Team Aniston

Do you have one of those people who you would consider your arch nemesis? The bain of your existence? The Mizzou to your Jayhawk, the Joker to your Batman, the Jolie to your Aniston? I had one. Up until a week ago, that is.

You see, there's this girl....we'll call her "Angelina." She had a leading role in something that happened about 4 years ago that essentially crushed my soul. Seriously....not exaggerating. On a scale from 1-10, this was a 10 on the crap-o-meter of life. So anyway....I've been wrestling with anger and hurt and resentment toward this person (and the situation in general) for a long time. In the past year or so, I felt like I'd come to a place of forgiveness. This was an internal thing and I thought that it would just have to stay that way because the receiver of the forgiveness lived in New York and, shoot, I would probably never see her again. And I wasn't about to call her up or offer her my forgiveness and well wishes over facebook. She would just have to feel the vibes coming from my direction.

A week ago Danny and I were walking around on the Plaza and decided to go to Scooters for a drink. I got mine first and was meandering around the store waiting for Danny to get his drink. I saw a girl with a USMLE First Aid book and was contemplating introducing myself to her when I heard a voice from the other side of the store say hi to Danny. I was interested to see who it was because I always enjoy running into friends. So with a preemptive smile on my face I looked around a sign that was between me and the voice, (Insert sound of screeching record here.......then crickets chirping) It was her....ANGE-frickin-LINA! UGH! Even though I'd forgiven her in my soul (that was once crushed by her - let me remind you :) I was not ready for this moment. I mean for real! The girl lived in New York, I shouldn't have to worry about running into her on the cotton-picking PLAZA! So my sympathetic nervous system kicked in big time and I literally had a fight or flight moment. Seriously, I'd be lying to you if I said I didn't consider jumping over the table and strangling her skinny little neck. But I didn't....I turned around and hauled my arss right out of there, thank you very much! Then I thought about finding a bathroom so I could wretch a few times.

As I was scampering away, I heard a voice behind me calling my name.
Dang woman! Why can't you just leave me be?
At first I pretended that I didn't hear her, but reluctantly conceded to her beckoning and stood there in the middle of the sidewalk as she opened her heart and apologized. She had attempted this feat in the past, but this time was different. I could tell that this time she was sincere. She'd grown up a bit, she'd gotten married and she now realized how hurtful her actions had been all those years ago. And there, face to face, I was able to tell her that I had forgiven her.

Not exactly the leisurely, carefree day that I had planned on, but that's okay. This was something that needed to happen and when it did, a huge weight was lifted and I was a little bit more okay than I'd been in a while.

Plaster and Pig Feet

I finally learned to put stitches in last week. Very exciting....especially for an A personality freak like me. Making the stitches line up at perfectly congruent angles is a thing of beauty. Even if it's only on a pig's foot.

After stitching up the little piggies, we learned how to cast. Also very exciting. Kind of reminded me of pottery class. Here's a picture of my friend Kelli and the beautiful cast I made her.

Third Year

Today I finished the fifth week of my third year. I can't believe how fast the time is going! Third year is so different from and so much better than the first two years. The first two years are kind of starting to feel like a distant memory to me (I think the therapy is helping).

Anyway, here are a few observations/thoughts/ramblings about my first 5 weeks:

Nursing home - Everyone....EVERYONE is on antidepressants. Living in a nursing home + hypertension + diabetes + stroke + parkinsons + memory loss + incontinence = sad people. Why not hand out a few happy pills? Oh, and the nurses seem to be less than thrilled to help med students with.....anything.

VA wound clinic - Lots of wounds. Venous stasis wounds, diabetic foot ulcers, gun shot wounds (I'm so street). There are a lot of people here who just don't take great care of themselves. If your sugars are out of control, you're not taking your lasix, you're not trying to lose weight, well, your wound just might hang around for a while. Interesting fact: nicely healing venous stasis ulcers look a lot like ahi tuna. Yum!

Hospice House - It's amazing how the body can tell you when death is knocking.

Pulmonary clinic - "Pickwickian Syndrome" essentially a fancy way to say, "Hey buddy, you're too fat to breathe!" If your BMI is, oh say, 106, then you might fall into this category.
Favorite moment from pulm: GI/hepatology attending walks up to fellow med student, asks if he's a med student, then preceedes to steal his stethoscope. I wish he had asked me for mine....it's pink :)

Rheumatology - They are trying to KILL me. Most clinics have regular hours, even get done early some days. Not so in rheumatology. The last patient is usually scheduled at 3:30 or 4:00. We're lucky if we get to them by 6:00. That's right! We're horrible people who love to make you sit in a little room and WAIT! Haaaaaaa! Suckers!!!!! Totally kidding. If we don't see you untill 6:00, we don't get to go home until 6:45.

Also slightly frustrating because the attending expects me to know everything he knows about his patients who he's been following for 15 years. Seriously???? I've got 20 minutes to see a patient and read through the novel (sometimes 2 volumes) that is the patient's chart. Difficult. Maddening. I don't like novels, or books in general for that matter. I don't like to read. Here's a fun fact - the smarties that assess USMLE practice tests thought that I might have an undiagnosed reading issue. Does anyone have the phone number for one of those Sylvan learning centers?

