How To Survive

A weekend to destress was helpful. Still not feeling at the top of my game, but I am remembering how I survived in times past: looking forward. Even if I fail out, I get to spend the weekend of April 22nd in Arkansas reconnecting with some cherished friends. And that's really something. Two months until that time. Two months to dig myself out of where I am and find my way again.

I've kept my mind pure since my last post. Granted, I've also been drinking heavily. Particularly after our recent pharmacology lecture on the effects of ethanol, I've appreciated much more the decrease in cognition that ethanol provides. Thank God for GABA. So perhaps in contrast to many other men, I drink to help myself avoid sinning. And to decrease anxiety of course. And a number of other reasons probably. Hard to tell (I'm currently drinking).

I've gotta keep my mind elsewhere. Study hard and daydream of another time and place. That's how I've survived in the past. If I become hopeless, I become depressed, and when troubles come, that depression can easily turn to anxiety.

Awful

Passed pharm with a 73. Failed pathology with a 65.5. Passing path with a 70.3 and pharm with a 75.5.

Anxiety is awful. So is depression. I just want to be back around people in America. It was hard enough to remember friends while they weren't far away. Separated by time and distance... I just don't know anymore. I feel like nothing, and also worse and worse.

If I had failed out when I first started med school, at least I would have only had around $15k to lose over it. Now it's multiple tens of thousands of dollars later, and I'm terrified of failing out. All that money lost. I've met people who've done that; they were coworkers that I trained before I knew anything about medicine.

I keep wanting to give it all to God, but it feels like when I first went to college. I don't know how. I'm saying the words, but it's not changing. And my thoughts haven't been pure either. That's an effect from the time and distance thing, as well as the grades. I just feel very very alone and no amount of texting or skyping does that much to alleviate the problems.

I know that there's a lot of potential sitting in me, but being martyred would be just peachy. Or just killed in a less dignified way. If God allows it, I won't be too picky.

Till then, I'll try to do better. And endure. Maybe suck less...

On The Horizon

It's that time again. Less than a week until exams, followed by exams, and then exams. And, naturally, Valentine's Day falls upon the weekend preceding all of it, just in case anyone had not yet been dissuaded from a world of happiness.

Honestly, I'm just trying to keep my mind clean. It's a daily struggle meow. It was easier in times past, but distance does tend to make the heart grow fonder. Okay, it's really just lust. It's way easier to objectify people when you hardly ever talk to them.

Anyway, pharmacology and pathology and foundations of clinical medicine. All will be tested soon. I have a much better grip on everything than I did on the last exam, partially due to the fact that I don't have a cold this time.

Uhhh.... that's all maybe...

Irritable

I've gotten more angry lately. Waking up for hospital rotations, getting less exercise, and having to be around people too much... I dunno, something took its toll. The guys I hang out with, the white guys, also happen to be obese. And it hadn't been a big deal until I had to hang out with them so much. But it's pretty genuinely repulsive, how much they eat. I hate to be judgmental, and I can normally kinda just say "to each their own", but even I am cutting back on alcohol the more I read about its potential negative long-term effects. But despite obesity being a killing thing in America, they go on fueling it.

That and the fact that there's a reason why they failed classes in the past, and failed their first exams this semester. We make fun of others in the class for asking dumb questions, but now I've stopped asking basic questions like "what's that the prof just said?" because there's always a follow-up question along with the answer, to make sure I got all the info or to explain something obvious. When our patience is being constantly tested by power outages and useless lectures, it starts to be tough to be polite.

I just want to be back in America. I know that it won't solve every problem, but it will solve a lot of them.

I don't want to find my relief in drinking. Drinking should be in celebration, not to drown sorrows. But the latter will happen if I don't figure something out...

No more rotations till next month. Exams a week from Tuesday (followed by exams in playing doctor class the following Friday and Monday).

I wish I didn't need to work out every other day. Or go to lectures. Or all of the things.

Weekend In St Kitts

It was a big weekend. Skipped classes on Friday and the timing worked out so we only got to the hotel half an hour after my family had arrived. My mom and I got massages on the beach and we all had lunch and talked about this and that.

I also had a tinder match from a vet student on this island just a few days before, and she told me that I should meet up with her. After watching a movie with my friends, they dropped me off at the bar where she was. Over the course of like 40 minutes of walking to a wifi spot to message her and then walking back to the bar, she finally spotted me. (Her pictures didn't clearly show her face, and I wasn't about to bet that the pretty girl dancing with all the guys was my tinder match). Moments after greeting me, she said something to a friend to the side about going to the Marriott because there was a "greater chance for makeout", yet I had the feeling that I had already been somewhat dismissed at this point, probably because I was acting so timid. Or socially uncomfortable. Or also who knows.

