HE'S BA-A-AAAAACK! JUDGE ALEX HAS RETURNED AS "JUDGE ALEX."

The honorable Judge Alex E. Ferrer has returned to TV Land. He never fully left us, as he could be found as a commentator almost weekly or even often even more frequently on FOX or on other outlets. His return in this case , however, is as a judge on TV. He has been sorely missed. What we will be seeing are repeats of first-run episodes. The idea is that the repeats of previous episodes of Judge Alex will garner sufficiently favorable ratings that another company will pick up the show for fresh episodes. It would certainly make my day, week, or year if such were to turn our to be the case.

Please allow me to digress ever so slightly to a topic that is a sensitive one in my family  and in my immediate circles-- one which easily becomes sensitive for other reasons among non-family members. In my immediate family, though not necessarily among all of my cousins, adults are not addressed by their first names by my brother and me. Aunts and uncles are "Aunt Marthalene" and "Uncle Douglas."  Siblings of non-biological aunts or uncles either receive the obligatory aunt of uncle status or are called Mr. or Mrs, depending upon the closeness of the association between them and my parents, Even extended cousins of different generations, as in first-cousins-once-removed or second cousins significantly older than Matthew or I are "Cousin Eileen" or "Cousin Anthony." Older adults who are friends of the family either receive honorary "aunt" or "uncle" status  or are Mr., Mrs. Miss, or Ms. My parents raised us not to address adults by their first names even when the adults in question would at times have  preferred to have been addressed lees formally. It was a non-negotiable sticking point with my parents, and it stuck.

I'm no longer a child. I'm in a gray area in terms of how to address others in some settings. Professionally, it's often clear-cut. I use titles for those who out-rank me or for nurses whose age is anywhere in the neighborhood of twice mine, as I do not wish to give the impression that as a young person who is making her way through the ranks, I consider that my rank and achievement supercede the  importance that of the other person. So I continue with the Mr., Mrs,  Ms., or Nurse unless the person I've addressed by his or her title insists that I call him or her otherwise, in which case I honor his or her request. In general, while addressing or referring to a person by his or her title is seen as a sign of respect or deference, such is not automatically the case. It could be seen as a way of rubbing another person's nose in the idea that I've achieved what I have at a young age. What I might intend as a sign of deference or submission, another might accept as condescension or cockiness.  Good manners exist not as a way of embarrassing or causing a person to feel ill at ease over a over which spoon to use for which course of dinner or, for that matter, over anything else. The true intent of etiquette is quite the opposite; it is the graciousness intended to put others at ease. 

Still, often I cannot find the elusive line that determines whether I'm being brash by using a person's first name or calling attention to a person's fading youth by addressing him without any sort of title. I've decided that, for the most part, I'll use titles, particularly where the issue is one of rank or achievement and not so much of age, unless the person point-blank asks me yo call him or her by a first name. Judge Alex sometimes identifies himself as "Alex" when speaking to me, but he's never corrected me when I've called him "Judge Ferrer," so I shall continue to call him "Judge Ferrer" until he asks me not to do so or until I turn some arbitrary age such as thirty -- whichever one happens first.

For me this applies also to celebrities -- not so much to those purely in the entertainment or pseudo-entertainment world. I wouldn't feel compelled to address any of the Kardashians and their ilk, as Mr. Mrs., Ms, Lord,or anything else of such nature. Staying current  would be be too confounding, anyway. Academic titles would be a non-issue with their hangers-on. Any degrees associated with titles would be honorary, and even South Harmon Institute of Technology wouldn't likely waste its paper and the ink in its print cartirdges on the likes of the Kardashians. One doesn't receive a special title supplanting Mr. or Mrs. simply by holding  a bachelor's degree, which only a couple of the living Kardashians have earned, anyway, however intelligent and erudite they take pleasure in deluding themselves into believing that they are. Suffice it to say that I don't concern myself with honorary degrees upon  anyone who may have conned an unsuspecting institution of higher learning into bestowing upon them when I'm deciding how to address anyone.

As superficial as it may sound, I apply the same consideration I would apply in real life when referring to individuals in politics or in the judicial system, whether it be in real life or in TV courtrooms. Not all TV "judges" are or have ever been actual judges. Furthermore, I don't believe there's any law preventing any given person from adding "Governor" to his name as long as he doesn't portray himself falsely as the governor of an actual state of which he is not the bona fide governor. If I know that a tv judge hasn't served as an actual judge in any capacity except perhaps at a county fair hog-calling or pie -eating competitions, I would take whatever liberties I feel like taking when addressing or referring to the person. (My upbringing doesn't require me to show titular deference to the likes of Angelina Jolie or Lawrence Welk.) If I haven't researched the situation carefully and have insufficient evidence in either direction that the person ever sat on the proverbial bench, I give him the benefit of the doubt,  though more often than not, however, I'm being more than generous in doing so. Judge Judith Scheindin, I do know, was an actual judge in the state of New York, As such, I would, were the opportunity to present itself,  give her the respect that is due.


Judge Scheindlin, who is supposedly a lovely person in real life, is a bit shrill on her show. I dislike saying that because it sounds sexist to me  -- males are rarely referred to as shrill,  but it also seems true to me. Judge Scheindlin can be funny, but her humor is too rarely self-deprecating. I like her bailiff, and I even like her in many ways. When it seems that she reaches conclusions in regard to the truthfulness of what has been said too quickly, my suspicion is that we're missing something that ended up on the cutting room floor or that something in statements that were given by the litigants in advance hs led her to her conclusion she reached; I don't think she's pulling accusations of lying out of thin air, or at least I hope she isn't. I also think her instincts are uncanny.  

On the other hand, I  don't like that Judge Scheindlin's rulings are too often based on what would be fair in her perfect world, as opposed to existing laws either in the jurisdiction in which her show takes place or the jurisdiction in which the case was originally filed. I do think she has a way of drawing the truth out of youngsters. Insolent adolescents will be insolent adolescents regardless of by whom they are being interrogated, though I do feel that Judge Alex Ferrer intimidates them more effectively into admitting things than they might otherwise admit, and I think he wordlessly commands greater respect from them than do the other judges. (Judge Marilyn Milian is great, but I would have talked back to her just like I talked back to my own mother, with the primary distinction between myself and her litigants being that I could never have found myself as a defendant in any courtroom as a kid and lived to tell about it.) Teens don't seem to roll their eyes at Judge Alex nearly so much as they do at other TV judges. I'm not certain why, as it's not as though he's going to jump over the bench and hit them. Regardless, whatever he has, which may be merely testosterone combined with recent parenting experience, he does force a bit more of the "punk" out of impudent adolescents in his courtroom than do the other TV judges.  Since [I think] she owns the company that produced her show, Judge Scheindlin can do things however she wants, but it sometimes seems as though she puts herself upon a pedestal a la King Solomon of "cut the baby in half" fame.  Laws exist in part to limit judges' power, as no branch of our government should wield excessive power if we are to function as a democratic republic. We're not a true democracy now if we have ever been such.

