Jun 2008
- Jun 1
- neglect
Ever since I got addicted to Twitter, I guess I haven't been blogging as often as I used to. There are just so many ways to express myself besides the long form of a blog post: Twitter, Facebook link posts, Google Reader shares with notes, del.icio.us. I am Web 2.0-ed out.
· Read more… - Jun 3
- mentally checked out
Man, my brain is currently occupying another dimension entirely.
· Read more… - Jun 4
- like the weather
The weather really does make me want to crawl back into bed and call it a day. I'll try again tomorrow.
· Read more… - Jun 4
- small triumphs/on the other hand
Given all that tripe, I did have a decent day today. I managed to get in an arterial line after three tries. The attending that I'm working with—who has a reputation for making interns cry—thinks that I'm probably no dumber than a box of rocks. (Which, believe me, is a complement.)
· Read more… - Jun 5
- to a crisp
I am thinking that 26 years of formal education can really burn a guy out. I'm like beyond slap-happy. I'm this close to raving lunacy.
· Read more… - Jun 7
- time
The problem is that if you think too far ahead, everything always ends in disaster. This is the ugly reality.
· Read more… - Jun 8
- more multivalent medical jargon
- Jun 10
- turn
found on ayşe's tumblr
· Read more… - Jun 10
- yet the arrow of time
I randomly went home on Sunday. I woke up around 6 a.m. outside my own volition, without any alarms, and decided it would be a good idea to hop on a train and head up to L.A. I pretty much just ate something like six meals and watched cable TV with my dad. We watched a bunch of westerns.
· Read more… - Jun 10
- unlooked for
Just when you think all is lost, sometimes you're pleasantly surprised. After struggling futilely to find some kind of jerry-rigged solution, sometimes all you have to do is turn the power off, and then turn it on again, and miraculously, everything else takes care of itself.
· Read more… - Jun 10
- well worn paths
It's déjà vu all over again.
· Read more… - Jun 11
- ¡ay caramba!
Coherence is probably a little too much to ask at this hour, after this much to drink. Today I have come to another bitter revelation, and I have a good idea of what my trajectory is going to be.
· Read more… - Jun 11
- the stark glare of dawn
I need to count the number of times I've used the phrase "Tomorrow is another day." I keep hoping that each day will bring some magic change inside me, that somehow I'll manage to snap out of it, and somehow all the things broken inside my soul will have mended themselves.
· Read more… - Jun 11
- it's not science fiction, dude
The current meme circulating on these internets is whether or not we should trust someone who can't use a computer to lead the nation.
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- Jun 12
- acid
Well this is pleasant.
· Read more… - Jun 12
- loneliness vs heartbreak
The unholy combination of Twitter, Google Reader, and raging insomnia brings me to this blog post about weighing the pain of loneliness vs the suffering of heartbreak. I kind of wonder if it just isn't the distinction between chronic disease and acute disease. Isn't loneliness just a more diffuse, protracted form of heartbreak? Loneliness is what heartbreak turns into, given enough time.
· Read more… - Jun 12
- 17 days
What does it really mean to be done? I've got 17 days of formal education left. I'm trying to be as optimistic as I've ever been about the future, but I'm just not an optimistic type of guy. I don't know. I'm more of a giddy cynic. A hopeful pessimist. The mantra of my profession seems to be "Hope for the best, but expect the worst."
· Read more… - Jun 14
- there are no happy endings, because nothing really ever ends
I don't remember the last time I wept tears of joy. Tonight—even though I have 16 days left—I felt that, at the last, it was truly, finally, over.
· Read more… - Jun 14
- light: salvation, damnation
I just watched a sweet, low-key film called "Infinity" that stars Matthew Broderick as the renown physicist Richard Feynman and Patricia Arquette as his first wife Arline Greenbaum. Despite the fact that it covers the period of time when Feynman worked on the Manhattan Project, it is mostly really a love story.
· Read more… - Jun 14
- 3 of swords, reversed
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- Jun 15
- i'm not here, this isn't happening
An incredibly haunting piano and vocal re-interpretation of Radiohead, entitled "How to Disappear Completely", found on Kid A
· Read more… - Jun 16
- i guess that's it
So it occurred to me that maybe that's my only purpose on this Earth, to ease the suffering of at least a small handful of people. Nothing fancy, nothing glorious. While sucky, loneliness is only one of the multitude of varieties of suffering available on this planet, and it is certainly nowhere near the worst. I guess. That's how I get myself through the day, at least.
· Read more… - Jun 16
- so you see, lonestar, evil will always win, because good is dumb
We all want the good guys to win. Most major religions prophesy that Good™ will triumph in the end, even against overwhelming odds, even if it seems that most folks are playing for the dark side.
· Read more… - Jun 17
- not well, no, not well at all
Internet traditions?!?! WTF?!?!
· Read more… - Jun 18
- love
Mark 12:28-31, New Revised Standard Version
· Read more… - Jun 19
- so transient
Truth be told, I am hoping for something terrible yet wondrous. Awful, joyful things.
· Read more… - Jun 20
- ab reductio absurdum
man. so i'm reduced to this. blogging on my phone. no a/c. no writing utensil. brain barely functioning. maybe i should just go home.
