Umm...Never Mind

Had lunch with my folks yesterday. They have extended the length of their visit next month, so they can celebrate the end of school with me. I felt myself swallow every word typed into the previous blog. It felt like trying to swallow whole Doritos.

Visceral Reflexes

My parents are visiting from Los Angeles, CA. It's been great to see them, but no family visit is without its emotionally triggering moments.

Last night, Iron Skillet came home from work utterly depressed. She was crying in bed last night, lamenting the absence of meaning in her life. We stayed up late, trying to lighten the mood, realizing that we are both so strapped by our current lives.

This morning, I had an emotionally difficult conversation with my mom on the phone. My mom and dad are visiting Michigan for the week. I was supposed to have my family over for cocktails tomorrow evening, but had to cancel because I don't have time to play host.

My folks haven't been to my apartment very much and I was looking forward to having everyone over. I knew they were planning a return trip next month, after my exams. This morning, my mom told me they would be returning during my final exam week. DURING. Meaning: I'm totally useless. Can't relax around my family. Can't socialize. Can't host a cocktail party. They are leaving the day after my final exams.

Okay. I can roll. I've dealt with bigger blows. "Well, Lara," I asked myself, "what CAN I do?"


I can shore myself up. After hanging up with my mom (I was really only mildly upset), I sat down to watch a lecture on taste and smell. Because I CAN study! The lecture began. The first slide appeared: a diagram of the taste bud.

I tried so hard to concentrate. But listening to the professor go on about the minutia of taste buds, it felt so unimportant. I stared at the screen and started to cry. Studying while emotional is like driving drunk. You might think you're fine, but you're actually heading straight into oncoming traffic.


"Don't let it get to you," I kept telling myself. "Focusfocusfocus." I have a bad cold. I feel so disappointed. I had nothing to grasp onto but taste buds. TASTE BUDS. It got to me.

Because I'm human, not a machine. Because I can only memorize so many bodiless facts before I start to feel like a hollow shell of a student. Because school can often feel more like hazing than like education.

Less Than One Month

Four more exams.
28 more days.

One commentary on multiple choice exams.

Normal Schmormal

For the first time in many months, I had an actual weekend. I can explain. Last week was a crazy exam week. But with an exam last Friday, there was nothing to study over the weekend. So, when I woke up on Saturday morning, I had only house cleaning, errand running and friend catch-upping to do.

I spent time with my friend Jack and his boyfriend Harold up in Ann Arbor. We just hung out and and I realized how incredibly stressed I am all the time. Nowadays, I mostly hang out with medical students or Iron Skillet, all of whom are accustomed to the high level of daily stress of a med student. But Jack and Harold were acting like it was a Saturday. Because that's what most people do on Saturday.

Now that the weekend is over, today has been a slow introduction to the swing of things. I skipped the morning lectures to get organized for the week. Then I went and shadowed a doctor who has bad breath and porcelain statues of Jesus all over his office. One of his patients had a 1st degree burn on her right breast. She told the doctor she got the burn from drinking tea. I repeat, a First Degree Burn. When I asked how tea gave her that burn, both doctor and patient looked at me like, "You mean, you don't pour hot water all over your breasts when you drink tea?"

Normal was fun for a weekend.

Creataholics Annonymous

This is a story about taking the evening off. It may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Neuroscience has been taking up a lot of my time. As one of my classmates put it, "I had no idea the brain was so complicated." So, it's been a lot of sitting on my butt in the library drawing out the roadmaps that allow us to see, hear, read, bitch, write blogs, and come up with the Theory of Relativity. In no particular order.

This past week was a little bit Head of the Class and little bit Magnum PI. I'm working with the Palliative Care team at Big Parking Lot Hospital and there was an unusual string of circumstances with a patient. I felt like a nerdy student and an undercover detective all in one day. It took up quite a bit of time and required me to write a narrative for my supervising doctor. This small task completely drained me because I was actually asked to articulate a thought. That is something I haven't had to do since med school began. You mean, you don't want to know the function of the optic nerve? You don't want to know about the knee-jerk reflex? YOU WANT ME TO WRITE A NARRATIVE ABOUT MY FEELINGS?? But don't you know I am nothing more than a bunch of cold, hard facts?

So, I sat down and wrote about my feelings. After writing a little less than one page, I was completely drained. I sent it off, sat down on the couch and proclaimed the evening off.

The blog entry below is the result of that evening. If that blog entry could be made manifest, it would be a stray puppy with a broken leg crying for it's mom. Hungry. In the rain. And in Communist Poland. Before medical school, writing was always my refuge. I have always been able to turn to my creative side to help ease anxiety, sorrow and boredom. Now, a year into med school, the ol' brain is so stuffed with chockablock medical facts that it feels as if there's no room left for free, crazy, creative thought.

I called my friend Cheryl in New York. She directed a documentary about the U.S. Synchronized Swimming Olympic Team. There are times when the person you're calling HAS TO PICK UP THE PHONE. This was one of those times. She picked up the phone, she was busy, but could talk. And talk we did. About everything and nothing. She's doing really well, and it was fantastic to hear about it. As the conversation neared its close, I felt the ignition of a creative spark. She agreed to be my creativity sponsor. Similar to AA, when alcoholics about to relapse call their sponsor instead of drinking a bottle of tequila. I know that if I feel the creativity slipping from me, I can call her and she'll make sure I don't relapse into the Budweiser of self-wallowing.

Vice Grip

The longer I'm in med school, the farther away I feel from creative thought. Does this happen to everyone? Will it return? It's strange to try to feel inspired. I wonder if anyone peaked artistically in med school. If there's a peak, or a slope of any kind, it's a downward one for me. Just trying to write a narrative of a clinical experience required several first-starts before I wrote something interesting. I can't quite say what's happening, but it's akin to The Nothing.