Revision: Trees

The slow embrace of snow
is gone, 
              the world seeks out the summer.
A windblown sculptor's dream
                  defines the day.
And trees encased in ice still wait 
                       to contemplate their thawing ;
         silence lingers
              in still and sleeping
   dreaming winter morning
		NsB 14-03-03
			"Trees"

Petit-prince!

I'm going to follow Clarabear's impetus and not cut this one. It's Saint-Exupéry, for pete's sake.
You are the little prince.

Saint Exupery's 'The Little Prince' Quiz.
brought to you by Quizilla On ne sait bien q'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux... *preens* Okay, I'm in a positively stunning mood now.

Who can tell me what <i><font color="#0000ff">CC, HPI, ROS, FHx, and PE</font></i> means?

Today, in brief: T.B. has transposition of the great vessels. He's 22, but looks 15. A little squirrely, Dr. L, calls him. No kidding. He just...seemed shifty. But we listened to the heart and even I found the PMI for once. And his thrill. C.C. is two days s/p CABG, six days s/p AMI. Not to mention she's had oesophageal cancer, lung cancer, and GERD. Oh, and she's 54. This is her second heart attack. But she gives a wonder of a history. Maybe I'll tell it to you later, O Best Beloved. Home. Dad needs me to take him to Dimension to get the car. Again. Can't say no, of course. Then it's home again, and off to fencing, where I get my ass kicked in foil by a 13-year-old kid named Raffi (been fencing 7 years), trounced 5-3 by Angel in a bout, and mutilated in dry sabre by John, who's big and strong and can parry me by simply not letting me move his blade. Gods, what fun I'm having. Home. Finished the renal notes, thank havens. Now just 40-some pages of GIT to do tomorrow afternoon. And now to bed. Mom and I are going to go to Curves on Saturday morning, I think, and try it out. Rachel adores it, Mom might spot me some of the membership if I like it. Going to get in shape, godsdamnit. And things are working out fine with Cyndie and the mortgage. Got word today that the second mortgage to cover the remaining 15% of the house was approved. Hallelu. Sleep. Yes. *sleeps*

Open season on interpretations: Trees

The slow embrace of snow
is gone, the world 
            seeks out the summer
a windblown sculptor's dream
                  defines the day;
         the silence lingers
And trees encased in ice still wait 
                       to contemplate their thawing  
How sweet to touch, 
              to taste the still and sleeping
winter morning
		NsB 13-03-03
			"Trees"

Maybe I should've waited...

Today in Nephrology: diabetes mellitus and Your Kidney. If l had to name an Important Disease for a budding Medical Student to learn about, it would be diabetes. You need to know about diabetes. It's only one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality in the US today. But his idea of teaching us about Diabetes Mellitus seems to consist of presenting us one paper after another on the topic: "And this slide (a slide of a lot of meaningless numbers) shows us that 43% of the patients on drug X experienced a reduction of 1O points in their (score we have no idea of its meaning) score." Study after study. We are learning nothing at all. If he had just put up his final slide (now,an hour later) in the first place and told us that the data were in support of the following treatments for diabetes: -Tight control of glucose. -Aggressive management of HTN -ACE-inhibitors in type I, ARB in typeII (Scott: Why? The pathology is identical!) -Aggressive control of cholesterol - Low protein diet We would have believed him. More, he could have spent his hour teaching us something worthwhile instead of showing us too many studies to care about. Not to mention the Rule of Powerpoint: if you print out your slides for us (a Good Idea), always print MORE than one slide per page. (Scott: Here, Nykki: here's your tree. And here's your second tree.) We can read slides if you properly format them and print them four to a page. No problem. No, No, really. We can. Gah. Whydidn't I do what Rachel did and skip this hour to type up my Physical Diagnosis from last week? I would have been productive . for at least one hour of class today. Wagner ran over, this guy couldn't teach a rock to play dead (Meeta: Why are all of our Indian profs morons? I know I'm cracking on my own race, but really... ), and I still have GIT and Renal to learn by tomorrow night. Dammit. I hate wasting my time like this. Inspiration dawns: l think I'm going to go work on renal data entry now. Yay for Taika!

Funny things....

Lynda called, looking for Dad. He's out with Paul. So I chatted with her a little bit, about belly dancing (oh, I got into the class on the third week, just yesterday, when a space opened up) and the house, and Erin. Okay, we chatted for quite a while. Makes me feel grown up to be able to talk with her. Me, to Angel: We have a giant butter container in the fridge. What's in it? Angel (opening the fridge): Butter. Me: No, the other one. Angel: Rice. You know, I knew somehow that I was going to open the wrong one, and you were going to think I did it on purpose... He did. I'm sure of it. House paperwork came to us today. Except that it has the selling price listed as our original offer, not as the agreed-on price. Called Cyndie's cell phone, left a message. O please o please let this work out right... We want to close on the 28th. That's in 2 and a half weeks. Will it work?

