topotales

The theme of this post, not dissimilar to the theme of this blog overall, is that I am a walking disaster.

Monday evening I found out that I had been exempted from the last of my finals, thanks to carrying an A average all semester.  Meaning, I have straight A’s for the semester and didn’t even need to take 2 out of 4 of my finals.  Feeling righteously proud of myself, I took all of Tuesday off from life and planted myself in front of bad television for six fabulous hours.  When Pnut came home from work I treated myself to a virgin bloody mary, extra spicy.  The bloody mary mix came from my mother, who I later found out retrieved it from her office while they were cleaning out the supply closet.  Thanks, mom.

Fast forward to three in the morning, and many trips to the bathroom later.  Then fast forward to seven in the morning where I am drinking water and simultaneously watching it leave my body from the other end.  At this point, I started to get seriously worried for baby… I’ve had food poisoning in India and survived at least two days in a row of this kind of nastiness, but I’m not five inches tall.  So we call the midwife’s emergency number, and the emergency doctor on the other end of the phone tells me I have a 24 hour flu, to take some immodium, drink some water and stay hydrated.  Thanks, JACKASS.  Would be great if any of that stuff stayed inside for more than ten seconds.  So we head directly to the midwife’s office.  The doctor there (my midwife is out of town) takes one look at my dry, cracked lips and the bag full of vomit I’m holding and sends me to the ER, thankfully just down the street.  There I spend the rest of the day with an IV full of fluids and Zofran, capped off with a visit to the ultrasound doctor.

I admit it, me + doctor is inevitably a collision of egos.  Here’s the thing - I respect a smart person, whether or not they hold an MD.  But (big, huge but) holding an MD does not immediately gain my respect for you, nor does it mean you’re smarter than me, nor does it automatically mean you know more about medicine than I do.  True story.  So when the ultrasound doctor began her visit by not looking me in the eye, but by pulling up my hospital gown and telling me I shouldn’t be in her office because “this has nothing to do with the baby, you’re just vomiting, right?” she did not win my favor.  Instead, she started me on a barrage of annoying and inane questions to which I already knew the answers, intended to assess her knowledge of actual medicine since her knowledge of human relations was obviously lacking.  Her responses to my questions were less than adequate, and she covered up her lack of knowledge by acting like I had no right to ask her anything.  Then, she informed me that I had a giant fibroid which was probably “what’s causing all the abdominal pain”.  Thanks doc, OR it could be cramping from the explosive diarrhea I’ve had for the last 12 hours, you JACKASS.  Also, if an expecting mother has been in the ER for over six hours, she probably needs a reassuring look at her baby regardless of whether or not you feel like it.  And it’s what’s PAYING your bills, you JACKASS.

Pnut was a little embarrassed by my obnoxious interrogation of the doc.  At least twice he whispered out of the corner of his mouth “topo, I thought you were feeling sick”.  But I think he is secretly pleased when I pull this kind of shit - as soon as she left, he agreed she was an asshole.

The important part of the story is - baby is fine, and I figured out some cool shit on my own - like the reason I continue to appear not as if I’m carrying a baby, but as if I just ate five rolls of cookie dough for lunch: baby is sitting straight up and down in my belly.

Them’s the news, folks.  Sorry for the long absence, but I’ve been busy working on those A’s and collecting enough medical knowledge to annoy smarter and smarter doctors down the line.  My mum’s still convinced that this should all lead to an MD of my own.  But really, wouldn’t it be cooler to be a nurse practitioner with a PhD so all the other JACKASSES have to call me doctor anyway?

P.S.  My new favorite word is JACKASS.

Here’s something you don’t see every day!

And let me add that after almost three months of dissection, those cats didn’t exactly smell like a garden of roses.  Add that to morning sickness, and you have me on multiple runs to the bathroom for vomiting +  an overworked lab partner (thank you Jess!).

1. I am taking an Anatomy exam on Thursday which will involve many half-dissected cats spread out with numbered pins stuck into their vessels and organs.  Did I mention yet that my debilitating morning sickness comes with a side order of meat disgust?  I hope there aren’t points-off for vomiting into body cavities.
2. Pnut and I have been discussing what we will call this baby if it is a boy.  I have an affinity for names embedded with X’s, Z’s and V’s, but since I couldn’t think of any actual names with these letters, I started replacing the letters in regular names and suggesting them.  Like Joaquin becomes Xoaquin.  Very cool, right?  Pnut doesn’t think so: “If you’re just going to start making this shit up, then I say we just call him Parrrrrakannastuuur.”  Which, now that I think about it, actually wouldn’t be too bad if you changed it to Xaravanaztor…
3. The number of Italians in Jersey is most apparent from behind the wheel of a car.  Things like stop signs, yield, lights, and one-way streets are just GUIDELINES.  Also, the grassy median of a highway is just an unlabeled, efficient road from the local highway to the express highway.
4. There may be aliens on the road here… and if there are, this guy is going to find them first!  Either that, or his car gets better programming than my house.