Judge Marilyn Milian of The People's Court also worked her way up through the legal system as a state attorney, a county court judge, and circuit court judge. I'm not entirely certain whether her rulings are based on the laws of the jurisdiction of the location in which she films her show, or whether they are based on the statues of the location from which the litigants appearing originally filed their suits, but her rulings appear to have some basis in law as opposed to rights and wrongs she would define in her own perfect world if she were so fortunate and/or wealthy to possess her own personal world in which to make rulings. She's funny, an she is generally kind to her litigants until they give her a reason to be otherwise. She does fly off almost as if on a broom on occasion when someone truly sets her off. Once a graduate of the University of Miami Law School chose to manage his case in a manner that was not properly respectful of the court.  I cannot recall everything that was said as Judge Milian threw him out of her courtroom, but he made a remark to the effect that Douglas (the mild-mannered but physically imposing bailiff) had best not touch him. Judge Milian responded to the effect that she would be perfectly happy if Douglas beat the man to a bloody pulp. Judge Milian is normally congenial, but can be pushed to a state of agitation. In another instance, a young girl of perhaps eleven years had been walking her dog on a leash when the dog was attacked and seriously injured or killed by a vicious dog who ws sometimes allowed to run loose in the neighborhood. (Not all eleven-year-olds are equal.Some eleven-year-old girls are eleven-going-on-twenty-one; this eleven-year old was a little girl.) The defendants' defense was that the child should have know that the neighborhood was the territory of the vicious and unrestrained dog and should therefore have walked her dog on another street. Judge Milian was so incredibly outraged by the defendants' casually dismissive stance that she exploded on them in an almost unprecedented way. I say almost because although she's congenial as a rule, it's not unprecedented for her to unload on litigants who are far our of line. Anyway, her vitriol was such that she frightened the little girl who was a part of the plaintiff side. She tried to concole the girl, calling her "mami" [a Hipanice term of endearment for a female child], telling her than she had done absolutely nothing wrong. The cameras don't show everything. She probably hugged the child later in attempt to console her. The point here is that Judge Milian, who can be angered, also has a heart. She's good, but still she's not Judge Alex.

I could write all day about him and still not capture the essence of what is truly Judge Alex Ferrer. If you turn his show on for three minutes, then turn it off, you may find yourself asking, "What was she talking about? I've see funnier guys than this at the morgue."  It may take more than a few minutes of viewing time to understand just what it is of which I'm writing. Most of the the TV judges are funny to some degree. If they're totally  lacking in humor, their shows don't last for long. With Judge Alex, however, it's both deeper and more spontaneous. The humor is on par with that of a professional comedian, yet is far too off-the-cuff for the jokes ever to be written in advance for him. Judge Ferrer, like most brilliant comedians (Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert come to mind) and with the very few politicians throughout history who possessed the gift with which  to turn the banter of a press conference almost into an art form, has a gift -- some would say one of educational theorist Howard Gardner's  multiple intelligences. Gardner started out with seven forms of intelligence and ended up with at least nine, with humor not being one of the nine. I'm inclined to say that , even with "funny" often being in the eye, ear,  mind, and personal taste of the beholder, Gardner  missed at least one one when he was delineating what he believed to be  separate areas of intelligence. I personally view humor as more than just a part of linguistic intelligence. The power to be incredibly funny on  regular basis in and of itself is its own form of intelligence, and Judge Alex Ferrer possesses it to a high degree, which is not to say that he lacks other more conventional forms of intelligence. He doesn't, and is definitely one of he sharpest tacks in the package. Find the show in your local listings (and complain to your provider if you cannot find it) so you'll understand of what I write.

I have to admit that I cheated on Judge Alex once or twice in the interim while his show was on hiatus. The most recent instance of which I can think was not long ago when Judge Mablean (whose show is mediocre at best, but she struck gold with this particular case) featured a case involving parents who sent their kid to fat camp, and  who then  sued the owner/director. It seemed that their child either didn't lose as much fat as the parents would have liked or possibly even actually gained weight.  Part of the problem is that another fat camper was sufficiently entrepreneurial to sneak in candy, chips, and other snacks to sell to the other kids at fat camp. The child was caught and kicked out of fat camp, but some of the damage had already been done. The parents who were suing might have stood a chance at prevailing in the case had there not been a clearly stated rule among the rules they signed, which was that absolutely no money was allowed at camp. Had their child not brought money, he wouldn't have had the means to purchase the contraband from the entrepreneur.  Furthermore, the camp owner/director listed average weight loss numbers but made no guarantees whatsoever.  In any event, despite Judge Mablean's modest skills as a TV judge, it was a compelling case.

Judge Alex, if you do begin filming new cases, I would highly recommend that you scour the fat camps of America in search of someone there with an axe to grind against someone else.  Fat babies crawling or rolling around on a stage, or fat kids arguing about why they didn't lose the advertised number of pounds at fat camp, make for the sort of TV from which a viewer cannot turn away even if he or she wanted to do so, which he or he probably would not.

As TV fodder goes, one cannot go wrong with a case featuring fat camp attendees.

Chances are that the kid will be fine, though I may very well be forced to maim the parent.

Life was last week, and will, I hope,  continue to be this week like a small slice of heaven with regard t the working hours. I'm in the midst of a pediatric clerkship rotation. Last week and this week have both been outpatient duties. The offices don't even open until after I've usually already been through at least two surgical procedures, and, unless something highly unusual were to happen, the office closes long before I would have left the hospital following checking up on surgical patients, taking copious notes, and preparing for rounds.  It's like being a real person with a real life again, although there is, and forever will be - at least in the foreseeable future -- the omnipresent material to study.

I still need to be present when the office opens, but I am not expected to read the mind of the office manager who opens the place and to know if she has decided to come in especially early to take care of paperwork on a particular day. It is my duty to know when the office is scheduled to be ope to employees on a given day and to be there at that time. I don't have to compete with anyone else to be earlier than that person is.  We recently lost a few people - a bit of an anomaly at this stage of the game --  which has left us slightly short on personnel. This may increase the workload to some degree, but it reduces the obnoxiousness of medical students competing to be noticed by the attending physicians. We're more noticeable if we're the only underlings there. 

The reduced work hours have allowed for, in addition to some much-needed extra sleep,  a bit of an actual social life, which has worked wonders in terms of allowing me to feel actually human once again. I could say more about my so-called social life, but to do so might be to jinx it, so I shall remain mum. I'm keeping in mind that the easy life is temporary. Even before I'm out of this rather extended rotation, the hours will get ugly again at least for a time. The time to worry about it, however, is when it actually happens.

Pediatrics is a highly stimulating rotation to almost all except for those who especially do not like children. That doesn't necessary mean we all wish to pursue a pediatrics specialty. It's a fun clerkship but an intense specialty. Depending upon the size of a practice a person is in -- and you probably don't want to be in a practice that is too large because your patients in such cases are, too often, being cared for by doctors who do not know them  --- on call during a large portion of what is theoretically your time off.  I don't wish to be, in the prime of my career, on call every third weekend and two nights a week. All productive citizens wish work, but i don't especially wish to work that hards.

