Two Hundred and Ten, Stagnation

It's not that life is stopping all around, it's just that my personal development has slowed down to a crawl. I see myself as the same person who entered medical school four long years ago. Have these years meant nothing to the personable side of me? Can that side really have remained unchanged as my professional side underwent immense challenges? I look around at people moving forward with their lives--their real ones that matter! and see that I will have to work just as hard at my life as I do for my future career. While I rarely assume things will fall in my lap in most things, I see that in this area I have remained quite naive. Things will work out as they usually do but I will have to help it along a lot. And that means I have to learn, and learn quick.

But what is it I need to learn?

Two Hundred and Six, Scariness

So my computer sometimes decides to not see the wireless card. It's a little scary. The two computers that I have made have both been very special and worrisome. This is interesting only because all my friends' homemade machines work fairly well. Why both of mine would be messed up as they get, I have no idea. The worst part is that I'll just pray and keep using the machine as it throws up signs of machine dementia. No one really has any idea where to go or what to do. All of my friends--even the tech savvy ones--eventually throw in the towel on my machines. Makes me wonder if I should even mess with creating my own computers. It's sad because I get some joy out of creating my personal Frankensteins and that joy is being pulled away from me. As in baseball, the third strike you're out so I'll understand what it means if on my next machine (still some years in the future) I run into the same problem. Only time will tell.

Until then, I'll be bumming the Internet from the Roomie and school as I can. On the plus side, no reason to worry about Warcraft progress!

Two Hundred and Four, The Pit

I have interesting family dynamics which I might get into more detail down the road but suffice it to say, tomorrow I will enter The Pit and I don't know if I'll ever see the light again.  But as a member of this family, it's my place to try to change people's outlooks and reasonings.  We'll see how the progresses over the next couple years.

One Hundred and Ninety-four, Cardiac Arrest

I have been remiss from this forum for quite a while mainly because I did forget about it in the jumble known as life.  This entry doesn't herald my sudden return to all things blog but it is to point out a small event that occurred earlier today.

A patient in the hospital for whatever reason stopped breathing and pumping his own blood.  Doctors rushed in along with nurses, I stood outside the room with my three colleagues.  I hear different orders being shouted through the air, "Get the crash cart!" "You start compressions!" "I'll get the kit" "Push another atropine!" "Stop! Does he have a pulse?" "Rotate on compressions" "We have a pulse!" "Ok, he's stable" "I lost the pulse!" "Quick, start compressions again!" and on and on.

At one point, one of the residents turns to me, points, and beckons.  As I near him, he tells me to leave my white coat outside the room.  I hurriedly rush in sans white coat and grab the gloves he gives me.  

"You're going to relieve the guy giving compressions."

My mind's jaw drops.  My physical body continues as directed to the side of the room where the folks giving compressions are standing and doing their job.  As I stand behind the fellow whose shoulders are heaving as he pushes heavily onto the old gentleman's sternum, someone tells him to pause to check pulses.  They find one!  Everyone relaxes (again) as the people in the room prepare to move the bed to the ICU.  As the connections are dropped, they notice his pulse is gone again.  Matt, my resident, turns to me and points me in.  I step up, place my hands as taught and practiced on rubber dummies, and start counting while doing my job.  I count ~50 compressions when the lady next to me says, "I can feel your compressions, stop so I can see if he's beating on his own."  I halt.  She still has a pulse.  I step back after glancing at Matt as the bed is wheeled off.  As I exit slowly behind the bed and its horde of people, my two colleagues come up to me and congratulate me on saving a life.  I stutter like I always do when I get a compliment.  Jokes continue into the night about using the story to score chicks at the bar.  I'm just happy he lived.  And constantly reminding myself in my mind about how oddly the feel of the elderly gentleman's chest felt just like the mannequins we practice on.  The only odd part was the face staring up at me slowly turning first purple, then pink with compressions, and with a mouth slightly parted in the agony of the situation...

One Hundred and Seventy-four, Day 4

The following is an excerpt that I can apply to various people I know who are going through this power outage.

"I still don't have power but it's OK [cue hysterical laughter] because who needs power? Not me. I don't need power at all. I'll just read by candlelight for the rest of my life UNTIL I GO BLIND IN FIVE DAYS BECAUSE DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO READ BY CANDLELIGHT? IT'S HARD THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID.

Ahem. At least people I know have power. If I couldn't get out of our dark apartment, I'd have jumped off the balcony by now, which wouldn't have even killed me. I'd have just broken my leg or something and sat there in the dark crying about my stupid, broken leg. Wah wah waaaaaaaaah."

For those who do have power, enjoy the music at this MySpace site!

