more, for the three hour ride to El Hormiguero, on the scenic Wani river, near the largest natural preserve in Nicaragua. Paved roads are one thing. The road to Mulukukú from Rio Blanco, where the pavement ended, was something else. Dust everywhere. They were playing tic-tac-toe on Mike's leg in the dust sifting down. The road from Mulukukú to El Hormiguero, on the other hand, was worse than Purgatorio. We're all on top. The dust is in human below. Despite the beam broken nearly through, and the branches and electric wires that send us diving for cover, we're on top. The truck whines its way across a dirt road no wider than it is in places, concrete-slab bridges over gorges, through potholes so deep they tilt the truck 10 º or more. We're holding on for dear life. Screams and laughter. And then... Then there are these exhilarating moments of speed, where we fly down a hill, wild, free. The camioneta breaks down. We pack into the other, I guess. Cause the next time I see it, it's got people clinging to it... 08 January There's no electricity here. I'm sprawled on the tile floor of the patio in front of our side of the school, writing by candlelight. The moon is full, and so bright. The clouds are clearing; but the moonlight washes out the stars. Went back to the river to bathe tonight. A shower's been built for those who want it, but I kind of like river bathing. It's so fun. Waldo says he knows a better place to bathe, but we didn't see him before we went down, so it was back down shit mountain tonight. Leela slipped and fell on her ass in shit yesterday, which was the source of endless amusement. There's a fast place where we could surf down the river, where I almost lost a shoe. My hair feels soft, I feel clean. I like it. Today we set up the clinica, unpacked more amoxicillin and analgesics than I've ever seen in my life, and organised. --- Saw a cockroach last night with an ant clinging to its leg. Looked like the ant was trying to eat it. 10 January Watching the dentist today. Morning: 45 extractions over 15 patients. Average patient age: ~20. Brushed my teeth after lunch. 12 January ...Along about 4:00 Joe brought in a little girl with an acute asthma attack. Had to get her weight and temperature so they could dose her. And then it turned out that she had to be in the vitals room, because we had electricity, so the machine to mist her could run. So I took ove rher charge. Stayed with her from 4:30 until 6:30 and then got dinner. And them back to the watch. We gave her three separate treatments with the mist, and by the second half of the third one, she was breathing in the mist instead of just gasping for air. Poor thing, tiny and fragile, wrapped in my towel to keep herself warm, with the fine features of the indigenous people - a small nose, solemn mouth, and huge eyes, brown-black. She was nine, looking seven or less, a tiny, tiny child. Her dad finally came at around 8:30, and I went to bed.

Did you ever dance with the Devil...

...Last night was a pleasant blur. The best of it came in several peaks of happiness, the first when my cell phone rang as Angel was in the shower. Ryken called me. It wasn't an incredibly long chat with him, but it was so good to hear his voice. So good to be able to tell him I missed him, talk with him...Especially after missing his last two calls. He's going to Mississipi next, to tech school. Maybe he'll be able to find a laptop, maybe he'll find a net cafe and be on once in a while. I miss him. So damn much... We couldn't decide where to go to dinner. It was already something like 6:30 when we started calling random Asian places for reservations. Asian Bistro didn't answer the phone. Mikado did. Sukiyaki, which is sort of Japanese fondue, and sake and low lights and real Japanese waitresses and a bill that made me wince. Oh, but it was wonderful. I could've stayed there all night, except...well, except that we had tickets to the dance, and so we went. We stayed a couple hours. Got drinks at the bar. Then caught a cab home because we hadn't driven there, watched MS-NBC investigates and had a lovely bit of alone time. *coughs* And then came home. I have a new coat, we have new jeans, I have earrings and necklaces and hose (two pairs of which I ruined) and a network card for the Dell palmtop that should be coming in the mail soon and I'm going to have to take out student loans to pay for the bloody programs to put on it. *snarls* I will share the cost of the books for specialties I'm never going into. It makes sense for me to have a Harriet Lane. It does not make sense for me to have a medical text for neuro when I'm not going to do it for more than a month. The car adapter for Shain (the laptop) works great, although the poor beast is exhausted from going hither and yon, and I should shut it down and let it get a little rest. I'm finally done with the notes on arteries and veins, and I can start on the notes for the lungs and then male genital system (Why o why did they have Dr. McBride do the male genital system? The man is so unbelievably hot...and there he is popping up pictures of syphilitic penises and torsioned testes and wincing every time he does. It was different when Merkle did diseases; he didn't have this gorgeous baby face that you just want to...) Okay, rambling. Getting slightly obsessive about this. I need to move on. Tomorrow: no school. Which is why, at 1:55 in the morning, I'm eating carrots and peas and ranting on my livejournal. I think I'm going to call Michel-Ange in sick tomorrow, try to get him aligned (Stupid gay car doesn't even drive straight) and get more notes done. Trying not to obsess over the Wednesday Pulmonology Medicine exam that I haven't studied for. Stupid pulmonologists. This is going to suck. And Allergy too. But at least it'll clear out something like an inch of notes in my binder. Wednesday-Medicine, Monday-Pathology. And so it begins. Current score: Cardiac medicine, 27 pages. Done. Vasculitides, 24 pages. Done. All that's left for the next exam are four sections of lung (Thank you, Dr. Burkhardt, for having beautiful notes and straightforward exam questions), male genitalia (which, if I can get my mind out of McBride's...Never mind. I'm not going to finish that thought. He asks good questions too, though) and then I'm done. I can handle this. Especially if I get my ass in gear tomorrow.