So, I'm sitting in class, in Medicine, thinking to myself, "How am I going to survive an hour and a half of potassium balance lecture from a Chicago-bred nephrologist?" And I'm playing euchre on Taika, and getting my butt kicked because my partner's aggressiveness is set too high so he's calling trump on a King-Queen-Left if I'm lucky, and thinking that maybe I should switch to Solitaire because at least maybe I can win then, but I have to keep pausing to write notes because his idea of a "handout" is providing us with the topic headings. And he talks so damn fast that you can't write everything down, and if I do try to write it all down I forget what he's talking about, and then he's looking around the room: "Boersma?" And I feel stupid at that point, always do. He goes through and asks us questions in alphabetical order. Nothing like it. So I might as well play games, jot a few cryptic notes, and know what he's talking about. And then, just then, darling Lowene comes into the room and says "Excuse me for interrupting, but I need Asher, Rachel, Scott K, Andy, Ryan, and Nykki immediately. They need to go to an autopsy." You have never seen six medical students pack their bags so fast. Forget coming back for Radiology this afternoon. Hell, we're gone. Over to the hospital, where we were told to park in the doctors' lot. Mind, the doctors' lot has a security bar, and only Rachel (who was working there over the summer) has a keycard. So we pass it from car to car and get yelled at by Security for it, but what can you do? And up to the autopsy. Middle-aged man, 310 lbs, came in for a TURP (trans-urethral resection of the prostate), which is a pretty standard procedure. But it's done under anaesthesia (aren't you glad, guys?), so they needed cardiac clearance. And then they didn't get it. Off to the cath lab he went, found 95% occlusion of the LAD - a heart attack waiting to happen, more or less - and took him to put a stent in. That's when the problem happened. Rare but normal complication of stenting is perforating the artery. They put a balloon in there, took him out of surgery, looked good. Then he started feeling bad - BP 62/54, HR 152...things like that. And developed cardiac tamponade (fluid in the pericardial sac compresses the heart so it can't beat) and died. Enter Lowene calling us out of class to come see the autopsy. It was interesting. I could have done forensic pathology, I think. The smell of the inside of a human being is...strange. The layers and layers of fat instilled in me a burning desire to exercise. We saw a diaphragmatic lipoma, a kidney cyst, and the cardiac tamponade. All 200 cc's of clotted blood. And then there was the rose. The funeral home puts a rose on the body bag when they bring it in. A plastic one. The tech said if we wanted it, we could have it. So I took it. Asher: That's just bizarre. Me: The rose, or keeping it? Asher (mouthing exaggeratedly): (Both). Me: It's a souvenir. I got some strange looks for that one. But it's taken me this long to creep anyone out in the class, so I think I'm doing good.

Gyah.

Would you give consent? I'll admit that under anaesthesia would be a good time to practise a pelvic, so you knew you weren't hurting anyone, but without consent? Sometimes I wonder.

Say it ain't so...

Someone tell me this article...this one right here....is a farce or a joke. Please. Angel: No, they're serious. It's everywhere. Me: No! That is the most- Angel: -asinine thing you've ever heard? Me too. Freedom fucking fries. I'm so disgusted.

Uteri: the plural of uterus. U-te-ri. Word.

Final score on the OB-GYN exam: 80%. Much better than the 73% I'd gotten previously Final score on the Pathology lab exam: 81%. Class average: 85%. Getting there. Notes for Monday's Pathology Exam: Female Genital Tract (Bustamante): 27 pages. Thank heavens for tiny favours, like skipping the last two pages of gestational disorders Gastrointestinal Tract (Czaja):45 pages, but not all of it is important by his standards. Mental note: print out his powerpoints. The Kidney (Lee): 25 pages. Lower Urinary Tract (Smith): 8 pages. Total: 105 pages. My current location: Page 25 of Female Genital Tract. 80 pages to go. Damn.

Linkage!

Okay, rather than scanning in the whole article with the pictures, how about I just offer you this:

Journal-Gazette Features: Under Exam

That's me with the closing quote, even. *dances*

Scott, the paper's here!

Jim came in this morning waving a copy of the newspaper. The story on us came out, and I have my name in the paper! And this time, I said something a little more intelligent, Mom. You must understand: my mother has never quite let me live down the time when, in third grade, I told the newspaper that I liked my class because my butt didn't hurt from sitting in one place all the time. I'll have to see about getting a scan of the article...for you, O Best Beloved.

