One Reason I'm Not a Crack Ho

I'd like to think this would not have been me regardless, but one never knows for certain.

Most of us are familiar with the proverb "It takes a village to raise a child." What it means is different to different people. while many people agree with the maxim at face value, many people took  umbrage at hillary clinton's use of part of the phrase in her book It Takes a Village, primarily, i assume, because it was hillary who used the ohrse. She could have entitled her book Jesus Is the Light of the World, and the evangelical and fundamental Christians of our nation would have found a way to disagree with and take offense to it. I am, however, digressing.

If most of us recall our childhoods and adolescences, we can come up with at least a few adults who were crucial to helping us to maintain relatively sane lives and to stay away from drugs, crime, wanton sex, and the other bad things out there just waiting to pounce upon and ensnare youth. This typically happens when a young person is at an age when he or she doesn't especially want to hear what his or her parents have to say. If another adult says the very thing our parents were trying to tell us, often we're willing to listen. This was true in my case.

I was fortunate enough to have had several of such adults in my life. I'd like to think that even without their guidance, I probably would not have become a crack whore, but one cannot know such things for certain. 

While there are many adults, including my parents,  to whom I should give credit for my relative functionality and sanity, because I'm leaving his home tonight to  go back to school, I shall devote this post to my pseudouncle Scott. I will try to give credit to the others in upcoming weeks or months.

Pseudouncle Scott married Jillian, whom we consider part of the family, particularly because there's a large segment of my dad's family to whom we do not consider ourselves related; we had room for a few extra relatives, and Jillian's family became those extra relatives. Jillian's father and my father met soon after my father relocated to Florida, and my dad soon began to spend more time at his friend Jerry's house than he spent at his own.

Jerry and my dad continued to be like brothers, and the bond was solidified when each of them married and their wives got along extremely well. When Jerry's wife, Aunt Ilianna, gave birth to a very premature baby, my mother flew east to Florida to help run the household so that Ilianna would be free to come and go to the hospital as needed.  My mother typed most of her doctoral dissertation with Jillian sitting on her lap.

When Matthew and I were born, Uncle Jerry flew west to deliver us. Later, Aunt Ilianna flew out because I was an especially difficult baby and my mom was experincing trouble in maintaining her sanity while being in solitary confinement for much of each day with twins, one of whom screamed  for roughly twenty-three of the twenty four hours of each day.

Jillian was seven years older than I, but she was light years ahead of me in maturty to the extent that it was though we were not even of the same generation. Hence, when she married, our relationship was more like that of an aunt and niece than one of peers of any sort. Her new husband inherited the "uncle" role.

I first met Scott a day before the rehearsal for his wedding to Jillian. Our initial meeting was precarious to say the least. Scott likes to tease people -- particularly pre-adolescent girls -- and while I ordinarily handle teasing reasonably well, I wasn't at all certain I liked his particular brand of it.

It all started out when the intended six-year-old flower girl came down with chicken pox. The search was on for a new flower girl. Scott pointed out that the dress, while much shorter on me than it would have been on the six-year-old (it was supposed to be floor-length on her), would be more than large enough for me. He nominated me to be the new flower girl. In retrospect, I'm sure he was joking, but at the time I didn't think his joke was funny in the least. The very last thing any thirteen-year-old wants to do in any wedding is to be the flower girl. That ruse continued until Aunt Ilianna took the dress up on the sides to make it fit a skinnier relative than the original flower girl.

My next conflict was over my playing the violin at Scott's and Jillian's wedding. Scott was unsure that anyone who looked like me (I was thirteen but could easily have passed for nine) was capable of playing the violin well enough to be a part of his wedding in that capacity. He was an undergrad music major in addition to his pre-med studies, so he was a bit picky in terms of  the music that was to be performed at his wedding. He thought I should audition for him. I had no intention of doing that; he could take me or leave me as one of his wedding musicians, but I was unwilling to demonstrate my skills for him beforehand.

We compromised -- against my will -- by my playing along with my mom as she sang the song that Scott himself was to sing at the wedding. I argued with my mother that doing such was pointless, as the notes I would play while accompanying her would be very different than those I would play when Scott sang because of the disparity between the tone of their voices, rendering my 
"audition" pointless. My mom told me to play along anyway just so he could get an idea of what I might be playing. The song was "Fileds of Gold," but Scott was going to copy my mother's arrangement, which was very different from that of Sting, the original artist who performed the song. 

I gave in and played along with my motther. Scott must have been suitably impressed. He took over at the piano and played while he sang, and I filled in phrases with an obligato, which was, as I said it would be, considerably different than what it was when my mother had played and sung the song. Afterwards, Scott conceded with "Touche'. I had no idea anyone so little could play so well."

We had no further contact until that summer, when my summer camp plans fell through for a time that my parents would be traveling out of the country. My parents needed a place to park me, and the pseudorelatives needed money, which my parents would pay them to care for me. It seemed like a win/win situation for everyone but me. The initial meeting, when Scott picked me up at the airport, was most awkward, and he said basically nothing to me all the way from the airport in Salt Lake City to their home -- a shabby apartment in a complex filled mostly with married BYU students in Utah County.

We got past the uncomfortable reintroduction and made a tentative peace. The situation gradually improved, though there was continued conflict throughut the summer over Scott's concern abut how little I ate. I've never been a big eater even since infancy, but the problem was compounded by Jillian's habit of cooking Cuban entrees for dinner. Jillian believed that a kid should eat what was on the table or nothing at all; I wasn't about to tuch, much less eat her Cuban concoctions.

That particular obstacle was finally overcome by their allowing me to eat cereal or to make peanut butter sandwiches along with salad or to eat rice from the meal and to take bits of the meat that was used in the Cuban concoction before Cuban spices had been applied to it and to cook it myself. 