Let the midnight special....Shine a light on me...

...From Friday... I emailed Jen yesterday morning, when she sent the email out to the listserv for IUSM telling everyone that the St. Vitus day dance was sold out. Just to make sure she'd gotten my check (We centre students are at a serious disadvantage for everything; we can't just toss a check in someone's mailbox and go. We have to pay postage and all.), which I assumed she had. Imagine my surprise and terror when I got home that evening and got a mail from her saying "I don't remember getting your check, when did you send it?" I emailed right back...Monday the 6th, I said, I mailed the check. We have our hotel reservations (At the OMNI) through Hotwire, so they're not refundable. But there's not all that much point to going to Indy if we don't have a dance to go to...except to see Chris and Laura, where we're staying tonight. Got another e-mail from her today. My name's on the list (whew) so we've got tickets reserved. Tonight - staying with Chris and Laura and having a good time with their Cheese Fondue. Tomorrow night: St. Vitus dance. Tiny black dress and open bar and a taxi back to a nice hotel. Sunday: come home and realise that despite my lovely intentions, I haven't gotten any studying done. Monday: worry about studying. So goes my proposed weekend. Heard from a voice on the 'net that saw Ryken's graduation from Basic today. He looks good, sends greetings. I miss him.

Dr. Smith, screaming, in the front of class, in a sturdy German accent: "No sleeping! I can't stand it when you sleep! I have to put on my lederhosen!" Rachel dropped out. She's a first-year student. At the beginning of the school year, she went in to see her doctor because she was coughing up blood. They figured it was pneumonia, and sent her in for a CXR. And that's when they found the softball-sized tumour growing around her inferiour vena cava. "It's okay," they said. "We'll do a biopsy. It's probably Hodgkin's lymphoma. You're young, you're mostly healthy, it's got a 95% survival rate in someone your age after radiation therapy." It wasn't. It was non-Hodgkin's, trampling on the odds (more men than women, most patients are 40-70) and putting her in a category with a far higher risk of dying. She started 6 weeks of chemotherapy. And took classes. And passed classes. Last Friday, she went in for a CT scan at the end of her chemo. It should've been gone. If it'd been gone, then everything would have been fine. It wasn't. It was still three inches. She's going to U of Nebraska to have her bone marrow sucked out. Then they'll irradiate her whole body, kill everything in it, all the B-cells that are running rampant. Then they'll stick the good stem cells back in, and hope it finds her bone marrow again and makes new, non-cancerous bone marrow. Bone marrow transplant is so risky. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is so nasty. I think...if we've been told correctly, she has a 40-50% five-year survival rate. She's a medical student. She wanted to be a doctor. She stuck it out, through all of first semester, going to classes, going to labs, going to chemotherapy, and she passed. Maybe you're starting to get an idea of the kind of dedication it takes for a healthy person to pass. I don't understand why, this time. I don't know what the reason is. God, please let this treatment work...

I miss you, Ryken...

I got home and got the mail. There was a small white and green envelope with the Air Force emblem on it. And my name spelt wrong. My heart turned over. I feel bad for not having written him...I keep meaning to, and then I don't, and I don't, and I don't. And I miss him. And there was a lot more I was going to say, but I just...No. I think I'll hold my thoughts in my mind for a while yet, turn them over and feel them. Maybe it'll be a reason to write. Note: finish the entry about Radiology.

