Thursday Folly

Fuck, I'm tired.

My morning came way too early. I got to bed at a reasonable hour, though practically in tears because I was so exhausted. Then I slept for a scant handful of hours, but then was up in the night for several hours. I could NOT get back to sleep. I tried listening to an episode of Frasier on Netflix (which usually distracts The Brain enough to let me get back to sleep). I had a snack because I thought my blood sugar might be too low. I drank some water. I tried meditating. Finally I was able to get back to sleep about ninety minutes before my alarm went off. So that was great.

As I was trying to get ready to leave the house, I dumped a bowl of tuna on the floor near my bed. (A can of tuna is my usual clinical day breakfast because it's lots of protein.) After I cleaned that up, I still had to have breakfast and I was so peeved that I just went straight for the unhealthy option: A fried egg sandwich laden with cheese and mayo. So that was not great. Then on the way out the door, I ripped my favorite pair of scrub pants. Which sucks. So I had to run back in the house and change into another pair of pants. That ate up my 5 minute cushion for getting out the door. Of course it meant that I ended up on the shuttle with a bunch of people from my class that irk me. And I was not feeling very friendly after my morning.

This week has been from hell. I had an exam on Wednesday, as usual, but even though it was only one exam, it still left me feeling wiped out. I also had to do some god awful assignments that took hours and netted me 5 points each. If I didn't need the points, I wouldn't have done them. But I still resent the stupidity of the whole deal.

I think part of it is that I was fighting off some kind of thing, a cold or something, over the beginning of the week. I had a sore throat and all my lymph nodes in my neck and behind my ears were going crazy. I had what felt like pain in my ears and then it moved into my chest. I did a lot of pursed lip breathing to get everything moving, but as recently as yesterday, I felt like my lungs were being squeezed. Then this morning I woke up and felt fine, just wiped out. (So I guess not fine. But more fine that I had been feeling.)

What else can I tell you?

I had a clinical day today. The patient was intubated and fuzzed out. He woke up a bit over the course of the morning, but it's not like he could communicate much with use, what with the tubes shoved down his throat. He kept trying to pull out his lines, so he was in restraints. Even with restraints, he was able to pinch someone as he was being turned. His liver and kidneys are a mess. His heart, too. And his lungs, I guess, considering that machines are breathing for him. Here's the takeaway: If the doctor tells you to stop drinking, then stop drinking.

He was 7 years older than I am and his family are adamant that they want him to be revived if he codes. It's happened once before and they brought him back. Lucky.

In the room next door to our patient, another teaching model for the residents in the form of a patient who should probably just be sent home to die. Awful. Bloody, and bloody awful. Seems like they'll keep him alive, too, until everyone has had a chance to practice something on him.

This week.

I ran into a woman I was in a clinical group with three terms ago. (Feels like a hundred years ago.) She failed out of the program that term and then she wrote a Facebook screed about the rampant cheating going on in the program. (She's not wrong.) The head of the program heard about it. (She's a passive aggressive moron. I don't like her. All she seems to do all day is monitor Facebook.) Nothing changed of course. All that happened was the moron sent out a mass email reminding people not to cheat--and my former classmate burned her bridges.

The moron's daughter, Moron Jr., is also a student in the program (not the program I'm in, but the easier version of the program that I'm in). Moron Jr. also failed the same level as my friend (but, like, two terms later). Like mother, like daughter. This week I meet a student who is in Moron Jr.'s cohort. "She's a dummy," she said. "The instructors all dumb down the material and the exams for her so she won't fail again. You should have seen our pharmacology final. It was all, like, 'What's a capsule?'"

This exchange reminded me of decades ago, when I was a little undergraduate getting my biology degree. There were always these idiots in the biology classes who couldn't answer the most basic questions. These students were invariably pre-med. Every time one of them said something stupid, my friend April would turn to me and whisper, "There goes the doctor who's going to kill me."

We're heading into Memorial Day weekend. I have so much homework to do that I won't really get a day off.