Scott and I bonded somewhat over music. He gave me piano lessons since my mom wasn't there to give them to me, and I taught him the basics of playing violin. 

I spent parts of the next three summers with them while my parents traveled and my brother was at baseball camp. I didn't make life all that easy for them and caused them to earn their money by developing croup one summer and having my appendix rupture on me another summer. 

When, in the fall after my third summer with them I suffered my infamous restroom assault, Scott offered in all seriousness to fly to California and kick the @$$ of the main perpetrator, who was a legal adult. I wanted to take him up on the offer (he's big), but my parents turned it down, saying that we would handle the mater legally. My parents were right in not using violence to setle the matter, but still, I appreciated the idea that someone was willing to commit violence on my behalf.

On the rare occasions when classes became difficult and my dad wasn't around to clarify tough concepts, Scott was always available. Even now in med school, I call him if something is unclear. He explains things a bit more clearly than my dad does. He helped me to prepared for medical school interviews, which he went through much more recently than my dad did.

Scott and Jillian have made me the Godmother to both of their children, for which I am deeply honored. 

I would like to think that ultimately I would not have led a life of crime or ended up on skid row even if Scott had not been in my life, but his presence made the possibility even less likely.

Scott and I relate to one another primarily through trading barbs and insults, but I wuld like to express now just how sincerely I appreciate and love him. 

Auntie Jillian, Judge Alex, and How Plans Change

This post was originally about something entirely different than its eventual topic. I'll tackle the other topic soon, as the introduction was already written. Instead of telling you about Stephanie March - a talented actress who portrayed (and still portrays, I think although I rarely have time to watch) an ADA and/or bureau chief  on Law and Order SVU, I'll instead write about what my brother says is my absolute favorite topic on which to write or to speak: ME! Anytime I seem to him to be too full of myself, my brother announces, "Let's all sing another round of the "Alexis Theme Song" (sung to the tune of Barney's opening theme: "I love MEEEE! You love MEEE! Everyone loves  MEEE,  MEEE, MEEE!" etc. You get the point. My brother thinks my ego is excessively large, and i am perhaps abit self-obsessed.

As a very young child, I had a bit of an obsession with the guy who played Steve on Blue's clues. I didn't even know if his real name was Steve or not. That's how young I was. Judge Alex Ferrer was probably my closest thing to an obsession after Steve. At first I wanted to be adopted by Judge Alex and his wife and to be rescued from what I perceived as the abusive home situation in which I was entrenched. Then, as I began to see reality a bit more clearly, I just wanted to become Judge Alex, or at least the female equivalent of him. Television fame - or even fame in any form -- was not my aim. Rather, my goal was simply a matter of wanting to fight for truth, justice, and the American way. I lamented that fact that I was not of Cuban descent. I wanted to go to a really good law school. From there, I wanted to be an assistant district attorney, which is something Judge Ferrer never did, but still I thought it was the best way for me to reach my ultimate objective, and it had worked well enough for The Judge  Honorable Marilyn Milian (also of Cuban extraction), so it seemed like a viable plan.

Incidentally, I now no longer totally idolize Judge Ferrer, I don't worship him as I did as a young teen. Instead, I see him as a real person with normal strengths and weaknesses - far more strengths than weaknesses, if it matters - who is a truly good, kind, and moral person. He is a good husband and father, which, in today's crazy world, is one of the most honorable characteristics a man can possess. He married a good woman when he was young and was smart enough to stick with her through the inevitable tough times of any marriage. He raised children of whom he and his wife can be proud. One of them just graduated from law school today. He never forgot his humble roots, having immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba as an infant, with his family having left behind a comfortable lifestyle and virtually everything they owned, and speaks often of his experience as a young immigrant assimilating into a new and very different culture. He's the sole survivor of his parents'  three sons, and as such has assumed the responsibility of assisting his aging parents. Judge Ferrer has raised awareness of the issue of bullying in our schools and elsewhere, and is also taking on corporations who commit unethical practices that harm all of us, in many cases without our knowledge of the nefarious corporate practices.  Judge Ferrer is someone I admire  immensely, and once the craziness of medical school, internship, and residency are history, I will strive to someday accomplish a fraction of the good in the world that he is doing..

Judge Ferrer is someone I also consider a friend -- one on whom I can call for advice or even just a kind word of encouragement when I'm in need of it. He doesn't have to be so nice to a complete nobody such as myself. He just does. It's certainly not because of my looks. If such were the case, he'd be asking me for the phone numbers of my friends, some of whom are bona fide knockouts. I'm not the only average citizen to whom he extends such kindness, He's a great man who gives freely of himself. If half of the world's celebrities, or even of the world's average citizens, were as giving of themselves as is Judge Ferrer, the world would be a much better planet on which to live.

Back to my law career that never happened . . .From the ADA's side of the courtroom,  I had hoped to impress enough politicians that I might eventually be appointed to a position on the bench in some capacity. I could, obviously, have run for election, but I'm not sure it would have been a great route to a judgeship for me. Something about being a tiny blonde girl  with a high-pitched voice who doesn't look her age and probably won't until she's fifty wouldn't seem to inspire confidence in the masses when it came time to cast one's vote for a judge, and my preference wouldn't be to wait until the age of fifty before attaining the rank of judge. (Once I had the position and had done a decent job, relection wasn't quite such a daunting prospect to me.) Neither Alex Ferrer nor Marilyn Milian waited so long. Impressing a few politicians seemed like a surer bet.  Meanwhile, I could put away hordes of heinous.criminals. I would have to look over my shoulder constantly because of the friends and relatives of the gang members and other bad guys I'd convicted, but that would be just part of the excitement of the lifestyle.