Thank you, guardian angel...

I'm driving down Jefferson. I turn on my blinker to get into the left lane, just as I'm crossing Lafayette. Just like I always do, because half of the left lane turns down Lafayette two blocks before I want to turn, and it's so much faster to just cut in then. I turn on my blinker as I'm crossing Lafayette, slide over into the left lane after going a good fifty feet or so past the street, because you're Not Supposed To Change Lanes in the Middle of the Intersection. And I check my rearview mirror like a good girl. All clear. Halfway through, I look back again. There's a guy in a silver BMW who apparently decided that doing 35 on the right side of the road wasn't good enough for him, and he's cutting across two lanes of traffic in the middle of the intersection, while accelerating. Into the lane I am changing into, which I cannot cease changing into for fear of running into a giant dump truck. He doesn't back off, I accelerate and get in my lane, he tailgates me for like four blocks, revving his BMW engine before passing me as I'm going 45 in a 30 zone. Asshole. Clinical cases this morning, for an hour. That was nice. I like clinical cases. Especially when they have little "These might be on the Boards" questions after them, and we get to talk about them in class. The other two hours were a little droopier, but I did manage to stay mostly awake for most of them. This afternoon: Radiology. Seriously considering a nap. I think I'm going to need it. I don't want to go to class.

Sayonara, Samuel....

Stopped at the store. Never mind getting home early, it's almost 17:30 now. A random note on health-food nuts. There's this long argument about what one should feed a baby (coughcoughBREAST MILKcough), which boils down to: "Don't feed babies icky cow's milk. It gives them allergies and increases their chance for diabetes. Feed them this delicious, nutritious, wholesome Soy Milk instead. It's much better for them." Soy is one of the top five allergenic substances for kids that exist. It's right up there with milk, peanuts, and eggs. Does this strike anyone else as a little bit odd? Feeling adventurous today. Bought soy-based pseudohamburger. It's not bad, in tacos.

We had an allergist lecture today. So, out of curiosity, I asked him about my nose-itching. We think, Angel and I, that we have it narrowed down to wines with a high sulfite content and foods with MSG in them. And I explained the whole thing. And he gave me a quizzical look. "Just your nose?" He laughed a little, too. But he says it's entirely possible that I'm allergic or reactive to MSG and sulfites, and I just have a very strange reaction. Daddy's allergic to sulfites. Maybe I got it from him. It's a great party trick. Feed me cheap wine and watch me spend hours batting at my nose, because it won't stop itching. Doesn't run much, once in a while my eyes will get into the act, but mostly it's just my nose. He was an interesting lecturer, the allergist, especially with his story (true story, boys and girls. He saw it when he was in training) about the woman who was allergic to seminal fluid. Every time she and her husband had sex, she wound up in the ER in anaphylaxis. He had to wear a condom to keep her from reacting. Wouldn't that just kill a relationship, until you figured it out? "No, sorry, honey, not tonight. I want to breathe." It's 3:45 PM. We're out a touch early, hallelu. That means I can go home and throw something in the fridge to marinate or something, and then maybe get some notes done before I die of longdayness. I hate medical school. Have I mentioned that recently? Got out the third-year calendars this afternoon and went through them. I know when I want to do my FP-Peds-Elective months, so it's basically a choice between doing OB and surgery first or Neuro-Medicine-Psychiatry first. And frankly, I just want to get Neuro out of the bloody way. I know I'm never going into it, I'm not all that good at it, and if I do it right after Boards I'll have just reviewed recently - so I should know the stuff better, right? So I've got options picked out, going to go over them with Angel and look at everything. *fingercrosses* And this is the point where God does God's magical God-thing, and all of my choices and options will fall apart and fall away until there's only one clear choice for what to do. That's how it always happens for me. I don't really have a choice in life; I'm doing what I'm needed to do, what I'm called to do, and I'm finding that every time I try to go another way, I'm stonewalled and left dragging my feet, exhausted and abused. Funny how it works like that.

Snow!

It snowed last night - the kind of snow that doesn't make ice, brushes off the car neatly, and begs to be played in. I wish I could. I wish I didn't have to go to class in the morning, I wish I didn't have to play Medical Student and sit here in these classes. I wish I could just blow off the classes, sleep 'till ten, and play in the snow all day, all bundled up in my warm coat and gloves and boots. And come in freezing cold at noon for hot soup and grilled-cheese sandwiches. Iwona missed half of class this morning. Listening to her telling the story of why. I-69 is blocked, northbound and southbound. Her daycare's on Illinois Road, which is where everyone's trying to get off. Plus a lot more.

