Dear FOX - a cautionary haiku

Channel which ruins all
"Shall be available soon"?
Best by nine - or else!

I'm having cable trouble. And a massive headache (Mia, what do you DO about these horrific migraine things? They're a new and terrible critter for me to deal with - like the pancreas wasn't enough.) And I'm shamefully hooked on American Idol, and I MUST WATCH IT at 9PM Specific (Family Guy humor, there) to see who gets the boot this week. My guess is that it'll be a country boot, swung out of time to a line of chirpy violins, and will land squarely on the butt of one Kristy Lee Cook. Seriously, don't they have people to advise these kids when they're about commit show suicide?

Anyway, I'm not sure what it is about blogs and haikus, but for some reason, I feel obligated once in awhile to post one once in awhile.

Edit - So dialidol.com says that no one is safe except David Archuleta. Pfffft.

Scott's birthday

Scott turned 29 today, and I wanted to drive the 30 minutes to his house from mine to go to church with him, and then hang around and watch a movie or something. (And likely eat cake and possibly pizza, knowing his mom!) Scott, church, a movie, pizza, and cake = an evening of my favorite things.

Instead, I felt too weak and fatigued to even take a shower. My doctor ordered some bloodwork which I had done yesterday - he ordered a CBC w/diff (meaning they separate out all of the types of white blood cells and give a percentage of how many are there) and a monospot. I'm thinking it may be mono, because I had it about 10 years ago and I remember how tired and generally crappy I felt. I would sleep about 12 hours each night, and then come home from class and take a 3-4 hour nap, and still feel exhausted. That went on for a good while, too. And I've read that mono is worse in someone who is past their mid-to-late teens. Great.

I am just so sad that I didn't even get to see Scott on his birthday because of this stupid mysterious illness that I have, that I wish someone would diagnose so that people would stop getting irritated at me for feeling bad all the time. I know my family and friends are starting to think that I'm just lazy, or depressed, or something. I really miss Scott, though - it's hard for me to see him these days, because during the week, he's working and understandably doesn't want to spend the hour on the road (round-trip) that it takes to come to my house, plus the couple of hours it takes to watch a movie or whatever. And I simply don't feel like driving to his house, or anywhere else.

I'm sitting here crying as I type this because I'm so mad at myself for feeling so hideous that it's keeping Scott and me apart. But I just don't see any solution. I'm open to suggestions.

An ER visit worth writing home about (preceded by some TMI, just so you know)

Lately, I've been having a little medical issue that isn't quite related to my pancreas - well heck, I'll just tell you. This fentanyl patch that I wear, being an opiate, has the unfortunate habit of slowing down peristalsis of the intestine (meaning that it slows your gut to a crawl and greatly decreases its squeeze-squeeze-squeezage.) While I am on a "bowel regimen" (probably too much information, sorry) of MiraLax and Colace, I will admit that I maybe haven't been 100% faithful to the regimen. Occasionally I'll skip a day. (Nevermore though, nevermore.)

Anyway, the thing is, I was literally full of crap. Hardy har har.

It actually has made me really, really sick - I feel so sluggish and spend lots of time sleeping. I have no energy and not much of an appetite, and I stay nauseated with abdominal cramping, on top of the pancreatitis. I've been working with an urgent care doctor who first tried lactulose. No go. Then magnesium citrate, which may as well have been water. Then he took an xray, saw that I'm indeed full of crap (but not visibly obstructed and there are no dilatations - i.e., areas that look like they're about to explode.) So now, I'm on the five-star regimen: mineral oil 3x/day, lactulose 2x/day, and MiraLax, Colace and Sennakot once a day. Fuuuuuun. Guess what, though? All of that stuff just made the cramping and nausea worse. So I finally went to the emergency room (and you know how I HATE being an ER patient - if you don't know, see previous posts here and here.)