My ambition to practice law was all the more heightened by my Aunt Jillian's choice of law as a profession. Aunt Jillian is only seven years older than I, and has always been my real-life role model. I suspect if she had become either a nun or a prostitute I would have seriously considered doing the same even though I haven't the slightest inclination toward a vocation of either sort. She attended J. Ruben Clark School of Law in Provo, Utah (affiliated with Brigham Young University) because she had done her undergraduate work there and because her husband was attending the University of Utah School of Medicine thirty or so miles up the freeway. Aunt Jillian did well in her law studies, just as she has done well at virtually everything she has ever attempted to do. She had considered medical school, but because of issues with her health, she ultimately decided that law school would be a more reasonable course of study or her.

I don't know if she has regrets about her decision to forego medicine in favor of law -- I certainly hope she doesn't --  but her early legal career showed considerable promise. She moved from the public defender's office to a position as an assistant district attorney to private practice to doing the one thing that really mattered to her most, which was to raise children. She is in her final trimester with her second and final child. (Having children puts more stress on her body than it does on the body of the average expectant mother, and she's doing very well to be able to produce two healthy children, and signs point to her being able to do just that, though we're all still keeping our fingers crossed and keeping her and the baby in our prayers.) .Jillian's older child - a little boy named Andrew, who just reached six months of age, is my Godchild and is the absolute light of my life. I don't think anyone in the world loves him more than I do except, perhaps, his parents.Andrew's little sister will be born at around thirty-five or thirty-six weeks of gestation, which is as long as she can carry a baby before going back onto her regular medication for cystic fibrosis. This will make Andrew between eight and nine months old when his baby sister is born. My mom says non-twin siblings born less than a year apart are known as Irish twins. The babies are half Cuban, with the remaining half being a mixture of Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, so there's not a drop of Irish in the mixture, but they're about as close in age as non-twin siblings can be. I gave up a teaching job this summer (I had an offer to teach calculus for summer school) in large part so that I could spend as much time with the babies as possible. There are lots of people to help, so it's not as though the family is in great need of my assistance, but it's what I want to do with my summer. Jillian and my Uncle Scott will probably get so sick of me that they'll kick me out of their house, but until then, I'm staking my claim and hanging out there.

Aunt Jillian still does paperwork for the legal firm in which she is a partner (it was a new firm, and they really needed capital, which she could offer, so she became an instant partner). When her children are in school, she says she'll try a few cases a year. Meanwhile, she'll handle paperwork and draft opening  statements and closing arguments for other attorneys in the firm when she has time.

I've worked with Aunt Jillian as a paralegal (no certification is required in order to be a paralegal here; if the attorney paying you is satisfied with the job one is doing and the "paralegal" does nothing to offend the judge, he or she has the job). I can shuffle papers with the best of them and am a relatively quick study with a bit of clairvoyance in terms of anticipating what document Aunt Jillian needs before she asks for it, plus I'm a meticulous note-taker. She says anytime I want to take a break from my career as a med school student or doctor, I can work for her if she's working. Right now she's having too much fun with her baby to even think about stepping into a courtroom.

Working with Aunt Jillian gave me an up-close-and-personal look at the practice of law in the courtroom. It's neither as glamorous nor as exciting as what one typically sees in any of the Law & Order genres. Even in the most efficiently-run courtroom, a tremendous amount or time is spent on technicalities. Jurors are late for trials. Motions are made and must be ruled upon, however ridiculous they may appear. Witnesses become emotional or ill, and everything stops while they compose themselves or finish hurling. Questioning involving s mindless and inconsequential matter can go on for what seems like forever. A good judge can minimize the repetition, but the accused must have a fair trial, and if that sometimes involves the belaboring of a point ad nauseum, that's the way it has to be.

And that's just the courtroom side of the law -- the exciting part. Most of a lawyer's hours are not spent in court. Most of it is buried in paperwork, negotiations, consultations (often for which the pay is often a big fat nothing), drafting of pre-trial motions or responding to such, conferencing with clients either by telephone or in person, trying to reason with people who are not all that reasonable, and attempting to console clients or families when things don't go the way they had hoped. But mostly it's paperwork, paperwork, and even more paperwork. And that's if you're working in criminal law. In civil law, God only knows how much worse it might be. For the most part, there's  not quite so much looking over your shoulder at someone who wishes in the worst way to off you as an act of revenge, but it's still not beyond possibility. Family law in particular can be ugly in that regard.  Where huge sums of money are involved, too, emotions run high, and people who might otherwise behave more rationally can lose sensibility. No profession is 100% safe, and the legal profession is probably less safe than most.

The safety factor is minor in the grand scheme of whether or not to ultimately choose to go into the legal profession. one must have a passion for it in order to be either successful or happy. It is going to be tedious more often than not. An attorney had best be a person who doesn't mind reading even when the reading material is something that could put a person to sleep who hasn't slept for days, and one must read with extreme attention to detail and with level 20.0 comprehension at the very lowest. (That's as in beginning first grade being 1.0, mid-second grade being 2.6, etc.). Unwieldy stacks of written material will appear on an attorney's desk on a regular basis. Unless an attorney has a paralegal he can trust beyond question [and it typically takes years to develop such trust in an employee] the reading needs to be done by the attorney himself or herself. The buck stops with the attorney. One simple conjunction -- an and versus an or-- can drastically alter the bottom line of a settlement. It's all in the details.

And  one must write with the same level of precision that is expected in one's reading. A good legal secretary or paralegal can catch the obvious errors, but the more subtle nuances may only be understood by the attorney. As an attorney develops a working relationship with a paralegal, he or she may find that the paralegal is roughly as competent at such things as is the paralegal, but in such cases, if the paralegal is really sharp, he or she will complete law school and cease to work for a paralegal's wages. And in spite of any paralegal's qualifications, the ultimate responsibility will always fall upon the attorney. He or she will be sued if a client is screwed over by a misplaced comma or other seemingly inconsequential misuse of the English language that might have earned a single  mark of a red pen in a university English course but could cost thousands or tens of thousands if an attorney botches a legal settlement on behalf of a client. (These sorts of things are usually read multiple times by more than one reader with expertise in  going over such material; such a grievous error  isn't an everyday occurrence, but they do happen.)