I plan to have children someday. While society has evolved in ways previously though impossible, and fathers are taking on much more responsibility than tey have previously, a mother is a caregiver if not the primary caregiver to a child or children. If a spouse also has a responsible vocation, or, God forbid, if one finds himself or herself in a position of being a single parent, who is left in charge of the children when parents are called out for emergency situations. And while the idea of coordinating partners' on-call times so that both parents are never on call at the same time,  a doctor married to another doctor in a specialty when on-call times are the norm rather than the exception will tell you that the idea is a pipedream.  That's where nannies come in, I suppose. I accept that there ill be times when my children will be tended by paid caregivers, I would prefer that such occur mostly during daytime hours. Even the idea of leaving my future children in the care of other during daytime hours bothers me.

The pediatric rotation has been everything I thought it would be.  The obvious thought that comes to mind is that if you love children so much, be a pediatrician! It's not that simple.  A pediatrician has to do many things that make children unhappy. Right now I'm mostly the smiling face that enters the room and distracts the child while the real doctor does things that inflict pain upon a child. As the real doctor, I would be the one causing pain to the child. It's obviously for the child's own good, and one therefore need not feel guilty for sometimes having to perform procedures that make children cry, but neither does it make the job especially appealing.

I've already performed some of the dreaded procedures. I've stitched boo boos (both in the E.R. and in the office, cleared wax from a 9-month-old's ear canal, given injections, drawn blood in the attached phlebotomy lab when the pediatric patient had especially difficult-to-access veins, and performed both throat and nasal cultures. I'm probably forgetting a few. The list of procedures is sure to grow longer as this week progresses. I'm still in the relatively unique position of being youthful and possessing a sufficiently sunny countenance that I can then smilingly produce a lollipop or sticker and make the child forget I was the one who just cased him or her the distress. That won't last forever. Youthful appearances fade.

This is one of the longer rotations. Not all of it will be outpatient, and then the hours will return to more of what I have become accustomed. still, I can enjoy the relative freedom and time to study while ti lasts.

Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vines,
I'll taste your strawberries.
I'll drink your sweet wines . . .
Etc., etc, ad nauseum

Suicide, Mormon Prevention, and Personal Observations

It sounds good, but I don't believe that anyone who is currently alive knows this to be absolutely factual.

Knotty wrote a blog about suicide. I realized after writing five paragraphs and still not being finished that my response  was far too long to be a response.. I've turned the response into the blog of its own. Thanks for the inspiration, Knotty. Thank you also for your expertise. As an M.S.W. (I can't remember in what field was your other master's degree), you are a professional in the field of mental health. While it's not officially listed as such in official or unofficial rankings of our school or even of most medical schools, I'm not sure mental health receives its proper emphasis in our curriculum. With the exception of those of us already of considering psychiatry as a specialty, most of us look toward our rotation in psychiatry as something to be endured -- hopefully with minimal [literal physical] scars ; the psych ward can be a scary place -- by the time it has been completed. While mental health professionals can sometimes be guilty of failing to rule out physical causes before delving into the mental and emotional aspects of a condition, medical practitioners are, at the same time, more often dismissive of mental health as a legitimate profession, although the most extreme of mental health patients they're  more than willing to pass along to their mental health counterparts.


Knotty noted that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has begun a new suicide prevention web site. I'm pleased that the LDS church is at least addressing suicide, though the skeptic in me highly doubts that they are going about it in an efficacious manner. I could very well be wrong and genuinely hope I am, as I count among my blood relatives members of the LDS church who are in need of mental health assistance, though whether it's reached the point of suicide prevention, I really do not know. Where the LDS church and its kew program are concerned, at least it's a start.


I read somewhere on RFM that suicides had overtaken accidents as the leading cause of deaths in Utah among those between the ages of 10 and 19. I googled it, and for the year of 2013 , it's accurate if the statistics cited in the google source are accurate. (https://www.google.com/#q=leading+cause+of+deaths+for+adolescents+in+utah) I don't now if those are the most current statistics compiled on the subject, or if the youthful population of Utah  between now and then became less despondent and more careless again.

I think I understand much of the mindset concerning adolescent suicide simply because I've found myself  in similar situations as many of those in that age group who have either succeeded, attempted, pr contemplated committing the ultimate act designed to end it all.  I've only been in a couple of situations in which an even semi-rational person would consider suicide as a viable solution to the problems or after-effects of problems one faced. the other times suicide has even crossed my mind, I have to say I was influenced in a large part by adolescent hormones. puberty didn't officially hit me until three years ago, and so I'll continue to have those adolescent hormones interfering with logical thought process for a few more years. 

My situation is perhaps heightened by the "pressure cooker" nature of my educational program, and particularly by my having accelerated the process by completing both high school and undergraduate education early. This was done, however, by my own choosing. My parents did make the decision to enter my brother and me as kindergartners even though we were born on what was, at the time, California's final day of eligibility for kindergarten for the year. If that was a mistake -- and I don't believe it was, as even the slightly dense Matthew was reading before kindergarten though we were just four-and-one-half years old -- that would have been my parents' mistake. I don't think it ended up being a mistake at all, though. The single biggest issue in that regard was that my parent faced a great deal of judgment and criticism from school personnel and from educated parents of our classmates for having enrolled a little girl in kindergarten who still wore size 2T clothing. I was almost up to a 3T by the end of the year. (My plaid Catholic school jumpers for the year had to be hand-made by my mom's best friend. Size 5 was the smallest size that could be ordered from the company that produced them. Two years later when we were again in Catholic school, after I had been very sick and hadn't grown at all in that year, my mom's friend still had to remake the size 5 jumpers into 4Ts.)

When seventh-grade became unbearably unchallenging, however, Matthew and I were each given the choice of moving up to eighth grade halfway through seventh grade. I know I was influenced by Matthew's carte blanche to make his own decision; there was no way I was going to allow him to advance to the next grade yet stay put myself. Still, the ball was clearly in  my own court. Once we were in high school, our parents insisted that we enroll in academically rigorous courses, but the choice to take the advance placement tests for college credit was ours and ours alone for each and every course. This made it possible for us to make it through baccalaureate programs quickly if we chose to do so. Matthew was encouraged by my parents to remain an undergraduate for a fourth year to complete his athletic eligibility. He chose to graduate early. I hope it wasn't a sense of competition and of keeping up with me that motivated him to move on to medical school when he could have lingered and played baseball for an additional year, but if so, no one held a gun to his head. As far as I was concerned, my parents probably assumed I'd want to move on after three years, but I'm confident that they would have expressed no opposition had I chosen to be a college student -- even if only to boren my social life -- for an additional year.

