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After half an hour of my first shift, I could see why my colleagues had warned me about this place. "The nurses at SEH are such. Bitches." was what I had heard on more than one occasion. But after half an hour I could also see that that wasn't strictly true. They were good at their job. Their job was hard. I was getting in their way. Who wouldn't chirp at me?
It was basically an exercise in standing in the worst possible place at the exact moment that 30 people needed to get past me to get stuff done, while knowing nothing of value and possessing no helpful skills.
I thought that clerkship had burned out my ability to feel anxiety -- well, it didn't. I spent most of my first couple of shifts practically dissociating from panic. Every time I presented a case -- a simple task at this point in my life -- I found myself stammering out nonsensical and irrelevant things, back-tracking, forgetting information I had actually gathered and losing track of where I was. Every time my preceptor asked me a question, it would be like she had hit a giant reboot button on my brain. All I could hear was the windows start-up sound and all I could see was a wee hourglass turning over and over and over again on itself. There was no good reason for any of this, I might add, but there's no good reason for most anxiety I feel on a daily basis. Just an old fight-or-flight algorithm rearing its head at the worst possible times.
Being in the emergency setting again, after well over a year, is 1) a good reminder of why I chose to do something else with my life, but also 2) like waking up from a pleasant dream of competence to a reality of chaos and ineptitude. Oh, I find myself thinking. Right. You ARE an idiot. You knew that once...how did you manage to forget? The mindset had been completely forgotten, but is totally familiar.
Fortunately, by shift three, I started feeling better. Part of it is in knowing how things work at SEH, where I have never worked before (and likely never will again). Part of it is that my preceptor turned out to be pretty nice. Part of it is that I am actually a fairly adaptable person. And part of it is just that anxiety, fear and doubt can always be banished by hope. So, here we have Say Not The Struggle Naught Availeth, read by Winston Churchill over the wireless during World War II. Most of the military imagery of the first two stanzas is a bit unclear to me, but I particularly like the last stanza, maybe because it feels like leaving the hospital at dawn.
( Say Not The Struggle Naught Availeth )
- Mood:
contemplative
I've been in residency for 3 months, but in some ways it's just starting tomorrow. The last time I tried to do this combination of rotations was approximately 2 months after my last post here, and it sort of broke me. I'm trying to put a bright face on the fact that I'm doing it again and it will all be fine this time, but really, I need to stay aware if that's going to happen. Awake.
So! Poetry, writing, reading, and good things like eating and exercising. *nods*.
From Open, the autobiography of Andre Agassi:
"Dreams, I tell [my trainer], in one of our quiet moments, are so damned tiring.
He laughs.
I can't promise you that you won't be tired, he says. But please know this. There's a lot of good waiting for you on the other side of tired. Get yourself tired, Andre. That's where you're going to know yourself. On the other side of tired."
~Strophie
- Location:home
- Mood:determined
Regardless, I like it, and that's really my only standard for posting, so:
( I Like You )
( Spring Forward, Fall Back )
-troy jollimore
Yes. That's about it. Happy November, everyone.
Last time I picked up Tom Thomson in Purgatory by Troy Jollimore. It has an awesome name, so that was a point in its favour...an introduction by Billy Collins, another point in its favour...and was relatively inexpensive, so -- SALE. I took it up to the cashier, a twentysomething guy with shaggy hair, who looked at it and said "Tom Thomson in...purgatory?"
"Yup," I said, getting out my wallet.
"Is it about purgatory?" He turned the book over before putting it into a bag.
"Well, it's really more about Tom Thomson," I replied, slightly flippantly, punching in my pin code.
"Who's Tom Thomson?"
"...Tom Thomson? He's a famous Canadian artist...member of the Group of Seven...painted a lot in Algonquin Park? But then he died, under mysterious circumstances." I put on my best 'mysterious' voice for that bit.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah...it was a canoeing accident...allegedly he drowned, but he was a very good swimmer. It didn't make a lot of sense, and it's never really been figured out. And there was a guy who had motive, see..."
At this point I trailed off, realizing that twentysomething was holding out my bag and looking at me with the slightly widened, glazed eyes of someone who is trying to look cool while wracking their brains for an escape. And at the same time I realized that the transaction was long since complete. I swear I thought there was another step to be accomplished here, for which I was filling in the time, but apparently not -- apparently I was just rambling, about Tom Thompson, to a frat boy with a low tolerance for the crazy.
Fortunately the poetry's good enough to make up for it. Lots of them are sonnets, which is cool.
My favourite one I'm saving for sometime when I can actually write about it.