Though it sometimes doesn't seem to be the case with my haphazard typing, usually after I've put ointment into my overly dry eyes, I am able to write with precision when I take the time to do so. I read carefully as well. I have the ability to pay attention to detail, to think quickly, and to draft responses on the spur of the moment. What I do not have, and may not have at any time in the foreseeable future, is a commanding presence and a powerful voice. I'm a skinny, pale little girl whose voice sounds even younger than I look. (I only sound authoritative if I have a cold.) Were I to pursue law as a career, I would surely need to have speech therapy in effort to add depth and resonance my voice, and chances are that the world's most talented speech pathologist would have only marginal success in improving my voice. In terms of vocal chords, you basically get what you're born with. You can damage them but you probably cannot make them much better.. Relaxation techniques can remove some of the strident sound my voice possesses, but there's a limit to how relaxed I can or should be on the job. I can't down a pint of bourbon before work every day.

What I do have working in my favor, though, is that I've always had a knack for math and science. My dad mostly kept his mouth shut throughout the time it was assumed I would study law because he knew that I was likely to do the opposite of whatever he suggested, although he did recommend several math and science courses as electives under the guise that it would supposedly give me an advantage in certain specialty branches of law. I listened to his advice and took the courses. Then, midway through my undergrad studies, Dad finally came right out and said that it was a waste of mathematical and scientific strength for me to go to law school. I don't know if he honestly believed the part about it being a supposed waste of ability; I think he just believe I would totally suck as a trial lawyer. Regardless, at least I had that strength on which to fall since it didn't appear that law school would be the best of options. I would have gotten into at least some  law school (my GPA and LSAT scores were strong), and I would have done reasonably well in law school, but I would have totally stunk up the joint as a trial lawyer, and chances are that any attention I got from any politician would have been because of my high and squeaky voice and little-girl-dressed in-her-mom's clothing appearance, and not because of my Solomon-like rulings and any presumed laser-like precision with which I ran the prosecution of my cases,

It's a family thing that we all try to obtain degrees in music even though we don't necessarily intend to pursue careers in the field. Both of my parents have music performance undergrad degrees in addition to their REAL degrees. Matthew didn't have time to get one because he played Division I baseball and finished school in three years. As critical as i can be of Matthew, even I will admit that it's asking a lot of someone to complete a double major under such circumstances. I was already on track to complete my piano performance major, but because I had switched majors from English to biochemistry and didn't have quite as many broad science  courses as would have been ideal for a medical school applicant, my counselor decided it would be a wonderful idea for me to tack on a violin performance  major to my already heavy load, (The word on the street is that nearly all science majors with high GPAs and MCAT scores who are also violin performance majors are usually accepted into the medical schools of their first-choice.) Since I was slated to finish in three years  (I had taken tons of AP courses in high school. I would have finished high school in three years except that A) my parents didn't want me leaving for college at 15 and B) I took enough AP course to equal more than a year of university credits) this added a level of intensity to a final year of university that should have been spent lying on the beach while opening an occasional textbook. C'est la vie.

The violin performance add-on major might seem on the surface to have been a really good idea except for one minor glitch:  I'm not all that terrific a violinist. What I play sounds good, but my technique up to that point hadn't been something on which I devoted a great amount of time. Piano was my instrument. my mom played violin, and we always had one around, so I dabbled with it. My mom noticed that  I got a better-than-average sound out of it when I played, so she taught me the basics, but I never had formal lessons. I didn't even own my own violin until the Christmas before I graduated from high school. I played it because I enjoyed it, but there was a considerable level of technical mastery that I lacked. When the counselor came up with his brilliant idea, the workload nearly killed me, but I did it. I passed my juries easily, and the recital went without a hitch. (It's easy to perform when you're playing the pieces you choose.) I'll never know if the violin major made a difference, but I was asked to play violin at two medical school interviews including the one at the school I attend.

That's how I ended up in medical school despite starting out as an English major with pre-law aspirations. Relatively few people end up doing what they thought they would do when when they began university studies. The points to this, if there are any points to it, are  that ANY degree is better than no degree at all, to take courses early that will be useful regardless of one's major ends up being, to listen to the right people, as some  people give better adudy vice than others,  to make changes in university if one feels the strong desire to do so , as it's easier to shift courses of study while still in school than it is to do so after one has completed his or her education, and to try to maintain some sort of a balance between what you do well  and what you love to do.

Jesus Wants Me for a Zombie

I probably should be studying rather than posting, but as far as studying goes, there comes a time when either enough is enough or it is time to find a new course of study, I'm hoping that enough truly is enough where my studying is concerned, as I really don't want to find another course of study.

Tonight I studied independently. I did run a few things by my brother, and I consulted with my pal just around the corner from me who is an intern. I think I've committed to memory everything I can memorize up to this point. I've even memorized a few things I don't fully understand because they haven't come up yet in lecture.  I assume that it will all come together for me when it's discussed in lecture, or maybe even before. One other time I memorized a huge section of text that I didn't understand. Two nights later I had a dream about it, and then it was all perfectly clear. As I see it, my dreams work against me more often than they should, so if a dream works in my favor once in a great while, It's only fair. The only problem with dreaming about text that I've memorized is that I wake up not rested in the least. When one spends her sleeping hours working out the vagaries of medical science, one cannot expect to get quality sleep.

Midterms are coming up next week. I'll also be able to run next week. Running should help me burn off nervous energy related to midterms. i don't actually have that much nervous energy related to midterms, though. I just want to run. Testing is less work for me than lecture. with lecture, I always worry about whether or not I missed anything. /with tests, its simply a matter or regurgitating what is known and synthesizing a bit from what has been learned. It's actually much less stressful than dealing with lecture. not everyone agrees with me about this, but it's my personal philosophy and I'm sticking to it.