"Now! He's taking a breath! Let's go!"

From Yesterday Morning: And the TB lecturer, while very interesting and engaging, especially when compared to the Asthma lecturer who completely failed to show up (Lowene: "He's probably out saving lives." Scott: "He'd better be - because now we can't."), droned on and on and on, lecturing from 10:55 to 12:05 instead of 10:45-11:45, which would have allowed us the normal lunch hour. Lunch isn't that exciting today anyway - just fish, rice, and veggies - but it's being somewhere other than the bloody classroom. At least this morning marked another first lecture by Dr. Burkhardt, who always spends his first lecture showing us slides of all the places he's been and seen. Today, it was Chamonix, France, so we had 40 minutes of mountains and hikes and 15 minutes of lung anatomy. It's been a slow day so far.

Further proof that my car is gay..,.

Michel-Ange has been misbehaving lately. Ever since Angel took to driving him to work, as a matter of fact. He's sulking and pouting, refusing to start until I beg and plead and promise to be sweet to him. Fucking diva gay car. Everything's fine until a man touches him, and then it's "Fuck you, honey. I got needs." Flooded the engine this morning, I think. But he's never done it before. He's been so tolerant and kind to me...and then Angel's driving him to work and we stop by the Ford dealership to drop off the Taurus (which, by the way, has been fixed now), and he just flat-out refuses to start until it's almost late enough to make me ate for school. But not quite that late. Like I said, he just wanted to make sure I was good and worried about the whole fucking thing. My car is not only gay, he's a flaming diva. In good news, the following:

From: Stewart, Carol S To: Boersma, Nicole S Sent: Monday, 13 January, 2003 13:04 Subject: RE: Family Practice and Peds third-year clerkships Nicole, all you have to do is choose Ft Wayne as your Peds outpatient preference when you complete your preference forms. You have to do your inpatient Peds in Indianapolis. It is usually not a problem to schedule your Peds outpatient in Ft Wayne. (I can't speak for Family Practice, but it's not a problem for us.) It also doesn't hurt to send me an email reminder about 4-6 weeks before you would begin your Peds clerkship, just as an added assurance.

What that means, boys and girls, is that I get my Outpatient Peds right here in Fort Wayne, almost guaranteed. All but signed and sealed. One month of three down, two to go. I'm waiting to hear back from the Family Practise people, and Carolyn emailed me to tell me all I had to do was let her know what elective I wanted to do here. Emergency Medicine, I think, or maybe an extra month of FP...now that might be intriguing. I'll have to look at the options. And now to bed.

Bang.

So I have to post this morning's Livejournal tomorrow, when I get back to the school computers, where I saved it before I went to lab, and then Jim took me home, so I didn't get back to it before we left. McBride comes in, looking hot as ever. Damn, but that man is cute. Jim says he's gay. We say he's just well-dressed. And the first thing he says is: "I hate to disappoint you, but unless I talk excruciatingly slowly, develop a stutter, have seizures mid-lecture and endure a touch of gastroenteritis, we'll be done in about an hour." I love short labs. We were done at 2:15. The most interesting thing we had was his story about the man who was having an affair with his former best friend's girlfriend. He was sitting on the side of the bed when said former best friend came in and shot him through the heart. The story goes: He took a drag on his cigarette, looks down, says, "You killed me, you fucker..." and drops dead. Going over Palm vs. Pocket PC for my 3rd year clerkships. Dell's got a nice Pocket PC out for way less, looks good. It wouldn't be a big deal, except I'm trying to give advice to the whole damn class. So I took notes on software. And then I sent them out. I don't know. What if I tell them wrong? Gah. Think it's time for a nap.

Kalamazoo Wings: 2. Fort Wayne Komets: 1.

Hoeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

You're a Magical Girl!

You're sugar-hyped, caffeine-hyped, and permanently genki-er than a whole busload of Disney characters on crack. You eat too much, you're a total klutz, and somehow this makes you an ideal candidate for saving the world. If you're really unlucky, you get to get naked in an embarrassing transformation sequence in every single episode, with only a few sparkles and pastel blobs to cover your dignity. Which generic anime character are you?

