Like learning Chinese....
that's how I describe diving head-first into bone radiology. Most of the words are barely pronounceable, which is extra demoralizing for a linguophile as myself. Try saying "enthesophytosis" three times fast.
so, in short, I am dumb. Not just kinda un-knowledgable, either. I mean straight up stupid, useless, unworthy of whatever letters trail my name. I know less than nothing. I am a glorified transcriptionist.
seems as though my residency life and boxing life are rushing along in parallel - both are reducing me to my essence.... which, it seems, is nothing.
better work on that
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
In the clearing stands a boxer
...and that fighter would be me.
In keeping with my long-standing chihuahua complex, I have decided to ditch 24 Hour Fitness (the stinky overcrowded mega-chain gym) for something tougher. I have officially taken up boxing.
I had had it with the jazzercise and the territorial middle-aged women who would glare at you for encroaching on their little plot of real estate on the gym floor. At 24 Hour Fitness, I'd inevitably get relegated to some unwanted corner of the aerobics floor, stuffed there with the fluffy lady in a headband who passes the entire class by casually raising her arms up and down, regardless of what the rest of the class is doing.
I craved the badass classes I used to love at the YMCA in Winston - classes like Pump and Boot Camp and Kickboxing, where the instructors would push you until you thought you would pass out. Now, THAT was fun.
Instead, I've morphed into a marshmallow person. I'm becoming the fluffy lady. Sometimes I get winded just talking on the phone. Something has to be done. Is this mid-life crisis? Isn't this too early? Isn't 32 the new 22? (You get the gist of what's motivating me.)
So, now I'm a member of the Boxing Club, where we get to don big puffy gloves and sling sweat as we beat the crap out of punching bags that look every bit as authentic as they actually are. I like to position myself to where I can glance into the mirror every now and then and give myself a good snarl. I make sure I'm not dancing around too much, I try to emulate the muscly guy beating the stink out of the bag next to me. I slink down into my shoulders, look mean, and throw the hardest blows I can manage. At least I'm doing that: I've boxed the skin off of my third knuckles on both hands.
I feel good.
I feel tough.
Just try and mess with me!
In keeping with my long-standing chihuahua complex, I have decided to ditch 24 Hour Fitness (the stinky overcrowded mega-chain gym) for something tougher. I have officially taken up boxing.
I had had it with the jazzercise and the territorial middle-aged women who would glare at you for encroaching on their little plot of real estate on the gym floor. At 24 Hour Fitness, I'd inevitably get relegated to some unwanted corner of the aerobics floor, stuffed there with the fluffy lady in a headband who passes the entire class by casually raising her arms up and down, regardless of what the rest of the class is doing.
I craved the badass classes I used to love at the YMCA in Winston - classes like Pump and Boot Camp and Kickboxing, where the instructors would push you until you thought you would pass out. Now, THAT was fun.
Instead, I've morphed into a marshmallow person. I'm becoming the fluffy lady. Sometimes I get winded just talking on the phone. Something has to be done. Is this mid-life crisis? Isn't this too early? Isn't 32 the new 22? (You get the gist of what's motivating me.)
So, now I'm a member of the Boxing Club, where we get to don big puffy gloves and sling sweat as we beat the crap out of punching bags that look every bit as authentic as they actually are. I like to position myself to where I can glance into the mirror every now and then and give myself a good snarl. I make sure I'm not dancing around too much, I try to emulate the muscly guy beating the stink out of the bag next to me. I slink down into my shoulders, look mean, and throw the hardest blows I can manage. At least I'm doing that: I've boxed the skin off of my third knuckles on both hands.
I feel good.
I feel tough.
Just try and mess with me!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Novice
It astonishes me how many times I keep repeating the novice/expert cycle.
I seriously haven't settled into a routine for more than a couple of years straight in my entire life....and just as I get good, inevitably it is time to switch to something where I'm back at square one.
College - med school- grad school - med school - intern - research - now this.... Having completed an internship and a year as a research resident, I am technically a third-year resident, though I'm widely recognized as a first-year resident in radiology.
Geoff reminded me that when he was a third year resident, he was in his last year of pediatrics. But, here I am, a spring chicken. I guess, at the very least, it should make me a very adaptive person (?). Luckily, I'm less daunted by all of this than I feel I should be...an audacity that I probably should have outgrown by now.
