serendipti's Diaryland Diary

10:02 a.m. - Thursday, Oct. 20, 2005

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House of Sand and Hooba

this morning I woke up with a thick throat. Thick thick because my submandibular lymph nodes are way swollen, and I can barely swallow my spit.
I got a flu shot yesterday in clinic. As medical professionals, we all need to get flu shots because of the ubiquitous virus laden patient mucus that we are sure to be exposed to continually throughout the Chicago winter. And then there is the lupus. Even when there was the flu shot shortage the other year, I get priority because of the ole lups. So when Enrique the nurse was lining us all up to shoot us up, I was like, so-weet, bring it. However, this morning, I think I am having a nice little immune kick from the vaccine, and I am kind of bummed about that. I called up one of the coolest docs there, and let him know I am not coming in, and he was totally cool about it and was like, are your joints swollen?....take care of yourself.....

And why is it that someone in the med profession being kind to me about my illness always seems like some sort of revolutionary act of kindness?

So I will rest for a couple hours, but then I have to work. Not at school, but because I invited the Muslims in my class to come over and break fast at my house.....it is Ramadan, and since my first year, I like having an iftar, a breaking of fast dinner where I invite all the people in my class to come and eat and support the Muslims in their fasting. it feels like a good thing to do, and it is just another excuse to bring people together. The last time I had one, I was totally cripped out, and I had no help to cook and I was chopping potatoes with my gnarled, crippy little joints.......so it was then I decided that I would invite my whole class, and tell the people who were fasting that they will be fed, and the people who are not to treat it as a potluck and bring food as well. This year, it will likely be small, since I only let people know a couple days ago and everyone is crazy busy with applications and rotations. Still, I need to cook for at least a dozen people.....my energy will likely pick up as the day goes on. (insha'allah.....i think the spelling mught be wrong....god willing is what i mean)
So iftar tonight. Whenever I have a get together of any sort, the morning of, I am always like, why the hell am I doing this.......this morning I turned to Amy, un-thrilled about all the work ahead of me, especially in the context of feeling like ass, and I was like, Amy, why am I doing this, Hindus and Muslims are supposed to hate each other.........she shook her head and gave me a 'whatchu talkin' bout Willis' look.

So I am going to suck it up and start cooking in the next few hours. Don't even know what to make.
What else? I have not been writing because I have been so uninspired of late, and have felt so closed off about talking about it, I have kind of dropped off from the blog and even when I talk to my friends, I don't really feel like talking about myself. That is the place I have been in, for what it is worth.
Random happenings of the past month:

1. I read the House of Sand and Fog. It was my date Saturday night, just me and the book, curled up under my covers, till 2 am. Yes, that is the extent of the 2 am action in my life. And then on Tuesday, I took it to work. And it was a weird day at work because the head of oncolgy, this Venezuelan doc who had joined our hospital like a year ago and was trying to really re-vamp the program, they had received news the week before that he was killed in a car accident with his fiance in Caracas. He was supposed to show up to work once his vacation was over, and he never did. I overheard some of the doctors talking about how crazy it must be for his patients, who were coming in for their appointments, for these people young and old, who had been getting his help to live, to fight their cancer, for these patients to come in for their routine visit with their 40ish year old doc, to be told that their doctor was dead.
What an awful feeling for that cancer patient.
And so on Tuesday, as I was at the climax of the beyond-the-imagination-of-the-Greeks, eye-of-the-tornado-of-tragedy climax of the House of Sand and Fog, and it was noon. And that day was the memorial service for the doc. And I knew none of the other students were going to go, but somehow I felt like I should, en solidaridad, because like it or not, even for a short time, I am part of the community of Illinois Masonic, and if my community is greiving, I should support them in their grief. So at the very moment when the heart shaking tragedy of the book is unfolding, I put it aside, and find myself in a memorial service.
And this man who died's friends came up on the podium, with their heavy heavy voices and their feeble attempts at composure and each word felt like tears and they described a man who talked too much, who laughed a lot, who was full of passion and conviction and who fired people up and made them believe in his vision of things. And this one woman said that his gift lay in his ability to hold up a mirror to his friends and what it always showed was not who they were, but the reflection would be of who they could be, their limitless potential, and so people were drawn to hime because he gave the a picture of the fulfilled potential of their best selves.......it was so touching and I had to stop myself from bawling, because between the so real, so human fraility and tragedy of the book and then hearing about this beautiful man, it was a bit much for me in one day. And the rest of the day I was somber and I had a couple people in the clinic ask me if everything was okay, and then I woud say, between the book I just finished (which I finished right after the service) and the service, I was emotionally spent. Brenda, on of the nursees, was like, maybe you should read a book that is an upper next.
Anyway, he died with his fiance in a car crash. His fiance apparently had a 2 year old child. Sad sad sad.
So that is one story.
Another story:
I have my rotation with this boy who is mean. And I do not really know the rest of the kids on rotation. So I was telling JTC about it, and he mentioned to his lovely son Tre, who is student at this bilingual school which is like 3 yards from my clinic, and Tre reached out cuz my rotation sucks and was like, tell Dipti to come hang out at recess. So I went once, and I was all white coated out with my stethescope around my neck (I won't lie, I wanted to look cool for the kids) and sitting in the playground that day, being around all those young 7th graders, such a totally different feel from my everyday....it was like an IV infusion of fresh frozen plasma.......okay, I don't really know what that feels like, but I do assume that it must feel like instant life. And so Tre intro'd me to his peeps, who were all so lovely and diverse and friendly and then I was like, so what do you guys do at recess. and then in a chorus they started to list off the games they play, and one caught my attention: hooba. I was like, what is that? And they explained it was a game they made up, kind of like Marco Polo, but you have to stay on the jungle gymy slide bridgey contraption, and your feet can't touch the ground, and the person who is 'it' shouts huba with their eyes closed, and then people have to shout it back as they try not to get caught. So I watched, and then when people were cheating I was like, hey you are cheating, and it was explained to me that every gets to do a little bit of sanctioned cheating and otherwise the game would be too hard. And they were all in agreement about the okay-ness of the sanctioned cheating and my heart felt refreshed by all of them. I had to run to clinic and I said next time I would come by and kick their butts in hooba and actually play with them. So yesterday I went back, as joe the commie told me that the kids had been waiting to annihilate me at hooba, and so I went.....and omigod, I was this total old lady. I could not pull myself across this horizontal bar with my arms the way the rest of them could, I could not use the monkey bars without slipping off.....and the kids kept making excuses for me....oh, it;s okay, it is really cold today, or, yeah, this is really hard for some people, it takes a while to get used to, and then they were like, its okay, your feet can touch the ground here......and they were bending the rules for the old lady in the white coat who was playing with them.......it was a total washout and now I need to go to the gym to build my upper body so I can keep up with the 7th graders. if I had any self esteem left, this would be a blow to it.
But hooba was fun as hell. And it was a nice high before going to clinic and having to deal with the schizoaffective patient who would not stop talking, and one thing I have realized about myself.....I don't do well with psych patients who talk a lot. I want to slap them ot hurl myself out the window so I don't have to listen to them. I cannot stand it. And maybe it is something I need to work on, or more preferably, maybe it is something that I can just accept about myself....but this woman made me and the resident want to shoot ourselves. When we got out of the room, the shy little Bulgarian resident made the sign of the cross and said something in Bulgarian while I was making a gun motion with my hand and pretending ot shoot myself in my mouth.
God, that woman was a nightmare. So the hooba high was important to have that afternoon.
I have been having a lot of PE lately......no, not a pulmonary embolism, but something just as insidious and dangerous.....profession envy. I go to a middle school to play Hooba with the kids....PE kicks in, ooooh, i should have been a teacher. I read a nytimes article about Rachael Ray and her cooking empire.....PE sinks its ugly claws into my very soul......I should have been a chef.......I hear Dad talk about the half hour of Oprah they caught about a heart CT that can show you like 54 slices of the images of your heart in a minute.....PE overcomes me.....I should have been an Oprah.....I write to a reporter in the trib about an op-ed piece I want to write about phramaceutical influence in medicine.....he writes back asking to interview me for a spread he has been meaning to do on this very topic......PE lodges itself into my pulmonary vasculature....I should have been a journalist.
Bottom line: I am sick of PE. Sick sick sick. Speaking of sick, I think I might be running a temp right now. and I really need to start cooking. will write more later. I want to do a list of high and low lights for you

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