That said...we got a new Entertainment Centre to put all of the Entertaining Stuff on, and now the TV's been moved a bit. It makes for an interesting setup. Went to a Komets game today. More on that later. Damn. I wanted to be a mascot. Or Bishounen.

Must Share...

Courtesy of 's LJ entry today. Seems someone got hold of a bootleg LotR:Fellowship DVD with some amateur subtitling. Which is just...*laughs* fantastically funny, especially if you know the story. No cracks on the actors this time...it's all the subtitler. Find it here.

Bed for sleepy children...

Missed Clarabear because I was watching ID4. Snuggled up against my Angel, listening to explosions in the Dolby Surround (One of our speakers, you will note, is taped to the wall using some of those neat 3M strips that pull off, and it works Just Fine) and suddenly discovered that after we paused the DVD once (to go downstairs and find out why the dog was barking) all the subtitles came on. After a frantic search for the remote, we discovered that the Couch Ate It. No surprise there for anyone who's been to our apartment. The Couch eats everything. Subtitles off, we continued the movie. Only to discover that in the Special Edition with Added Footage, all of the Added Footage had indelible French Subtitles suddenly. It hadn't been like that before we paused it. Ah, well. Made it easy to tell what was Added Footage. A message for your health, from PVPonline.com.

And that's it. I'm going back to bed.

Thanks, Pete.

Small folded card in the mail. Addressed to: Nicole Boersma Information Systems Manager (My home address) When did I become an Information Systems manager? Bond Report: Livejournal Post at 19:29. Movie at 19:40. Drive to theatre: 15 minutes. Time finding a parking space: 5 minutes. Time standing outside ticket booth realising that we didn't want to go in late to Bond, freezing our buns off and trying to find another movie with a showtime between 19:45 and 20:45: 10 minutes. We gave up, decided to go to Biaggi's. On the way over, we stopped at Michael's to get candle wicks for Strayling. Along the way, I found some spiffy giant margarita glasses. Mentioned that they looked like the giant margarita glasses at Red Lobster. "Ooooh," Angel says. "Red Lobster." So that's where we went, and wound up bringing boxes with half our meals home. I adore salmon. And now we're going to cuddle up on the giant couch and watch ID4. Mmmm. Quality Time. "Total Disability due to any of the following is not a Qualifying Event: (a) Normal pregnancy or (b) any intentionally self-inflicted injury or sickness..." Does that sound like pregnancy is a self-inflicted sickness to you? I laughed so hard.

To sleep, perchance to dream...

Meant to take a little nap. A tiny nap. A nap like my usual naps, ten minutes, maybe twenty. Not four hours. Whoops. I'm sure I probably needed it, the way I've been feeling lately. Not enough sleep, moving my waking-up-time back and back and back quite suddenly to six AM instead of eight-thirty, which was hard enough on the two-AM-to-ten-PM that my body really wants. I keep drifting in class. Everyone's so hard to understand recently. Either they whisper or they have horribly thick accents, and I find myself drifting. Didn't write much today, more read through the unfinished stories I have. I'm still not sure I like the way I ended One Black Feather. It feels...Well, I know that I wrote the ending because I needed an ending. Because it was weighing on my soul. And I don't know if I like it still. It feels so rushed to me, like I'm shorting Meredith and Raven somehow. But maybe I'm wrong. The thing that's going to drive me to rewrite it all is...What happens to the baby? Carmina Mine needs rewritten from the middle of the first page into something that doesn't sound like a high-schooler worked on it. It's choppy and dry and tedious. I can't believe I have four or five more handwritten pages of it somewhere, and I didn't realise that what I have is barely salvageable. No wonder I always had trouble writing more. On a tangent, I'm glancing through the finished works now. Wondering what there is worth keeping. Ard Velhi. Ard Velhi I'll keep. I started it in high school, as a two-pager. I revised it, because I liked the idea so much, and two pages became eight, and I think that it's more or less done. Blind Luck has always been one of my favourites. I have a desperate need to go through the ClarisWorks-converted copy that is the only electronic copy I have of Blind Luck (save a scanned OCR'd version), and do some editing on it. Make it make sense again. Then I'll post it and beg for help on how to make it better. Fable is short. I wrote it for Steve, so long ago. I wonder if I should make it into something more. My aunt-the-editor claims that First Light could be publishable. I submitted it to a contest once, and got a letter back with "Some good writing. Looking forward to seeing more from you" on the bottom of it. Well if it was that good, why didn't it win anything? I've never entered a contest since. She is another strange one, based on a dream I had. Can't decide whether it's a keeper or not. Strange, how that is. I like it, but I don't know if it translated well enough to paper to validate its existence. And The Sketchbook, which is unnerving because the girl is based on me, but empowering because she's only based on me in the original image he has of her. I still like it. It's funny, I have such an emotional attachment to some of these that I can't really tell if they're any good. I'll type pages into Morning Glory when we get back from the Rave (going to see Bond) and maybe post that, depending on how close to done it is. I have more written than typed at the moment. A lot more. Hold that thought. Bond's in 15 minutes. *poofs*

