omg, nyc

All I can think about is how good it is to be home, and it’s VERY distracting from my studies. 

I went to the Temescal Street Fair today, and wandered the street in perfect weather…when I was supposed to be working on my paper.

Yesterday I went on a hike at Wunderlich Park in Woodside…when I was supposed to be working on my case presentation.

I’m working on a case presentation on molar pregnancy, which is so gross and weird and fascinating! I had a patient a few weeks ago who was being monitored after having the mole evacuated, and it was the first time I’d come across it. But I wasn’t as stoked about her as I was about seeing trichomonads swimming around under the microscope! It’s awful, I know, to be excited about things that are wrong with other people, but dude! Little protozoans swimming around! And they’re very easy to destroy with Flagyl, so it’s not like I’m squealing over some great misfortune.

It’s amazing how actually being interested in the subject matter does pretty much nothing for my work ethic. Serious burnout. And serious distracting happiness. I think I’ve been grinding my teeth a lot, maybe chomping at the bit in my sleep, just trying to make it across the finish line.

I have so much school work piling up in the homestretch, so obviously it’s time to get back to the blog. 

I struggle with prenatal visits. While I’m totally fascinated by all the physiological changes a woman’s body goes through in pregnancy, I’m so much more interested in gynecology than obstetrics. I’ve been trying to explain my disinterest, but it’s difficult for some reason. Maybe part of it is that I’ve been seeing most of my pregnant patients in a practice where all that happens at every visit is weight, blood pressure, sonogram. Sometimes they have a little blood taken, but that’s basically it. In most practices, women only get like 2 or 3 sonograms in their entire pregnancies. Maybe I’d be more into it if I were measuring the height of the uterus and listening to fetal heart tones. But I don’t think so. Prenatal visits have such a predictable sequence, but if something goes wrong, it goes REALLY wrong and it scares the crap out of me.

Routine gynecological visits have so much potential to be so interesting! You’re checking in with women about everything that is going on below the belt. You get to talk to her about her sex life! And her life in general. It’s great. All of the problems that come up at gyn appointments seem so much more manageable to me, or at least puzzles that I’m interested in solving. I totally look forward to working with women on resolving mysterious pelvic pain or crazy periods or chronic BV. Things like preeclampsia or cholestasis of pregnancy? Too fucking crazy. 

I love when Bill is in town! He got in on Thursday, and in a few short days we went to:

• The Levee: We tried to go to the beer garden across the street, but even on a Thursday, it was too crowded and intolerable, so we went to the reliable Levee and drank Jim Beam and cream soda. It’s better than it sounds, I swear.
• The Commodore: Also totally crowded on a Thursday! Clearly I need to get out more.
• The Metropolitan: Of course we had to attack the photobooth at the divey gay bar. Of course.
• Dean Street: Pulled pork for brunch? Yes please! Worth venturing out of the house in the pouring rain.
• Brooklyn Brewery: Brewery tour! Totally fun and interesting.
• Eastern Bloc: Such an elaborate website for such a tiny bar. I was kind of disappointed that I was not the only girl in the bar, as we thought might be the case. 
• Crif Dogs: I finally branched out from the chihuahua I usually get, and I got the “casually attired” dog with cheese and sauteed onions. Oh DAYUMN.
• Blue and Gold: $3 drink in Manhattan: they exist.
• Crocodile Lounge: Free pizza with every beer. We might have a junk food eating disorder.

So much fun, so little time. I couldn’t resist making a list to keep track. After all the eating we did yesterday, I feel like I need to eat nothing but vegetables for a whole week.

Now I just have to get back to packing and school work and…

Well, after weeks of rigmarole, I finally started my clinical rotation at Harlem Hospital today. The process of getting “clearance” was arduous. It took a month of emails and phone calls before I even heard back from the woman who was supposed to set up the process, and when I did hear from her, it was in the form of a terse email that simply told me my appointment was for 8:30 the next day. My appointment for what? It turned out it was for a physical, which involved taking titers to make sure I’d had all my immunizations, a drug test, and a chat with a kind of bitchy PA who was like, “You studied English? You should become a teacher.” Seriously, lady?

