all around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces--tears for fears

my downfall began last thursday...no...wednesday....hm...no...thursday.  starting again:  my downfall began last thursday.  every moment i have been home and awake...i have been eating.  anything i can get my greedy little hands on, i consume.  the worst part of all is that i KNOW i have a problem...i just seem to have no desire to fix it.  when out of work, all i do is eat and sleep.  my new name--lardium.

somewhere along the lines of my last week on nights, i became incredibly exhausted.  for that reason, it has taken some time for me to refuel the energy and motivation to begin writing again.  i promise you, in my mind i would write the greatest posts, but once i sat to actually type, i realized none of them actually made any sense, and though delirium had set in strong, it wasn't so much that i could not see sense from nonsense.  thank you for being patient.

i am currently on a surgery rotation.  now, some of you may know or remember that i have always hated the OR.  it really is a most detested area for a number of reasons.

1) it's ALWAYS freezing in there.  always always always.  the place was made for beastly beings with a boiling internal thermometer.  i, for one, always have blue fingers when in there.  also, my teeth start chattering, and unless i am constantly moving, i will turn into an ice sculpture.

 2) always moving in the OR, generally doesn't work very well. what i mean is...well...here's the thing...so the attending i work with has done most procedures laparoscopically, which means he needs someone to run the camera.  enter: me.  i get to hold the camera, which for all of 2 minutes i thought would be fun, until i realized this was just about as bad as being the retractor holder!  anyway...as i'm freezing, i have to make sure to hold the camera in place, following my attending's movements so that he can see...and keeping the camera steady, which isn't so difficult, unless of course, you're so cold and you know if you don't move your arm, it might just fall off.  yesterday, the patient was tilted at a weird angle and i was stuck in a very uncomfortable position between my giant of an attending and the patient's arm, which was strapped to a board behind me...and though because of that arm, i had to stand in a really odd way in order to see the display while not getting in my attending's way, i have to say, that one arm emitted so much heat that it warmed my body and i appreciated every inch of that arm.  i know that sounds weird...but when you're freezing, you take heat from anywhere you can get it.

3)  scrub nurses.  the most hypercritical people the world has ever met.  'nuff said.

okay...all of surgery isn't so bad.  there are okay moments.  i like practicing my suturing...though my fingers are as clumsy as the rest of me.  i like that the patients are unconscious...it's a nice relief from the jibber jabber i get all day.  and i'm sure there are more that i can't think of.

yesterday, however, in the surgery clinic, i did have one patient who decided to treat me like the family doc i am and started to say, "well...see...when i was 11 years old a tree hit my head and then..."  i cut him off right there.  in surgery, there's no obligation to listen to those stories.  you stick to what's pertinent.  when evaluating an umbilical hernia...a tree falling on someone's head 49 years ago just doesn't matter.

there are some parts of this hospital that just confuse me.  when i was doing GI, my attending pointed down a hall on our basement level floor and said, don't ever go down there...it's too scary.  and then he laughed and said, okay...go once...but don't go alone...it really is scary.  and quite frankly, it IS scary.  i haven't been down there yet, but one day when i'm on call...i'll make a lil trek.  i'm sorta confused as to where it might lead.  according to my mental layout of the hospital (which is probably grossly incorrect...i have no idea where it could go).

we also have 2 surgery areas.  one is the main on in the hospital and the other is located across the street...mostly dealing with outpatient things, i think.  there's a way to get there without stepping foot outside, and the other day, since i had to go there, i decided to try this indoor method.  i had asked a couple of my colleagues and one told me that it wasn't so hard to get across the street using the overpass (of which i didn't know how to get to), but once there, it was hard to get to the correct building.  he told me that "you have to go into the bowels of campus ridge..." to find the way.  and he was right!  once i made it through the overpass and across the street...i looked for any stairs that took me down into what i could only be led to believe were the bowels of campus ridge (campus ridge is essentially a separate building that belongs to the hospital).  once down into this rather strange and creepy area, i followed any hallway wide enough and lit up enough to look as though it was leading somewhere.  more importantly, i followed my internal senses, which i swear are repelled by any room even resembling an OR.  as my legs became heavier and my breathing became more difficult, i knew that i was closing in on the very place i had to be but didn't want to go.  campus ridge was constipated...and i...i was the obstructive piece of stool.

anyway...patient here.  gotta run.  laters.