Transition State

….What colors do you want your kitchen to be?  Sofa bed or day bed in the office/guest room? Which car insurance agency to do you want?  What is the interest on your student loan?  What is Ohio’s policy on handicapped parking? Have you thought about investments???…

STOP. STOP. STOP.

For just a moment I would like to bask in the moment that I am done with school for all intensive purposes.  Other than three weeks of casual lectures. I am done with medical school.

No more exams, no more adult patients, no more surgery rotations!!!

and now that moment has passed. now we move on to whats really important when you graduate from medical school at 25…becoming an adult.

A real one.

I am bad at it.  For starters…life has been prolonged series of camping trips since well birth…  I go somewhere, I sleep there for a while then I move on. I don’t know what color I want my kitchen or what kind of slip covers I want or where one even really goes to furnish a house… When I imagined myself as a grown up…I imagined a small soviet bloc style apartment or small falling down African house/flat filled with a lot of ethnic art, books, photographs, doctor stuff and stock piled peanut butter in rubber maid containers next to the rubber maid containers of Gideon bibles (in a language that only i speak) and buttons that misguided yet well meaning churches send me and I use as coffee tables. Eventually there will be a husband and kids smooshed in the tiny, tiny flat  too.  I have no idea how to set up house in America especially as a doctor. Apparently doctors are very respectable and have color coordination and matching hand towels. Why didn’t they cover this in medical school?

Insurance…well I have been uninsurable off of my parents’ insurance up to this point. All I know is insurance companies hate me because I was born gimptastic.  There are now like mutliple plans that all cover me now because I have the title of doctor and I work at Childrens.  How do I choose? What’s the difference? Can I just barter brownies for hip x-rays? Is that an option?

Money…never had any of my own…ever.  What little I did have to my name I spend on plane tickets for “camping trips” and food. I have no idea what one does with money that does not go to eating…apparently  one goes to IKEA and buys sofa beds…thats what my Mom said to do.  Then there are taxes and my student loans according to my Dad eats up the rest of it.

Well I have been an adult now for four days. I think I am done. I am ready to retire.

Traditions…..memories….nostagia

My family loves traditions.  Making our family Christmas gifts, singing off key on each other voice mail on our birthdays,  the annual cousin Christmas play, dying eggs at Easter, red velvet cake on my parents’ birthdays in Feb, Red Lobster for my sister’s, advent calenders, trivia at the dinner table, lunch after church and I could go on. We mark our milestones and holy days as a family with joyous rituals  always remembering years before variables on a common theme.

Preparing for major orthopedic surgery in my family has familiar rituals  too because its been a somewhat frequent occurrence in our lives.  Some are very practical, some are down right silly.  Its been  a while but one would think it was just last year if you watched how quickly we all fall into the roles we know so well. My Mom sets out arranging things even with me signing consents and doing most of the arranging now she still finds ways. Dad reassures Mom, me, himself with daily pronouncements that everything is going to be ok.  Emily and Tori shuffle in and out of the dialogue offering books, chocolate and wanting to know long i will monopolize all of our lives (my primary question as well) particularly my parents’.

I go to the library stock up on books,  DVDs, audiobooks,  stock up on food. As I packed my car this morning. I  packed pillows. I went to target and bought new undergarments and socks. I found my one pair of shorts that I own and stuff them in my suitcase.  I plan the traditional ‘last meal’ via google and decide on wine and crab cakes (it is Maryland after all).  All the paperwork has a folder, all the appointments are made and all the necessary items are purchased.  I then of course am now taking the traditional joy ride which has expanded considerably since childhood with my driving ability and all terrain vehicle.  This time it will include a week of visiting, going to the beach and general traveling.

And just like with all rituals and traditions…I remember.  But they are strange memories as I suppose all childhood memories are to some degree when we looked back at them with  adult reason and knowledge. The last time I had major hip surgery I was 13 and although some times I thought what it would be like 10-50 years from now, most of the time I just wanted to be able to go through a whole year of school without having to be on home-bound.  I wanted to get through a Spring where I didn’t break a major limb to pieces over something ridiculous like walking the stairs.  I wanted to be able to stand for a whole play or walk my dog or go hiking with my family like I had when I was younger (5 yo- 10 yo). Frankly, my life was pretty awful between the pain, the social isolation and lost of the abilities to do many, many things I love. I was begging for surgery.  It made so much  sense.

But now my desires are so much bigger, I haven’t been ‘sick/injured’ from Kniest in a decade other than an occasional minor mishap. I have traveled the world, graduated from college, live independently, drive a car and do crazy things like ski and play doctor.  And I don’t want to stop any of those things, moreover I want to do more like live overseas, complete a residency, get married, have kids, raise them, etc,etc…  Handing over my life to the hands of a surgeon is so much more difficult now. The stakes are higher, the leap is so much scarier.  Its not about just making it off the ground it, its about finding my way back to  the lofty altitude I have been cruising at for the last 9 years.