I went to a different ER than I went to in those two horrible accounts, though (if you know me and are from around here, it's the "green" one, not the "blue" one. The one where you're more likely to find the most medical students.) Well, they were ridiculously nice. They asked me if I was in pain and gave me some Dilaudid and Zofran without me even having to beg and plead for relief. Then they did some "washing out" procedures which I totally don't want to do again, and then they gave me another dose of meds and sent me home. But the ER docs were SO nice, and the experience was just a 180 from the mean and ignorant doctors I encountered at the "Blue Hospital".

I'm still feeling really tired and sluggish with general malaise, but maybe it's getting better. We'll see. I go to the pain clinic on Wednesday, and I'm going to ask for an extra dose of my breakthrough meds for each day because six days out of seven, I have about 5-6 hours of severe pain (in addition to the other two peaks of breakthrough pain) and nothing to treat it with. That's one of the reasons went back on leave - I just can't work with that much pain. I complained about it at my last appointment, and do you know what they gave me? Seroquel. Which is an atypical antipsychotic. I'm beginning to think that I don't like this clinic as much as I thought I did. Please pray that the appointment will go well - it's Wednesday afternoon.

But for now, yay for the Green ER!

Geeeeeeeeez! I've been gone for awhile.

I have no excuse - just holidays, my birthday, and sickness. Did you know I've been sick on about 26 of the last 29 birthdays? It's kind of my trademark. You should see some of the pictures that I have from my birthdays when I was a wee tot - standing in front of a flickering Snoopy cake, looking unsure whether to blow on it or barf on it. Actually, in this day and age, you COULD see that picture. I'm at the apartment, though, and the picture's at home - I'll scan and add it later. I was so darn cute when I was a kid, I'd hate to deprive you of my cherubian face and my dark curls. (I'm not being vain - because while I was a cute kid, I'm not so cute anymore. So.)

What have I been doing, you ask? Let's see. I ushered in Christmas Eve. Then I ushered it out and ushered in Christmas. Then I ushered it out and ushered in my birthday (my 29th birthday - this is the one that I just keep celebrating the anniversary of, right?) and my pancreas reared it's ugly head even higher than normal. And then I got some sort of virus that came complete with lots of barfage, weird leg pain and twitching. That stayed around until New Year's Eve. Scott was very sweet through that whole viral crap - he came up to see me almost every day and was all attentive and stuff. Awww.

Then I started back to school on January 7th - I'm on my Family Practice rotation. So far, I really like it. It's soooooooo much better than my foray into Internal Medicine (I blame a lot of that debacle, though, on the fact that I was so sick and everyone was all, "How dare you be human!!!") This time, a whole different me showed up to the first day of the rotation. I am a lot more interested, responsible, and attentive when I don't feel like someone is stabbing me in the gut.

And I've watched Reign Over Me, Juno, and Enchanted. I'd recommend them all - especially Juno. I adore Michael Cera (is he too young to join my Geek Love Fake Boyfriend Brigade? I'll have to check.) And Ellen Page makes a great debut. It's funny, heartwarming, and just very darn good.

Oh, and I saw a toenail fungus yesterday. I itched the whole rest of the day. I know that Trichophyton (Trichophytons?) don't have legs and couldn't have jumped on me, but still. The mind is a powerful thing. Also, did you know that adults most commonly get toenail infestations by dermatophytes, which invade normal keratin? And that older adults (i.e., geriatric adults) most commonly get toenails infected with mold, which invade irregular keratin? I didn't either.

These Are Your Heels On A Psychiatry Rotation. Or, Jessica Simpson Causes Large Fluid-Filled Lesions.

