A Strange Night

So I've recently started at my new residency program. Done with the horrors of a medical internship and relaxing with the easy life of a medical subspecialty. And I must say, I really like most of my new coworkers. Last week, I ended up meeting one of my senior residents for a drink, staying out most of the night and sharing all kinds of secrets that should not be shared by people in the medical profession. Though I assure you, there are a lot of us with all kinds of secrets. So this particular girl, I'll call Doctor Ballerina (DB). Before going through the whole medical school / doctor route of life, she worked as a professional ballet dancer. So you can kind of already see why we would get along. It's amazing what kind of lives doctors lead before they ever put on the big white duty coat isn't it?

In any case, the strange night of the title here refers to 3 other people that have yet to be introduced in this blog. For now, I'll try and write the condensed version out right here.

So it's Friday night, DB and I had some tentative plans to hit the town. Unfortunately she seems to have taken ill that day so she had to stay home and recover. Meanwhile, I could have just gone out by myself and lived my life, but I ending up staying home, getting stoned and drunk while and eating cheap, shitty NYC mexican food and watching baseball. It was some amazing baseball on that night though, Jonathan Sanchez's no-hitter against the Padres. Anyways, game's ending and I notice a text from this girl that I wanted to get to know a little better. It's midnight and she's asking what I'm up to and if I want to come out tonight. So immediately I'm pretty happy, thinking booty call all the way. I do a little booty call dance and get dressed to head out.

Riding my scooter down to meet this girl, it dawns on me though, the girl that I wanted to plow has the same name as one of my new co-residents. Also, the girl that I wanted to plow, though I never put her phone number in my phone, I realize it's a different area code than the area code tagged to the text message that got me out that night. So I'm starting to wonder if what I thought was going to happen would actually be happening at all that night. It didn't go at all as planned.

I got to the bar and it's not the girl I wanted to plow, it's one of my new co-residents. She meets me outside the bar and informs me that another of the senior residents, the exact guy that earlier in the week within 30 seconds of meeting him, I told this girl I did not like this guy; this guy was there. The night was being quickly demoted from booty call to rescue operation. And I was a little annoyed.

So I got the 3 of us to leave the place they were at. We went to a much quiter, more chilled out pub and I had a drink and made some small talk. And as quickly as I could, I let it be known that I had to cap it and offered the girl a ride home.

So that's how we got out of there. This girl and I then ended up at some koreatown spot which probably would have been pretty cool except that I was a little annoyed and even more, that shitty mexican food was starting to destroy my gastrointestinal tract.

So then I took her home, told her that I was glad to help bail her out and reminded her to please never ask me to do that again.

Then I barely made it home. Dropped an explosive deuce, barely made it to the bed and passed out.

That was the strange night. More about the fallout from that night later on...

People getting punched

Skinny White

So I don't particularly have much in common with most doctors. I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine about how as a medical student and how even now as a resident, people would come to give lectures or talks and occasionally remark about how as a group, we as physicians must be such great future-thinkers and gratification-delayers. My entire youth it was widely regarded that I'd never live past the age of 21 due to my complete and utter lack of regard for my own safety and well-being combined with my penchant for extremely dangerous, self-destructive behaviour. I mean, if you think about it; isn't everything dangerous by necessity fun? (okay, there are exceptions, but seriously, think about it for a moment)

So that brings me to Skinny White (SW). He's Irish, he's probably the palest person I know this side of albinism, and he's about 6'3", 135 pounds. I once convinced this guy to do some push ups with me and I couldn't stop laughing for 15 minutes. So yeah, skinny and white, Skinny White. I remember first meeting this guy during intern orientation. I had on an oxford shirt and a necktie, trying to keep up appearances. He was wearing a T-shirt with the logo of an underground techno music club. Not long after, a bunch of us about-to-be interns, headed out for drinks. One by one, the flat-leavers left us and SW and I were the last 2 men left standing. We ended up walking around Brooklyn that night, having a drink at every bar we could find. I don't especially recall the cab ride home too well, but I did recall thinking that I was probably going to have to make friends with this guy. A common occurence between the last 2 people left standing after a hard night's drinking.