The roles are the same, the rituals are the same but the dance is so much more complicated than I remember.

the aftermath

The last 6 days have been down right glorious. There are few pleasures in life more sweet and more comforting than the affection and company of old friends and your family. The sort of people who you haven’t seen in a year or even two and despite the fact your life has changed and evolved, your relationship is the same.  Conversations, tea, gardens, long walks and quiet understanding of people who know you nearly as well you know yourself, in some ways better.

I spent a great deal of time outdoors in the Blue Ridge Mts with my Mom and sisters post-boards. I left my cell phone and computer and books in the corner and forgot that I have the cartilage of an 85 year old and wandered around my favorite mountain celebrating the tentative Virginia Spring with its red buds, Bradford Pear Trees, bulbs and shy buds. I had a long talk with my Dad about life then I moved my stuff back to Winston sans all my school stuff. I just left it in my basement. It was liberating.

I flew to Texas to see Karen and Jon. I soaked in the sunshine, the hippee-ness of Austin and the affection of dear friends. We cooked, talked, stayed up too late, wandered around San Antonio in the middle of the Final Four craziness, ate REAL Mexican food and Americanized Romanian food???, reconnected with a random kid I met in Romania and mostly just talked, solved the world’s problems, told stories and laughed. It was lovely.

On the school front, my life seems to be working out too well. I not only got the sced of my choice, I got the attendings I wanted for surgery which is completely a GOD thing because I never confided in anyone about such.

And now to bed since I have slept much in days…too much fun to be had.

grateful fear

I spent my first day off from studying in four weeks sprucing up my living room. My wonderful Mom helped me build some shelves (she did it I was too busy having a mental breakdown) last Tuesday. Today I filled them with books and pictures and momentos from my journeying. I have a travel shelf with my little Belarusian village house and magic doll (a gift from a developmentally disabled woman, it supposed to keep the evil eye from looking my way), travel guides, essays and such. I have a shelf with all my books on doctoring (not textbooks, memoirs, stories, fiction,etc) and some med school friends pictures. Another self devoted to college pictures. On the bottom shelves I put children’s books and various toys and things that I have accumulated so that my roomate’s nephew who spends at least one night every other week with us will have full access. to the toys and books  even if I am not around when he comes.  As a result of moving books and pictures out of my room, I finally have desk space and got rid of the random piles of crap that used to live on my dresser.

I also got some pictures framed. Ariana (my best friend from childhood) and her husband Jimmy are professional photographers these days. They sent me three beautiful photographs printed on really cool shiny, metallic paper and already matted for Chris. All I had to do was provide the frames. The finished product of shelves and pictures was lovely. I feel for the first time settled in my own home.

I am actually sitting on my sofa (people will have to make out elsewhere tonight) rather than holed up in my room. Its liberating. I feel a little ridiculous I can’t believe I let it get this crazy.  I should never be afraid of my own living room. I should never hate my life like I have for the last while.  I whine and complain but in reality I have not done much to help myself of late.  I think I left my self advocacy in a box waiting in my closet next to my travel guides. It was safer there tucked away where it couldn’t get me in trouble.

Similarly I have let stuff pile and fester without thinking to the point I have beaome so overwhelmed that I just want to purge everything that is overwhelming me so I don’t have to deal with it.And even the smallest addition to the piles makes me want to do this. And of course the mess is NOT MY FAULT, I am great at blaming and justifying my lack of action. Not healthy or helpful.

So today I reorganized. Today I hung some pictures and finally unpacked the last box from college. And I pondered.

and I decided that I was going to blog on my sofa tonight just for starters.

i think i just quit med school or tried anyway

I broke down in sobs.

having lunch with my mother.

in a very public local restaurant.

yeah.

You know how when you were a kid sometimes you spent a lot of time in your head going over exactly how you want to tell your parents something. Carefully craft your presentation to decrease scaring your parents and/or  increase the chance of them letting you  do exactly what you want them to do.  This was not one of those times.

This was completely and utterly not planned, not rehearsed. We were just sitting there talking about my two sisters (who are competely and utterly fine) and five minutes later I have tears streaming down my face and I am telling my Mom I want to  quit medical school.  I didn’t plan it, I didn’t wake up this morning and say i am going to quit med school today.

It should be noted that my parental units do not read my blog and although I have told them that I am less than enthused with medical school. Out right talk about quitting  was shocking. It shocked me. It shocked me that my Mother didn’t really skip a beat and suddenly is going over the options with me. It shocked me that I was crying in public, uninhibited and pretty much without shame. I didn’t really feel better afterwards. I didn’t really feel worse.

 We parted ways and I try to get back into studying. 20 mins later my mother calls me on the phone and says she talked to my Dad and he thinks my mom should stay the night.  It then occurs to me that I have most likely just freaked my parents. Here I am the stable child, the child with direction and motivation, the responsible one, here i am having a breakdown.  I explain to my Mom that I love her and am grateful she wants to stay but it would just cause me more mental anguish right now trying to play host and study for my final.

I stare blankly at the wall for a moment and think you know if I presented to a real doctor with this story and my current sleep, eating, social situation, etc.  They would medicate me.  Me and probaly half my class.

med school: Clinically depressed and Fabulous.