· Read more… - Jun 21
- mining time
Skipping merrily along the random fractured paths of the Internet, I somehow found my way from the sad fact that Cody's Books on Telegraph and Dwight has closed (hat tip to Jamie Grove to the revelation that such a thing as a Twitter political debate exists, and that it sucked immensely (with commentary penned by the lovely Jennifer Van Grove) From there I discovered that there is now a patron saint to Twitter: tweetjeebus.
· Read more… - Jun 21
- the pirate ship "unmerciful disaster"
…some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
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Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never—nevermore."' - Jun 21
- effexor withdrawal
So I gave up on my psychiatrist because she's been pretty adamant about me making timely follow-up appointments. Unfortunately, part of my problem is that my executive function is seriously fucked. I'm just not very good at making plans. Seriously. It must be at least a minor miracle that I've made it this far without ending up dead.
· Read more… - Jun 21
- post-mortem while the body's still warm
Wow. Just, wow. Good thing I'm a little drunk.
· Read more… - Jun 22
- set adrift on memory bliss
The Dragonfly Initiative suddenly took me back to those halcyon days of yore, when I could just sit for hours studying things that I find are of little-to-no clinical relevance. Chronic renal failure? Obsolete. It's Chronic Kidney Disease. Congestive Heart Failure? Obsolete. It's just Heart Failure, or Decompensated Heart Failure, now. There is no such thing as Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus, either. It's either DM type I or type II. Beta-blockers are standard of care in Decompensated Heart Failure. Digoxin is almost useless, except as a way to achieve rate-control in atrial fibrillation. The difference between Q-wave Myocardial Infarctions and non-Q-wave Myocardial Infarctions are academic and don't make a difference in terms of treatment. What we care about are ST-elevations: STEMIs vs NSTEMIs/unstable angina. And it's all called Acute Coronary Syndrome now.
· Read more… - Jun 22
- unroofing
It's terrible, really. Times like these, when it's sunny and calm and blissful and quiet, is when I worry the most.
· Read more… - Jun 22
- an exhortation
I know you. If I leave you to your own devices, you'll pick the path of least resistance. You'll stay in San Diego because it's the easy thing to do. Or you'll go to L.A. because your parents are there and you have a fool-proof backup plan. But I think it's time you took an active part in your fate and not just let chance decide where you go.
· Read more… - Jun 22
- beauty and the beast, revisited
I keep thinking about the cruel arbitrariness of the back story—how a beautiful fairy shows up dressed as a hag, and the prince is disgusted and throws her out. OK, so judging people by their appearances is not a good thing, but to use it as a pretense for turning a guy into a hideous monster makes me want to kick the fairy's ass.
· Read more… - Jun 22
- apocryphal medicine - episode I
My dad relates this anecdote to me:
· Read more… - Jun 23
- confundor, exfundendus
Non certior ubi omnes illi inceperunt. Fuisset ubi ea et meus laboramus pariter, ante omnes res quid ea subire. Pro nonscitarum rationalibus, ea meum accrediderat.
· Read more… - Jun 24
- realized
OK. I'm too exhausted to make up a video. I know it's crappy, and I must warn you, there's a possibility your tympanic membranes will rupture, and you might be enraged and/or disgusted by dropped notes, off notes, and screwed up timing, but I just had to post it.
· Read more… - Jun 24
- worn down to little bits and pieces
It is weird to observe new beginnings without actually being part of it. Like when A+E first got together, for example.
· Read more… - Jun 25
- always struggling against gravity
I woke up with this song in my head
· Read more… - Jun 26
- i'll follow you into the dark
This song, which recaptured my imagination a few months back, popped back into my head today.
· Read more… - Jun 28
- timeline runner
So I woke up at 2:30 a.m. because of some excruciating left upper quadrant (LUQ) abdominal pain, with some referred pain to the neck. The abdominal pain was a burning, almost boring, continuous sensation. I wasn't short of breath or diaphoretic, and this was pretty typical for the problems I've been having with my GI tract, which I've basically written off as either really bad GERD or quite possibly some peptic ulcer disease. I blithely entertain the notion that I'm having a heart attack, but since the only symptom is this quite caustic sensation in my belly, I don't buy it. In any case, the neck pain goes away after some Tums and ranitidine (Zantac) 300 mg (4x the over-the-counter dose.) But the acid pain is still there, and I figure I may as well eat. And since I'm eating, maybe I should go to the grocery store.
· Read more… - Jun 28
- wall-e
No, I haven't watched it yet, so there aren't any spoilers. I just read the review in the L.A. Times from yesterday, and it seems like it would be very much my movie, the way, I suppose, I got obsessed with "Beauty and the Beast", even.
· Read more… - Jun 29
- clinical medicine
That is most of it, being a physician—listening and seeing. The rest is technique.
· Read more… - Jun 29
- happy ending
Even this late out into the game, I find myself still hoping for a reprieve from a life devoid of tender companionship, a life destined to loneliness and continued struggle.
· Read more… - Jun 30
- eve
Quite predictably, I am in love with a robot.
· Read more…