I haven't said nearly enough about my foray into the sleepy, "I can't believe they're letting me do this!" world of clinical medical education. Now, this has been entirely different from the first two basic science years of medical school. First and most imporant, we have to dress up every day (blah blah blah professionalcakes) instead of looking like we just woke up four minutes before. And unfortunately, I'm too fat for most of my "professional" clothes, so I had to buy a bunch of new stuff (that's not the unfortunate part - the unfortunate part is that I'm quickly approaching the size of a small house.) I had to be careful in top selection - cap sleeves must be avoided at all costs, because a shirt with cap sleeves might as well say, "Look at me! I have sausage arms!" They're worse than sleeveless, even. And then we move on to shoes. Since safety requirements dictate that we wear shoes that are completely closed-toe, and comfort requirements dictate that I can't wear much of a heel or anything like that - I pretty much look like I'm sharing shoes with my great-grandmother. The very first day, I wore this cute pair of Jessica Simpson wedges (ballet flats with a wee heel - the marriage of cute and comfortable. Or so I thought.)

At the end of the day, I had blisters as big as my head (and that's BIG.) I later managed to rip the skin off of the blisters by dutifully walking a couple of laps around the park in my orthopedic-looking-but-very-comfy-and-functional Masai Barefoot Technology shoes from Bliss. Check out my scary blisters, and my cracked heels which I cannot fix despite the 1,023,872 heel creams I've tried. And when those suckers crack, they HURT - a lot more than something that small should hurt. I have a crack on the bottom of each heel right now, and I have developed this odd walk-on-my-toes mechanism, which makes me look like I might be cognitively impaired. Anyway, the blisters:

And the next day, I still had to wear shoes, because barefoot student doctors are generally frowned upon. So I ended up buying TWO sets of not-at-all-fashionable shoes with toes - a regular pair in a couple of different colors and a backless pair in those same colors. (I love shoes, though, so I can't really complain. I just wish my shoes in current rotation could be could be cuter.) I actually like being dressed up, though - I feel like a real grownup going off to work or something. (Ha ha, I'm so not a real grownup, though.)

As you know, I'm on the psychiatry rotation, which is known for being the easier one. This was a good one for me to start with, since I don't adapt to change well and it takes me a little while to get used to new routines and such. So it's better that I don't have 4:45AM-8:00PM days (see "Surgery") right off the bat. Eeeeugh, 4:45AM. I really don't know how I'm going to manage that, y'all. I have a hard time rolling out of bed at 6:30. And I've learned that my psychiatry preceptors (i.e., the psychiatrists) are not unlike me. One of them told me that he hates morning. A couple of them don't roll into the hospital until around 9:30 or 10. That's AWESOME. I might consider going into psychiatry solely for that reason. Just kidding. Although I do think this rotation has been really interesting, particularly the inpatient stuff. I'm learning a lot from my patients.

And now I'm tired. To be continued. I also need to tell y'all about my Pain Clinic experience.

Amusing ringtones and some health issues

We were in a biostatistics/epidemiology lecture for our Step One review course yesterday, and our professor's phone went off (it happens often when the instructor is an M.D.) and his ringtone was Alright by Janet Jackson. BWAH. He said, "Janet Jackson. I live in the 80s." And we all laughed, so he explained to whoever was on the phone, "My ringtone is Alright by Janet Jackson." That was probably the most awesome thing that happened in my life yesterday. (Isn't that sad? Oh my gosh.)

Probably TMI

Oh! And I think I peed out a kidney stone. I've been having some right flank pain and UTI symptoms (the whole burning pain, frequency, urgency, etc.) and the pain kind of moved from my right side to my right lower abdomen, so I diagnosed myself with some sort of ovarian malady. I also felt like I was going to barf for a couple of days (I attributed that to nervous stomach, since I have this giant beast of an exam hanging over my head and getting ever closer.) Then yesterday, I found myself peeing out something that looked like a wee little dark orangish-red Nerd. (You remember Nerds, don't you?) I think I blunted the pain over the past few days because my pancreas has been hurting so I've been taking my trusty Vicodin, but that kidney stone continued to hurt through the Vicodin HP. Wow. Those things must really suck if you don't have a narcotic.

/Probably TMI

And finally, someone made me laugh while I was trying to eat lunch, and my epiglottis malfunctioned and I ended up with cheeseburger lung.

And that's all I've got for now.