Urology

Lots of penis jokes. I'm fucking tired and I'm only 3 days into this surgery shit. Worst part is, I think this is where I belong. shit.

-bender

have you lost your mind?

damn... some people drive me crazy.

people without manners just drive me crazy. for example this girl that drove me crazy today, sitting in the doctors office pretty much all morning from 7am-11am waiting for my grandma to finish her procedure. so i'm in the waiting room from opening time and little by little people are coming in. eventually, the next thing i know this girl comes in with her father. she seems like a nice girl, kinda cute, wearing a pomona sweater so I'm assuming she's got half a brain. her dad goes in for the procedure and she is sitting there. she then pulls our a book and i think oh she's going to read, that's good. next thing she does, is pull out her cell phone... and proceed to talk for the next 3 hours. Seriously... I'm not fucking joking, this bitch talked for 3 hours straight. you'd think she'd be quiet or at least appropriate, nope... stupid hooker was talking about needing someone to score her some black angel dust or some other shit. I was just hoping her battery would die... or better yet... wait I'm not supposed to say those kinds of things.

so yeah... I hope that chick gets her black angel dust and rots her brain out and turns her dumbass into a veggie.

bah humbug...

joe izzout

Sorry I let you down Bender

Sorry I let you down, you didn't say it, and you probably never will.

You showed it in your eyes the first time you met her and when you told me to stop. So I did, then all the drama came around, and I'm back where I shouldn't be.

I probably don't have your blessings, but I'm trying it the right way.. if there is a right way. I don't know what will come, but I know its something I have to do and something I'm not backing down from. I hope you don't think any less of me for this.

Miss you bro and hope you are doing well up there.

Joe out

haha

Wow, I'm such a bastard for laughing at this poor grown man crying. Damn...



-bender

can't be coincidence

I am at a loss for words right now.

Part of me wants to believe in fate, and part of me wants to deny it and keep on trekking through the shit I need to do and want to do.

School has been a dream thus far, and I am truly blessed for the opportunity I have at the moment. I have gained the support from my Chef and he's recommended me for a job or two that I will be interviewing for. Part of me feels lucky but part of me says that this is what I was supposed to be doing.

I got the opportunity to eat at supposedly one of the top 10 restaurants in Los Angeles, Jiraffe. Met the executive chef/owner, and grubbed down on some of the most extravagant food I've ever seen in my life. Was my first time I ever had Foie Gras or truffles or anything like that in my life. Had some really crazy stuff that night and I took pictures of the plating because some of it was SICKNASTY as Ja would put it. I think the best part about the whole thing is that my Chef used to be swing chef in the kitchen so we got treated like VIP's. We called 1 hour ahead of time to make a reservation, and we got crazy VIP treatment.

It was awesome cuz on my way to the bathroom I saw a lawyer I knew in that restaurant and he talked to me for a bit, and thought I was there with my Law School friends. When he found out what was going on with me, he was super happy. He kinda put some ideas underground for me, and made me happy to hear that he believed I made the best choice for myself. He said I was too mindful of the important things around me to trudge on through mundane tasks for the sake of keeping protocol. I was too practical and it felt good to hear it from him. He called me the next morning to invite me for golf and to talk since we only spoke for about 1 minute. I gotta say, as much as I hate on Lawyers and what they do, there are some nice ones in the world, they are just really rare. It was funny but he invited me to go to the ex partner of the Jiraffe's restaurant which is supposed to be one notch above Jiraffe's so I could make recommendations on what to order. I was kinda in awe at that offer, because I don't know anything about food yet, and I declined the offer and explained this. But he said he would really like me to go and that he was going to invite my old boss. It was funny cuz then I really declined and he was like ok, just golf and a sandwich. He's a funny guy, older gentleman but not too old, he never struck me as an LAish type of attorney, always reminded me of someone who would get along fine in a smaller city with less corruption(although there is no such thing).

