Damn dude let me just rip it and see what the fuck comes out.

I don’t think i can do this anymore. I don’t think i can, quite honestly. I neeed to real quick figure something else out for myself. I need to spend some time talking to the powers that be, i think. I can start at the bottom of the totem pole with the residents, guess. That’s where i’m at rght now, after taking some time to regulate after that intense kind of just like sob session in the bathroom.

There’s omosmeting so otherwordlly about those moments, isn’t there? When it all just comes crashing to reality. It feels so freaking good. You don’t need to dissociate anymore and in fact you can’t. Once someone snaps you out of the dissociation it’s sort of like well damn i guess we’re here in the world again. holy fuck dude my god.

It was all because of , well first of all , well i guess it’s hard to say where it even started. It started as soon as med school did, let’s start there.

But this particular episode i guess we can work back in reverse chronological order. So we start with me here in the park, just south of the [rdct], and before this i was sat on a tree stump next to the river contemplating whether i should call mom or not, ultimately deciding not to.

Before that i was walking to the park becuase it was the only place that came to mind. This is the place that i knew would be best for getting myself back to reality. And look, it was. This is a good place…. This is a good place for me to find my footing.

But before that, during the walk to the park, I was just kind of in my own zone, not aware of anyone else and not caring what they might have been thinking as they saw me coming with bloodshot downcast eyes. Doesn’t fucking matter in times like that.

Before that, i was inside the hospital trying to find my way to the exit, and it wasn’t exactly hard to find, but i did have to navigate my way first to the on-call room where my backpack was and then to the elevaotr and down to the ground floor adn then out the front doors.

I noticed that i was having more urge to cry when i imagined going back up to the scene of the crime. I feel right now really strongly as though i can’t go back to that place. I don’t think i can do it.

Idk man. All of the signs today seemed to tell me what i was thinking i should do all that time ago, over a year ago now, but never did, and if i had done it perhaps i would be in a better….. No, of course, no such thing as better or worserse places….. I think? Shit man i don’t fucking know.

I think there are plenty of other things i could devote myself to. There are literally just plenty of other things.

And if i become a dropoutttytyttt, the literal worst that can happen is a few people raise an eyerbrow at me. Like "damn kid you really couldn't finish those last nine months of school? You couldn’t do it at all. ,, ,really, it was that bad, you turned down a medical degree from [rdct] univiesrsity?" And the answer will be yes, indubitably yes.

We need to come to a decision right now, right away. We can’t just decide to half-ass our way through the rest of this rotation, we literally just can’t.

I don’t know, man. I think this is a conversation i can have with someone hgher up, i guess. I just kind of don’t know. I don’t know.

I do know that the answer to this problem is like…. Something in the middle. One extreme is to just muscle through it, which will be devatastinting in its own right. The other harsh way is to fully drop out, which is also sort of extreme , i sint’ it? But i think this situation in many ways calls for a sort of extreme solution, don’t you? It calls for an extreme solution. I want to disturb people’s awareness. I want to make it so that we all see how things really are. I want to show people that this place fucking sucks.

the man behind me just started playing his saxophone, and i think of music, and i think of the arts, and i think of myself as an artist and all that shit, and i think that’s the life that i want, even though i scorned it in the earlier days….

Shit man. I think in any case the next step for me right now is to go to [rdct] at least and just like tell her what’s up with me. maybe i’ll eat some lunch first . ojkay, compromise is that i’ll eat the banana . and then i can show up back. I think? I dont know. I don’t know. She said to take all the time i need.

Shit man i just don’t know how to play this. I really don’t.

I know i feel good and safe and okay right now, and the thought of going back to the hospital only serves to stress me the fuck out. I’m ready to be done. I think i need to call it quits. I think the time has finally come to drop the fuck out of this place. Like what the hell am i doing? Nothing worth doing, i’d say. There’s nothing worth doing here. I’m not ready to keep going. I don’t want to keep going.

The man is practicing his saxophone and he sounds pretty good. It sounds like he’s working on agility. I love to see an adult man practicing a sasaxophone. He’s trying to get better i think at speed and precision. It’s an admiralble thing. See, you do have to work at other things in life. It’s not just medicine. Medicine is a fucking mental illness, my guy, seriously. It’s hugely fucking mentally ill.

I need to…… there’s nothing i need to do. What i can do is go back to the hospital now and see if i can have a conversation with someone who might want to talk to me. I’ll pull someone aside for a chat and be like "i really don’t think this is the rotation for me, but i also don’t think any rotation is for me. What do you think i should do?"