So Matthew and i placed ourselves in a metaphorical academic pressure cooker by enrolling in medical school at the ages of 19. It just seemed like the only thing to do at the time.  I believe that there are times when both of us, but particularly I because I look much younger than Matthew, are the recipients of the negative aspects of envy from classmates. One happened to me very recently when I wasn't allowed into a bar along with others from my cohort. Most were unaware of the situation, but a few knew, and took particular delight in refusing to cross the street to try the establishment on that side of the road in the event that that bouncer or manager might have believed that my driver's license really was mine.  That or something like it will happen to me again at least once before I'm finished with this program. It comes with the territory. It's human nature for people to be -- at times, anyway -- jealous of other who achieved what they achieved or more at an earlier age than they did. i knew this would happen when I signed on for this lifestyle. I didn't see all that many Doogie Howser reruns, but of the ones I saw, I don't recall him whining about his classmates practicing age-discrimination. Doogie just did his job at the hospital, then went home and straightened his room, typed his journal,  and took out the trash as his mother expected him to do. (He didn't do nearly es much studying as the interns I see around here doing, though. Perhaps Doogie's sitcom character status made him just a little bit intellectually superior to his real-life counterparts. Filming Doogie studying might have made for some rather boring film or video footage.) Sometimes that has to be my motto: What would Doogie do? (Editorial note: I know Doogie's not real, and, for that matter,  a not-terribly-realistic character as TV characters go. Still, one must find role models to fit one's situation even if one must sometimes search into the less-than-credible annals of TV Land)

As one matures and grows more intelligent and more self-aware, one must learn that adolescent hormones are, for some of us,  not entirely unlike the voices that are heard inside the heads of schizophrenics. The "wisdom" emitting from our adolescent hormones is usually best ignored, or at least considered, then rejected. Not everything about adolescence in itself is bad, but somewhere between few and zero legitimately good ides ever sprung as a result of the direct influence of adolescent hormones. They're an interference in what otherwise might be a well-functioning brain.  I'm told they go away gradually. I'm still waiting for that to happen. Meanwhile, coping mechanisms must be developed. I've found three thoughts  that are most effective in keeping me from serious consideration of suicide as a solution to anything.

The #1 thing that keeps me from seriously contemplating suicide is that my situation, even when at its very worst, usually improve dramatically within a matter of days. Such is probably the case with most people in my age group. Our circumstances change rapidly, along with our abilities to handle them. The number on exception I see to this, which does not impact me, is the case of an adolescent struggling with sexual identity, whose struggle is compounded by a family who is unsupportive and hostile, whether for reasons related to  religion, ignorance, bigotry, or God knows what. That's a situation that my not resolve itself quickly, ad intervention is indicated if an additional suicide is to be prevented.

The #2 factor keeping suicide at bay as an option for me is that I am, at heart, a coward. Anything that is a sure shot to succeed is almost guaranteed to be a bit scary, a bit painful, a bit  messy, or combinations of the three. I don't want a botched suicide on my hands. I especially don't want a suicide that leaves me alive but with diminished physical or mental capacity, which happens, but neither would I want a suicide attemp to be considered as a cry for attention. If I were to attempt suicide, I would want 100% success, meaning i would want to be dead at the end of my attempt.  Ways of going about this, as I see it, are basically on of three processes: jump off an extremely high vantage point from which no one could survive; shoot oneself in the head; drown oneself in a place one would not be rescued before it was too late. I don't think I'd ever have the nerve to hold a gun to my head and pull the trigger. My hands would probably shake too hard for me even to pull the trigger. The drowning option, in its simplest form, would take too long and would, in my mind, therefore be too agonizing. I suppose someone could rent a boat, drive to a remote part of a bay or large lake, take a large quantity of sedatives, then jut as the sedatives began to take effect, jump overboarding perhaps weighting ones ankles for added measure. I'm still not sure if unconsciousness would come fast enough. Probably my best bet would be to jump off  a surface too high for anyone to survive it. The amount of time from jump to impact would be emotionally agonizing and one would need to find a place where he or she could not fall on and injure someone else. Taking someone else out with you would be unconscionable. I still think the wait between jump nd the inevitable would be more than I could handle, but I suppose if I were in a situation where i had no choice but to end it all, that would be my only option. (I don't trust drug overdoses. Too often they don't work.)

My #3 reason for not giving in to the temptation to suicide is that it scares me. It scares me not just in a way that death scares me, but in its own unique way. It's not even that I fear judgment from God, as I believe a loving and just God would be somewhat understanding to anyone facing a predicament that drove them to suicide. It's something more. I read a book that Judge Alex Ferrer recommended.  I checked my Kindle library, an I believe the book was Many Lives, Many Masters by BrIan L. Weiss, MD. Judge Ferrer lost two older brothers to illnesses when they were in early stages of adulthood, and thus has an interest in life after death, but I think he views much information regarding the supernatural with the same skepticism that I do.  I read the book. While I'm naturally skeptical of the supernatural and woo woo aspects of just about everything, religion not excluded, much of this book made sense to me. One thing from the book that stuck with me is that, according to accounts of those who had been clinically dead but had been revived,  most people who had died were, after death, in blissful states. Those who had deliberately ended their own lives did not possess that level of blissfulness and calmness.  I don't wish to be in  situation in which after death I am agitated and unequipped to do anything to change the situation.

I'm still not quite comfortable with death and am happy to put it off for quite some time, but my work requires exposure to it. I'm in the very early stages of seeing death as part of the natural progression.  The particular part of the progression they call death is something for which I don't feel anywhere near ready. There are circumstances over which I have no control, but suicide certainly isn't one of those things. One thought stays with me, which is that what if all of the stories of spirits floating peacefully after death, of going toward the light, and so forth, are all things that occur when the brain is deprived of oxygen for a considerable time? Such has been hypothesized. What if this life is all we have? What if once we go -- POOF! --it's all over, and we never regain consciousness in any form.  Except in Dr. Kervorkian-type cases where one can no longer bear the pain, it would seem to be a sad thing to give up this life when there was nothing left to follow it.

I'm not saying there's no form of heaven -- I believe and hope there is  -- but how could I ever know for certain?  Faith is in the heart and mind, but is not based in reality. If there is a heaven, it can probably wait. If there isn't, that's all the more reason to stick round here as long as one can stand it. I hope the Mormons are successful at preventing suicides.

Cutthroat Bitch Is Back With a Vengeance!

We're all off this  long weekend except that I'm scrubbing in for a procedure that my pseudouncle is performing here early this morning. Then I'll have the rest of the day off.  

Friday night's very ugly situation has resolved itself as much as it ever will, I suppose. I either posted or told someone there were a total of fourteen in the group, counting myself. A more accurate head count shewed that there were actually twelve of us in all.  Seven claim to have known nothing about my exclusion from the club by the manager. Because I have no evidence to the contrary, I have chosen to believe those seven. 

The remaining four (I was one of the twelve) have, for ll intents and purposes, placed themselves on my "I'd have to think long and hard about it before even dialing 9-1-1 if I found them in extreme medical distress, much less rendering any actual aid myself" list.  For two of them, I'm comfortable leaving it at that. I'll offer a perfunctory greeting if I pass either of them in a hallway, but that's about as much as I will ever do for either of them. One of them is considering an oncology specialty. My dad has a somewhat prestigious hematology and oncology residency program. Suffice it to say that the person's chances of getting a match with my dad's program are somewhere between nonexistent and if my dad's program is so desperate for a candidate that it will probably fold if he doesn't obtain a match with that candidate, the program will fold. My dad doesn't typically allow me to meddle  in the affairs of his business,  nor do I even try, but he'll make an exception when I explain that I was stuck waiting for a cab all by myself outside well after the setting of the sun in a less-than-savory neighborhood due in a large part to the actions of a group of four individuals. End of story.


