I have today and tomorrow off. Saturday and Sunday I have to take a pediatric life support class. And then Monday morning we start our four days of orientation.

I keep telling myself that I've always had a good experience on every rotation I've ever done, so I don't know why things would start going badly now. I had this exact same feeing days before I started every single rotation (emergency medicine, pediatric infectious disease, psychiatry, ob/gyn... all of them).

So now I'm trying to relax.

I was going to use today to work out and eat right. But then I had five "cocktail-sized" spinach empanadas that were left over from our housewarming party, some yogurt and two poached eggs. Yay for anxiety-eating!

 

Yoked to the apartment waiting for a UPS delivery.

Would really love to be able to walk down to ArcLight and see Tree of Life.

I have this lurking feeling of dread that occasionally confronts me head-on... "I HAVE TO BUY A CAR!!"

I do not want to do this. I don't know how to even start going about it.

Yesterday we went to Drew's sister's house for a Memorial Day bbq and our niece gave me a doctor puppet:

 

A friend's sister took this photo seconds after I officially became a doctor.

My life has turned into this long struggle to change careers; that struggle has been going on for seven years now, so sometimes it's hard to stop and appreciate that this change has actually happened. I've gotten where I was hoping to go. Obviously I have a lot (everything) to learn, but today instead of worrying about residency I'm just going to stare at this picture and be thankful that I've made it this far.

 

Medical school is over. We moved back to Los Angeles eight days ago. I'm currently sitting in our office/guest room surrounded by half-emptied boxes. There -- now you're all caught up.

I found it difficult to write while I was doing clinical rotations. So many of the good stories involved patients, and I'm loath to put anything about any patient on the internet. Also, I was way too tired. And lazy.

I have four weeks until my residency program's orientation begins. My baseline anxiety has been well-documented on this blog, so I won't bore you with how freaked out I am to be responsible for sick children. Except to alert you to the fact that sometimes I think I might faint at the mere thought of it.

I have major performance anxiety.

Speaking of which, I recently re-watched Katharine Hepburn on the Dick Cavett Show (which is AMAZING); she attributes much of her success to her ability to concentrate.

Focus and concentration can definitely carry you a long way when you're trying to do good work. My ability to concentrate fully, to completely immerse myself in whatever it is I'm working on at any given moment, has definitely suffered recently. And by recently I mean pretty much always.

Drew, meanwhile, is a master at this. It's inspiring to watch him work; he sits at his computer for hours and hours without even using the restroom or taking a sip of water. I used to accuse him of lying when he admitted that he "forgot to eat" because he was working on some project. Forgot to eat? This never has and never will happen to me. His ability to focus on a task has been good for the move from Philadelphia back to Los Angeles. Although I will admit that I've snuck off to the bathroom to check Facebook once or twice or three dozen times while he was doing something like individually bubble-wrapping everything we own. I just can't keep my mind on anything for more than a few minutes.

A recent episode of Science Friday on NPR about science books for summer reading highlighted a book which blamed the internet for destroying our ability to do "deep reading". While I'd love to blame the internet for my inability to concentrate more than five minutes at a stretch, I'm sure there are other factors at work here. Still, it is true that I love to click through from article to article while "reading the news" online. To the point that I often don't make it past the dateline.

This exchange has happened more than I'd like to admit:

Someone: "Did you hear about _______?"
Me: "I saw the headline but I didn't actually read the article."

So these are my tasks for this week:
1. Use the internet only when there's a clear purpose behind it (e.g. twice-daily email checks, a morning perusal of the front page of the New York Times, settling arguments with Drew re: things like "Why is gold a precious metal?"
2. Read fifty pages of a pleasure read without interruption.
3. Read twenty-five pages of something that requires more of Hepburn's "concentration" without picking up my iPhone to see if anyone has responded to that hilarious thing I just posted on Facebook. Which shouldn't be difficult if I successfully complete task #1.

 

I've got a bit of a cold.

I'm sore from overdoing it at the gym these past couple days.

Sitting poolside at Drew's parents' desert house. In the shade. Drew all sunscreened up in a lounger closer to the water.