It’s a lot to put on someone i literally met yesterday. The truth is at the end of the day i really need to just like decide if i want to stay in school or not. I mean like sunk cost fallacy being what it is, i think it would be nice to just like…. Decide right here to be done with the sinking. I’m done sinking. Let me the fuck out. I don’t want to be [rdct], MD. I don’t want to be any of it. I don’t want to be that. I want to be done. I think i’m fucking done.

I think i’m just done. I think i’m just fucking done. I think i need to be done. I think i’m done i think im’ done, literally i think i’m done.

This is it, isn’t it? Is this fucking it? I don’t know man. I don’t know what to do . i don’t know what to do.

Jesus, i didn’t even write about what fucking happened. What happened was i was just standing around waiting for my life to pass me by while the team (it’s a big team, too, like three residents plus uhhh fuckin one nutritionist plus one attending plus me just sort of standing there plus the one or two nurses caring for each baby) was talking about this baby who has a mass growing in his mouth, and then toward the end the attending comes up to me and is like "did you see it? This is a good thing for you to see. you’re just standing there in the corner, you should come see it" (she said it more nicely than it sounds, but maybe it wasn’t nice, but that’s not really part of it, except of course it is, because everything is everything).

Anyway i looked at the baby and the mass is the size of its mouth—even bigger actually—and its mouth is just like splayed open. There’s no way for the mouth to close, not even a little bit, and now the baby is just fuckin…… it’s just like intubated and sedated. There is a trach inside of its throat so that it can breathe, because the mass is so tight against his lips that no air can come in or go out . and he’s sedated. What really sealed it for me was when the attending said that the surgery team thinks it’s best to let the baby grow for another nine months or a year so that they can have more skin available to make a skin flap or some shit like that. That’s when i was like ohhhhh okay so yall are fucking evil. You want to deprive this baby of all of the experiences that come with the first year of life, which to me are probably some of the most mystical and important… how many critical windows, bruh, would it be missing??? And stuff like that…. And just like…. One of those things that you don’t need to have every reason spelled out as to why it’s fucked up, you can just really tell in a deeply felt way that it’s fucked.

I spent a minute or so while the team talked about numbers just looking at the baby and at the mass in his mouth and stuff. I could describe the mass in the vivid detail that it deserves, but I suppose some things have to stay private.

But yeah… then we moved onto the next patient, in a different wing of the unit, and i just like….. I felt myself coming in and out of life. Each time i was 'in' i felt that kind of choked up feeling in my throat and in my eyes that indicates i need to have a little bit of a cry. But i was holding it together. I let some of the tears come out as they talked about the next patient, and then i excsued myself for a second to get a paper towel so i could wipe some of my tears away and blow my nose.

Then i lock eyes with the attending, who seems to be looking at me a little longer than she usually does, and that’s when i get snapped into reality for long enough to let the tears really start coming, and that’s when i had to walk out the double doors, push on the handleless door to the previous wing and then go through the locked door back out to the main area of the floor, the one without the babies and the one that’s not securely locked. Then i found the nearest bathroom and cried for probably like 15 minutes. I crouched on the floor at first and my vision was totally just fogged up and all i could see was the snot coming out of my nose and landing in a pile on the floor. a few separate piles. After some time of that, i brought myself over to the toilet and sat on it and continued crying, still hunched over, making new piles of snot on the floor beneath me, and now there were two piles of piles.

And then i just like…. I went on like this for a while, stifling my sobs but occasionally letting out some of the sound, betraying my state to the people out there, the nurses or whoever, and i tried to keep it down. I tried to keep it down, i tried to keep it down, i’m not someone who needs to verbalize the sobbing, i can silently sob with the best of them. God this sounds so self indulgent but it’s all just reporting the facts.

Anyway when i felt like it was time to be done with that because i could tell i was just going to keep crying and now i was taking up a whole bathroom, someone tried to open the door which was my external confirmation from the unvierse that it was indeed time to go. The signs are truly everywhere my dude.

And then i left and you’ve already heard about what happened next.

So like……. What now?

•

Sitting on the roof listening to music in a little attempt at integration. I don’t know how well it’s going, quite frankly. It’s like i don’t know if i really have a life outside of medicine at the moment.

I think the whole premise of the MD is something that people aren’t quite understanding that i don’t believe in. i know [rdct] seems to think i should get it so i can have more 'power' or something, and….

Well shit. The sunk cost fallacy comes back in. What if it’s true. What if it’s actually true though and not a fallacy? I think when it comes to literally like giving all your money away to an institution… but then money also being a farce. I need to find my damn siddhartha statue thing so i can meditate on it.