It's a beautiful morning - oh!

Picked up Angel's Taurus this morning. Taking it in to Dimension Ford on Monday, hoping they know what to do with the beast. I toyed briefly with the idea of just skipping class today; it's only two classes, both of them in Medicine - which promises to be unbelievably tedious just like every other freakin' day. I don't understand it sometimes. Why do we have one incredibly fast-paced hard class, and then the professors for Medicine come in, say "I can't cover this topic in any detail in one day" and then proceed to make a go at it while making No Sense Whatsoever? Not that I'm in any hurry for it to get more detailed...I just wish that things would make more sense. Yesterday, this charming little Hispanic pulmonary physician came in, and he said "You had a lecture on Pulmonary function testing, right?" And we all kind of nodded. And he was bright enough to ask "So you know what FEV-1 and all that means, right?" Which is when he discovered that we hadn't a clue, because the function testing lecturer had made no sense to any of us at all, not even when we asked questions. Most of it...we didn't even know where to start asking questions. "I'll go over it quickly for you." Learned more in five minutes than I had in an entire hour. "Dr. Liz Isbister. I know. It's a horrible name, I married into it." "Did you learn the brachial plexus?" General agreement. "Well, that's useless." I love medical school.

Should've brought the Pan-Optic

Physical Exam this afternoon was short. Hallelu. No lunch, as Rachel and I decided we'd rather get to Lutheran early and find our room than get there late and make a bad impression. We spent a little time talking to a couple of sweet old ladies with interesting heart rhythms, chatted, and that was it this afternoon. In more good news, Dr. Smith talked so fast that I get tomorrow morning off in Pathology. However, Angel's car is still in the shop...and they're punting to the Ford dealer, since they have no idea what's wrong with it. This is frustrating :( It started when the radio turned off every time you turned right. Now it turns off all the time. Randomly. Then the power steering started to come and go. Then the seatbelt light started flashing. Flakycar. Nick and Jarrod say it's epileptic. I just want it fixed. I could've gotten all the shopping done this afternoon except I didn't have a car, and it's too cold to walk up to Kroger's. I'd do it if it were warmer. Bike or something. It's only a mile or so. But it's cold and icy and gets dark early and I'm not that confident.

A long and winding road

Strange dreams last night. Strange dreams this morning. But I woke up, and I feel better. Today is session 1 of Physical Diagnosis, which is the equivalent of last semester's History Taking only with Real Tools. The boys are all complaining that it's not even a Real Class...but it's important to me. It's the one where I realise I'm going to deal with Real People. And I don't know whether to bring things along or what, but I want to show off the PanOptic sometime, and I don't know when I should... Mmmph. Before I work myself into a frenzy, I'm going to go brush my teeth, put on socks, pack my White Coat and go to school. Tools can wait for next time.

Page count: Pathology, 15.

The most common cause of severe isolated pure valvular regurgitation is floppiness. Floppiness. Is that a technical term? What he means is prolapse...but...right. Every now and then I relapse. Like tonight. And I think too many thoughts, and I don't know what any of them are. And I think to myself, and I'm glad suddenly that I lack the desire to go over to the cabinet and get out the bottle of Cap'n Morgan's. Because I don't want to get drunk. If I get drunk, I'll be fifteen again. If I get drunk, tonight, I'll be curled up in a corner, locking my hands together, trying so hard not to imagine what it would be like to tear my wrists open with my teeth, to block out the taste, the imagined pain. If I get drunk... I haven't been drunk, not that badly, since Ryken was still here. The night he told me "Ask me anything, I'm drunk enough to answer," and I couldn't ask him. I've been afraid to, ever since then, because it all came flooding back. And I don't want it to. I don't want to remember what it was like. I want to walk the road I've chosen, the road I've made for myself. I want that to be what I think, how I feel. I am not who I was, nor will I be again. And then I click over to my friends list to set up the security on this post, and I see someone's added me as a friend - someone I haven't seen in years...someone I didn't know had a LiveJournal. Dan, pardon me, but that totally creeped me out. Because I knew it was you as soon as I saw your username, and how the fuck did you find me? I've changed websites like ten times. Funny, how little things can change your mood. So fast. I was up, now I'm down again. See how long that lasts. I think it's time to go to bed: I feel like a badly made Vampire character - too full of angst with no reason for it. And it's not even test day yet. Fuck.