One Hundred and Fifty-eight,

Influence exists, there's no doubt about it. Up until now, however, its power over me has not been that powerful. My merits and personal traits have carried the day even in the face of influence at times. Going through medical school though, it's going to be tougher to fight influence. And I successfully made that fight tougher for myself by accidentally hitting "Reply All" to an innocent email. I'm clumsy, as my friends know. Apparently that conveys to mouse-clicking too at times.

I'm nervous, but I'll live. And whatever can't kill you, only makes you stronger. I heard that somewhere once.

One Hundred and Fifty-one, False Panic Attack

What's messed up is waking up thinking the exam is tomorrow and feeling a major panic attack coming on for the day to help focus studying...

Then realizing that the exam isn't tomorrow, it's in two days, and your body settling down right away back to its ho-hum ways.

[le sigh]

One Hundred and Fourty-three, Seat of My Pants

Maybe it's an unconscious way my mind tries to bring excitement to my calm, ordered life. I don't care for this particular excitement. For most of my education, I've ridden an edge. At first it was the A/B edge in grades. Then in college, it was the B/C edge. Now in medical school, where there aren't letter grades, it's the P/F edge. Even now, I sit here having calculated out my grade for the unsure course. It's on the edge. There is one unaccounted-for grade which should push me over into the "safe" zone but it's definitely nerve-wracking. It's been like this since I started in Fall 2006. As always, I keep faith that what's right for me is what will happen, whether I agree with it or not at the time.

One Hundred and Thirty-seven, Mortal Combat - The Pit Stage

obtained from Here

For the past couple months, a certain area of my room was slowly turning into the Mortal Combat level of yesteryear. Up high on my throne I felt nothing until I went to lay my bare feet down on the floor. Splintered plastic stuck up at odd angles out of the floor mat, threatening flesh and fabric alike. Every roll of the chair caused a cacophony of cracks to fill the apartment. My roommate has attested to hearing me rolling around after he's gone to bed.

Be that as it may, I kept it, in true Indian fashion, until it died. Not just died but hemorrhaged out onto my hands. That day of death was when I rolled forward sending a roller through a hole in the mat. Upon rolling back out later on, I pulled the mat apart. Needless to say, I spent the next five minutes rolling together the falling apart mat. It now sits in an empty bean bag box waiting for its sojourn to the dumpster.

My feet caress the soft carpeting under my chair.

One Hundred and One, Inexorable Grades Coming In

I don't get nervous/stressed out when preparing for huge exams, but I do when planning evening outings with friends.

I also get nervous post-exam as the grades start rolling in...

Eighty-five, Curt

There's something to be said for your outlook influencing your day. Tomorrow will be very good. I guarantee it.

Fifty-two, One point seven five

As far as I know, that's how much I passed by...

how close I was to repeating my second year.

Fifty-one, Spontaneous Implosion

Is this what my life will come to mean in the upcoming years? Hours spent studying, ignoring my close friends to concentrate on passing exam after exam after exam? Having to cut short phone calls with people I care about; going to bed earlier than planned because of my exhaustion; I don't like estranging the people closest to me. Especially not when I've known over half of them for more than 10 years.

Some of my classmates have adjusted to it just fine by setting up scheduled times off. But this doesn't come naturally to me or to the way that I interact with my friends which has a lot to do with spontaneity. Spontaneity is quickly disappearing into thin air. I have a respite coming up this Winter Break. But even then, I'm going to be spending some time with dad paying for my Step 1 Exam fee and shopping for one good book to use as a Board Exam study aide.

I lost last Christmas because I did procrastinate. I don't want to lose this one as well.

Seventeen, School

As I sit here 10 minutes before I have to head out for class at 8 AM, I look ahead at this week and take a deep breath. It's like they're making Thanksgiving our fault so they pile up everything in the week and 2 days before the holiday. But, I know, they just have to teach us what we need to know for Board exams next June.

On the plus side, it'll be warm and raining today!

Two, Stressing? Nah

You hear about stressing out and how everyone does it their own way. I'm sure I also stress out, but I will admit I'm not always sure what way I show it. Yes, I enjoy procrastinating as much as the next Joe Schmoe but does my fine art of procrastination at test-time denote nervousness? Or does the fact that I can be extremely non-chalant about six-hour-long block exams mean that I am really panicky? I think of friends and family more during study time but that could just be because I'm not sitting through yet another hour of lecture on kidney stones or Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome. And I love playing video games during this time. In fact, I think some of my best video gaming occurs during study weeks. Amazing how fast I can rip through the original Half-Life when I should be studying Genetics (nostalgia since I just beat HL2:Episode 2).

[cocky grin] nothing like going into an exam with your snarks out on the line!