serendipti's Diaryland Diary

10:21 p.m. - Monday, Jun. 27, 2005

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PIGS FEET, JESUS HAIR, GERD

So today was the first day of surgery...don't get excited....it was only orientation at our school. And then we had a suture workshop---suture is the shmancy word for stitch. ( i think I only realized this a few months ago....ouch...i am like a tubelight) SO the thing with this workshop was that we were all handed a pink stump with a hoof on the end to practice on....a pig's foot. I was handed a bloody pig's foot today. (technically it was not bloody, but there was a bit o blood if you made a too-deep incision.)
As I was handed the pigs foot, my first thought was, oh no, am I morally opposed to this? And it was kind of annoying, because I was talking to Joe the Commie about this, how sometimes I just want to be normal. Like not think twice about the severed little stumpy longstocking foot, and just go ahead with it all. Like, I have this pharmacoipeia (sp?)...this small lil reference book to keep in your white coat that allows you to look up all these drugs and their uses and dosing, and so Phyllis gave me one, and it is a drug company one, and so since I have chosen not to eat lunches sponsored by pharamceuticals, I feel like using this book is in the same category, but then someone GAVE it to me, I did not get it from the pharm co....I have not used this book, but I am trying to figure out waht to do about it....thoughts???)So as I looked at the little hooved foot I was handed, I wondered if I should be taking some sort of a stance against this....
WWSD???
Yes, that is right, What Would Saraswati Do?
So I tried to put myself in the holy chappals of the Goddess of Knowledge, Saraswati....and since there was no bolt of lightning or appearance of divine intervention, I just went with it. Let me know if you think my learning how to suture on a pig's foot goes against what you believe to be my value system.
So anyway, it was kind of hard, since pig's skin is tough....tough as a football....HAHA!
So I learned how to do some knots and suture some, and no part of me felt naturally proficient at any of it, but I got okay at it in the end. I was relieved to see a good number of other people from my class who still had rotations left from third year, and I was more excited that Linsey, my lupus sister in my class, is at Mercy Hospital with me. She is going to pick me up manana, because I need to buy a car this weekend, and would have ended up renting or borrowing Grace's for the week. Oh, and if you have any thoughts or pros or cons about the Toyota Prius. please let me know, because I might be in the market for one, although I have never had a car worth more than 10K, so breaking the 20 mark on one go seems way freakin extravagant, and I don't know if I can do that.
So the I went and caught up with JTC, chilled in his office while he told me about his least favorite student in the history of UIC, who, accd to Joe. had the checklist of someone he would be really down with....Latina female from cali whose parents were migrant farmworkers and who worked in a farm from age 6.....he told me how he had mentioned unions and how she was like, oh, don't get me started on Unions, I hate unions...so he was thinking like, oh, this makes sense, because a lot of unions can be really anti-immigrant labor and can be really wack, so he thought this makes sense....but then she goes on to be like....when my father was trying to get food on the table for our family, Cesar Chavez and his men drove them out of the fields with clubs....and Joe was struck with the knowledge that her father was a SCAB during the UNited Farmworkers Movement, and all he could think was...I would have used that club ON your father if I were there.....
Anyway, that whole convo came out of the fact that a few weeks ago, I had this lamo BS rotation at school, and the room they were lecturing us in had no AC, and it was in the 90s, and all these students were bitching, and so all of a sudden, I see Joe in the doorway of this conference room, carting a bunch of bottle of cold water for us. And then he handed one to the Doc who was lecturing, and helped him set up the screen for the power point or whatever. And I sat there, and somehow, seeing Joe in his role as a service employee, getting water for ME andmy peers....i felt this weird mix of rage and shame, like it was all wrong. And I felt like standing in my chair and shouting, this guy is worth the more than all of you combined....you should be serving him!
Anyway, I was exploring these feelings with him, saying how it reminded me of how when I was a kid, and some skinhead type would come to the motel and be rude or racist to my mom, or call her a bitch, I would have my blood boil, because my parents had to hold thier tongue since we needed the business, and pacify the customer (there is this saying in Gujarati....vaniya ni muchh neechi....the vaniya are a caste to people, the merchants, who always have stores and stuff, and this saying means that vaniya's mucch (mustache) is always neechi (lowered)...i.e. if you want to be a merchant of any sort, your mustache, thus your head, is always lowered wrt your customer....i.e. you are always in deference, you take the abuse, you don't complain...cuz you need to make the sale...so vaniya ni muchh is always nichi, always lower.)
So when these wack customers, whose used condoms and shit smeared towels my parents had to clean, when these asshole would disrespect my parents, I would always think about how I wanted to say, you are not worth the hair on their head, these are exalted souls and you don't even know it. And I felt that way when JTC wheeled his little cart of water in for us. I felt ashamed and angry, like I wanted to swoop him away. So he and I talked, and he was talking about the class privilege of thinking that labor or a sevice job is 'beneath' anyone....and he had this pithy quote that I don't remember about labor being this wonderful thing and then he told me the story of the last supper...and I interrupted and was like, I know, I know, Jesus washed all of his disciples feet....and he was like, did you know he dried them with his own long hair....and I was like, SNAP...no I didn't know that. So we had a really awesome convo and you have to understand, that Joe is like one of the most important adult figures I have had the blessing to have in my life. I mean, he has this brother/father/professor of socioeconomics and politics/girlfriend role in my life......saying I love and respect him demonstrates to me the poverty of the English language (me and Lori's sister and her friend Shawn were discussing this the other say....the word love in English....Dana said that the Italians would always freak out during her year abroad when she would use the Italian word for love in the loose, casual way we use it hear....I love my mom....I love this capuccino....I love this cropped t shirt...I mean, don't the inuit have like 30 different ways of saying love??)