Mumble mumble mumble...

Angel rolls over in bed this morning. "What time is it?" I pick up the alarm clock. "Mmmh. 8:30." Beat. "Fuck." Note that class begins at 8:30. I had to wait for him, because he's my ride, and Angel's just not quite as good at getting ready to go in a hurry as I am. At least he wasn't as slow as usual. I can get my shower done and be putting my contacts in by the time he's ready to take a shower on a normal morning. Why I insist on him showering first is a mystery. Probably because I'm lazy. I got there in time for the Spock jokes. There's a disease (whose name I've promptly forgotten) that affects only smokers, which involves a constriction of small vessels, necrosis, and winds up in the fingers falling off. And Dr. Smith made a crack about elves and hobbits and Spock, and how Bones was just apoplectic, and they had to do ear reconstructive surgery..."Dammit, Jim..." Next up: respiratory medicine. Oh, how I loathe this life of vile servitude.

To sleep, perchance to dream...

Iwona took me home today, after only 3 hours of class and a financial aid lecture. We talked some. She's not happy - she's having trouble in her marriage...if it weren't for the kids, she says, she'd be divorced most likely. I didn't know. I wish I could do something. I, on the other hand, have a marvellous husband who came home grumpy and perked up after I made faces with the broiling pan at him. We had fish. I feel like Gollum. There's ice and snow melting off of the roof and falling down the tiles. It hits the air conditioner with a loud "Thump", or occasionally a "Crash". It's kind of unnerving, if not downright frightening. Daddy came home today, from France. He brought me a journal with covers of bark, and a beautiful pen with ink cartridges. And a bottle of Alsatian Riesling, and some Cote du Rhone. And he's home. I missed my daddy. I just wish he hadn't had to come back to a pile of bills that were all due yesterday and today. It hurts, hearing him toss a magazine offer into the junk pile, saying "I don't have twelve dollars..." But he's making it. Somehow, God always seems to take care of him. I just wish it weren't so fucking last-minute. I don't know how I'm going to survive this semester. I can't stay awake in class for the life of me. Doesn't seem to matter if I get enough sleep or not. Maybe it's just my whole out-of-shapeness kicking in. There's a fencing class, at the Parks Department, starting Jan. 30th. We are so there. Exercise, fun, and pointy objects. In English, unlike the last time I took fencing. Hallelu.

A long and winding road

...It's been...days since I've posted a real update. It's been days since I've been able to motivate myself to do anything but sit around, play video games, and bemoan the looming presence of school on the horizon. Hence, this will be a long one, compiled from various notes.

