A 1.5 hour drive down the Long Island Expressway on a rainy Sunday night. I was blasting Bronze Whale, my latest favorite artist culled from this weeks Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify. I had to gently swerve to avoid the crater-like potholes left behind from all the snow plows, the snow still hadn’t melted and gray heaps of it dotted the banks of the road and the lawns seen from the highway. I had a coffee next to me with sugar free vanilla syrup added, a new thing I was trying. It was 5pm but I was post-call from a boring 24 at the VA, of course someone needed an emergent chest tube at 2am. My sleep was like it has been for months: in chunks punctuated by achey backs in hospital beds, the intern calling for help, bloody bowel movements the nurses saved for us to see, hiccups and nasogastric tubes, and sometimes a code blue page.
I finally found this guys apartment building and the parking garage right below it (he sent me a picture of it when I got closer for QuikPark). I walked outside of the parking garage just to take a picture of the city skyline in the rain. The fog and the colored lights during a rainy sunset were perfect. It quelled my nerves. A first date.
We had talked on facetime before, something I had dreaded but did anyway with a full glass of wine (carefully out of view, sipping subtly to not appear like an alcoholic). He was handsome, with really good hair. I think he used to have a speech impediment, he had to slow down to talk to me. He seemed passionate about his job, whatever it was (I swear I tried to understand it). Something about business solutions and IT and team management. I laughed a lot, and I didn’t roll my eyes once. Right before we hung up he asked when I could come and see him.
Here I was now cruising down the highway, the bass reverberating through my bones, feeling sultry, but tired. My tiredness lived in me now, had settled into my bones. I sipped the coffee, something I carefully matched it with water intake during the day. It felt like liters of coffee and liters of water.
His apartment was hot, it was uncluttered. He had 2 pictures on the wall and a lamp that changed color when has asked Alexa to change it. His bathroom had toothpaste still stuck in the sink. But the toilet was clean, so was his shower when I peered around the curtain. The view was amazing (see above). He was wearing a t shirt and shorts and socks. I had spent hours getting ready, to be honest, to look like I was always this sleek and clear skinned. Poor women of the world.
He talked to me confidently after he made Mojitios using mint from his quarantine project indoor garden. He wasn’t scared of me. I made up an elaborate lie that i had to go at 7:30 to pick up my friend at Penn Station who had been in town enjoying tapas restaurants with her friends from med school and she didn’t want to take the train home since it took too long. I had her call me at 655 reminding she would be ready on time. God bless her.
So this guy sat on the couch at 7:15, said I could sit down too. I did, but I was at least six feet away, maybe quarantine habits had sunk in hard. Our fluid conversation became jagged, I knew what was happening. I asked if he was afraid of COVID, he said “not enough to stop from kissing you soon.” He actually said that. And he scooted over, across the distance I had placed and kind of pushed me down and took over me and touched my face and neck and it was a good make out session. But I designed this so I had to go. I had mentioned it one hundred times. And he stopped and lifted up his body and said to me “please let me go down on you, please? Please? I want twenty minutes.”
Was I dreaming? And also, how did I say no? I could feel my hair pushed into twenty directions. I could fell my lips burning from being rubbed against his stubble. I could hear my ragged breath, but I said no, in as cute of a way as I could, I pretended I just really had to go. We kissed goodbye, but he had this look of fascination in his eyes, his facade had been broken. I like that look, but I also feel like I won too early.
I left the apartment, I felt neutral, not on a high or in a low. It was misting outside, I put up my hood and walked for a mile. I found a pizzeria. I ordered a Margherita slice at 8pm in the rain. I stuffed napkins in my pocket and walked outside, unwrapping the pizza. I will eat pizza in the rain in the city because I don’t care. It’s a story, it’s romantic, it’s artistic. I saw the yellow-white lights in all the apartments, people in all of them, sitting around tables, one guy with a guitar. Interesting curtains, weird wall hangings. And the voice I fight now everyday was very loud in the rain in Long Island City on this Sunday while I ate melted cheesy pizza dappled by raindrops: I want to be an artist.