The remaining two  of the four are not getting off quite so easily. It's been said that to err is human and to forgive is divine. I concede to being 100% human. I don't intend to ruin my own life by carrying around the heavy baggage of a grudge against these two women forever, but for the present time, I'm plenty strong to bear up under the weight of any grievance I have against them.  In truth, it actually gives me a bit of additional spring in my step.

One of the two was the one who said to me directly, "You can go there if you want [pointing to a club across the street], but we're all going in here." if the club across the street, which was actually the nicer of the two establishments, hd also rejected me, I would have understood the group's choice to stay put. I wouldn't expect a group to travel the entire SF Bay Area region in order to find  a bar or club that did not believe my driver's license was bogus. It just didn't seem to be asking so much that the group could cross the street one single time to see if I might have been granted admittance by the other place. And this may be a female thing, but it wasn't quite so much what she said as how she said it. This may jut have been my perception, but she seemed to take a bit too much pleasure in excluding me from the group.  

My brother was to have a date with her last night.  I explained what happened and what was her  particular role in the fiasco. All i had to do was to tell him what happened. i didn't even have to ask him to call off his fate with her. He did it automatically.  I would have done the same for him.

The second of the two people for whom I'm not quite willing to let the matter drop is a bit of a dim bulb. she applied to medical schools for four years before she was accepted to an MD program. I believe she was accepted into a couple of programs that grant doctorates in osteopathy; a doctor of osteopathy does practice medicine, but there are differences  in what MDs and DOs are allowed to do,  in the prestige of the degrees. and in the level of income earned by holders of the respective degrees.  I ordinarily wouldn't hold something of this nature against a person (I wouldn't even know of this had she not told me), but in this particular case I'm looking for  axes to grind.  

This second person sent me a totally unsolicited text. In it, she  wrote, "Boo hoo, Alexis. So you weren't allowed into one lousy bar. Did you know that it took me four years to get into an MD program, and I probably wouldn't even have gotten into this one if my grandmother hadn't made a substantial donation? [Editorial note: if such is indeed true, it doesn't speak well for my medical school.] You're always bragging about how young you are and how easy everything is for you. [Editorial note: i've never once boasted to my peers of either; why would I say something that would only make others hate me?]  It's only fair that you should experience some rejection like the rest of us do once in awhile. boo hoo. Go cry to yourself, because no one else cares."

This woman is thirty years old. It's the sort of message I might expect to get from a thirteen-year-old, but not someone of her age.  And I'm not sure why she even felt the need to send the message. I got it hours before Matthew broke off the date with the other woman, who was not even especially close to the girl with whom Matthew broke off the date, anyway. This woman obviously harbors rather intense resentment of me. Perhaps it's just as well that I know of this resentment, because it's easier to watch one's back if one knows who one's enemies are.

i haven't yet shown her text to anyone -- even Matthew. I could take the high road and show it to no one, but I'm not that big  a person. I'll show it to someone -- possibly just one person --  because I think that this person could conceivably be dangerous to my career, and I wish to protect myself. I'm not going to pass it around freely among my peers, as doing such would merely stir up trouble. I will show it to a person who is in authority.  Then, if this person ever makes an allegation that could be damaging to me professionally, i will have provided prior documentation that this classmate's issue with me has precedence and is personal. 

It's good to know that it wasn't the entire group of twelve classmates disrespecting me, but rather, just four people, if I choose to believe that, and i am choosing to believe it. I can live easily enough with the idea that out of one hundred or so people, four are rat rectums.  I really believed before any of this went down that we were, as a cohort, a cohesive unit. We weren't without disagreements, as it's impossible to work together closely, especially in a competitive environment,  without conflict. Matthew tells me that we still are a cohesive unit, but that we have a few more complete jerks in the group than was previously thought.

I'm off to scrub for a partial lung transplant. Then the rest of the day is mine for hurdling, playing musical instruments, and even bar-hopping if I so choose, though that will not likely be an activity I will choose.

Rats Desert a Sinking Ship

not where I was last night

People seem to think that looking younger than one's chronological age is a really great thing. I am inclined to  agree that, especially one reaches some arbitrary point of adulthood, it' probably is a hell of a lot better than the reverse, or looking older than one's actual age. Still, there are heachaches associated with it.

Among the very worst part is attempting to go clubbing or bar-hopping. It's bad enough before a person is of legal age and is trying to gain entrance to drinking establishments with fake or borrowed IDs. One would expect such to be a risky proposition at best. The real problems arrive when one is of age, and bouncers bartenders, managers, and everyone else is doubting the validity of a perfectly legitimate ID that was actually issued to the person who is holding it and attempting to use it to gain entrance into a establishment. The establishments always fall back on the old caveat of "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." I'm not sure how simply printing such a blanket statement on a plaque makes it a legally binding policy, anyway. It didn't seem to work all that well for those bakers in South Carolina or wherever who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. Championing the cause of a gay couple seems far more politically expedient and sympathetic than does standing up for the rights of someone who looks younger than he or she actually is.

And I'll explain one more time that my motive in clubbing and bar-hopping is typically NOT to becomes totally wasted, not that such makes any difference in the grand legal scheme of things. My primary motivation to spend time in drinking establishments stems form a desire to socialize with my friends, or at least with people I thought were my friends. They decided upon a local establishment.  Everyone in the group was admitted other than I. I've at least gotten smart enough to go only if it's in a place with decent cab service. Once I was stuck outside for two hours playing with my phone waiting while everyone else partied it up inside.

This past  week was an especially rough work week. Patients seemed to die right and left - on the O.R. table, before they could make it to the O.R. table, in recovery following cardiac surgery, in the ambulance before they could even make it to the hospital. Our cardiac patients just couldn't win last week. In no case was it physician or hospital error, nor in these cases did anyone even allege that such was the case. (It's far from infrequent for someone to insist on blaming doctors and hospitals whenever death occur despite the inevitability of one's expiration and the clear-cut evidence that neither medical malfeasance nor malpractice was present.)  In a legal sense, the cardiac unit did its job well enough last week, but legal-schmegal; no one wants to watch patients die.

Compounding my personal woes were that I worked sick for more than half of the week. We can be compelled to work when we're sick as long as whatever ails us is non-communicable. For that matter, I didn't want to miss work. At this point, any missed opportunity to work is a missed opportunity to learn. Not only do I need to learn everything i can for the good of myself and my future patients, but I'm also dealing with a highly competitive system. We're competing for favor with attending physicians, grades, for class ranking or standing, for residency placements, for fellowships, for bragging rights, and for just about anything one might imagine. Our atmosphere here isn't quite so dog-eat-dog (I hate the expression, but it's highly fitting) as it is in other medical schools, but competition is still a very real part of the process. No one who cares a great deal about his or her future in medicine is going to willingly take himself or herself out of commission even for an hour, much less for one or more days.