It's so nice to slip into a bathtub r shower without the hassle of triple-wrapping my leg in garbage bags. I'm still using my handicapped placard because I cannot yet ride my bike, and if I park in general parking, I'll be handicapped by the time I walk the distance from the outer limits of student parking to the medical science building. If it matters. my orthopedist told me to continue to use the placard until next week. At that point, I'll send it back. I'm not a total reprobate.

In just over another month, final exams will be well underway. Then shortly thereafter, my final summer vacation as I've come to know it will have begun. Maybe I should have gone to law school. I would have had one more summer vacation had I chosen law as a course of study. C'est la vie. If I earn enough money, I can eventually afford to take two to three months off every year if that's what I really want to do. It's those next few years of getting to that point that are likely to kill me before I get there, though.  

The Great Stupidifier - Medical School

For anyone out there with masochistic tendencies who really wants to feel stupid, I recommend medical school.  It's not that my peers, classmates, competitors -- or whatever I would call them -- are doing much or any better than I am. It's just that there's nothing like meeting up with subject matter not available at any of my previous stations in academia or in life.  It highlights just how much I don't know when I study for twelve hours and feel as though I've barely made a dent in the material I  must commit to memory forever or at least for the duration of my professional career.

With academic work I've done in the past, I've known that much of it was not tremendously pertinent to my life. I could learn what I needed to learn to ace a course, and then choose to remember it if it was in anyway useful or interesting, or to forget it if it wasn't. It may be that someday I'll decide that in the grand scheme of things,  something that I'm learning right now really doesn't have much to do with my field of medicine or is otherwise cluttering my brain, and will have the freedom to forget it.

Somehow I doubt that such will be the case. I think the professors are probably speaking the truth when they tell us that learning about how cells form tissues and learning the early principles of molecular biology  and med school anatomy (not to be confused with the most advanced undergrad anatomy course available anywhere, which everyone in the class has taken) lay the foundations for everything we'll ever learn about the scientific aspects of healing.  I think what I'm learning now will have to remain in my brain for the foreseeable future, at least in some dormant form.

Very soon, I will undergo a few hours of clinical instruction regarding the basics of vital signs of the human body. This will enable me to process the basic intake of E.R. patients for just a very small amount of time each week.  It used to be, back in the dinosaur days when my dad went to medical school, that a med school students wouldn't get within shouting distance of a patient until Year # 3 of medical school. All that has changed. I'm not sure precisely why, as it seemed like a pretty good system to me. Perhaps it's because anyone willing to put in the time and effort can learn what's in a book, but for me and for most of the opposition (I don't love to think of those who are studying with me as such, but that's the way it is now if I'm to be honest), what will allow us to succeed or cause us to fail miserably in the field of medicine will be the ability [or inability] to synthesize what we've learned and somehow make sense of it and make use of it in the real world.

I can't speak for the experience of anyone else in the program, but for me, it's like building a bridge. Right now, I'm on one side of a body of water and building out across the water to another piece of land. I've built my bridge maybe a total of three feet into the roughly 10 miles of water I'll need to build it across in order to reach land again. In roughly two weeks, I'm going to take a helicopter or row a little boat or somehow get all the way across to that other section of land and start building the bridge from that side. I'll build on that side for maybe five minutes, then fly or row back to the other side to build again from the original side. I know what's on the very beginning of this side, and I'll know what's on the very start of the bridge on the other side very soon, but my two ends of the bridge are in no way even remotely close to being connected, and I have no clue just what it is that will one day connect them. I don't really know for certain that the ends of the bridge will ever connect.

I'm taking it on faith that all the people who have ever done this before me are not co-conspirators in some ginormously perpetrated hoax and that this is not some bizarre hazing ritual designed to cull the weak, ignorant, and insufficiently dedicated among us.  The anatomy part I get. Yes, a doctor has to know the bones and everything there is to know about each and every one of them.  Most of us knew all the bones before we ever set foot on campus for medical school interviews. Now we get the fun of actually finding them on a real [used-to-be] live human body. (Yes, I did throw up in my first anatomy lab, but I wasn't the only one to do so.)  It's the more abstract learning of cellular and molecular biology that is perplexing me. How what I'm learning in classrooms could ever have anything to do with removing someone's appendix, ridding someone's body of a kidney stone, or even stitching up some child's boo boo, is still very much a mystery to me.

I could take the easy way out.  I could do the job I plan ultimately to do with a mere PhD in biochemistry or even microbiology.  I chose this more difficult path, and now I'm really wondering into what sort of quagmire I've gotten myself.  And, at the end of the day when my head is just short of imploding and they let us out until morning, now I don't even have Judge Alex episodes with which to distract myself. (Curse you, Fox! And you have the audacity to call yourself a real network!)

If it sounds as though I'm treading water and just barely keeping my head above the surface, that's probably not a wholly inaccurate description of my current state.  The only thing really keeping me sane and here is that, while some are better at faking it than I, they're in every bit as much trouble as I am.  The ones who are the least stressed are the few who don't really belong here with the rest of us and haven't yet figured it out. Some of them believe that pass/fail grading means basically everyone passes. Everyone doesn't pass.

I will pass. It seems grim now, but I'll get through it. And I'll do the pre-clerkship portion of medical school in two years, not the three years that the administration is so heavily pushing us to extend it to. I know if it's difficult for me, it's even more difficult for some others.  I can see it in their eyes even if they pretend to be having the time of their lives.  Nobody here is both having fun and passing. It's interesting, but it's not fun. Any one of us who thinks he or she is having fun is going to be out of here after December.

It's accurate except for "What my family thinks." Too many people in my family have been to med school for anyone to believe this.