General Med - You see a lot of everything here. I saw some nasty feet today. For a split second I kind of thought I might throw up. The toenails were a lovely shade of yellow and appeared to be growing in thickness instead of in length. There was some funky stuff all up under the nails too. Then there was a nice, thick layer of dead, calloused skin covering both heels which the patient claimed underwent shaving on occasion. Oh, and they smelled rather badly. I went to put the patients socks back on, and the afore mentioned toenails snagged on the socks like fingernails on a chalk board . Man....I sure am concerned about those diabetic foot ulcers. Look how much I CARE!!!!

Okay, I'm going to go wash my hands now, again, for the 500th time since the foot incident.

I'm back.

One more observation: There are sneaky little 4th years, posing as third years whose only purpose in life is to make me look dumb. These 4th years, for whatever reason, have a third year clinical rotation that they have yet to complete. This may be because they've taken time off, decided to push their boards back, or they may have failed a rotation....or boards. Unfortunately the attendings assume that we're all at the same point in our education, but in reality these 4th years have a whole year of clinical experience on us. So they know the tricks....they know how to give a good presentation. They flaunt their skillz but keep mum about their fourth year status. I may have to blow their cover.

The stupidest things I've done lately (Part 1)

1. Left my purse in the records room at the geriatric clinic. Doctor and nurse left before the students, locking the door to this room before they left. Had to sit and wait as security fumbled through about 4 gozillion keys trying to open the door and then recommend that we call maintenance. Awesome.

2. Thought the 4:30 patient in the geriatric clinic was a no show. Continued to fiddle on the computer trying to figure out electronic medical records. Found out at 4:55 that the 4:30 patient was not, in fact, a no show and had left after waiting 20 minutes for someone to come see her. Oops.

More to come.....

Dirt and Ashes

Last month my mom, my grandma and I finally took Pop to the cemetery. We had been meaning to do this since he died in September, but for whatever reasons (not wanting to cry anymore, not wanting to go through with this final step) we waited until June. Oh, and I should probably mention at this point that he was cremated. We didn't pull some sort of Weekend at Bernie's stunt or anything. And we decided to bury his ashes ourselves because the cemetery wanted to charge us $800.00 to dig a hole the size of a shoebox. Whatever.....

We started out at Brio on the Plaza for a nice lunch and then headed to Mount Washington Forever Cemetery. I hadn't been there since my great-grandma Dolly died when I was about 7 so I couldn't really remember much except that our family grave sites were on a steep hill. The clouds were dark as we drove, but by the time we pulled up to the hill, the sun had broken through and shone down through the thick trees over the graves. We gathered up all of our supplies; spade - check, flowers - check, water - check, Pop - check, and headed up the hill. I climbed strait up to the headstone while my mom and grandma made a zig zag pattern up the incline. While I waited for them, I held my Pop's ashes in my hands. The box that they had been in for the past several months read: The cremated remains of Dr. Clyde E. Fry. Strange. Strange for so many reasons. My Pop, who probably weighed about 160lbs when he died had been reduced to 10lbs worth of ashes that fit neatly into this little box. Strange that, according to this box, it's contents were his only "remains." I've thought about those words a lot and I've come to the conclusion that those ashes are certainly not my Pop's "remains." My Pop's remains are grandma, mom, dad, me, Danny, Ted, Louis, Shirly, Lois, Herold, Cindy, Julie, Rachel, Carmen, the guys from the ball team, his patients, his friends and everyone that his life had ever touched. His remains also include laughter, big band music, jazz, coffee, silly sayings (I almost told a patient today "Where there's no sense, there's no feeling"), goofiness, pancakes, messiness. There is much love that remains in the special part of my heart that belongs to my Pop.

When mom and grandma made it up the hill, I began to dig a hole near Pop's headstone. The ground was soft from recent rain which made the digging easy. When the hole was big enough, mom took the plastic bag of ashes out of their box and we slowly let them spill into the ground. After we covered them with a layer of soil, we planted some flowers. The flowers were pretty and all, but their main purpose was to serve as a decoy just incase the cemetery people got suspicious that we were burying the ashes ourselves, which is apparently against the rules.

So there we stood over his freshly buried ashes, the three women he loved the most in this world, the three women who loved him back with all our hearts. There were quiet emotions that we each kept to ourselves, but there were no tears. No eloquent words were said, no fuss was made. There was peace, warm sunshine, a cool breeze through the trees.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

Hello

Hello. My name.....is Charlie Bartlett.

Guitar Hero or Guitar Loser?

So I was watching Ellen today and she had this kid on who was like the best Guitar Hero player EVER. As I watched, I was amazed at how good he was, but then I started thinking about how much time he must have spent mastering his skillz. Then I thought, "Gosh....if he spent as much time playing with a real guitar as he has with a plastic one, he might have a talent that he could actually use someday....for something interesting and productive and perhapse lucrative." He would certainly get more chicks someday if he could play a real guitar. Then I just got irritated at our video game obsessed culture. This might have something to do with the fact that we're studying childhood and adolescent obesity in school right now. Don't get me wrong, I played my share of Mario Brothers in my day, and I can appreciate the value of a good video game, but for real! Why would you play tennis on a Wii when you could put your tennis shoes on, go out side (or to a club) and actually play tennis? Are we that lazy that physical activities have to be packaged in the form of a video game for us to take part in them?

Okay....rant is over.