After having worked in a state of illness and weakness for the better part of a week, I felt entitled t loosen up amongst a few friends  (???) with much ground in common to mine.  I'm not a blithering idiot; I know that drinking myself under the table would have been, speaking in a medical sense in terms of  me as a patient, a very stupid thing to do.  Nonetheless, i would have enjoyed a very low-octane strawberry daiquiri followed by a few glasses of seven-up and a few soda crackers. Alas, such was not to happen last night.

I admit to being hurt that my associates too often are unwilling even to TRY another establishment for the purpose of one more attempt to get me through the door. I understand that time is a rare commodity for all of us, and that my classmates don't wish to travel all over the Bay Area trying to find a bar that will accept my ID as legit, but there was a roughly equivalent establishment right across the street. One cohort mate said to me, "You can go there if you want, Alexis, but we're all going in here" [the establishment that rejected my ID, and, hence, me]. My dignity will not allow me to enter a bar alone and pursue drinking as a solitary activity. I took a cab home.

I've been helpful to my peers. I've covered shifts. I've shared notes. I've helped by explaining and re-explaining difficult concepts to others until they finally got them. If, on the other hand,  last night is representative of the way my cohort mates are going to treat me, perhaps they have not yet even begun to see just what a cutthroat bitch I can be when provoked.

P.S. It wasn't Matthew's fault. He went home for the weekend.

Some Things I REALLY Do Not Like

If it appears docile to you, you are easily deceived.

There are things in this world I do not like.  The list is far too long to share in its entirety in this forum, but I will highlight at least a few of the very banes of my existences. I shall not refer to my list of dislikes as pet peeves, as first of all, I dislike the term, and secondly, I don't think the term fits what I'm talking about here. Pet peeves are little things that get under your skin and annoy you. Sometimes they annoy you for very good reason, yet still are sufficiently trivial that a genuinely rational person would not allow himself or herself to become worked up about them. 

An example of this sort of pet peeve would be my Aunt Celine's Number One Pet Peeve of all time, which is sentences that end in prepositions. Just how hard and fast a rule the "don't end sentences in prepositions" directive is or ever was is very much in debate, anyway. Beyond that, unless one is an English teacher, who gives a flying rat's a-hole? Aunt Celine's youngest child has a case of diaper rash that, upon a casual glance, more closely resembles shingles or jungle rot, fire engines are  at least once every six months dispatched to Aunt Celine's address because she's left the house for lengthy intervals with vile concoctions baking in her oven  that were, if the truth were to be known, probably unfit for human or canine consumption even if cooked at the proper temperature, and her eldest child is being formally adopted by other members of the family because she has refused to speak to him because he returned from his LDS mission eight months early due to an intestinal condition that cost him several feet of his large intestine and almost cost him his life, yet Celine is bothered that the next door neighbor's child said to her, "You can't come inside our house. My parents said that when they're not home, no one except the family is allowed inside."  

Another example of a pet peeve would be that of a person who has a particular problem with something along the lines of  a woman (or man; I don't wish to be sexist or to assume anything here that I shouldn't)  applying lipstick or other cosmetics in places where Miss Manners or others of her ilk would say cosmetics should not be applied. Perhaps it is true that it's a breach of etiquette to touch up one's lipstick in church. (Then again, perhaps it is not. I don't actually know because I don't care.) But for the sake of argument, let us agree that lipstick should not be applied or reapplied in church.  If a person goes against that rule, precisely who is being harmed by the practice?  The person who applied his her her lipstick? If so, he or she interfered with the quality of his or her own worship; it would seem that the matter would be between himself or herself and God.  If the depth of another congregant's worship were so transient that the mere view of a person applying lipstick inside the sanctuary of a church  caused the viewer to lose his or her spirit of reverence or otherwise lose his or her connection with the deity, it would seem that the person's connection with the Father. Son, and Holy Ghost, or whichever members of the standard Godhead that  one professes to sanctify would have to be classified as tenuous at best.  While most of us would agree that, while in a public place, pulling one's full Mary Kay cosmetics tray from one's handbag and going through one's complete beautification routine, from exfoliating to clarifying to concealing to all the other steps the Patron Saint of Cosmetics has deemed to be essential, might be considered a slight faux pas as well as a mild act of eccentricity. Still, unless it happened to be disrupting a presentation or process (I cannot imagine it being allowed in a courtroom, for example) or otherwise taking attention away from a person who held the floor, few of us would care very much about it  beyond mentally questioning the level of  civility or refinement of a person who would engage in such behavior.

My list is of something entirely different than pet peeves. I could fill a book longer than the Book of Alma (the longest book in the Book of Mormon, for those of you who are lucky enough not to know that) with things that I very strongly dislike in terms of foods, but in the interest of making a somewhat uninteresting post even less interesting, I'll limit myself to two item related to food. If the list ends up including more than two items related to food, I'll come back and edit this part of the post to reflect that number, and no one will ever be any the wiser. How I would have hated being a blogger back in the dark ages of typewriters.

I very strongly dislike mountain lions. Call them cougars. Call them pumas, Call them house pets. Whatever they are, I don't like the things. I shall go so far as to commit blasphemy by suggesting that gd screwed up when he created mountain lions. I understand the life cycle and the balance of nature and that if there were no mountain lions, there would be too much of something else that would possibly be even less desirable than mountain lions. I think God should ponder the issue very seriously. I think He could come up with something other than one of the two creatures that prevents me from even spending a night in the outdoors again as long as I live.  The other creature keeping me out of the wilderness at night is the bear -- mainly grizzy, but black bears [who aren't necessarily black; that's just their name] are scary to me. yet for some probably irrationally reason, I'm not so grossed out by bears as by mountain lions. I wouldn't care to come face to face wit either of them, but if one were allowed to remain on the planet while the other were to be sent elsewhere, i'd keep the bears and send the mountain lions away. Far away.  I don't like wolves or coyotes, either, but we just don't see quite so many of them around here, so they're less of a vexation to me. If they start appearing more frequently in my neck of the woods, they, too, could end up on my list.


I do not like those pencils into which you insert the lead -- I think they're known as mechanical pencils.I cannot be convinced that they're in any way superior to  standard pencils. I don't want to use them.  Where they're concerned, I'm capable of minding my own business . . . to a  point. I've spent a few of my days off working as a substitute teacher. As a teacher, I despise those mechanical pencils with a passion that most people reserve for serial killers and people who drive with blood alcohol level in excess of three times the legal limit.  Students of all ages who have mechanical pencils spend so much time messing with them -- partly because the devices malfunction on a regular basis but partly just because they're there to mess with  -- that they almost never get any work done, and often those students messing with the mechanical pencils manage to distract other students from matters upon which they should be focused, although what could cause  a mechanical pencil to be exciting enough to distract a person from anything is, to me, one of life's great mysteries. Simple things for simple minds, I suppose. hen I subbed, I gave one warning to the class about mechanical pencils. After that, if I caught any kid using one for anything other than writing, i took it away until the tnd of class and gave him a boring yellow  #2 pencil to use in its place.