Uncle Lee, Lee Harvey Oswald, Bigotry, Unresolved Grief Pertaining to Judge Alex, and Catholic Doctrine

Add a few wrinkles, take away a bit of hair and the booking number, and you have my Uncle Lee, not to be confused with Lee harvey Oswald, though the resemblance is remarkable.

Note: Sometimes my blogs run too long because they're my real life that I wish to get on paper. If this is too lengthy, you don't have to read it.

I really need to deal with the cancellation of "Judge Alex" the TV show, but I'm not yet ready to blog about it , so I'll let you in on the latest happenings in my boring life so that you don't think I died and went to purgatory or worse. By the way, according to the priest who taught my Roman Catholic confirmation class, purgatory is not now, nor was it ever, an official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.  He's no longer a priest. If purgatory is not an official teaching of the church, what the former priest taught us probably wasn't, either. Does that mean I'm not a confirmed Catholic? I suppose I'll find that out if I end up in purgatory or worse. My situation is no worse than that of my pseudoaunt and uncle, who were married by a priest who is no longer a priest, and chances are wasn't being all that priestly when he performed their ceremony. Google Albert Cutie (pronounced /cyu/tee/AY/ ) for more information.

My uncle by marriage on my dad's side (there are seven of them; I can hardly keep them straight, so I would never expect readers to be able to do so) made an impromptu visit to our home today.  He didn't come right out and ask for money, which is the usual reason for any of their visits, except for Mendel. Mendel is the one of my dad's sister's husbands whom I like. When he visits, it is never to hit us up for money. He was a trust fund baby and has never touched the principal of his trust; he probably has more money than everyone else in the family combined, including my grandfather, who is himself no pauper.  

I probably shouldn't have included knowledge of Mendel's financial information in my blog, because I don't think the other sisters and their husbands knew that Mendel and Cristelle are wealthy. C'est la vie; now Cristelle and Mendel will probably be hit up. It is lucky for Cristelle and Mendel that they live on the Isle of Man. They'll only be bombarded for cash by text, email, phone call, or snail mail. Who has the money to fly to the Isle of Man to ask for money?

Anyway, the uncle who visited today was traveling from the San Francisco bay area to the LA area by rental car, and decided to stop and visit us, of all people. He has two other brothers-in-law in the immediate area. Why us?  We telephoned my dad's two brothers who live nearby. One had to assist with an emergency c-section, or so he said. Actually, he put his eight-year-old daughter on the phone, who said he had to perform an emergency ski session. The moral of that story is to do your own lying instead of relying upon your eight-year-old child, who doesn't even freaking know what a c-section is when she was delivered by one. I would love to check the hospital records to see if he was within a mile of the place at any time today. 

The other uncle I called  came over with his family to dilute the misery. He brought his wife and kids. We mostly stared at each other and ate cookies and drank bottled Grape Crush. That stuff is hard to get around here now. My mother heard it was at KMART, and she bought the last five six-packs. She ended up giving an entire six pack to my uncle just to get him out of our house and on his merry way.

For the record, this was not the uncle, who shall remain nameless,  whose wife nearly killed me via smoke inhalation by leaving me in a seriously injured and immobilized state by myself in the unfinished attic of her house while she left a casserole not even fit for consumption by members of the Donner Party burning in the oven at 425 degrees, as the fire department later reported. This uncle is not the thief or kleptomaniac. We're all still arguing over which diagnosis is the accurate one concerning Mahonri. All we know is that he steals others' belongings almost on par with the way Rickey Henderson stole bases back in the day.  

So if it wasn't Mendel, it wasn't Mahonri, it wasn't the one who shall remain nameless here whose wife tried, intentionally or otherwise, to kill me, that leaves four other of my dad's sisters' husbands. This one is most notable for his uncanny resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald, or at least to what L. H. Oswald might have looked like had Jack Ruby not thrown a hatchet directly into his plan to live to the ripe old age of forty-six, which is Uncle Lee's current  age. (I had to look that up in a family genealogy record. I don't walk around with that sort of useless knowledge in my head.) Furthering the confusion is the fact that this uncle's actual first name is Lee.

Once my mom had asked how Uncle Lee's wife and nine children were and he had answered, there wasn't a hell of a lot left about which to converse. Uncle Lee asked Matthew about his future plans. Matthew told him he had been accepted to ********  Medical School. Uncle Lee reacted enthusiastically, jumping up to shake Matthew's hand and pat him on the back.

Then he asked me if I was in high school yet. My Uncle Michael started laughing hysterically, because it's no secret in the family that Matthew and I are twins. I quietly said that I had finished high school. "You're going to college?" he asked somewhat incredulously.

"I finished that, too," I told him. "Triple major."

"So what can you possibly do now now?" Uncle Lee asked me. "Teach preschool?"  I share this with my deepest apologies to preschool teachers everywhere. Teaching preschool is a noble calling in the minds of everyone more intelligent than a single-cell organism, which my Uncle Lee apparently is not.

Lee looked at my dad. "John, I just don't get why you pushed this child so hard to get through high school and college when she's obviously not qualified to do anything. She probably can't even cook."

"She baked the cookies you've eaten at least a dozen of," my Uncle Michael commented. 

Uncle Lee chuckled. (I hate that word chuckled, but it best fits Uncle Lee's inane laugh.) "Have I eaten that many?" 

My eleven-year-old cousin Ariel shook her head affirmatively. "I've been counting," she chimed in.

Meanwhile, my dad had run up the first staircase to try to find my university paperwork. "Alexis, where's your stuff?" he hollered from the balcony.

"What stuff?" I answered his question with a question. I didn't know if he thought I had a private drug stash and needed to raid it to get through the remainder of Uncle Lee's visit.

"Your university and med school information," he answered.

"Black file  cabinet, second drawer," I answered his answer.