Quiz!

Which chicago Character Are You?

Brought to you by Faytrial Of all the characters in Chicago, I think I like her the best. Roxie always made me want to just hurt the little bitch for being so stupid.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away...

Sitting in Fox and Fox, waiting for Michel-Ange to get done. No point in having Jim take me home, just to have to find a ride back again. Shouldn't be long; he said half an hour or so. Angel: why don't you do some notes? I should've brought my keyboard - it would be way more practical to do them then. *ponders* Thínk I'm going to go read a book.

Ow. *sobs*

Got the estimate on Michel-Ange. Somewhere between $7 and $800, it appears, and that's all what he referred to as a "priority list". Ball joints loose and alignment - before the ball joints give out and the car dies. Fix the boot over the passenger's side drive shaft that's been ripped open, and replace the drive shaft. Replace some funny link in the bit that keeps the wheels level when you turn - the source of the >klunk< and something that Should Be Fixed. Ow. I bought the car for only twice this much. But he's a good car. I love him. I just wanted to have a little room to breathe in the next few months' budget. With the downpayment looming, we're running on empty...

Blessed be this child...

Rather a dark story, and one I don't know if I ended right:

Blessed be this Child

Blessed be this child. Padre murmured, sprinkling water on my face, fat lips bending to touch my forehead. Be blessed, this child. I felt his lips, fleshy and warm, his breath hot against my cool and clammy skin; a good-witch kiss to guard me against the evils of a Technicolor world, a kiss to mark me. Blessed be this child, indeed. He should have just gone ahead and said it, changed the words of the ritual: be mine, this cold and unbelieving child, be forever branded with the sigil of my touch; a red and gleaming scar, a chilling, eternal reminder of my existence. Be mine from this day forward, this child. Padre owned me, from that day, claimed and purchased with a price of blood. Blessed. I can hardly speak the word. It must have been that he did not know the power of his invocation, that he was merely repeating the words of the rite; that he believed them to be as empty and dead as the hearts of his parishioners. It must have been that he was as surprised and unnerved as I by the flash of, something that passed from him to me as those fat virgin lips touched my clammy unbeliever's forehead. He must not have known. Blessed be this child, he said. And then Padre, the good Padre, kissed my forehead and sprinkled me with holy water and said a little prayer. I could see my parents beaming at me with pious pride that their daughter was blessed by the good Padre. What kind of man consecrates a child to his high and holy Lord, and then goes home that night and hangs himself? Padre did. They never told me, but I know he did. Blessed be this child. I woke up that night, choking and gasping for breath, clawing at my throat and screaming for them to get the rope off my throat. They say l finally passed out - it would have been when he died; I slipped then into dreams of bleakness - falling limp and lifeless on the bed. I didn't revive for half a day, until the sun was well out, warming my cold little mimicry of a corpse. Padre was dead, they told me. I told them I knew that. They didn't believe me. He would have known. He had to have felt it. Blessed be what child? I was no longer one. What cruel trick of a cosmic God would splice the soul of a dead priest into that of a little girl? I've been dreaming him since then, dreaming his life and death and the empty spaces after his death, a slow burn and shiver of decay. They say if I know his afterlife, tell them where he went: Heaven or Hell or the Purgatorial processing grounds. If he went to Heaven or Hell, I don't know. I don't know anything. Blessed. And l rot in my dreams. It has been twenty years now, twenty years of feeling my skin crumbling away in my sleep as his does, twenty years of psychiatry and meditation, Valium and acupuncture and the siren's song of alcohol, all failing me in the end. I have spent twenty years trying to forget the hot touch of lips on my cool forehead, the way he breathed the blessing onto me as if to make a believer of unbelieving I, the words that carried with them some small essential part of his soul. l cannot forget, not now, not even after twenty years. Blessed be this child, this child who has now become part of his slow decay into oblivion. Sometimes when I wake up at night for the horror of my own ongoing decay into fetid flesh, I can feel him within me, almost a separate being still. It is so real, so distinct in those early morning wakings, that I must force myself to resist the driving desire to rip him out of me with my bared claws. I am an animal. in the early morning dreams, a beast that desires only one thing: to be finally free. Blessed be the one who can remove this curse from me, this overwhelming burden of pain. They have always told me that l was too imaginative for my own good, that if I would just release this childish fantasy there would be no more nightmares, no more need for the pills that keep my panic at a low ebb of horror. They say. They say a lot of things, and some of them are true. But they do not know everything. They cannot explain it all. Blessed be the child I used to be. In these days, these last days of my own personal Apocalypse, I am beginning to see signs of the end. When l wake fron my dreams of decay, my hands are bloody and fissured by lines of dying flesh, scars that are slow to heal and ooze a thick greenish fluid onto everything I dress them with. I have more and more with each waking. My hands are twisted by them, nearly useless now. My parents were so proud of their daughter, to be blessed by the Padre... Blessed be this corpse of a body, this remnant of a spliced soul. I am tired, now, so very tired of living from grave to grave, my life not my own - not a life to claim, hardly, this walking evidence of the un-ignorable grip of death on the soul. I am so tired, so exhausted by struggling to stay my own, that I am beginning to doubt its value . What happens to me if I cease to struggle, end this endless war with my surrender? I do not know. Somehow, the idea is immensely appealing: to let go, give in, and let Padre's death take over me. It would be so very easy, so little pain when it was done. If there is a cosmic God watching over us all, surely He would understand. After all, I have been blessed to just this end, have I not? Blessed be this dead and dying child, after all.