I do not like my food to touch. My mother has an issue with this one. She'll make some smartass remark like "the flour and the eggs are touching in that cookie you're eating. How can you eat it? You don't like your food to touch!"

Or my grandmother will make her favorite response to my quirk, which is, "It all mixes together in your stomach, anyway."  Once when she said that, my Uncle Michael, who has a stomach of steel, mixed all of his food together on his plate -- just stirred it up as though his fork was a makeshift Cuisinart -- then proceeded to eat every bit of it, making my grandmother gag.  

"What's wrong, Mom?" he asked her. "It all mixes together in your stomach, anyway." My grandmother never again complained to me about my not wanting my food to touch.

I'm not an absolute nutcase about it. My maple syrup can touch my pancakes. A salad can have lettuce and cucumbers and whatever -- as long as it's not anything too weird -- and I'll eat it.  But if I have spaghetti on my plate, I don't want my bread touching my spaghetti. Actually, I don't want my bread touching anything. My taco can have meat in it, meaning the tortilla and the meat can touch. I may occasionally even allow a bit of cheese in my taco. I don't however, want my lettuce in it. I'll eat the lettuce separately. Most casseroles are massive instances of food touching each other, which means mostly I do not eat them. If i'm at someone else's house for a meal, and the food touches each other,  I play with my food and make it look as though I'm eating in order to avoid offending my host.

I do not like TV commercials about sensitive subjects.  My mom said it was really embarrassing when feminine hygiene products first began to air commercials on TV. A girl might be watching TV with a date when all the sudden, along came a commercial about panty shields with wings that fly would right up a girl's legs and protect her underwear.  It was probably almost as embarrassing for the boys as it was for the girls. One time following such  commercial, my mom's date actually asked her what was the difference between a pad and a tampon. Now she would probably grab a note pad and draw a diagram for the guy, but she was more reticent when she was seventeen.  My grandfather wondered through the living room at the time; he told the kid to ask his mother if he was really that curious. And now all those sexual enhancement drugs must have their moments of air time. I like the parts about if a guy has an erection lasting more than four hours, he should seek medical attention.  I always though it was one of those disclaimer put on the box and in the commercials just because it's theoretically possible,  sort of like the disclaimer on the box of one of the old desktop model computers my parents bought. It said the computer should not be used in a shower stall when the water was running. Some idiot somewhere must have done that once, and then tried to sue because the instructions never specified NOT to use the computer while taking a shower. I assumed the Viagra or cialis or whatever enhancement drug it was put that disclaimer there just in case someone really did have a four-hour erection, though they knew it would never happen. Guess what? It did happen. I can share this because I saw it as a patient in an ER waiting room recently and not as a physician -in-training, which means I'm not violating any laws of confidentiality. I don't know the guy's name and didn't pull out my cell phone and snap a picture, so it would be difficult for me to commit any major HIPAA violations here. Anyway, from the looks of things, this guy must have been one of he ones with an erection lasting for more than four hours. It's for real, folks! The poor guy appeared to be in absolute agony.  Even though I really needed to be seen pronto, I asked the nurse at the desk to take him first, PLEASE. I couldn't stand to watch it in progress any longer.

There are more things I REALLY do not like, but I must go to work. Some poor soul's sternum is waiting to be sawed open, and I need to be there to catch every detail of the action.

Mama Said There'll Be Days Like This . . .

It's a lonely job when things don't go well.

I cannot say that my work this week, at least thus far, has been especially uplifting for me personally. It's educational, certainly. Learning experiences abound in this aspect of my training. Cardiac surgery, however,  is not now, nor will it ever be my choice of course of  study or work. 

We all need to be exposed the very basics in every field of medicine to make intelligent choices as to our specialties. Furthermore, somewhere way down the road, I may be in a position where circumstances are so very dire that I'm the most qualified person to assist in a cardiac procedure. God help the patient if such is ever indeed the case. I am in my current rotation for a very good reason. I need to learn everything I possibly can from it and I need to put into it everything that I have to give. That does not mean I have to like it. Fortunately for me, because of a glitch in my scheduling, I'm here for only one week instead of the customary two. It may work out that I will put in an extra week in cardiac surgery next year. On the other hand, it may not work out that way. However it works out, I'll live with it.

Next week I'll have an unusual opportunity. My pseudouncle is visiting the hospital where I'm currently working in order to perform a thoracic procedure as a guest physician. The technique he'll be using is one that has yet to have been performed here in the hospital at which I'm currently assigned. He requested that I be allowed to scrub in for the procedure, and his request has been granted. I won't miss much in the way of my regular duties, as I am assigned to outpatient pediatrics for the next two weeks. The surgical procedure is set to begin at 5:30 a.m. If we're lucky, it will conclude by 10:30 a.m.  I'll then change out of my surgical clothing, scrub out, and rush to the site of my assignment, without, I hope, having missed out on anything too exciting. I do not wish to start off on poor footing with my next supervising physician.

Today was an especially rough day for more reasons than just one. We had a couple of myocardial infarction patients who were operated on as last-ditch efforts. The odds were against the patients, and the odds both times worked out the way odds are supposed to work. I was warned in both cases by the interns that  the surgeries were long shots at best, but it's still hard to see that in real life, things don't have as many happy outcomes as they do on TV and in movies.  I stood far back. There was nothing I could do, and no one needed me in his or her way. I did hug the son of the deceased afterward just because he looked so forlorn and it seemed the natural thing to do. I had a few tears running down my cheeks, but I wasn't blubbering, which would not have been appropriate, as I didn't even know the lady.  The attending physician said that showing compassion toward family members is a good thing, and that minor emotional displays are even OK.

I worked sick today. It was determined that my illness was a manifestation of colitis and not of anything contagious, and so I was told to remain at work.  I knew when I signed on for the program that working sick would occasionally be a part of the experience. I had to leave the surgical suites in the midst of two procedures. My superiors knew this was a possibility, and I was given the green light to exit whenever it was imperative that I do so.  The surgeon allowed me use his private bathroom attached to his personal office. I'd still much rather experience the barfing and other stuff that accompanies colitis in my own bathroom at home, but I was at least not stuck on the floor of a stall in a public restroom with God knows whom walking in and out of the stalls on either side. I borrowed cleaning supplies and gave the surgeon's private space a thorough detoxification after befouling it.

All things considered, if every day turned out the way today did, I would probably quit medical school and become a 900-number psychic, but chances are that not every day will be as depressing as today was.  The sun'll come out tomorrow. You know the rest of the song, so I don't need to spout anymore bullshit for your benefit.

Future Doctors Being Denied the Benefits of Terms of the Geneva Convention in Order to Be Warned of the Evils of Pharmaceauticals

I'm not sleeping well, which is a pity, as I could use the sleep. Three mornings this week I had to report for work derangedly early, as in by 3:30 a.m. at the very latest. Two nights I was stuck at the hospital until 7:15 p.m.. Another night I couldn't leave until 7:46. Another night was the enchanting dinner party obligation about which I wrote. While it was very nice of the people to have invited us into their home for the evening, all things considered, I would have been more relaxed in a room full of rabid Mormon missionaries and rattlesnakes. That night I didn't get home until after 9:30.  

