Are You An Only Child?

I miss working. I miss the hospital. I miss patients giving me quizzical glances on days when I'm tired and out of it. I even miss the - no, don't say it - discharge summaries.

I was thinking about how patients and sometimes nurses would sometimes smile at me and be generally compliant, but would then ask me in a very patronizing way at the end of my history-taking, "Are you an only child?" It's amusing to think about that now, with my sister terrorizing me on and off. I guess it was the fact that in an effort to be polite I never really yelled at them when I first met them and would ask a detailed history without the brusque, efficient manner that they were used to. It probably also had to do with the fact that on admission days and post-admission day pre-rounding, I invariably looked frazzled, but they assumed that I was a sheltered only child.

It really used to bother me - the fact that even as a doctor I was perceived as a child - but I suppose that while the white coat gives you authority it doesn't change who you are completely. Assuming that persona perhaps comes with a little more practice and a thickening of the skin.

When I finally do work again, either in this country or the US of A, I guess I'll have to do something to seem a little older.

Anyways, first Step 1.

Disclaimer: Only for those with strong stomachs

I've never seen a more perfect example of caseous necrosis. This adrenal really does look like it's filled with a cheesy (feta), hummus-like matter.

This by the way, is an adrenal gland diseased by tuberculosis.

Inclusive Development

I've been thinking.

Maybe I shouldn't look at the world around me and the people who populate it so disparately. After all, for a girl who thinks that syzygy (as used by Carl Jung) and confluence is the highest ideal, I am the first one to put myself alone in my own camp.

Huh.

Peter Pan Syndrome

I've realized recently that I take myself seriously far less often than I used to. I've gotten into the habit of a sort of whimsical approach to life that leaves little time for any constancy of purpose. Of course, I still have the same aspirations, but I really have to dig much deeper these days, to draw strength and action from them.

The reason is disdainfully obvious, of course. I no longer have any excuses to play with. I'm a proper adult whose life is in her own hands, as I have been for 5 years. However now, the stakes are very high.

That idea terrifies me sometimes.

It leads me down this easy path of whimsy and flight of ideas that gives me some excellent conversation starters (I am confident that the former wallflower, goal-oriented, painfully shy me could talk the ears off the most stoic Pashtun warlord or high school mean girl) and a feeling of unlimited freedom and possibility.

But where am I really, now that my whole approach to life has changed? The things that centered me, like career, school, achieving things are now not the only things that I find at the center of my life. Friends have become immensely more important. Family has become so much more important in a more genuine, less need-based way. The interests that I generally suppressed or put on the back burner in pursuit of academic achievement, now push their way to the front. Even at the 11th hour, when they really shouldn't.

If I look at all this optimistically, I'd definitely say that my life has become far more colored and rich. It bursts with things to be done, places to go, people to talk to, music to hear and things to learn. I have so much more to live for now, than I have ever had.

While all the above is wonderful and I'm eternally thankful to whatever power helped to arrange the above (some strange amorphous God like entity), I'm also disappointing in the lack of discipline I show these days. I'm also disappointed in the part of me that still hangs on to the self-destructive belief that I'm just not capable of taking for myself everything that I've ever wanted.

I am so happy these days. And complacent.

In the past, I'd have waited to figure out what was wrong, to work myself up in a fiery speech of resilience and self-patronage and worked zealously for a time.

Now, though I still do this from time to time, I mostly save the theatrics for friends in need or the hungry insecure part of myself.

In all honesty, I don't want the drama anymore. That isn't what I want motivating me. I don't need grand ideals and inspiring rhetoric. I just need to know that when I want something and have the courage and discipline to get it, I can live every day in fulfillment of that goal. That's really all I need to be happy anymore.

Sadly, I've been getting in my own way a lot of late.

I don't know if its the lack of courage, discipline or goals, perhaps a disappointing combination of all three, but I just need to grow up in some arenas of life.

The whimsicality can stay, but I guess it needs to be brought into check and not take over.

Ladies, Where’s the Ambition? « Clutch Magazine

Ladies, Where’s the Ambition? « Clutch Magazine

Here's what I'm talking about

:)

A Return to What I Do Best / Marriage & Lady Macbeth

Am I getting too old for angst-ridden posts written in quiet desperation in the wee hours of the night?

I've not hit a quarter century yet, so I think, perhaps not. That is, of course, assuming that there is a statute of limitation on angst. The only reason I'd think so is because I wouldn't want to be judged. Then again, I am writing on a platform open to all 7 billion plus people on this planet, but more scarily, my family, future employers and future......