He ran into my knife ten times!

Woke up with the alarm this morning, at 5:45 like a good girl. I didn't want to, and in all honesty I didn't get out of bed until nearly 7, but I did awaken and stay mostly so until then. Made plans to leave at 7 so that we'd actually get out the door just in time to drop off Michel-Ange at Fox and Fox. They're going to fix his alignment and ball joints - hopefully so that he stops going >klunk< when I turn or go over one of the ubiquitous potholes on my way to absolutely anywhere. That would be nice; the noise is really rather unnerving. So we dropped off Michel-Ange and Angel dropped me off at school after napping on my lap for 20 minutes or so. And I suddenly wondered: when did I learn to like eating oranges? Up until not so long ago, I shunned all things orange (perhaps a subtle rebellion of the poet in me; no use for anything that doesn't rhyme) - but now, of late, I find them quite yummy. Had an orange this morning, foregoing my yoghurt for it. Was good. Plus, fruit is good for you. And oranges, whole, are a good bit of fibre. Too bad I'm so sleepy; Dr. Lee plans to finish her lecture in lab too. Why can't they schedule this stuff right?

Aiee!

Angel fixed Taika! Through my fiddling with it this morning, I managed to break AvantGo, which is the software I use to sync Taika with the web. During all my study breaks today, I've been trying to get it working again. Finally Angel asked if he could try. No sooner had he touched Taika than she was cured. What a man.

Realisation dawns...

I am a Paid User. Therefore, my Semagic icon still blinks when someone updates. Sometimes, when I go to double-click on it and open the Friends page, it just opens the Semagic client. I could never figure out why. Today, I discovered that if I just click on it once, it stops flashing and will then open the client instead of my Friends page. I see. (remotely)...'It was a beautiful post...you have a talent for words I wish I could emulate.' Funny how sometimes I have to work and work to craft what I'm going to say, and then sometimes I just...know.

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping...

Angel, waiting at a red light and watching the car next to him creep up: Dude, the light's not scared. It doesn't care how close you get to it... I suddenly realised that I've done very little updating as of late, and more Creative Writing. Probably a relief to Some People. It's not that nothing's happened - evidenced by the usual RP quotes from Friday - more that I keep getting distracted from doing it. Ah, Em...when I tell you to put the CD in the drive and run the installation program, I mean put the CD in the drive and run the installation program, not ask me why the computer has no sound so I have to go put the CD in the drive and run the installation program for you. In the immortal words of one of my classmates: "Emily's not that bright, but she still deserves better than Mike..." Even keeping in mind that "not that bright" is relative to a medical student, it's so true. She's just...daft. Heard from Cindy-the-mortgage-agent on Friday; she's sending the papers for us to sign. Going to try and push up the close date to 28 March, hopefully. We signed the disclosure and our request for the sellers to make the front windows work, too. All the rest is little stuff. Stayed up way too late watching movies on Friday night and consequently got almost nothing done Saturday. No sleep and doing notes and Z's utterly enthralling campaign all at once... I'm sure our little cabal has been up and going for 48 hours straight - or very nearly. We've been on the same day for four or five sessions now, and so much has happened that I don't know quite how to even begin Psyche's journal entry. I'll have to do what I try not to and go back through logs. Psyche, after all, has a practically eidetic memory for details - particularly when she's upset...which is almost constantly. So not much of major import for this entry...the big things have been addressed in as much detail as I intend to convey in prior entries. And today's sermon quote, from a man who was reminded of what he took for granted: "Master, feed poor boys - not monkeys."