On Friday, there was a new 4th-year med student looking on as I read out with my attending. Apparently, she knows my attending on a personal level (a fact made apparent by all of the personal references and inside jokes she painstakingly made at every opportunity). Every time my attending asked me a question, she would rush to answer it and show me up. The kid even pimped me once. (She is campaigning hard for a rads residency).
As mildly annoying as she was, I was impressed by the volume of factoids she was able to regurgitate, how she spewed those old hackneyed medical mantras that may or may not be located somewhere deep in my memory. There is an art to medicine, but the side that is not art is largely the brute memorization of "facts" that are repeated as ardently and devoutly as any fundamentalist would recite lines from their holy book.
This is the essence of what separates medicine from science. Medicine is about mastering the known (or, at the very least, what everyone agrees upon as being known). It is concrete, causal, black-and-white, and self-assured. Hard work and smarts are generally rewarded.
Science, on the other hand, lingers on the fringe, with the unknown. Or more unsettling still (to the MDs, that is), it deals in uprooting even the most deeply-held facts and mantras. To live in the scientific world, you have to tolerate theory, complexity, shades of gray, and uncertainty. Hard work and intelligence are necessary, but not sufficient to succeed in science. You also need a healthy measure of luck.
With some luck, I'll be successful at navigating these two antithetical yet co-dependent worlds - at least successful enough to justify all of these years of training.
I seriously haven't settled into a routine for more than a couple of years straight in my entire life....and just as I get good, inevitably it is time to switch to something where I'm back at square one.
College - med school- grad school - med school - intern - research - now this.... Having completed an internship and a year as a research resident, I am technically a third-year resident, though I'm widely recognized as a first-year resident in radiology.
Geoff reminded me that when he was a third year resident, he was in his last year of pediatrics. But, here I am, a spring chicken. I guess, at the very least, it should make me a very adaptive person (?). Luckily, I'm less daunted by all of this than I feel I should be...an audacity that I probably should have outgrown by now.
On Friday, there was a new 4th-year med student looking on as I read out with my attending. Apparently, she knows my attending on a personal level (a fact made apparent by all of the personal references and inside jokes she painstakingly made at every opportunity). Every time my attending asked me a question, she would rush to answer it and show me up. The kid even pimped me once. (She is campaigning hard for a rads residency).
As mildly annoying as she was, I was impressed by the volume of factoids she was able to regurgitate, how she spewed those old hackneyed medical mantras that may or may not be located somewhere deep in my memory. There is an art to medicine, but the side that is not art is largely the brute memorization of "facts" that are repeated as ardently and devoutly as any fundamentalist would recite lines from their holy book.
This is the essence of what separates medicine from science. Medicine is about mastering the known (or, at the very least, what everyone agrees upon as being known). It is concrete, causal, black-and-white, and self-assured. Hard work and smarts are generally rewarded.
Science, on the other hand, lingers on the fringe, with the unknown. Or more unsettling still (to the MDs, that is), it deals in uprooting even the most deeply-held facts and mantras. To live in the scientific world, you have to tolerate theory, complexity, shades of gray, and uncertainty. Hard work and intelligence are necessary, but not sufficient to succeed in science. You also need a healthy measure of luck.
With some luck, I'll be successful at navigating these two antithetical yet co-dependent worlds - at least successful enough to justify all of these years of training.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Glitter Sparkles
The way the left side of my head has been throbbing since last night, I can tell my left brain got a good work out during my first two days of radiology. Whew! It was like watching a movie about flying planes then immediately being thrust into the cockpit and ordered to fly to New Jersey!!!
That's why I was so grateful it was July 4th, and we got the day off!
We celebrated with the Grays - Curtis, Kelly, Taylor and Josh. We met them on this day last year at the fireworks over the water at the Embarcadero. We brought Mishka (a mistake because she's petrified by fireworks), and the kids kept coming over to pet her, though she wasn't cooperating (in typical skittish Mishka fashion). Taylor, their charmingly loquacious 9-year-old daughter, struck up a conversation with me (mostly about Jupiter and her pet and High School Musical) that led to our meeting her parents and finding out that her dad Curtis is the foreman for a construction company. It just so happened we were looking for a contractor. It also just so happened that we are neighbors!!! We exchanged numbers and Curtis introduced us to Wally (a character in his own right), and they were hired! One year later, our house is finished, and we love it. We still thank Taylor for the introduction.