This morning my cohort has a mandatory meeting. It's scheduled for 7:30 a.m., which would feel almost like sleeping in (it's not true sleeping in if one has to turn on an alarm clock to be assured of not missing a mandatory meeting) except that I cannot sleep anyway. Along with other various and sundry reminders about our miscellaneous dereliction of duties and general slothfulness, we'll get to have The Drug Lecture once again. They seem to hit us with it about once a year. I don't think it's a random thing. I suspect we'll hear it again at least once before we graduate, and possibly an additional time for good measure. And I'm certain we'll all, no matter where we end up for our internships, hear it once more in a very big way just before we reach that milestone in which we become licensed practitioners and have the legal authority to write prescriptions.

The rationale for hitting us all over the head with this information is not lost on me. I understand what a monumental societal problem prescription drugs have become.  I get that we, once we become licensed doctors, will have within us the power to make the problem even worse. We will have the means both to turn ourselves into massive drug abusers or, even worse, to become part of the problem by writing frivolous prescriptions for attention meds, opiates, benzos, and possibly even medical marijuana for friends and relatives, or, even worse, to supplement our incomes. Statistically, one of the lecturers told us today, at least two of us will fall into each of those three categories of self-abusers, frivolous writers of prescriptions, or de facto dealers.  Maybe we actually will, or perhaps we will not. It' highly doubtful, however, that the lectures they're forcing on us will change the outcome for any of us. And I'm not suggesting that the drug talks be eliminated entirely. It seems, however, do be overdone ever so slightly.
Raptor Jesus suggested that they show us Reefer Madness so we could at least be entertained throughout the scare tactic process.

My complaint with their system is that  by robbing me of a morning of sleeping in and forcing me to attend five hours of lectures and meetings during a week when they already forced me to work 81.5 hours (counting the forced dinner frivolity, which was, by the time all was said and done,  more stressful than actual work) between Monday and Friday, they caused me to need the drugs they're cautioning us not take far more than I would otherwise ever have needed them. It's almost the equivalent to force-feeding someone a steady diet of nothing but sugary foods and saturated fats until the person becomes obese and his or her arteries become clogged to the point of needing Drano, then berating the person for flirting with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, liver disease, and colon cancer.  It's like they're giving us a lecture on the evils and dangers of guns, then sending us into battle without any weapons because everyone knows guns are dangerous.

My week may have been a bit worse than what the average cohort member went through, but by and large it evens out, and we're all dealing with the same nonsense. Most of us deal with it by consuming insane amounts of coffee. I cannot drink coffee. It [literally] makes holes in my colon. I've already had two segments of my colon removed. While coffee was not the culprit in the loss of my two sections of colon, were I to start drinking it, it would most certainly cause a loss of a third segment. I need all the calories my intestines can absorb. My body  cannot afford to give up many more chunks of bowel. Coffee is out of the picture as a solution. Even strong cocoa (as in the stuff Starbucks sells) has a similar effect. (I can handle the stuff that comes in Swiss Mix or Nestle packets if I dilute it with milk.) Beyond that, caffeine doesn't work quite as it should for me. It's somewhat slow-to-reverse-acting. I drag throughout the day after consuming it, then have extreme difficulty sleeping fifteen hours after I've taken it. An occasional Pepsi or Dr. Pepper as a treat doesn't cause major effects, but anything beyond that is more than my body can handle, particularly with the tachycardic effects ( increased heart rate) of my mildly elevated thyroid.

I shouldn't complain. One member of my cohort has lupus. House said it's never lupus, but in at least one case it is.  Another person has rheumatoid arthritis. Another member as hepatitis C, which, in addition to zapping his energy, will disqualify him from some residency positions. (A few people claim fibromyalgia, but I'm a bit skeptical where that particular diagnosis is concerned; I'll buy into it when it hits me, which, in true Karmic form, it probably will.) All I have is a colon that likes to develop holes and a tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with insufficient inertia to provide adequate resistance when someone else comes barreling into me and knocks me down flights of steps or otherwise encroaches upon my course of motion. I will live through this. I'm not sure about the rest of them.

I just think it's silly of our protectors to repeatedly warn us about the evils of drugs while causing us to need those drugs about which they're warning us in ways that we never would have imagined would be necessary were it not through the regime that they're putting us. They went through it, so we, too, must run the gauntlet.

P.S. I've always known where my dad kept his prescription pad, and I can do his signature better than he can do it himself. Had I been truly interested in obtaining a supply of contraband either for my own use, for that of my friends, or for financial gain, I likely could have pulled it off successfully a long time ago. I do not deserve to be required to sit through any more of the drug lectures.

Innovative, huh?

Mini Post-Script to the Prior Post

This picture has little to do with my post except that the lady looks slightly like Avril.

I discussed a situation of etiquette, in my most recent blog. Those of us who were present made the decision to approach both the person whose manners were lacking and the dean of our program. It wasn't our intent, or at least not my own, to get the person into trouble. My rationale was that I didn't want to be blamed if the couple who hosted a group of us for dinner were to call and complain about a member of the party but not name the person, all of us might have been in jeopardy. The reason for approaching the woman herself was, at least in my justification, to be up-front rather than duplicitous about it.  i have no serious hope that anything Kal Penn might have told he would have changed the way she lives her life.  I do, however, find it easier to live with myself  in knowing that she was told both how the group felt and that the dean was to be contacted by one of us.

As it turned out, less than an hour after Dylan, who represented our group in speaking to the dean, left the dean's office, our hostess from the previous evening did call to complain about Avril's rudeness. As we thought might be the case, the hostess didn't name the offending party. The dean didn't let on that he had already been apprised of the situation, but he questioned the hostess to ensure that the picture as dylan painted it was accurate and that no one else was discourteous or otherwise poorly represented the school.

The rest of us are in the clear, but I have no idea what will happen to Avril. she can't really be kicked out of the program for exhibiting abysmal manners at a public relations function.  Transfers at this stage of the game in medical school are rare but not unheard of, and it could happen, though not likely without a second chance for Avril.  i wouldn't think that the people in power would be quite so concerned about what she might do  at future functions for our university, but rather, what she will do once she gets her degree from here that might tarnish the image if our institution. (Pun intended; this place is all colors of crazy now.)  I'm trying to adopt the mindset of the dean and of his advisory board. I suspect they'd love to unload her on some unsuspecting (or even suspecting) medical school that needs her high qualifications more than the school doesn't need someone with her social skills. Those in power would probably arrange her schedule to be so ugly as to be considered almost   (but not quite) harassment.  that's easier than officially inviting her to leave, which they could legally do, I suspect, if they were willing to take on the necessary documentation, but it might not be without a court fight. It would be much easier if she were to pack he bags voluntarily, which she might very well do if she were told that she would not receive a single positive faculty recommendation were she to stay.

But then, what do I know? Perhaps a similar action is being plotted behind my back as I type this.


We wouldn't know any of this except that there is a mole in the dean's office.