~Strophie
( Tom Thomson in Perspective )
Yes, that seems only fair. Let's put him down, then,
as Honourable Failure and an Honest Attempt.
Yes, I can live with that. And him? He'll have to.
</div>
( Tom Thomson in Between Women )
( Tom Thomson in the Morning )</span>
Last night I had a dream.
My feet hurt, not achingly, but with a searing, cut-and-burned pain. I sat down to take a look at them (for I had been working, inside and out in the garden, ignoring my bare feet). And oh, my soles, they were such a mess. My left sole was covered in straight cuts running at all angles. My right sole was covered in white blisters and -- on closer inspection -- was hanging half-off my foot. My foot had been transected horizontally from heel to mid-ball. There wasn't any blood, and when I pulled the cut open, there wasn't much pain. Just a thwapping sound, like flip-flop sandals make, as I let it spring back.
I held my soles up to the light. They were so ugly now. How did they get to be such a mess? What happened? (I had been working outside and inside, on my bare feet, ignoring the pain.) I mourned. My feet were such a mess.
One of the pediatric emergency room doctors was there. She is capable and casual, like someone's big sister, and as calm as anything. I was mourning for my ugly feet. I told her, I have been working in pain, outside and inside, ignoring my bare feet. I showed her my left foot and said My left sole is covered in straight cuts running at all angles. I have been working in the garden in bare feet. I am experiencing a burning, painful sensation. She looked at my left foot and said Those are not cuts. That is a classic terenoma pirialis infection. It is a nasty bacterium that lives in the soil, and burns its way into your sole when you work in bare feet. See the characteristic chain-like appearance of the lesions. I looked, and saw that the lines were as she described. I didn't know how I had missed that before. She moved on to look at my right foot and said And these are not white blisters. These are clusters of mortadema, a parasitic worm that burrows into the skin. She began to pull them out with tweezers, long white strands that felt like cotton yarn.
I said My work has taken me inside and outside, and I have ignored my bare feet. I said My right sole is hanging half-off my foot. And she said You have already begun to heal like that, with your foot transected horizontally from heel to mid-ball. She said See, the cut is dry and hard. She said There is nothing here for me to stitch. She said It may go back to normal with time, but you will have to see for yourself. It also may not.
My mother was lurking around somewhere, but I didn't want her to freak out at the state of my soles, and so I didn't look for her.
Then I woke up.
I went to work, but I was thinking about how four weeks of clerkship has made me feel further away from you, not closer. I watch you, and I have no clear picture of how I am supposed to become you. Also, I sympathize with your patients and their families (yes, even the difficult ones, even the ones you laugh at and roll your eyes about behind their backs), far more than you do. And I feel more kinship with them than I do with you.
It would not surprise me one bit, for example, if I learned that you laughed at me and rolled your eyes behind my back.
But for the most part I think you just aren't all that fussed about me one way or the other. I'm there, doing my thing, but I'm not doing it particularly well, or in a particularly helpful way. I go for lunch. I go to teaching. I go home at the end of the day, because there are no jobs I am capable of doing right now that would cause me to stay late.
So I don't feel like I'm really part of your club right now, and that's okay. I have mixed feelings about joining your club. To be honest.
But I'm paying attention, maybe more attention than I realized.
Sincerely (but not yours, not yet),
Strophie
(p.s. to my knowledge, neither of those bugs actually exists. I literally dreamed them up. and my feet are fine.)
- Mood: contemplative
The worst part is, this time around, I have no memory or understanding of making the mistake she failed me for. I thought I had done pretty well on the test, frankly. But when we got back she informed me that at one intersection, I made a right turn at a stop sign that forced an oncoming car to use its breaks. I don't think the examiner was out to get me, so if she says that I did it, I guess I believe her. But I was being pretty careful to creep ahead and look carefully at controlled intersections before entering them, since that's what I did wrong LAST time. Not only did I not see this car before I made my turn, I didn't see it after I made the turn, or realize at any point in time that I had done something dangerous.
This worries me, because as I said I thought I was being careful, so right now I can't even say what I would do differently to pass the test next time. As such, I think I'm going to put the whole driving-test thing on ice until the end of September, and make it through the first month of clerkship car-less. I could try to schedule a test for the week after I get back from Berlin, but realistically, going to a driving test after 2 weeks of not driving sounds like a recipe for further disaster to me, and I'd rather not fail a THIRD time. Thank you very much. I'll use the month to practice some more, and then maybe I'll GROW SOME EYES.
Blast. Stratford is out to get me. This hurts.