After the physical, which somehow involved like 3 hours of waiting around in between different people seeing me, I had to go to the volunteer office and fill out a stack of paperwork for a background check. This involved listing every address I’ve had for the past TWENTY EIGHT YEARS. Of course.

I finally got all this done and then had to wait a week before I could pick up the ID that would actually allow me to start clinical. But when I went to pick up the ID during the time window the volunteer office gave me, they were mysteriously closed. I called, and the person I talked to (who answered the phone while they were closed…) told me I’d have to go to an orientation, which was of course during my midterm the next week. 

Writing all this out, it sounds really dumb. 

Anyway, I decided I would just show up on Monday and see what I could accomplish. At every step of the way, it seemed like the people I talked to suspected that I was somehow trying to be sneaky and subvert their process, when really I was just doing what I’d been told I needed to do. After sitting through like half the orientation (because I needed to learn how to wash my hands, right?) they decided I would be allowed to get my damn ID. Phew!

So I started today. I’m working with a doctor who quizzes me on prenatal stuff! Crap! I explained that my sometimes stupid answers are because my focus is more on family planning than pregnancy, and then I started getting his questions right. Ha. Look at me, I know about Rhogam.

And to put it all in perspective, I saw two patients today who’d been the victims of female genital mutilation. I’d been kind of aware that I might see this, because I knew that there is a study being conducted about this at Harlem Hospital, but it didn’t hit me quite how common it is. They were both pregnant women who had moved here from West African countries. One woman’s clitoral hood had been removed, and one didn’t have a clitoris at all.

Suddenly nothing that I’d been bitching about seemed important at all.

Yesterday, I had a three hour break between classes, so of course I used that time as any productive member of society would choose to: I came home and took a nap.

I didn’t fall asleep right away, and it seemed like I was just going to lay there with my eyes closed for the whole hour I had allotted, when suddenly I was walking with Margaux under great redwood trees. It was just her and me, attached by a long rope leash. We were walking downhill, approaching a coastline, which Margaux was very excited to reach. At one point, she jumped off a cliff, and landed on a small ledge. She growled at me to follow her, but instead I tossed her the leash and found another way down. It seemed treacherous, but was surprisingly easy to run down. Margaux met me at the bottom, holding the leash in her mouth for me to take back. Just as we were nearing the sand, my alarm went off, so Dream Margaux didn’t get to go swimming.

The dream walk was so vivid when I woke up. I wondered if it had some subconscious meaning about overcoming obstacles on the way to something beautiful and awesome, or about enjoying the journey, or if it was just about missing my dog and the Pacific Ocean. Maybe some combination of all those.

Last night, I went out to see my friend Whitney play music in the LES. Totally fun! Of course, though, the punishment for having fun late at night is that it takes me like a year to get home. I took the D to the 3 to the 1, relatively painlessly, except for some longish late night wait times. Whatevs.

When the 1 went above ground at 125th St., I saw that the rumored snowstorm was beginning. There was a thick swirl of flakes fluttering outside the train, and things were quickly getting covered in white. At 157th, the train stopped, stayed in the station for a minute, and then pulled out without ever opening the doors. Everyone who had stood up to get off the train was like, “Whyyyyy???” Including me. Come on, MTA, get it together! At 168th, I momentarily debated waiting for a downtown train to bring me back to my stop, but decided to just walk the ten blocks home instead of waiting some stupid amount of time for a train to carry me a distance that I walk like twice a day anyway.

The snow was a serious factor to consider. Would it be beautiful or excruciating to walk ten blocks in snow?

At first, beautiful. Broadway was about as quiet and New York gets, and the snow was mostly undisturbed. Snow really is as quiet as they say, especially when you’re so used to the cacophony of rain in the winter. It was kind of cool getting to make footprints in new snow, before it turns all brown and cityfied. I was walking along thinking, “OK, this is kind of magical.”