This all got me thinking, where would I be right now without everything. Without everything that happened to me, if one thing was changed. Then I thought wait a minute it was all part of my destiny, everything I've done was part of my story, part of who I was. It couldn't be random, it couldn't have just happened by chance, because it was all important. Then I counter and say.... that's just your desire to be more important than what you really are. Which is also valid, people tend to glorify experiences to validate themselves and also add meaning to meaningless shit. We all do it, and we all deny it, but whatever it makes us feel important and good about ourselves... so fuck off.

side note to myself.... the thought that keeps crossing my mind, refuses to let me sleep... is this a coincidence, random chance, or was it in my destiny. Can I really have the one thing that I desire with no doubts. It's funny cuz I would make it final if I could, that sure, 100%. It's the only thing I don't doubt or question.... at the same time, there I go glorifying something trivial to the world... fuck off...

Joe out...

The fact of the matter...is stranger than fiction

I have a patient that my intern and I are trying not to get too attached too. One look at him, aside from a big belly, he looks perfectly fine. He is a nice chap and a real hoot to be around. Aside from liver cirrhosis, he has no other problems. He looks fantastic. I wonder why he isn't on the tranplant list. My intern and I want to work him up so that we can get him on the transplant list. We wondered why nobody had championed for this guy to get a new liver. There's a funny thing called the MELD score in medicine. It takes a bunch of values into account and basically says the odds of being alive in a given point in time. This guy's score says that there's a 90% chance that he'll be dead by the end of this year. Kind of sobering, I know. It's hard for me to fathom. I can see how it'd be hard for family to fathom. Here's a guy who looks really healthy and we need to talk to him about putting him in hospice. If I were the patient, I'd think that I was crazy too. Do I champion his cause, only to be let down? Or is this the beginning of me not fighting for my patients? Hard to say. You want to be your patients' advocate, but you don't want to burn out and become useless to all of your patients. So I guess the easiest thing to do is send him home, knowing that you're sending him home to die. You hope that he doesn't come back on your service because you want to believe that he got well and lived happily ever after. It's always the nice guys...

-bender

Last stretch of medicine

Bluntly put, I'm pretty tired and worn out. This isn't to bitch and moan or say how rough life is. Just a little tired and doing what I have to do to survive and do well.

I've been feeling a little lost lately. My whole life I've had this picture of what I wanted to do and who I was. I thought I'd be that community doc that did it all. I don't think so anymore. I'm not even sure if I like internal medicine. That plus my refusal to kiss anyone's ass and my cavalier attitude toward everything = not so hot scores. I'm been told I'm a little too informal with the team and patients. My patients love me and let me know each time I discharges one of those suckas home. Now whether my attending thinks I'm intellectual enough or professional enough...well that's another story.

It's weird, everything in medicine comes in waves. The patients roll in in waves. The badness and the sickness come in waves. Usually I roll with the punches and I'm good to go. I put on my cynical mask, joke and talk a lot of shit in general. Every once in a while, that all comes tumbling down and I ache all day. I want my alcoholic patient with liver failure to stop drinking and somehow get on the list for a new liver. I'm sending him home to die next week. I want my diabetic kid to get his insulin and stop coming home looking like those starved african children. I want my heart failure patient who thinks that he is doing well because we took off his fluids with lasix to go home and do well. His duke score sucks ass.

Those days are the toughest...and it just literally hurts in my chest all day until I can wall it off and go back to being an asshole. When I am an asshole, I do well in medicine. I'm on top of my game, not intimidated by anything or anyone. I tapped a guy's ascites and stuck my finger up some guy's ass without batting an eye. No thought about any consequences or badness...just rolling through the day. I was in the proverbial often wrong, but never in doubt mentality.

Joe, I don't know what kind of doctor I'm gonna be. Hopefully a good one. I'm supposed to schedule rotations in a couple of months in whatever I'm interested in. To be honest, I haven't found anything yet that I'm crazy about. Nothing that I'd be happy to sacrifice my 20s to. I'm so burnt out that I just want to sleep in or have a weekend off to play in the snow, grill up some burgers and drown myself with some suds.

