A Week Off

My first week of general internal medicine (as opposed to the GI medicine that the last six weeks was focused on) is going well, primarily due to the fact that we do not have hospital hours this week. This meant that aside from reviewing a few charts at the hospital on Monday, we did not do anything this week.

However, the brief experience I have had in this rotation is already a breath of fresh air. Solving the riddles of what a given patient has, in terms of learning what orders to send for as well as what to treat with, is so nice. Perhaps what makes the biggest difference in this compared to previous rotations is that I already know enough to sound competent; in the rest, I had a world of studying to do that I never completed till the end of the rotation. I feel as if I have already impressed the doctor a little bit with the diagnoses I have come up with (even if none were what the patient actually had).

Anyway, since I had the week off, my mom came down and we decided to stay in Galveston for two nights. Since it has been a fortnight since school started, the place is pretty much dead. So not exactly what one hopes for when one finally has a reason to leave one's apartment, but there are worse things.

Speaking of which, one point my mom was emphatic about as we discussed some psych issues is the value of life. She spoke of how good it is, how it is better to be alive than not. I disagree. Being alive is exhausting, and the amount of even mildly unpleasant times seems to far outweigh the amount of pleasurable times. And I had thought that before I had the experience of breaking down my emotional walls for a period of time. Even when I was constantly surrounded by funny and supportive friends, I still wanted to die at any given time. This is also because the Apostle Paul spoke so well of life after death; it is rough when your passive suicidal ideation is apparently theologically sound.

In other news, girly texted me last week saying "Miss you!" I wanted to reply "Oh. Kay." but decided to be better and returned the sentiment, despite the fact that I do not have any particular desire to see or interact with her (largely in response to her expressing this position of no desire to interact toward me a few months ago). She also responded to something funny I posted on Instagram. Hopefully I can avoid running into her, or, perhaps better yet, rise above my resentment in such a way as to be both kind and honest when I see her.

I take comfort in the fact that the GI doctor I worked with did not meet his wife until residency. That seems to me to be the most practical way. She is a physician's assistant, I think. Of course, I am so annoyingly particular that it is difficult for me to scrounge up hope in the field of romance. But I did learn some lessons from allowing myself to like a girl. For instance, I must never make assumptions regarding their faith; this one turned out to be new to the faith, and unwilling to read her Bible, though she casually read other material frequently. There were also selfish aspects which I thought were playfully charming, but in the long run, would likely be frustrating to me. And of course, she was tied to her mid-level job to an extent that I felt burdened to try and aim rotations and residency toward her in Dallas (a city I do not particularly care for) rather than toward what would be best for me and my future goals as a physician. Oh, and in general, it felt as if most of my part in the potential relationship was reactive. One of the last things she said to me (when we were talking about anything real) was not to worry, because we were good. But I was the one who had a problem with her, not the other way around. She was like my family, only seeming to understand things as they related to her, rather than using empathy.

It is why one prays about dating, and why one asks for more holy men to pray with them, before committing to anything.