serendipti's Diaryland Diary

6:45 a.m. - Monday, Nov. 08, 2004

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rotations--first week

this entry is from a long time back, never uploaded. Last Monday ( a week ago), I believe. I will write more current scheiBe some time today. Gotta catch the bus for work. It is like 30 degrees out there....yipee yipski!

I am just beginning to understand what so many people have been going through wrt rotations and med school and the such. It is 930pm, and I am exhausted, and my ass betta be in bed in the next half an hour, cuz I needs to wake it up at 6am and then I am on call through the night and come home after the noon lectures which end at 3pm Wednesday…..and god knows if they will wake me up on call, but that is not the point, the point being that it is election night and I know it will be agonizing and I will be in histrionics and want to be with people who can support me in the throes of my despair as more and more states turn blood red as the day wears on, and of course, I wanted to be the good guy and even though the thought of volunteering to take call on election night sounds ridiculous, it was between me and this girl who is not much older than me, who has a 17 year old and a 3 year old, and I was like, you pick the day that is better, you have kids, and she was like, if I go on Tuesday, I have to get a sitter, and so I said, oh, I will totally go tomorrow, no prob, I may have even flashed a smile. And thus is the beginning of having no real control over my life…..and not offering to go manana was not an option….it was the right thing to do….although I am sure she realized that this way would also give ME the weekend call instead of her….so part of me feels like a pushover…..and the day was spent feeling very nervous and not smart and not knowing that hyperkalemia is indicative of hemolysis when asked and there was a lot of ‘what the hell am I doing in a hospital not-as-a-patient?’ going on in this head of mine, and I came home and was so famished and I have been trying to inspire Lori and Amy to try and cook more and eat healthy and after we ate more burritos (we made extra of everything ayer), I had ambitious plans to cook more food to have it ready in the fridge, but I am floggin spent, and all I have left in me to do is boil some potatoes just in case someone wants to melt some cheddar and slather some sour cream on it for dinner manana…..I will be in the hospital, so I will likely be eating with the meal coupons they are supposed to give me.
Are you tired of me yet? I am.
I did study for about under an hour, after which I stopped and watched ‘Everwood,’ and it makes me so sad that dramacidal teenage WB romance reminds me of my love life, but there you go. Me in all my glory.
I did get to play with the cutest little jumbee today, (I just wrote her first name, but then I thought of confidentiality issues, and I don’t think it matters with only a first name, but gosh, I don’t want to break confidentiality on my first day, you know??), and she was born with her abdomen not really closing right, so all her intestines were like spilling out of her cuz her stomach did cover them, and so she is delayed wrt sitting up right, being able to hold her head up, etc. Her mom is apparently 16yo. She will be one of my patients for the next 3 weeks. Huge cheeks, perfect smile, small little head of hair. I lof her already.
The peds peeps are almost all women….at noon conference it was like a dozen women and one guy, and I was like, whoa, I am at the Lilith Fair, where’s Sarah McLachlan?
So today was the kickoff, rainy, gray cold, at 630am…..rainy, gray cold, at 5pm….i am trying to keep myself up, but I am anticipating a great challenge in adjusting to my new complete-lack-of-flexibility-life.
All I am doing is praying for Kerry. And giving Bush the evil eye.
Do you know what I did for Halloween? Well, Dipti here’s the doorbell ring around 5pm, and she gets so excited and into the spirit of things that as she swings the door open and the kids scream ‘boo’….she jumps out from behind the door with her hands up in claw position and a great ugly snarl on her non-masked face and days “rraaaawwwwrrrr” and these 3 little Latino kids’ faces drop, they look terrified and scream and turn around and begin to run and then the little 7 ish year old girl falls, rips her pants and the next thing I kow she is howling in pain, bleeding out both knees. Yes siree folksies, I made the very first trick or treater BLEED at the front door. As she sobbed and called out mama I kept saying ‘lo siento’ and ‘toma’ and shoving more candy into her bag. She didn’t want any. Lori went and got band aids and Amy (fresh from her completed peds rotation) put them on both bleedling knees, and I just sat therem repeating lo siento, and wondering: what the hell is wrong with me? Only me. For real. Only me.
Lori laughed till she cried. I felt horrible, my mom was like, that is so bad, dipti, as she clucked her tongue in disapproval, Dad rallied my on, and was like, that is the point of Halloween, while Hiteshbhai was like, you’re really psycho aren’t you? I bet you didn’t even plan to do that…it just came out didn’t it.
The truth was, yes, it just came out.
And so did the gushing blood from her knees. And so did her scaldingly hot tears streaming down her cheeks. Just came out.
I am a bad person.
In other news, the Arod and I went to a suburb of Milwaukee and did some door to dooring trying to find swing voters. Desafortunadamente, the league of conservation voters, who provided us with the neighborhoods we needed to hit up, sent us to Bush country on Saturday, and it was a very character building experience. I mean, what build more character than meanness, rudeness, and slammed doors on your face? But by the end of the day, the sight of more than 2 visible American flags on the outside of any home, or more than 2 SUVs in any given driveway was enough to make my stomach sink and say, Amy I think its your turn.
The visual, as we drove into Milwaukee was priceless…..one yard, Bush/cheney sign, next house, Kerry/Edwards…and so it went….every other house….it was a bloody SWING state….Amy and I looked at the divided city….a microcosm of this divided country….and all we could say was, I’m scary.
Speaking of which, I am scary about tomorrow.
Scary scary scary.
Call me. I will be on call….and if nothing is going on, I will be in the call room, watching tv, freaking out.

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