Buuut, despite Stratford's crimes against me today, Shakespeare is pretty good on failure and disappointment. My poem for today is Sonnet 29. Yes, so it's hyper-dramatic...but so am I at the moment. It's unusual for Shakespeare to put the volta (or change in focus) at line 9, as he does here; he usually saves it for a closing rhyming-couplet zinger. This seems to be the Petrarchan form, as far as meaning goes, although Shakespeare maintains his trademark rhyme scheme. Why did he do this? I, for one, really like that he gave so much space to the opposing argument. While the speaker's shame and sadness are still first and foremost in his mind, the gift of love and friendship is almost enough to balance it completely. Like to the lark, you guys. This is what friends are for.
In happier news: turns out that Berlin is where Run Lola Run was filmed. I've loved this movie for years. Once, in my teens, I was heard to say that if I ever visited the city it was filmed in I would know my way around, just from watching this firey redheaded thing run her way around it 3 times/viewing. And now I'm going! I'll make sure to take some scene shots while I'm there. :)
~Strophie
- Mood:defeated
I have a lot going on in my head at the moment and none of it is interesting. So! Poem?
I think this is, unfortunately, the kind of poem that makes people hate poetry. So hang in there, if you're reading this -- don't give up yet -- I'll try to talk you through some of it but it's not like I'm some kind of expert. Just hold on tight, it's a bit of a crazy ride, and I'm on it too. We're going to the moon on holiday, and it's not clear whether or not we're going to enjoy ourselves. It's not clear whether or not it's safe. It's not even clear whether or not we're going to see the real thing, or if we're just going to dream it all up.
Someone else has been there before us. They wrote a little guidebook -- a Baedecker, in fact, the original travel guide company. The poshest of Victorian world travellers carried these with them, leather-bound, in steamship trunks, between layers of morning suits and evening dresses. But there's very little that's Victorian, or posh, or steamship-trunk-stuffy about the moon. It's extravagant, certainly. Decadent. And lit with cold, brilliant white light. Watch for the descriptions of the light. There are repeated sets of dashes -- I fancy that those stand for epileptic strobe-light bursts that are disorienting, as a computer being restarted must be disoriented. Where am I.
And watch for the collision between old and new. Imagine a city centre, worn buildings overcovered with sharp electric billboards. See them try to work together, but ultimately fail. It's not a question of clashing armies, of right sides and wrong sides. It's more a question of astronomy. Two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
Finally, watch for the uncertainty that what you're seeing is really what you're seeing. Did you come to the moon expecting an opium den? Times Square? Maybe that's what you saw. Maybe you sleepwalked there. How do we know we're really anywhere?
~Strophie
- Mood:
blah - Music:Sarah Slean, "Willow"
See, this is my problem. I don't know why I think I need superhuman insight to write blog entries. I'd love to talk, but I can't seem to do it in any kind of normal way. At least not when I'm writing. Shut up, brain.
Here's your fun news story for the day: Ancient Sumerians Thought Farts Were Funny
In light of the recent X-Files movie, I've been plunged back into the fandom, and it's strange. It's like meeting an old lover again -- you remember what life was like when you lived and breathed him, and you remember what you were like then too. It's hard to separate how much you like him today from how much you like your pleasant memories. Would you still like him if you met him for the first time now? Impossible to say, impossible to say. And it's all a bit of a jolt, too -- you remember things you learned from and with him, things that are now regularly incorporated into your daily perceptions, the source long since forgotten. Oh. That's why I react this way. That's where I learned what this looks like. That's the evidence I used for this belief. That's how I got on this path I'm on. Maybe you, older and wiser now, wouldn't trust this person quite so far anymore, but it's too late. What's learned is learned.
I was trying to explain this to Answerboy last night, and I think I wrapped it up by saying "...so you see, honey, this is all really like having my ex-boyfriend sweep back in the picture..." and he just shook his head and laughed. He may or may not fully understand how hard we fan-type people can fall for something. And for the X-Files I have only the defence that I was too young to know better.
But really, can you blame me? I was 12 when I saw it first...scared to death of people, boys, growing up...and here's this show with enough fantasy elements to provide escape, and real solid characters who were themselves and respected each other and didn't seem afraid of anything, at least not when they were together. Unless it was losing the other person's trust, or the other person in general. They gave me a framework for believing that two people with trouble letting down their guard could be close. That was important for me to see at the time, I think.
Enough rambling -- bedtime for now.
~Strophie
- Music:Lisa Germano, "La Parade" (where the title is from)