Maybe things would be easier if I didn't take everything so damn personally. I need to stop quoting you've got mail...but shit. What's so wrong with being personal anyway? Shouldn't everything start with being personal? When I present my patients, I have no idea who my team is talking about. I've got nicknames for all of my patients and that's who they are. Some of them go by their middle names. They've got tattoos of long loves that left them and children at home who need them.

I apologize that this blog is a jumble of random ass thoughts.

I'm sort of stuck on what bothers me the most about the hospital. Sandwich effect...I love my daily soup and talking shit with my cashier Omar. Things I can't stand. I hate roaming through the halls in the middle of the night. My mind starts wandering and I get confused. I still get lost in the hospital in the middle of the night. I avoid the back entrance of the hospital like the plague in the middle of the night. There are some long creepy ass stretches that ruffle the skin on my neck. In the night, I see them carting off the biohazard red bags...it smells just like the thousands of mice I used to sack. I can only image what those bags are filled with. I'm haunted by our superstitious society. Our elevators don't have a 13th floor...goes from 12th to 14th. I like to think that there is a 13th floor, like in being john malkovich, for tiny people. In the night, the elevators creep me out. I hate davis tower, 6th floor, cardiology unit. The patients there are scared out of their lives...I imagine it must be like that all across the hospital. Seeing grown men cry and hold in their shit for a week because they're so damn scared of their heart surgery...and they lash out at me when I try to talk to them...like a cornered animal. Those memories haunt me every time I start rounding in the morning. Davis 12, room 63 creeps the shit out of me. More people have coded, died in that room than god knows what. 3 Since the past week and a half or so. Some of the nurses are scared to go in that room and some say that it's haunted. Thanks a lot...whatever. My patient made it out ok. I know that she is gonna come back with altered mental status changes because of her liver failure. Once she gets back to lucid, it's gonna kill me again to have to ask her what the date is and have her start crying on me once she realizes that her time is short, but the last month has been wasted with her in a perpetual haze of confusion. I usually take pity on her and redirect her by talking about the superbowl. Sometimes I wonder if I should've let her have a good cry.

Sometimes I wonder if people ever get well at the hospital. When you're rounding on your patients at 4 in the morning, there's a certain light headed feeling that you feel. You feel like a ghost drifting through the halls of the hospital. In the beginning, you smile at everyone. As you start to fit in, you just try to stay out of everyone's way, but that just makes you look like an asshole cuz you don't smile or say hi anymore. Sometimes you spend every second of your waking moment wishing for just another wink of sleep. Sometimes you blow off your friends and family just so you can get a little more sleep. Then you get some sleep and you realize that the past few months have been a haze in your life, and you cry because it's most lost time. It's the reality of your life and all that you can see for the near forseeable future.

My fantasy basketball team is doing well. yay...what was I talking about before?

-bender

Why go on the record to say mean shit?

Damn timmy...that's some cold shit to say about gay people. I used to worship this guy as a kid. He had an unstoppable turnaround fadeaways...sad.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/6473866

-bender

jack and coke

Wow....

So how's this for grabbing the bull by the horns and taking his ass downtown.

Starting to fall in love with pastries and seriously considering trying my hand at a bakery/pastry shop. Trying to get a position as a patissier somewhere and we'll see.

The funny thing is, I'm not even switching because I suck at cooking. In fact last night I grouped up with the nonstellar students and fucking tore it up. Seriously, we made the best everything last night and even wowed the chef (a first cuz his ass is picky). It was my second stunt trying to do it without joining forces with the other "A" students and I think I did it more as a personal challenge than anything else.

The scary thing is, I think I love that adrenaline more than anything else, getting a group together that is totally down and out.... turning it around and kicking ass and taking names. The scary thing was, for once, I was the weakest link, and was more around for motivation and panic mode. My teammates were the calm, cool, collective ones. I was the chicken running around without my head just barking out crazy things. The scary thing is... they love me when I'm in that mode and somehow, it worked.