It’s going to be fine, my friend. You’ve ogotten it out of the way. This was the breakdown moment, the rock bottom moment where you had to sob in the bahtroom just to let these people know who you are. If that’s what the intention of your body was in causing you to cry, then so be it. That’s okay. It’s all okay. It’s all going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay. You know?

Last year was just different, wasn't it? I kind of don’t like this down here. I think it’s corroding away at me already.

But dont forget that your sensitivity is your strength or whatever. But isn’t it my strength insofar as i can actually “use It” ? or like what? I don’t quite know.

I think it’s okay to have a day to adjust. Time goes byby. Time continues to go on. It continues to go on! Yes, i’ve had a breakdown in surgery as well and the resdident saw me cry and comforted me there, too, after seeing what i believed to be a serious serious failure of medicine and me realizing i’m on the team that’s taking care of the person who's being failed. I’m the way that the superorganism rememebers that this shit is horrific, maybe.

I think that’s what [rdct] said. He said that i’m reminding people that the stuff in there is truly horrific. I think it’s okay. I think it’s okay to be the person who has to be dramatic about the baby with the teratoma in his mouth. I think it’s okay. I can just report it to the attending and be like "i’m sorry, queen, for leaving abruptly. I’m sorry about it. But i had to get out of there. There was actually nothing else for me to do without being totally disruptive."

You cried at work like many many others before you. Crying at work is pretty much par for the course these days, wouldn’t you say? I think it probably is.

I think it’s about supoprt systems at the end of the day, isn’t it? Like it’s supoprt systems who will get you through shit in life, and when shit hits the fan is you still a fan and stuff like that.

The afternoons are easy. You’re going to be fine. It’s really just the morning that is the grind. You have to rely on your discipline. I know you have it in you. You have the skills and the discipline to make it happen. You are two days in. you are doing amazing sweetie. You are two days down. There are not that many days left. This is going to be okay. You are going to find all kinds of meaning within these days. This is the shit that dreams are made of, my boy. You are in the midst of an amazing beautiful opportunity so like get into it bitch. You can do it you can do it. You can do it. You have the support.

Like [rdct] said, i now have people who see me. They really see me in there now, at least in more of a way. In more of a way. They know i’m the bitch who cries at the teratoma.

I’ts okay to cry, so i know i can cry, so i cry. That’s good. That’s the song playing right now.

Songs and playlists: these things remind me that life is real and i’m living it and my brain is connected to itself via many different structures including a hippocampus. But it’s how we keep going i guess.

At the same time it gets fucking gg g g co-opted by the most sinister shit ever. Like, medicine certainly co-opts the hicppocampus. It really does. It forces you into flow states that are honestly like hard to watch. They’re hard to watch, admittedly!!! People are getting in flow over like…. Minutiae!

Which i guess i do too and wehen i do it it’s not in an effort to save someone’s life. Like these people are trained to make people healthier. I respect it. I know that the minutiae matter especially for newborns cuz look at their tiny little fucking boidies!!!!

This shit is so hard though, bro, you see that, right? Like my god, why the fuck…. I get why. Again, i get why. It’s life and death of fucking babies. And it’s babies with real shots at getting better.

But then i think about, like, what system are we fucking submitting them to??? My god dude…… i know that life is meaningful and everyone deserves a chance to live especially people who like…… otherwise would have died…?? Like let them be the ones to comment on medicine and whether it’s worth doing. Like watch one of these kids we’re taking care of now be the cure for cancer or some shit like that.

And of course it doesn’t matter what each kid ends up doing. It’s the thing about like if you save one life you hsave the whole world or some shit… but these people really just like…. Fuck lol idk.

Right now i’m going to eat a damn muffin for dinner and then put some pictures up on my walls. Please. Let’s tape some shit to some shit.

Uhhhhhhhh yeah. I guess that’s it for now. Thanks for checking in.

We’re going to be fine. The time is going to pass anyway my guy. The time passed last month in much the same way, except i just didn’t have shit going on. And yes, it was fucking amazing and magical and li loved it. And that is part of what makes this adjustment so hard right now.

And yes, summer is very nostalgic, and it’s very over now. Summer’s over. That’s it. It’s over now. Summer is closing up. We did everything we could this summe. We did everything we could, including our best. We really did. I promise we did. We did our best, i know we did. It’s good. You’re good.

Fuck lol. This life is fucking weird. It’s gonna be okay though it’llll be okay girlllll it’s gonna be fine just fineeee fine fine it’ll all be alllrighthtttt remember it’s all gonna be fine.

Okay time for muffin and whatever else.