I would also soon discover, that both SW and I had previously trained in the arts of turntablism and also we had both at points in our lives made money busking through our respective juggling acts. I mean, how often does that happen that 2 physicians meet who also have extensive experience in the world of house, techno, turntablism and juggling.

Later on, ask we worked in the hospital further, we also both got reputations for being very smart and very arrogant. Because if you know something that the other people on your team don't, I guess you're not supposed to bring in the relevant research and give power point presentations and try to educate the rest of the team about the things that you know. Because that's just the arrogance running out of control right there.

In any case, you can imagine the hi-jinks SW and I got ourselves into. We were both, young, single, and brand new to NYC. The specific hi-jinks I will leave for another time. In terms of women, my plan was to just go around and knock out some hood-rats, you know; boom-boom-boom. SW was looking for something a little deeper and more meaningful, I think.

The person he ended up with was Worried Girl (WG). This name may not be totally fair because she really is so much more and I really do love her to pieces. However, to me at least, her defining characteristic is that she gets wound up over certain things, certain things about which SW and I would never give a second thought. For instance SW once lost his phone and because WG couldn't reach him, she obviously asummed that he was dead or kidnapped or something so she called the police and put out an APB to get the guys that took out SW. That was a tough day for SW, especially because it was my ass that had to go bail him out of jail. But whatever, we can laugh about it now.

(most of that above paragraph was fictional, if you were keeping score)

Anyways, that's the brief intro to SW and the even briefer intro to WG.

One Good Night

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
-Neil Gaiman

So Jelly Bean (JB) just left. Through a series of fortunate events, she was able to spend about 27 hours with me here in New York. She arrived in the afternoon, we played some playstation Karaoke and drank tequila, had a very fancy dinner, saw a beautiful muppet musical, came back to the apartment and stayed up until dawn writing poetry and enjoying the company. The next day, we had lunch across from the museum of natural history and afterwards took my Vespa out for a tour of Manhattan. Just randomly meandering the city always reminds me how beautiful it is out here. Stopped for a coffee and a walk around Union Square. It rained off and on a little bit, but it was more than tolerable with JB on the scooter, keeping me warm, safe and impervious to rain. Then we came back, had some drinks, had a good talk, played some cards. And like that... as abruptly as she appeared, she was gone.

Since I was a kid, I've wondered about what it is that made people miss each other. I remember as a freshman in college, I once went home for the weekend. Upon coming back to campus a girl I knew asked me if I missed her while I was gone. I thought about it for a moment and then lied to her, saying, "Yes, of course." She was a little bit upset about the pause I think.

I never used to miss people. Maybe it was something to do with ego. I felt like I was the star of my own life with an interchangeable supporting cast. Definitely, there are people that I like. I enjoy spending time with my friends. I really do. But for the most part, even now; out of sight, out of mind. (if you're my friend, and you're reading this, i assure you; i don't mean you) Occasionally though, there are those in my life who when they are gone, I feel the ache of lacking their presence. I really couldn't tell you what it is about certain people that does this.

I miss JB.

Driving

Another thing that I realized in going back to Southern California was just how much I missed driving a car. And it's not for the convenience of having a car and being able to move people and stuff around. It's not even for the visceral thrill of throttle response and body roll from a high apex turn. It's more to say I miss the meditative experience of driving.

I got to do a little bit of road tripping while out and California and it made me realize how peaceful, introspective and thoughtful I become when in road trip mode. Something about the right proportion of conscious and subconscious activity that it takes to drive on wide open freeways that frees the rest of my mind to achieve true clarity of thought. The kind of mindset that allows me to truly process and prioritize the feelings and memories in my life.

