Circles…

I spent a good portion of this week figuratively and literally lying prostate on a table having my someone pull my body into various positions until with my teeth gritted and  tears stinging my eyes I said “I surrender”   My orthopod last week said my x-rays were perfect, my PT progress was not.  He lifted the precautions for PT which means we can attack the flexion contracture with full force.

And so we did and because scheduling PT is like scheduling meetings with Obama I had three days in a row. While it was exciting and somewhat luxurious to lay on my belly…  by the third night I was downing tramadol at 1 in the morning because the muscle spasms were bad enough to wake me from sleep. I have been down this road before…my connective tissue just gives up and hopes  I won’t notice.  Then I spend months fighting it back into submission.  Only to have it eventually give up again and we go back through this whole cycle of me laying prostate on a table for several months….

Then there was the scheduling mishap that landed me on a surgery rotation.  And here I was waking up at 5 AM from my muscle spasms disrupted sleep cursing myself for letting Student Services sign me up for Peds ENT.  Three hours later I was either in the OR a place that makes me feel cold, nauseous and bored or in ENT clinic having my attending yell at me in front of patients to hold my otoscope like I held my pencil…I explained I was HOLDING IT LIKE I HOLD MY PENCIL…it never occurs to him maybe I don’t hold my pencil like everyone else….and I have daily flashbacks to writing my name in Kindergarten over and over again. My teacher standing over me saying THAT IS NOT HOW YOU HOLD YOUR PENCIL. I remember looking at her and wanting desperately to please her but knowing fully well that I could not hold my pencil the way and form the letters.  Why couldn’t she just understand that this way was working for me….

So here I am in my last 6 mons of a doctorate program and am being yelled at for how I hold my pencil.   Oddly not much as changed in 20 years.

or the last 8…

On Thursday night and Friday morning I put on makeup, I styled my hair, I wore designer clothes….and went to my first peds interview here at home. I walked into my faculty interview and before I had barely sat my little spazzing butt in the chair Dr M looked me straight in the eye and said ” Amy, I am not going to interview you, I know you well and you will have no problem staying here, you fit in well here and we want you to stay. Now surely they are pros and cons for you staying in town  but just so you know if you rank us high, you will match here. Now what other schools are you applying to?”   I sat there in my smart suit a little stunned, I had prepared answers to all the usual questions.  I had not expected to be courted, to be wanted badly enough to not even be interviewed.  My chief resident interview strated similarly after we looked at cute pictures of his baby girl..”Amy, everyone knows you and likes you, we want you stay here so I am going to give you the 5 min speal about why you should.” And the 5 min speal was not some standard thing it was obvious that it had been well prepared with regards to me…these people know me well, they have had 8 years to study me.  And part of my wall melted a bit I walked out slightly intoxicated by the idea that it would be so very easy not to break the cycle and just stay here….

and here we are back to where I melted four years ago sitting in a Ruby Tuesday where my dad handed me a check of early inheritance.  And I dissolved into tears and called the med school admissions office the next morning to declare my intent.

so here I am laying prostate on a table with my teeth gritted and my eyes stinging wanting so badly to just say…STOP I have had enough but not wanting to appear…weak.

It is  so easy to just keep going, to just circle around and around and around…