Tonight we had them over for an all American cook-out then returned to the same spot to watch the fireworks over the water, but this time we all drove together (sans Mishka). We sat in beach chairs facing the water as Kelly passed out glow jewelry and homemade ice cream and soda. People around us looked jealous. The firework display was gorgeous. Taylor abandoned her seat and nestled up to me and we oooohed and aaaaahed through the entire thing. We even took a vote, and our favorite was definitely the glitter sparkles firework (or so we dubbed it). "Yeah, that was waaaaay cool!" she declared in modern day valley girl speak.
They came back to the house and we enjoyed our new patio furniture and the lighted umbrella Geoff bought. The temperature was a perfect 70 degrees with a clear sky. The kind of gorgeous day that makes you feel extra patriotic....
That's why I was so grateful it was July 4th, and we got the day off!
We celebrated with the Grays - Curtis, Kelly, Taylor and Josh. We met them on this day last year at the fireworks over the water at the Embarcadero. We brought Mishka (a mistake because she's petrified by fireworks), and the kids kept coming over to pet her, though she wasn't cooperating (in typical skittish Mishka fashion). Taylor, their charmingly loquacious 9-year-old daughter, struck up a conversation with me (mostly about Jupiter and her pet and High School Musical) that led to our meeting her parents and finding out that her dad Curtis is the foreman for a construction company. It just so happened we were looking for a contractor. It also just so happened that we are neighbors!!! We exchanged numbers and Curtis introduced us to Wally (a character in his own right), and they were hired! One year later, our house is finished, and we love it. We still thank Taylor for the introduction.
Tonight we had them over for an all American cook-out then returned to the same spot to watch the fireworks over the water, but this time we all drove together (sans Mishka). We sat in beach chairs facing the water as Kelly passed out glow jewelry and homemade ice cream and soda. People around us looked jealous. The firework display was gorgeous. Taylor abandoned her seat and nestled up to me and we oooohed and aaaaahed through the entire thing. We even took a vote, and our favorite was definitely the glitter sparkles firework (or so we dubbed it). "Yeah, that was waaaaay cool!" she declared in modern day valley girl speak.They came back to the house and we enjoyed our new patio furniture and the lighted umbrella Geoff bought. The temperature was a perfect 70 degrees with a clear sky. The kind of gorgeous day that makes you feel extra patriotic....
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
becoming a radiologist
If you've ever played video games you can appreciate how unprepared I am to become a Radiologist... tomorrow.
Just because you've watched someone play Tomb Raider doesn't mean you know what the hell is going on or how to play it. I think maybe I just watched someone else play it and thought "Why, that could be fun!"
For someone who has made very explicit decisions at most of life's junctures, my choosing Radiology was incredibly rash, nearly instinctual.
Nevertheless, here I am. Tomorrow, I will become...A Radiologist.
At 8 AM, I am expected to show up at Thorton Hospital's
Ultrasound Reading Room and begin dictating from those snowy black and white images, somehow making sense of it all. And somehow spending a year in a cancer stem cell lab didn't help much, either.
Please heed my warning: DO NOT GET SICK, NOT NOW...because I am not the only one.
In fact, all across our fine country, there are thousands of clueless first-year residents just like me who will be taking care of patients throughout all aspects of our health care system.
Frightening.
Just wait until August to be ill.
Just because you've watched someone play Tomb Raider doesn't mean you know what the hell is going on or how to play it. I think maybe I just watched someone else play it and thought "Why, that could be fun!"
For someone who has made very explicit decisions at most of life's junctures, my choosing Radiology was incredibly rash, nearly instinctual.
Nevertheless, here I am. Tomorrow, I will become...A Radiologist.
At 8 AM, I am expected to show up at Thorton Hospital's
Ultrasound Reading Room and begin dictating from those snowy black and white images, somehow making sense of it all. And somehow spending a year in a cancer stem cell lab didn't help much, either. Please heed my warning: DO NOT GET SICK, NOT NOW...because I am not the only one.
In fact, all across our fine country, there are thousands of clueless first-year residents just like me who will be taking care of patients throughout all aspects of our health care system.
Frightening.
Just wait until August to be ill.
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