I found the parking garage. My brown boots were wet, my toes were getting wet. I paid 21 dollars for parking. 4 dollars for pizza. 3 hours of driving. I listened to the entire Bronze Whale album twice. I wondered what I could do about new resolutions in March, did I need a self help book now, why was I turning down a man begging to go down on me, who lost all his composure because he wanted so badly to give me pleasure? Was something wrong with me? Also, why do men beg me lately to come over, come inside, have sex? What happened to mixed drinks at pricey restaurants and being nervous about kissing by a car before saying goodbye? Was this thirties-something dating, or New York dating, or was I giving off thirsty sex vibes that made them all beg?
I drove home, and fell into a perfect sleep with the comforting admission that I am just overwhelmed right now, maybe all the time, and the only thing I can do is take it day by day, moment by moment, tackle what scares me (in small measured bites). I texted my friends I had shared my location with informing them I was alive, don’t worry, we will analyze this all to death with wine next week.
What’s it like closing a door and opening a new one?
I’m thinking of quitting my job. I was accepted as a training physician at a government hospital, miles away from home, no relatives near. Just me. Why did I apply? I guess I just want to make everyone happy. Especially my parents. And I wanted to leave the trap of my comfort zone.
I only want one thing in life, to be in a place where I feel like I belong. To be content, I know this isn’t possible but, I guess that’s what we all want right?
Everyday we face ups and downs, and some downs just hit you so deep, it leaves something permanent. Some downs just keep coming and coming, no ups ahead and you stay down. Not knowing how to get back up.
I am quitting my job because I feel like it’s all downs lately, I’m so tired all the time, I don’t feel like coming to work, the interest I have for it is dwindling. Can I still make it work? I tried. But it’s no longer working for me.
It’s time to close this door and open a new one. I’m thankful for the peek inside, but this isn’t the place for me.
I don’t know if the general theme of my posts today has been getting through, but I’m tired. This rotation has been hard.
It started with my chief informing me the day before my rotation that they wouldn’t be there for the first two weeks due to medical leave and I would have to take over as chief in a short staffed team.
Then I stayed late every day trying to run the team well, and as a result never made it to the laparoscopic skills training lab to practice before my exam.
Then I think I may have failed my laparoscopic skills exam. Which is not in and above itself a huge deal, you just repeat it, but it looks bad. Apparently no one fails (except maybe me. I’m still waiting to find out, but I panicked, and it was BAD).
Then we had an unexpected death in my extended family that’s hit me really hard. Someone way too young died of complications of her diabetes. Next day, I had three separate consults for young people with horribly uncontrolled type 1 diabetes. The universe is cruel sometimes.
The day after the funeral I couldn’t sleep. I had a couple bad days in the OR.
Now I’ve gotten my first rotation evaluation that has been negative. It says I work hard, I have good clinical judgement, but my operative skills are below average. I’ve never been told that before- in fact, I’ve always been able to hold onto my evals saying I’ve got “good hands” and I’m above average in the OR.
And this is my last clinical rotation before I start a masters degree- which is good, because it means I get a change of pace- but also bad, because if I go out with a failed skills examination and an evaluation that says I’m bad in the OR, my program director is going to be seriously concerned about letting me take two years off of clinical duties to do a masters.
A lot of people love peds surgery. There’s a lot of diversity of types of surgeries, the surgeons are nicer, and the patients are adorable.
I am not one of these people. After two months of being exhausted on one in three call and staying late, then watching little kids get sick and die, I am not cut out for this. I’ve been watching previously healthy kids go from normal to dying on ECMO in the span of a day. I’ve seen horrible peds traumas and I’m expecting another one in an hour or so.
Then just yesterday my friends had a baby who ended up in life support and therapeutic hypothermia in the NICU and it’s all just really hitting home.
I haven't been on this blog in so long... I'm sorry (if there's any of you out there actually following).
Somehow residency just keeps getting MORE tiring... not less. So far in third year we are so short on senior residents that we are all 1-in-3 in-house 24-hour call, with a few extender residents to fill in the gaps. It's exhausting, especially since the juniors are all new and you can't necessarily trust them to do junior tasks yet. It feels like doing two jobs every single night.
Despite being totally overwhelmed and playing chief while being totally short-staffed for residents this block (and working four weeks straight without a day off!)... At least all my hard work on my research project paid off. I won first prize in my category at Research Day!
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