In any case, her friends were driving back to the Marriott, where I was staying anyway, and I asked if there was room for me. She said that there was, though once again, I was pretty sure that the welcome was forced. The fortunate thing about leaving a bar environment to sit in a car, of course, is that I could make jokes. The guy in the front asked tinder girl who this creeper was in the car, and I replied something to the effect of "Hello captain, my name is London" and introduced myself as the medical student from Nevis. I made a bunch of jokes to ripen the mood, and by the end of that five minute drive, we were all conversing about the differences between our schools and islands.

In the casino portion of the hotel, the tinder girl was chatting up some guys, then soon disappeared, presumably for those makeout opportunities. I made friends with the guys there and then retired for the evening. The tinder girl was cute but did remind me too much of my crazy youngest sister, though far more reserved (which is to say not that reserved). However, meeting someone new from a different school and island was preferable by far to what my friends did, which was pig out, watch some shows, and smoke a cigar.

Of course, before the movie, my friends had asked if I had a rubber for my encounter with tinder girl. I then informed them that I'm still a virgin, that such matters weren't really a concern for me. And they were shocked. Not only because of the fact that I'm relatively fit and attractive (they are obese and alright), but also because I keep up just fine in conversation when wading the waters of double entendres and sexual innuendos. My younger homeschooled self would be proud.

This opened up a flood of questions from my atheist friend. Virginity in his eyes meant some real commitment to a faith, so he began quizzing me on different denominations and spiritual beliefs. I didn't try to preach at him, since I really dislike that concept of evangelism. I just answered in terms of history and culture for the most part. Even though I wasn't actively trying to convert him (though I did joke about it), it was nice that just this part of my life that I've actually managed to give to God despite temptation can change the way a person perceives me and my faith.

On Saturday, my friends were content to sit around and watch CSI for hours until checkout. They both talked about it like it was the ideal, laying in bed while watching that. I was so restless. I wanted to read or do anything else. Anyway, the rest of the story was basically just that we went back to Nevis that day and I watched a James Bond movie before going to sleep.

And now, a week of early wakeups begins. Lab tomorrow and then hospital rotations in the mornings until Friday. We'll see how stupid I end up feeling...

Paaaasssseeeddddd

Okay, I passed both exams as nicely as ever. My higher grade (78, just below class average) was in pharmacology, which was a surprise. Rumor has it that seven questions were dropped from that exam, which would explain how I managed to pass. I made a 75 in pathology, though the average was about the same for both classes. Fortunately, pathology really doesn't worry me that much, since like half of the material is stuff that we've already learned in multiple other classes.

Tomorrow, my mom and brother visit the neighbor island via cruise, so I'm waking up early and traveling to St Kitts with a couple of friends from school.

And I'm so relieved about those grades. I still need to shape up and do way better, but it's not such an awful pressure. Can't say the same for my friends though...

Fear & Anxiety

Over the past couple weeks, every time someone asked "how are you?", I would reply by saying that I wouldn't know until I have some grades posted. As much as I hate it, this seems to be my world. Forever trapped in the question of whether I'll do well enough on exams to get back to America. I've been enjoying learning so much this month; pharmacology in particular is fascinating, with each clinical vignette being like a riddle that I can actually solve. So although days of studying were draining as usual, I still enjoyed it. Until the tests. Pharmacology was a brutal exam. Like, I hope I passed, but I'm not betting on it. So now I've felt this anxiety creeping on me, and the compulsion to constantly check the grades will hit me again and again.

What I hate is that I know this feeling isn't right. I shouldn't be hit with anxiety over something like this, right? Worry never helped anything. Yet here I am, my feelings tied to the results of my collective knowledge tested on a particular exam.

What do I do with that? Submit it to God? Yeah, trying. Work out for endorphins? Done. Booze it up? Beer in hand and hoping to avoid taking it any further.

When that depressive episode hit me last year as a result of grades and having to stay an extra semester, I couldn't stop it. Prayer, Bible, God, workouts, booze, none of it fixed it. It was like a heavy blanket. I could hold it at bay for a little bit, but the weight of it was still always there. So now that I'm a full-time student again, I'm afraid of the same thing happening. Again. Especially since I've come so far...

I'm eight months away from getting off of this rock. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. But that's only if I don't screw this up. I don't want to spend another Thanksgiving here.

So there it is. I have anxiety about these grades. I want to submit them to God, but don't seem able to when actually confronted with the grades.

As it stands, I think I made at least a 50 on pharm and at least a 70 in path. A year ago, of course, I was sure that I'd made at least a 90 in a class, and that turned out to be a 58.