Sleep of the futile
I miss the days when I would sit down at my journal and let the words flow from my aching fingers like sad notes from a broken radio. Lately, I've become an old man. I go to bed on average at 9:30 p.m. everynight and get up in the 4:50-5:30 a.m. range to go to the hospital and do hosptial third year medical student things. I hang out with my girlfriend and she makes delicious vegetarian delights and we sip tea and enjoy sublime moments together. And THAT'S IT. I am by no means decrying the sudden change of tempo in my life, I'm merely making an observation as to its rather antithetical direction as opposed to last year. I feel more integral this year, more competent, I suppose than years past when I felt like I was coming apart at the seams some days, more at the mercy and whims of the sardonic dramas imagined or real. I feel more responsible, I suppose. Part of me has very much wanted to cut lose and go buckwild, but I demonstrate restraint, especially while on my surgical rotation. I can ill-afford a post-intoxicant day, so to speak. My wits and body must be sound. That being said, I'm enjoying my Neurosurgical rotation. Creighton is staffed by 4 different neurosurgeons all of whom are vastly different in their personalities and how they approach things. So far, I like 3 of them and the 4th, with whom I spend the most time, while I don't dislike him, I simply prefer his partners' styles better. Needless to say, I'm vastly more pleased to be on this service than my last misbegotten service. Orthopedic surgeons are a wretched and foul lot, best avoided if possible. Their whole buisness is crude and indelicate. It's profoundly artless. Often times they have personalities to match their craft. A good marriage of profession and person, I suppose. I was not charmed by their savagery both professional and personal and am happy to be done with them, wholesale. Either way, I am very pleased that the rest of my rotation will go more smoothly than its beginning. I'm afraid I have an announcement, though, which only comes as a shock to those of you who know me fairly personally: I don't think I will be a neurosurgeon after all. While I do enjoy caring for these patients and the surgeries themselves are fairly interesting, I think my true calling lies somewhere in your face. I'm talking about head and neck surgery. I have never been so charmed and so disgusted at the same time as seeing slides that a Head and Neck surgeon showed us for a lecture on cancers endemic to that area where he had personally cut away nearly a full quarter of a man's face and removed several vital elements in his neck and then he was done. Then plastic surgeons come in and begin the painstaking task of actually reconstructing said missing fourth of that patient's face so that they might resemble something close to human. I have to say: I was charmed, entranced, one might say. All I could think to myself is, "I want that! Why not me?! I want to cut someone's mandible off and remove their carotid artery and a giant tumor!" So we'll see how this new pursuit pans out. This isn't to say that neurosurgery is off the table for good, mind you, it's just not what I thought it was. I think I was love with the idea of being a neurosurgeon. It's like seeing a girl from a distance and thinking to yourself, "That's the hottest girl in the world! I must have her." Then you get closer and closer to her with each passing year and the closer you get, the less attractive she actually becomes. When you finally get up to you discover that she's not the hottest girl in the world, but she's not ugly, really, but perhaps, just cute. But maybe not cute enough to make you want to have sex with her. But maybe if you were really drunk at a party or something you'd do something with her because she's not that bad. Something like that. Holy Cow it's 10:00 p.m. already. I need to get to sleep. Anymore that's like me being up at 3:00 a.m. or something. I have to try and remember to take my Geritol before I go to bed.