Friday

Ever get somewhere and realise that nobody knows you're supposed to be there? What fun. Seems to be my lot in life - people never seem to remember that I made an appointment. But he did put me on an ambulance - a "truck", as they call them - which subsequently turned out to be broken. At least, the windshield wiper was. Took four people to replace the blade, before we pulled out at 8:25. Swung down Harrison, doing the parked-car slalom - this time, the ambulance, the bus, and a Caprice - fortunately, the bus waited for us to get past. Mental note: Ambulances don't have much in the way of shocks. Or front-wheel drive. We pull into a parking lot to wait for a call (literally, ambulances just hang out in parking lots, waiting for people to need them in that area) and get one. Priority 1 - a possible imminent delivery. Imminent, my ass. She wasn't even crowning when we got there. Contractions 2-3 minutes apart. So we loaded her up on the cot and took her to Parkview's New Life Centre, where she was resting quietly. Back to the parking lot, a different one this time. Was fun to hear them shuffle ambulances around over the radio. Another call comes in. He's 72, had a stroke mid-December, now complaining of shortness of breath (that's SOB in medical terms, boys and girls *snicker*). We get him on the cot, into the ambulance. He's looking a little bored by the whole deal. Put oxygen on (I got to hook up the oxygen, and take vitals!) and gave him a couple of sprays of nitro, and tucked him in in the ER. Mind, the letter I got about doing a ridealong says "You will not be doing any patient care. If there is a possibility of contamination, you will ride in the front seat with the driver." You will be bored as snot, it sounded like. But the paramedics asked me what I knew how to do, and even if I could do some things I won't be trained in 'till next year. And they let me do vitals and pulse-ox, and showed me how to hook up a heart monitor, and glucose, and oxygen cannulas and everything. It was so much fun. 11:35 - Priority 1: unconscious party. This comes from a complex that's notorious for bogus calls, but what can you do? We flip on the sirens and scream over there, doing our best to get around the Freakin' Assholes who refuse to move over or even worse, Deliberately Get In The Way (An aside: if you are one of those persons who thinks that it's fun to play with ambulances or not pull over as soon as it is safe to do so, please consider that they may be trying to save your Loved One some day...), and arrive at the apartment complex. It's not bogus. She's diabetic, with a list of meds a mile long and a blood glucose that reads "HI" on our little monitor. That means, boys and girls, that she's somewhere over 500...when normal is 70-110, thereabouts. This is a serious deal. We get her and her bag of meds into the truck, they start an IV drip, I take her vital signs and look over her meds list. "Um, she's taking Oxycodone and Oxycontin and Percodan? From different docs?" They pop some Narcan in her IV - which is supposed to reverse the effects of a narcotics overdose. She wakes up a little, then settles back into unconsciousness. Well, that answers that. Best guess of the ER doc: she's OD'd on her pain meds, which tipped her into diabetic ketoacidosis (basically next best thing to a coma), plus it looks like her anticoagulants are too high, because she's vomiting blood. Now that, I'm told, was an interesting run. Not many like that. We get a call at 1 PM for battery on a child, but the cops wave us off when we get there. Signal 2 - we aren't needed. Good. We get lunch at 1:30, and hope to eat it warm. We do. There isn't a single ambulance call until 4:20. We take naps and chat. I write. In quick succession - an auto accident with no injuries, a girl who passed out at the Credit Union, and another auto accident. J. is 20, complaining of neck pain after being rear-ended. So we put the collar on her, and I got to help get her on the board, did vitals, talked to her. We take her to Parkview. Turns out they were taking the xXx DVD back to the store 'cause they needed money. And she has no medical insurance. Supposedly it's the guy who rearended her's fault, he should pay right? I hope. 6:03 PM, and as we walk out of Parkview we're the only unit in the county who's not on a call. Including the one that was supposed to get off at 6. Fifteen minutes later, we're off to Centlivre Apartments, on a choking call. A 1-year-old. By the time we get there, all is well. Thankfully the mother speaks English... At 6:35, still pulling out of the complex, we get another call - man down, slumped over a snowbank. This is the weird one. He's conscious, alert, just neither talking nor responding to anything. Won't give his name, won't answer questions, nothing. They stand him up, he stands there on his own. We load him onto a cart and take him over to St. Joe - and the only thing he says is "Let me go." Just once, quite calmly. Drop him off at St. Joe, where the nurse recognises him, but can't make a name. And call it a psych case. What else can you do? I go home at 7:30, because there's no reason for me to stay and watch them do paperwork. It's been 12 hours away from home, and then roleplaying that night. All I had the energy for were quotes. Nothing much happened Saturday or Sunday. We went over to Medaryville for a family Christmas and had sandwiches and chatted with Matt's parents. Z's gaming was cancelled - and although I don't blame him, seeing as how he'd been up for way too long, it was still a disappointment. I like that character. So we stayed up late Satnite and skipped church Sunday. We'd planned to, since we'd thought that Medaryville would be a two-day affaire. Also took the Super NES in to McVan's and traded in all the games and parts, since the console's dead (no colour). And with $130 in store credit, we got an N64 and enough Zelda and Mario to make me happy and busy for far too long. Mailed off the ticket money for St. Vitus dance today. Can't wait for that; a whole weekend of fun, getting to dress up, an open bar. It's always a good time. Now I just have to decide what to wear... As far as today goes, it's been...tedious. I don't have half the stuff I need to make myself organised, so I spent a lot of the day trying to figure out what was going on and failing. Not to mention falling asleep in Medicine. It's so boring. The med-school equivalent of a blow off class. I'm going to have to do notes tonight; can't afford to get behind - and when we start the semester behind already, what can you do?