5.  Edited this post to add that on Sunday we went out to lunch at a local pub.  Pnut asked the waitress if he could please have his hamburger without the bunnies.  It took us all a few minutes to realize he meant without the bun.

One of the classes I’m taking this semester as a prerequisite for nursing is Anatomy and Physiology II.  I was a terrible student my first time around in college.  Meaning, I studied Literature and Romance Languages.  For somebody who can whip out a decent paper in a few hours and pick up a language pretty easily, this means I spent a lot of time partying and socializing and experimenting with various drugs, and not a lot of time studying.

For my first A&P II exam earlier this week, on the other hand, I spent a LOT of time studying.  Like at least 15-20 hours per week, every week.  I made notecards.  I wrote outlines.  I joined study groups.  And I walked into the exam feeling like I KNEW my shit, and I was eager to tell somebody all the cool shit I knew.  And not just because I wanted an A, which I do, but because it’s really, really cool shit to know.  So cool that I put Paolo to sleep these days telling him exactly, vein to heart to artery, how a bit of blood gets from one place to another, and all the minute details of how it clots.  But when I walked out of that exam earlier this week… well, let’s just say that the medical field has a way of handing your ass to you on a platter just when you think your getting smart.  It is completely demoralizing.

As a Liberal Arts student, there are always books you haven’t read, better writers, people who speak more languages, and obviously there’s always someone smarter than you.  But you never feel like knowing the stuff they know would be … impossible.  Impossible, not because you can’t study and try to learn it, but because one little brain just could not possibly hold all of that information.  In science, and medicine in particular, it’s glaringly obvious to me that there’s a vast, vast sum of things that I may never know.  And unlike, say, learning Italian, I can’t just go pick up a book about how to insert IV’s, head for the nearest hospital and shoot in the dark until I get it right.

All I’m saying is that those preparing to move from a Liberal Arts education (even one of the finest in the country) to Medicine (even at the local community college) should be prepared to feel their IQ’s shrinking with the quickness.  And to having it suck eggs.

I am in the midst of studying for my math placement exams for nursing school, so this will be brief.  Here’s what’s been going on:

1.  My dad drove up for a short visit and dropped off The Bitch for me.  Cars are a big fucking deal for my dad, and for me.  I feel honored to own this car.  It’s fast, it’s finicky, and it’s my dad’s dream come true.  It’s sitting in a different pew than my old ‘86 Hachi-Roku (yes, I had the carbon-fiber hood panda just like in Initial D, yes, I got many tickets, and yes I want to cry every time I think about the fact that I no longer own it), but I tell you - it’s the same damned church!  Hallelujah!  The Bitch is in MINT condition.  That won’t surprise anyone who knows my dad called it his “pocket rocket” and that it was polished with a diaper every Sunday at 10am or every 10 miles, whichever came first.  Truly, everything my dad has ever owned is treated that way.  But cars are special.  I hope I can keep her up to snuff; my only instructions from him were “whatever you do, keep her in the family”.

2.  Pnut and I threw a housewarming party.  Suffice to say, the guy at the liquor store told Pnut twice “boy, I wish I were coming to your house tonight”.  My beautiful cousins drove in from NY and Boston.  AND I got to meet the incredible Ken from Twunch and his gorgeous fiancé.  So someday soon I’ll get to say “Yeah, I’m just popping over to NY to see some friends of mine on stage”.  And then I’ll get beat up.  Because I live in Jersey, and that might actually be code for “How you doin’, you big guido?” or something.

3.  Math.  Lots of math.  A minimum of 8 hours of math per day.  And guess what - it hasn’t been as awful as I like to pretend.  It’s hard, but it’s also kinda fun.  Because I can look at 10 websites until I find the one that explains it to me in a way I understand, instead of the asshole tight-bun high school teacher standing over my shoulder telling me how bad I suck.  God, I wish we had internet when I was in high school.

4.  Mentioning Initial D above reminds me I need to add Anthony Wong to my celebrity  fucklist.  Pnut, are you taking note?  Your Jennifer Anniston obsession has competition.

That’s about it. Anyone know how to reduce a trinomial by grouping?  Seriously.  Does anyone know?