A moment later he came down with a folder containing everything pertinent I had done to get into college or medical school. Uncle Lee smiled at my first mediocre stab at the SAT, which was 2240. "Not a lot higher than Gina's (his kid number three) third try," he commented.

"That was Alexis' first try," my dad explained. He placed another paper in front of Lee's face. "This was her second and final try." Lee looked down to see a perfect score of 2,400.The grin turned to a grimace.

My dad showed transcripts, my valedictory certificate, framed scholarships and grants, and the grand finale, which was my MCAT score. I don't think I've shared it here before, and I don't like to share it, but in this case I forgive my dad for showing it to Uncle Lee. It's higher than one would expect.

"So she's trying to get into to medical school, too?" Lee asked with, for some reason, dread in his voice.

Uncle Michael entered the conversation. "She's going, Lee. With grades and scores like hers, she had her pick of programs."

"She's a legacy," Lee scoffed.

"No, I'm a legacy," Matthew said proudly, pointing at himself. Who else would be proud of admission to a program based on nepotism? Sometimes Matthew acts like he's so dumb that he can't even blow his own nose, but in this case, I think he knew exactly what he was saying. "Alexis got in on a blind application. It wasn't early admisssion because ********  doesn't do early admission, but she's known since late fall. I needed dad's name to as much as get an interview even though my grades and scores weren't bad. Alexis had her choice of everywhere she applied. She didn't need any help."

"Affirmative action," Lee pretend-coughed.

"Look at her, Lee" my Uncle Michael again joined the conversation. "She's as 'white and delightsome' [a formerly popular Mormon phrase] as anyone in this room. And ******** doesn't care about that anyway. They take whomever they want."

"It couldn't possibly have anything to do with her gender, then, could it?" he asked/whined even more quietly.

My Aunt Joanne, a graduate of an Ivy league medical school, bristled at this. "Do you want to compare MCATs and grades with me, Lee?" she asked.

"You're all taking this so personally," Uncle Lee complained. "All I'm suggesting is that this . . . this little girl might not be ready for the rigors of medical school."

"If she isn't," my mom responded, "she still has a home and plenty of other options. This is what she wants, not what we want."

"But is she old enough to know what she wants or what's best for her?" he asked.

"Is her brother?" my mom asked him. "He's the same age."

Uncle Lee made a few comments about freeway traffic that were likely veiled attempts for an invitation to use either our guest room or Uncle Michael's. An offer for neither was forthcoming, so my mom packed and sent a sandwich, some cookies, and a six pack of the precious Grape Crush (gawd, the stuff is amazing) with  Uncle Lee, and he left to accept Tom Bodette's hospitality somewhere along the way to Los Angeles. I do not think I would have slept soundly with such a bigoted person under the same roof, or even in the same zip code.  I'll probably have Oswald dreams tonight even with Uncle Lee well on his way into the next county by now.

Postscript: In a phone call with Judge Alex, he asked me if I knew my parents were proud of me. I didn't really know how to answer because it's not something we talk much about. All it took was a visit from Uncle Lee for me to be able to answer the judge's question with a yes.

Oh My Gosh

My brother is home this weekend.  I shared with him some of the academic work I've done over the past eight days. He was perplexed by one of the papers -- the one about sexual inequality among pygmies in the Ituri Rainforest of Zaire.

"Anthropology is about real people, right?" he inquired. 

"Yeah," I answered, with the unspoken words, "and your point is . . ."  lingering in the air.

"So why do they let you write about mythical creatures for an anthropology class?" he continued.

"Huh?" I responded, not sure from where he was coming.

"Pygmies aren't real. They're just fairy-tale creatures . . . like Oompah Loompahs. Oompah Loompahs are basically pygmies."

"Matthew," I told him, not quite believing I was participating in the conversation, "Pygmies are real. They're tribes of people who live in rainforests and are less than fifty-nine inches in height. Roald Dahhl made up Oompah Lompahs, but pygmies are real."

"No way, " he countered.  "Mom,  Alexis just said . . . " I have no idea how he finished the sentence because he headed downstairs to question my mother about the lies he thought I was telling him about pygmies.

The bad news is that Matthew will be admitted to a more prestigious medical school than I'll get into because his grades are good and he interviews extremely well because he's so charming. In medical school interviews,  questions about general knowledge topics such as pygmies aren't typically asked, so he's safe.  In roughly six-and-one half years, Matthew may be interning in a hospital near you.

The good news is that he studies hard and learns what he is specifically taught or instructed to read. Just hope that someone either taught him about appendicitis or told him to read that chapter in a book before you walk with pain in your lower right quadrant into the hospital where he's completing his internship. 

Early Decision

Three hours ago I had about thirty-six hours in which to make a decision as to whether or not I would  participate in track and field this academic year.  If I my name were were LeBron James, I would have reserved a large block of TV time in which to announce my decision, but since I'm not, I'll announce it here. In a normal university situation, this decision would have needed to have been made months ago, but the pickings are a bit slim on my university's team due to a couple of unexpected transfers. I just concluded that I had put the decision off for long enough. I will not be hurdler this year. It's a decision about which I feel great.

I'm too skinny as it is, and a major developmental milestone that most girls reach years before they're my age (18) eludes me.   Adding an activity  to my daily routine that's going to burn roughly seven-hundred calories every day of practice will not help me to reach this milestone any faster.

I enjoy hurdling, but not enough to put myself though an entire NCAA season of it.

My rationale had been that a year of NCAA athletic participation would pad my medical school application. While there's some truth to that rationale, being alive would also greatly increase my chances of medical school admission.  The way my luck has been running lately, I'd have another freak  hurdling accident.  

If I really wanted to compete, the odds of an unlikely accident would not stand in my way, but since my desire is not all that strong, I'm going with it.  Hurdling kills. I want to remain alive. Therefore, I'm not hurdling.   if the decision keeps me out of medical school. law school, Federico College of Cosmetology, Groover's College of Mortuary Science, or anything else, I'll live with the consequences.