Music playing. He'd expect me to know who this is... Call and Response? Uh, not sure.

Reading three books. Just because I can. The Spectator Bird -- sad, I started that one during Winter break -- The Bridge, and Brief Encounters with Che Guevara. Nothing to do all day but read, work out, lounge around.

If only this cold would go away, life would be pretty near perfect.

Aimee had her ultrasound yesterday. It's confirmed: a girl. I wish, for her sake, the summer would fly by.

 

It seems like I just started.

Then I think back to our road trip from Los Angeles to Philadelphia and it seems like a different life. We've changed so much. I had no idea what was coming: all the anxiety, the pressure, the excitement, all the nights lying on the floor of the school's study rooms drawing flowcharts and making flashcards, all the pre-dawn morning drives to the hospital (or home from the hospital)... and now it's nearly over. One more year and I'll be finished.

It's exciting having these milestones to look forward to. I don't know if my classmates appreciate it because when you're 25 you're used to having preset markers (16, 18, 21, college graduation) that give your life a certain shape and meaning.

I have to admit, though, that if I were to hit rewind and go back to America's Next Top Model I don't know if I could do all this again. One of my fellow story editors was dating a doctor back then who was just getting ready to retire. One day she was on the phone with him in my office and she said "My friend here is getting ready to go back to school for his pre-med requirements." There was a pause then she looked up at me and smiled: "He says he hopes you've got a lot of energy."

It's been a drain for sure. I'm only 75% done, but isn't that a solid 'C'? Can't I pass with that? If I stop working now can I still be a doctor?

Last night I didn't fall asleep until 4:00am. It's hard for me to fall asleep when Drew isn't here (he's in L.A. visiting his family; I fly there tomorrow night). I really need to go to bed soon. My final exam of third year is in 8 hours and 22 minutes. And then... one more year to go.

 

 

I've been hit with a steady stream of "fag" comments over the past month.

While I was visiting the family farm a few weeks ago my fourteen year-old cousin/godson said to my nephew "Don't be such a faggot." To his credit (I guess?) he didn't think I could hear him.

Last week a classmate said, in reference to a player in the NFL draft, "I hate that guy. He's such a faggot." Drew and I were sitting right next to him.

Two nights ago I was on Facebook and happened to skim over my 25 year-old cousin's status update (something about him watching baseball with his dad) when I noticed a brilliant conversation he was carrying on with a friend in the comments section. Before you read what he wrote I'd like to say that he was such an adorable, adorable kid back in the day. I really just have so much affection for this guy. But... oh well, here it is -- may as well not sugarcoat it: "Thanks for never answering my calls or ever calling me back anymore, you need to stop being a fag, and beer olympics is going on in kc this next weekend, you should try to make it!"

A few minutes ago yet another classmate gave someone a breath mint and when the recipient tried to take a few extra was told "Quit being such a pansy." [I realize pansy does not = fag. At least not to me. It's less biting in my opinion and makes me think of flowers rather than late-night-dark-alley hate crimes. To be honest I'm not sure people even think of "pansy" as a derogatory term for a gay person but I'm sorry that's what it is. And, once again, I was sitting right next to them.]

Each and every time (even on Facebook) I let the speaker/writer know that I didn't appreciate the comment. [Well, except for the "pansy" kid; I was studying and didn't feel like dealing with that one. Plus, I was having an internal debate about the offensiveness of the word.] I try to correct people with humor, because most of them (I think, I hope) don't actually dislike gay people. But it's really getting kind of exhausting dealing with it and I wish everyone in my life was a faithful reader of this blog** so that they could all privately work on expunging those terms from their temporal lobes. I'm seriously oh so very sick of hearing them.

I meant this entry to be a meditation on masculinity and the anxiety guys have about that quality both in themselves and in those they associate with. It was going to sound so learned and wise and when it was finished I was going to read over it and feel reassured that their words really are all about them and have absolutely nothing to do with me. But then I spent so much time recounting the various offenses that (a) I really have to get back to studying and (b) I'm all pissed off again.

** I realize there are no faithful readers for a blog that is updated once every four months. Still, it'd be nice.