Also, it's important to document this part of my personality; the 2 AM tragic diva who revels in negativity, insomnia, procrastination and warped pop-psychology.

Now that I have discredited myself adequately enough for my audience to know with utmost certainty that the following is all inanity, I can write the truth.

I am laying here, laptop in bed, hair oiled and wrapped in an old dupatta while I think of the things that bother me when I let them.

Like this whole marriage thing for instance and the fact that now that I'm in my 20s and socially obligated to fulfill my reproductive potential, I am no longer treated as the gender neutral, achievement hoarding happy little pack rat that I was. I'm suddenly a woman and must accept my role as one, complete with pain inducing heels and accident inducing saris.

Traditionally brought up Indian girls should not hit 23 without thinking about marriage, without welcoming the pressure, the onslaught of the circling MBA holders from good-families, preferably foreign-educated. We should welcome the zombie-horde, whether in the form of an actual 'match' or hypothetical situations, because well, it's just that time in our lives. Imagine that, 23 is the time in my life to welcome the idea of marrying a member of a hypothetical herd of suitably matched zombie men. Or since in my case, the discussion has only gone as far as theory with no actual frightening apparition on the horizon, perhaps we should call these elusive men ghosts, of a sort.

23 years of hard work, I’m at a crucial point in my fledgling career – unemployed and done with my Bachelor’s degree – and ‘the elders’ tell me that this is something I need to think seriously about. The kind of man I would want in my life. Hell, I don’t even know what kind of Shampoo and Conditioner works for my hair yet, how do I figure out what kind of man fits into my life? Assuming of course that they can be typed and sorted so easily into neat categories. (Not in my experience, excepting certain universalities).

All that sarcasm notwithstanding, I have nothing against arranged marriages or the idea of marriage. In fact, even though I sometimes wish I was off-the-beaten-path-enough to think that marriage was an obsolete social convention and that I'm better off alone or with endless versions of ‘the one’, I do want to get married someday. Mainly for the purposes of observing the progeny of the Squirrel Council and having someone around to tell me that although I do on occasion clean up very nicely, I should stop looking in the mirror, reflecting and get on with my damn life. Oh yes, that’s the dream, complete with a white wedding gown (read shiny pattu sari) and tiara (read stomach-fat-pinching vadlanam).

So, if I were my sensible USMLEing day self, I would say, what’s the problem. It’s just a matter of timing. You want the same thing, so just do your own thing and wait it out and this way or that, a suitable bakra will surely come along lay his head on the chopping block.

But my crazy night self rages at the injustice of it all.

Oh to be demeaned by these paltry considerations! When I have put my sweat and blood into my work these 23 years, am I now to be denied the fruit of all that learning - the ability to make and revel in my choices and decisions?! When I get married, shouldn't the man and moment be of my choice? But no - and all for the sake of diminutive man and obsolete custom. Biologically, I have no need for anything more than a sperm sample from a donor of vaguely Indian origin. To be pushed and prodded to think of that which has no place in my life, the yielding to destiny, the falling into my traditionally ascribed gender role. When all I want to do is be a great doctor and travel the world and live in an apartment in Manhattan.

Am I to be forced to say "I do" before I want to by the fear that the future holds nothing more than "Dying alone"?

Am I to say 'Yes' to traditions and definitions of my gender that until now have played no role in my life?

"UNSEX ME HERE!" I'd much rather say.

(You bet I’m going all Lady Macbeth on you. Mind it.)

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances,

You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry 'Hold, hold!'

I want focus.

I want determination.

I want the incandescent mind of Virginia Woolf's true artist.

and

I want the courage to want it all.

What in hell has the zombie-horde to do with all that?

MLE -ing

I have so much to do and 68 days to do it. I'm beginning to fear for my future.

I was supposed to get in 600 minutes today but instead got 273. That really is pretty bad considering that today was a good day. I seriously have to amp up my efforts because I know I can do this exam and do it well.

It looks like the Turkey post will have to wait. I've been working on it, but as usual, I've been waiting for it to be perfect and haven't actually put pen to paper.

Tomorrow 6 AM!

And an NBME this week too it seems.

Wish me luck imaginary readers.

PS - I know you're not out there, so I've been a little more liberal with posting my usually private shameful study schedule. Google stats tells me I'm the sole visitor to my blog, and although I keep telling it not to track me - whenever I clear my browser's history it seems to forget that preference.

Bumbling On.

- A