I hear that there are those who practice meditation and can reach this state just with sitting and perhaps chanting or listening to some new-age type records. Too bad for me, it's only come with driving.

What I did on my summer vacation (part 1)

So New Yorkers typically don't really respect you if you're not from New York, the exception I've noticed is if you're from California. Which is where I'm from and it's where I went on my little one week off, last week. My usual trips home, I see my parents, I see my core group of friends, I usually try and get a game of spades going. However, on this particular trip back home I got to see Jelly Bean (JB), someone who until this past week I'd only seen twice in the past 7 years. And I was really looking forward to seeing her. I really loved JB. Well, still do actually. We met back in undergrad. I was an actor, she was an artist, we were tight. We had so many good times as brash young kids with fake IDs and access to way too many drugs. What I've learned about drugs is this. Everybody has their limit. I think she hit hers a little before I hit mine. And that's where I lost her. I would eventually hit mine in medical school (evidently my limit was quite high), but that's another story for another time. So I guess that's the ultra-abridged version of the first part of the story of JB and me, though volumes more could be written just on the 2 years we had back in undergrad.

Anyways, due to a rough couple of months for JB, including some scary emergency abdominal surgery, I got to go and visit her relatively recuperated but still school-less and job-less. Which made for an especially great time since most of my friends are understandably working stiffs and can't really hang out all-day, every-day. The first day I went to visit, we met up and had sushi for lunch. Ordered 2 rolls but couldn't even finish those as we instead proceeded to drink a couple of pitchers of japanese beer and a couple of bottles of sake on top of that. Then we went to the market and got a fifth of 1800 tequila and a handle of cuervo. I was just going to get the fifth at first but at that point during the day, a fifth just felt so insubstantial in my hand. We then play Wii bowling for shots and beers, took a nap, then went out for wine and pizza. It was a great day.

I want to write more about all the things I thought about during that trip but I think this is a good enough intro. Basically the first thing that happened is that I pretty much spent 3 days straight, drinking all day, everyday. And on the 4th day I felt a clarity of mind that I had not felt in some time. I'm not saying that doing what I did would be a good idea for everybody. But it worked pretty well for me.

Another reason I hate my job

So I had this patient. Nice guy, Spanish speaking only, didn't laugh at my Spanish like the Puerto Rican patients I have. I learned my Spanish from Mexicans so the accent I have may be a little bit not what the Puerto Ricans are used to. Anyways, that's not really the point of this story. The point of my story is that, when I'm trying to be a good person and a caring doctor, that seems to be the time that I often get shit for going out of my way to help another human being as a fellow human being.

So this patient had a stroke, left side paralyzed. He had a bedside commode but a nurse across the hall stole it for one of her patients. And my patient really had to drop #2. So the nurse in the stroke unit is trying to tell me to let it slide, that she'll clean it up. And I don't get this, but for some reason, only myself and the patient seem to grasp that it's not a good thing to poo yourself if you can at all avoid it. I ask the nurse to try and help me get the patient to the bathroom but she won't have it saying that I never put in an order for that level of activity.

So what else could I do, I picked up the patient myself and carried him to the shitter. The nurse of course gets pissed off at me about liability issues or some such crap. The patient is really thankful, except that I have to hang out with him while he drops off the kids at the pool. I mean, I really do want to the guy to be safe, but still I have to take all this flak from the nurse about how I could hurt myself and the patient doing what I did and how inappropriate it is to carry a guy to the john.

I don't know. Maybe it was wrong. But it's what I would want if I was a patient. Just a little bit of compassion. Anyways, in the end I got the patient back to bed and later on I brought the nurse some pie to cool everything out. Nurses love pie.

And I didn't tell anyone but the nurse was right, my back hurt like hell for the next couple of days because I did that. The guy was not a small guy. Whatever. Like I'm going to hold someone liable for my own idiocy.

I'm just trying to do a good job. And in the end I get so little respect.