mahiwaga

Ah yes. The evil resident. This actually happened a good couple of months ago, and I am still reacting to that awful experience.

This is why I knew she had gotten to me, and that my sanity was at stake.

So I was on L+D (labor and delivery) and had to wake up at like 3:45am so that I could get to work on time (and I never got there on time.) The evil resident was the senior in the unit, and I was the only student there. (Which had me believing that I had offended some deity, because everyone else got to work with another student and had someone to share their misery with.) Now, I had the pleasure of working with her for a couple of weeks on the Gyne service. Despite being briefed by classmates who had worked with her previously as well as by people in the class before me, I did not appreciate the extent of her malignancy until I met her in person.

OK, I admit it, so I wasn’t exactly in top form. I mean, I’m not a surgical person. A lot of things are not within my abilities, and I don’t have a second sense for anticipating what is required of me. And yeah, I wasn’t on top of the books like I was when I did my surgery rotation. There were certainly a lot of things I should’ve known from reading, although I have to say, it wasn’t like the residents were exactly doing a lot of teaching. And for some reason, most of our lectures thus far were on obstetrics, not gynecology. So basically I didn’t know jack-shit about gynecology. The evil resident hated me from day one. It was excellent.

So by this point, on L+D, I figure she thinks I’m a worthless piece of shit, and I’m simply just too tired to fight the perception. I can only go on four hours of sleep for so many days in a row, and it’s really hard to study when you are delirious from sleep-deprivation. (Yes, yes, all you old-schoolers, I will cry you a river. So what if I’m a whining bitch.)

It wasn’t so much the actual yelling (although there was some of that.) It was the way she would roll her eyes, sigh in greatly aggrieved exasperation, and then give me the nastiest look I’ve ever seen on a still-living person. No, actually, what really pissed me off was the way she would yank the instruments from hands because I obviously didn’t know what I was doing. And, oh yeah, the way she would shake her head at my obvious idiocy when I would try to answer her pimp questions. Despite the fact that the intern was nodding. I mean, I was partially right. I figure I knew the basic principles. I wasn’t going to kill anybody, and if I ever had to call a consult, I think I’d have a basic idea of what the hell was going on. I sure as hell wasn’t going into OBGYN. What more did she want of me? (Yes, I realize there is no point in reasoning with the unreasonable.)

Anyway. I hated her because she was evil, she despised me because I was apparently incompetent. What more is there to say.

But the story:

So. I get on the road around 4:45 a.m. or so, and I already know I’m going to be late, but what can I do? So I drive into the intersection of Division and Ashland on the way to the expressway, and, when it is much, much too late to brake, I suddenly discover that there is a sawhorse barricade in the middle of the intersection. I slam headlong into the barricade as if it wasn’t there, and I pull off to the side of the road, stunned, incapable of any rational reaction. After making sure I didn’t kill anybody, I hop back into my car and head off to work, worrying that the next thing I’d probably run into would be the back of a semi-truck.

I relate this experience to my classmates who are having a grand ol’ time on this rotation because they have managed to avoid working with the evil resident. Oh, sure, they pity me, but they just don’t know the extent of my misery. They comment, however, that my mood has changed drastically since I began working with the Evil One.

But one of my classmates quips: “Are you sure you didn’t run over the barricade because you weren’t hallucinating that [the evil resident] was in the middle of the intersection?”

I answer, deadpan (and maybe even dead serious): “No, because if I had, I would’ve backed over the barricade after hitting it. And then I would’ve gotten out of my car and stomped on it. And then I would run over it again.”

Yes. The point at which I expressed homicidal ideation was the point that I knew I was pretty close to the edge. So I decided to take the next day off, and try to gather my wits. Apparently, one day wasn’t enough. I am still in recovery.

But yeah, that woman was evil. My friend worked with her the next rotation, and my friend also discovered that the evil resident was as bad if not worse than they say she is. This woman was so evil that she wrote a terrible midterm eval for someone she didn’t even work with at all. The attending who read the evals was completely appalled, although not the least bit surprised.

Whatever. Fuck her. May all the evil that she creates return to her a million fold.

I don’t mean for this to sound deadly serious. I mean, really, it’s supposed to be funny. (I’m operating on the somewhat sadistic principle that_everything_ is funny as long as it isn’t happening to you. So laugh. Point fingers. Say “Ha-ha!” like Nelson Muntz from “The Simpsons”) And then there is this ridiculous explanation for why this blog is the way it is. (In the words of my oldest friend, “It’s all bullshit.”) It’s all, in the end, supposed to be an attention-nabbing gimmick.

Long story short, don’t believe a goddamned thing that I write.

I may very well be depressed. Two people have placed it at the top of their differential diagnosis, and I am certainly exhibiting some of the pernicious signs and symptoms. (Not that I have all these, but I’ll recite them for board review purposes: anhedonia—the inability to enjoy things that I have previously found enjoyable, feelings of unremitting sadness, of hopelessness, helplessness, worthlessness, and excessive and inappropriate guilt. Crying spells. Loss of appetite. Insomnia.)

There is something incredibly seductive in believing that some of this might very well be relieved by drugs. I mean, rationally, even if I am truly clinically depressed, it’s not going to solve any of my problems. On the other hand, if I am truly clinically depressed, it’ll at least take some of this weight off my back, I think. The way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with empirical treatment.

But I just feel like I have lost my way. I am, for some deranged reason, afraid to go on in my chosen path. Not because of anything tangible. It’s just this stark feeling of unease, this fear of the unknown. I mean, this is despite envisioning spending most of my final year in med school at home in L.A. in a familiar environment. (I have grown weary of my self-imposed exile in the Midwest, and shudder at the thought of spending another godforsaken winter out there.)

Mostly, I am tired. Despite having had an entire week to decompress and try to regain my bearings, I am still somewhat paralyzed and afraid to try. As usual, a lot of the hard-won wisdom I gained this past year has been rendered inaccesible. I just can’t remember. And even if I do, I can’t seem to apply it to my situations.

I suppose this is what I’m really afraid of: If, at this stage in the game, when my responsibility is still pretty minimal, I’m already on the verge of cracking, what will happen to me later on? I can’t continue on believing I’m on this razor thin edge, scrambling for balance. There will be really, really, bad days ahead, and I cannot afford to let it get to me the way I’ve let these last twelve weeks get to me. (Ah yes, I have finally written down my evil resident story.)

See, the thing I recognize that makes this perhaps unnecessarily painful is that I feel like I can’t drag anyone down in my madness. I mean, I know that I have a pretty good support system, in terms of family and friends, but, I don’t know. These past few years, I just feel like I need to be strong and stand on my own two feet. Protect those that I care about from my insanity. That sort of thing.

But right now, I can’t hang. I feel beat. But life continues to run me over.

Oh well. Whatever needs to happen will happen, with or without me. I just wish I had a little more strength of will. But wishing won’t get me anywhere.

But really. Don’t worry about me. Don’t take this too seriously. In a rather sick way, it’s supposed to be amusing. The way that car crashes can make some people laugh. This too will pass. At least that much I’m certain.