Back in the Saddle Again

I looked for a picture of a girl in scrubs riding a horse but couldn't find one.

I've returned to school. Academically speaking, I don't think a whole lot went on in my absence. Matthew's study group was meeting in our apartment when I got home, and I couldn't discern any advancement whatsoever. If it were only Matthew on whom I were relying for input, I'd consider the source and rethink the matter, but a few of the people in the group have functioning brains, and the consensus was that not much new material had been presented in any class. (Perhaps that's why the profs were so willing to let me out of there for a week.) Most of the emphasis was on clinical work, and I did my share of that at another hospital, and had my hours logged and signed off by the surgeon in chief.

When not much goes down acadmeically, that leaves entirely too much time for things to go down socially. The word is all over the place about my ex's dissing of Enemy #2.  She seems to have lost status, and, by association, her friend has lost it as well. I may be blamed and may be targeted for retaliation, but these two are losing power by the minute, which sorely limits their positions to do anything that will cause me any legitimate grief. Furthermore, the dean has been apprised. They need to watch their steps for their own good. I don't care one way or another if they stay or go. If they stay, in two years when class rankings are calculated and matter in an official sense, there are two members of the class whom I will surely officially  no matter how hard they study, and they are going to find themselves lmited to a study group of two soon if their actions do not become more socially acceptable. If they go, good riddance, and they will be someone else's heaache. 

It's weird and entirely based upon my perception and not on reality, but with every mile that the plane moved closer to my medical school and further away from my home yesterday, I could feel the tension within me increasing. It must even have been discernible, as my ex, riding along with me in the plane, commented upon it. He said I'm stressing out too much, but that the biggest mistake a medical student can make is to not take it seriously enough. Before the quarter is over, chances are that someone's life and/or death will have passed through hands, and the outcome will have depended upon our actions. It's a rather sobering thought. 

It used to be that a med school student didn't get within breathing room of a patient until year three of medical school. Now we're managing intakes at the very beginning of  thrid month of school. In theory, life or death should not depend upon our actions, but the reality is that sometimes a situation is  critical before anyone other than we in the little white coats with "Student" badges are aware of it. if we're smart, we clamor loudly for help, and usually someone else jumps in and gets us the hell out of the way before we do any damage that cannot be undone, but until that happens, we're the only ones there to help the patients. This is particularly true when an ER is swamped.

I already have my two babysitting jobs for this week booked. One is for a professor who is not my professor but who has heard that I have a knack for keeping young children safe and happy at the same time, and that I follow parents' instruction to the letter. The other gig is for a third-year med-school male whose wife had a baby five weeks ago. She desperately needs to get out more. She and her husband -- the med school student -- are catching dinner and a movie.

Jared and I had a nice date just before my migraine set in. He probably caused the migraine, but that's another story for another day's blog. We saw, of all things, Meet the Mormons. We had free passes; we never would have paid even Monopoly money to get in to that movie.  I'm loathe to admit that we behaved most immaturely, laughing aloud what should have been the most serious parts, and even going so far as to throw popcorn at the movie screen. (An usher approached us, and I was sure we were about to be ejected from the theater for throwing popcorn. The usher whispered to Jared, "I'd throw popcorn at this movie, too, if I wouldn't lose my job for it." ) Wouldn't you say this movie is a real public relations coup for LDS, Inc. ? I would say it was a waste of perfectly good popcorn, but Jared had a coupon for all-you can-eat refills on one of those giant popcorn tubs. We snuck in our own sodas.

Jared is sweating out the waiting process for med school. He's taken the MCAT twice, for which I coached him all summer (he also took the Kaplan test prep course), and has submitted everything. He's now playing the waiting game. He doesn't have a music major to gild his lily or to pad his application, but he has a solid pre-medical course of study with a 4.0. He'll make a fine doctor if given the chance, I suspect he'll be given that chance, although it may bein Timbuktu. On a more serious note, he says he'll go anywhere n the U.S.  Cost is no major object, because his grandparents are footing the bill. He really regrets having no more Spanish fluency than what he got out of high school Spanish plus two quarters of college Spanish, but a Mormon mission would not have helped him in that regard, as he was to be sent  somewhere like Ghana, where Spanish flows about as freely as does the water there.

I really feel caught between two worlds right now. Here at medical school is where I belong, and I felt that way 100% until good old Jillian had to go out and have a baby. Now my heart is split between the two places. I'll be home for almost a week for Thanksgiving break in eighteen days. I hope Jillian and scott had no plansto actually hold their own baby during that time, because they'll have a tough time wrestling him from me.  After that, it's just two weeks until finals are over. 

Then I get almost a month off. I'll play Fairy Godmother  (seriously, I'd love to show up to the baptism in totl Fairy Godmother get-up, but I'd hate to be repsonsible for the priest having a coronary; I actually like the particular priest) but also catch up on sleep and have a little winter frolicking in Utah. Utah is not my favorite place, but the place in Utah where I have free lodging is not even a thirty-minute drive from Sundance resort, which gives me discounted passes.

What I thought might be unattainable seems to be mostly done. I'm through the roughest part of Quarter One of med school. I've been warned that Quarter Two is academically the toughest thing I'll face in my med school carreer, but I feel up to the challenge. Academic hurdles have never been my Achilles' heel. 

Have a pleasant autumn. I initially intended to tell you to have a nice fall but,  nice or not, I really don't want you to fall, so I'll choose my words more carefully.

I'm not a huge Barry Manilow fan, but I love this particular song, which I would like to dedicate to my Godchild, Andrew Scott Bryson.  (I'll share the story on the two middle names in a future blog. His parents aren't ordinarily the pretentious sorts who would give their child or children multiple middle names, but there's a legitmate reason for Andrew having both Scott and Bryson as middle names.)