But after about five blocks, the beautiful, serene white flakes that had been landing on me were starting to melt, turning into icy water that was seeping through my hat. So, I think I’ve scientifically determined that snow is pretty for five blocks. I’ve also scientifically determined that I should pretty much always be wearing my sleeping bag coat in the winter.

I remember going for hikes in the rain when I was a little girl, and I really liked the way everything sounded inside the hood of my raincoat. There was this sort of magical effect added both to sounds I made and sounds that came from outside my hood. For some reason, it’s hard to describe childhood sense memories, even when I re-experience them as an adult.

I was walking down the street today in my full length sleeping bag coat, which I love way more than I expected to. I decided I could start wearing it early this year since there were “flurries” yesterday. It was pretty windy, so I had my hood up and the neck snaps fastened so it would stay in place. I also had the thing snapped all the way down to the bottom to keep my legs warm. This makes my stride a little shorter, but it’s totally worth it.

As I thumped along down Fort Washington from school back to my house, something about the rhythm of my shorter stride and the quality of sounds within my hood reminded me of taking hikes in the rain as a little girl. The environment around me could not have been any more different from Mt. Tam, all traffic and sirens and concrete and 35 degree weather, but the feeling was there. It made me really excited to come home again next week.

Man, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I totally love the subway. I guess that’s why I don’t really mind so much that I live an hour away from everything. I love that it runs all night, I love that you always see crazy people, I love watching people fighting to stay awake, I love getting up to offer my seat to a pregnant lady, I love watching tourists be all confused or freaked out. OK, I don’t totally love seeing dudes spit on the floor of the car, or being in subway stations in July. But I love everything else.

Yesterday, I was on the A train going downtown, and a couple who were obviously from out of town got on the train. You can identify people who come from a land of driving by the way they refuse to move on the train without tightly clutching onto something with both hands. It’s kind of amazing. Some kids got on the train at the same time, and it was obvious that they were going to start dancing. Of course, not to the tourists. I guess the boombox wasn’t enough of a tip off. They stood, huddled together, grabbing the pole nearest to them. The kids politely asked them to move, and they just squished themselves closer together instead of moving further down the car. As soon as the kids started dancing, the tourist dude pulled out his cellphone to take a video. He kept being like, “I’m gonna put you guys on YouTube!” in his amazing out-of-town accent. (Midwest? Florida? Who knows!) The best part was watching these two scramble for seats when they became available; they seemed so afraid of falling down, so they moved really fast to sit. New York must be so exciting and huge and fast-paced to them.

Part of me is starting to wonder if I’ll miss New York when I move back to California…but I’m guessing not too much.

I had this great experience for a moment today on the subway. I was coming back from Trader Joe’s on the 1 this afternoon, and at 103rd Street, I suddenly heard really loud trumpeting. I thought it was probably someone playing music in the station for money. But I looked towards the sound, and saw a woman leaning out of the car with her trumpet, playing a quick fraction of a tune at someone in the station. They yelled to each other, and then she leaned back in, sat down and put her trumpet back in her case. I was at the other end of the car smiling. OK, New York is a pretty great place sometimes. I feel like you wouldn’t see that on BART.

Upper West Side Trader Joe’s has not lost its sparkle for me! Going in the middle of the day on a week day is always fascinating, in addition to being delicious. (Hello? Samples?) Last time I was there, it was around noon on a Tuesday, which is apparently the old people hour. Today, I was there around 2:30, and it seems that that is when the small children take over. Seriously, every adult in the store was tethered to a couple toddlers. Two of said toddlers were arguing over who got to load the cart onto the cartscalator as I was leaving, and I debated in my mind whether little kids arguing over something totally inconsequential is a better show than the old lady talking about how she could stare at the cheese all day. When is the cranky 20-something time slot?