Two Down, Four More to Go

Today's finals are history. Despite last night's nightmare and the Klonopin I had to take after 4:00 a.m. as a result, I managed to make it through both of today's finals in a more-or-less wakeful state.  I have one final tomorrow, two on Wednesday, and the last one  on Thursday.

The exams I took today weren't overly taxing. Tomorrow's final will be a bit of a challenge, as will be the second exam I take on Wednesday. The first final I take on Wednesday is one that almost any primate would be expected to ace with ease. Thursday's final isn't quite so insulting to one's intelligence but, nonetheless, shouldn't  involve pulling an all-nighter the prior evening or biting one's nail's to the quick.

This has been an interesting quarter in that, overall, it's has probably been more cognitively demanding than anything I've ever done or am likely ever to do unless I enroll in medical school. It's been a good test as to whether I may or may not  be up to the rigors of medical school.

As to whether I am indeed up to the rigors of medical school, the verdict is not yet in. My best guess is that, cognitively speaking, the answer is probably yes. On the other hand, the strength my interpersonal skills has been questioned more than once.  Do I possess the empathy and communication skills to work cooperatively with fellow medical school students, much less with patients? Maybe, or maybe not.  If I choose the medical school option, time will tell.

Since my chosen specialty would be pathology, my dealings with other human beings would be finite. Once I made it through medical school and residency, if that;'s the direction I were to go, I would spend a whole lot more on-the-job  time staring through the lens  of a microscope into the morass of pathogens than I'd ever spend  attempting to navigate my way through  dealings with my fellow human beings. Still, four years of medical school and the first two years of a residency would be a long time for a socially-challenged person to undergo forced interactions with her fellow humans.  

Life Has Settled Down

My mom is speaking to me again. She doesn't want me to discuss her PMS so much here, so for now I will need to humor her.

I love my dad. Even though he is at times irrational, he is kind to me when no one else is.

The pseudorelatives are dealing with whatever life throws at them. I'm glad they're no longer angry with me, because I hate it when they are. This is especially true when I am living with them, but I don't like being on the outs with them under any circumstances. Some really strange happenings went down tonight, but I don't think they would want me sharing most of them, so I won't. PseudoUncle has been highly stressed by medical school, which surely must be uncommonly stressful. It is also stressful to be in the way of medical students when they are feeling stressed. In a small condo it is sometimes difficult to find a place to be that is sufficiently far out of the way to avoid being hit by the residual fallout of that stress. Being part of a family sometimes means I have to take the good with the bad.

PseudoAunt mentioned tonight after PseudoUncle went to bed (he was REALLY exhausted) that I had never asked any questions about her recently diagnosed condition of cystic fibrosis. She was diagnosed with it at twenty-three, which is very unusual. The condition is usually detected in neonatal screening. The fact that she had it for twenty-three years before anyone realized she had it is a good sign, but it's still not as though she was symptom-free all those years. She does have the same long-term effects that any CF patient would have, which is, namely, lung scarring from repeated infections.

I told PseudoAunt that my dad had instructed me specifically not to ask questions, and that I hoped she didn't think I was unconcerned because I hadn't asked her about it. My reasons for not asking were that I didn't want to pry or be nosy in the event that there were things about which she didn't want people in general or me in particular to know, and also that I didn't want to be in trouble with my dad if he found out I had asked questions after having been told point blank not to say anything.

PseudoAunt said she appreciated both my and my dad's respect for her privacy, but that I should feel comfortable asking her anything I want to know. It can remain between the two of us, and she won't even mention it to my dad. She said that she never mistook my silence on the subject as a lack of concern; she correctly assumed that I was following orders. She said if there is something she tells me about her CF that I shouldn't share in a blog, she will tell me. Anything else can be shared. I suppose that negates the part about her not telling my dad that we talked about it, but since she brought it up, it's probably OK.

I was curious in a concerned way about her prognosis. She said she really doesn't know other than the obvious answer that no one expects her to expire anytime soon. Her specialists will have a better answer in about a year in terms of how rapidly her illness is progressing or if it's in some sort of remission or holding pattern.

I also asked about childbearing in relation to her condition. She's not yet certain, but at this point her doctors are saying that chances are she'll be able to bear a child or two. They don't want her to get pregnant until they have enough of a handle on her condition that it is safe for her to go almost a year without invasive diagnostic procedures. She said a large obstacle in terms of her having children will be to convince her husband that it's a safe bet. Under the very best of circumstances a pregnancy will take some toll on her; pregnancy typically impacts even perfectly healthy women to at least a slight degree. Her husband feels strongly that a life without their own biological children is preferable to a life without her. Even if the doctors OK pregnancy and her husband is convinced it's safe, fertility could be an issue. It's typically less an issue for women than men with CF, but PseudoAunt has so much difficulty keeping weight on that her cycles are affected. A woman can be too thin to ovulate. PseudoAunt has been thin enough for her cycles to be interrupted for quite some time. Until her CF diagnosis in December, she didn't know why. Now she's trying hard to gain weight, though not just for fertility reasons.

PseudoUncle asked my dad for the formula for my growth shakes. I immediately felt very sorry for PseudoAunt when I learned of this. I have been plagued with having to drink the disgusting growth shakes for several years, and I wouldn't wish the experience on my worst enemy, much less one of my two favorite relatives in the entire world. PseudoAunt says it's OK and I don't have to feel sorry for her in that regard. She says the shakes are not THAT disgusting and that they are a quick source of major calories and nutrients. I still feel sorry for her. I try to be a positive influence on her by drinking the shakes without excessive whining when I am with her, but I don't always succeed.

This may seem out of the blue but, for what it's worth, smoking is really stupid. Anyone who would consider taking up the habit now in the face of all the available information of just how harmful the practice is has to be a total moron.