So after I hung out with JTC, I dragged myself to the gym, my Amy-less self to the gym, and did my machine of choice, the recumbent bike, which I used to do side by side with my daddy last year, I did that for half an hour. (although amy considers the recumbent bike a joke of a workout...she's a freakin hater....hate the game amy, the game, not the playa...the gamy) OF course, as I was setting the level, I kept puching the up key, and I found that it was level 1-16, so I was like, coo, I can do 8.....needless to express, around minute 10 I wanted to hurl myself off, but I hung in there and did it....so Iw as stoked on myself. Took the bus home, which took a while, and then when I got home, I finally tried one of those insta-ffod my bro stocked me up on....this foil wrapped pouches of indian food that you boil for 5 minutes and presto, you have a meal.....and I will not lie, the pav bhaji was freakin GOOD! I was so happy. the Brand is 'swad' and he got them at this indian grocery store for like a dollar. Go bhai. His impulse purchases for me have always served me well.
The flip side to this meal was that it was at 930pm. So my bad news, as of Thursday after I got scoped down my throat by Amy's ENT resident, is that I have GERD. Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease.....for those of you who know me, for the past couple years, with increasing frequency, I have this little clearing of the throat business that I do...happens a lot after eatinf fried foods....well. wouldn't you freakin know it that with my luck, I have had acid reflux past my apparently not so tight as it should be lower esophageal sphincter....I was watching the computer image as she scoped me (endoscope...oooh, ahhh ENDOscope....pass me a blank so I can take a toke....1 puff 2 puff 3 puff 4 puff five I'm feelin real fly....okay, so I butchered and cannot recall some words....sue me), and there was inflammation and edema (fluid) in the tissues directly above my vocal cords and she was like, when you say 'eee' I shoud be able to see the vocal slit, but since you are so inflamed, the view is obscured. I let her stick the scope in through my nostril and down my thoat, without anaesthetic, becuase I wanted to 'feel' it....my left eye (the scope went up the left nostril) was like watering profusely by the time it was done...it was not as painful as it was uncomfortable....Amy was in the room and got to see my boogers on screen with me....i had an 'i'm embarrassing' moment....anyway, so we walk out of the clinic, and the resident leaves me with a prescription for a PPI, a proton pump inhibitor which is a pill (i say this cuz my brohter was all, is it an actually pump, like on the outside?? you forget when you are in medicine that you sound like a freak to everyone else...i expalined it was a pill to block a small pump in your stomach that secrets acid)....and I was pissed about having to take another pill, and having another freakin diagnosis to add to my list, and then having to think about why I have GERD, which for me, conjures up images of older, obese patients who eat a lot of fast food....so I spent the rest of the day kind of depressed and angry....Amy, unfortunately, had taken the no-no route of blaming the patient: dipti, you DO eat late a lot and eat a lot of oily foods....
it was a wrong thing said at the wrong time moment, and it made me want to cry.....cuz I might not eat that great, but compared to almost everyone I know my age, I eat as good if not better, eat less food from outside, cook more vegetables...the whole shebang. I mean, I rarely drink soda, no coffee, no alcohol.....so i had my i am depressed about my GERD time, and now I am over it and will prolly fill the script (short for prescription) some time this week. there is evidence that shows increased frequency of GERD in lupus peeps, but that was of no solace, because it feels like it is the kickoff of fun new aspects of my illness....as if stuff of a different variety will keep cropping up as the years go by
So that was my GERD story, which leads me into how as a result, I should stop eating at least 3 hours before bed, because this helps the GERD, but tonight, instead, I finsihed eating at 10pm, and my meal was oily, spciy, and garlic/onion/tomato based....all big GERD no-nos.
but come on people, the patient education handout said, for all intents and purposes....EAT NOTHING YOUR MOTHER MAKES...it, in essence, told me to extirpate the part of me that is Indian from the rest of me. an excerpt from a GERD website that I just found:

AVOID:
Most Mexican, Indian, and Chinese foods served in restaurants due to their beans, spices, and fat content

CAN WE SAY SHOOT ME???

Anyway, I am trying to do some adjustments wrt eating at night, avoiding fried stuff ( I got a side of greens with my veggie burger afer the Pride parade this weekend---BOOYAH!)
and eating more small meals frequently. although I am definitely more of a one fell swoop large meal sort of girl....ummmm....I really need to go to bed.....why am I writing everything????
okay, my fingers hurt and I really bloody need to learn how to type.....i know, don't wince, i don't put the fingers on the right keys, and I look down at the keyboard when I am typing.....you are now free to have your aneurysm.
love

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