Usually I work with the same group and we always put out a good solid product. We know each other and know exactly our strengths and weaknesses so we pick up the slack for each other.

I'm not sure if I did this because I wanted to push myself more than anything or maybe I did it because I felt bad, because I felt like I disappointed my chef or something when I told him I wanted to do pastries. Join the doughboy crew or something was his response and I know he was just joking. But I think it was more of him being disappointed because he actually thinks I have what it takes to last in a high class joint. But that has never been my goal, my goal has always been to bring something nice to the hood.

I am not completely sold on giving up the kitchen, and my chef is definitely not giving up on me and is still trying to get me to stay in the kitchen. So I think I owe it to myself and the culinary world to go at it. I'm by no means a natural at this shit, I'm horrible when it comes to knowing the difference between a china cap or chinois. But I bust my ass and go 500 mph and have kept up with everyone based on that alone.

I've been absent for a while and I know that I should probably blog more often. For that I'm sorry.

Just to keep you updated, I kinda sorta asked Jennifer out (the one from my class) and we're going to get some food on monday. I'm sure that nothing is there and have moved myself out of that zone and will be moving my ass to the friend zone. The other Jenny, the 867-5309 Jenny... well things have been getting kinda complicated. We're going out saturday but I just don't see anything developing right now. I think we're at different stages right now and that sucks cuz we both have a blast together.

Also, something else has entered the picture and I'm kinda happy about it. She's not quite at the stage where I would be in position to ask her out, but I'm definitely keeping my options open.

On a side note, I've been reading comics with Token lately, and found out that Iron Man is such an asshole. He totally manipulated Spider Man (my hero) and is a total douchebag. With that in mind I think I'm just gonna stick with Joe, cuz Joe would never abandon his comrades and always does the right thing. Stupid Iron Man.

Joe out...

boundaries

After struggling with an innerconflict I've dealt with for quite some time. I finally made  a decision about it and went with it. I'm not sure if I did it with some alternative motives in mind, maybe I did, maybe I didn't. But I made my decision and can't go back on it now, it's too late. Only time will tell what the future will bring but I think I just opened myself up to a lot of pain and suffering, but did it because I care and was willing to take it on.

The question of loyalty is always a hard one to argue, especially as a guy. We tend to stick together, just like women tend to stick together. When is this unspoken guy code off limits, and when isn't it? When is it absolute and when is it unethical? Well I made my decision, the code doesn't exist, it doesn't feel right. Doing what is right and feels right, is more important and... hehe.. right.

Iron Man out...
 

don't bark if you can't bite

seriously...

I dislike a lot of things, but lately I've been mellow, non-ranting, and just more happy-go-lucky. The one thing I am finding that is hard for me to swallow and be mellow with. Is people who find the need to bring down others to make themselves feel better. I think I've made it my personal mission to not take potshots at anyone in class. People cheat, I don't preach I just observe, people are lazy, I just observe. Someone does something stupid, I laugh inside or get angry inside and try to help out.

Last night was a little different, last night one of my classmates decided to call me out, to "throwdown" so to speak. Well I decided that I had heard enough about me to let it slide and I supposedly  "came down on her hard". I always heard the expression, the biggest bark has the smallest bite, I guess last night was a prime example of it. Because apparently I was an asshole for not staying quiet and nodding my head and calling someone out on their bullshit. I guess the girl couldn't handle it and thought I was being a jerk.

Damn, I can't stand it when that happens... don't talk shit if you can't throwdown...

iron man out...

This is how you know that you've made it.

btw, medicine sucks donkey balls.

-bender

check please...

After my first month in medicine at kaiser, I was dead sure that I was going into medicine. Now after a little over a week at the medical center, I'm thinking that medicine isn't for me. I can't imagine doing this for the rest of my life. Outpatient is lame, and inpatient. Well, medicine appears to be everybody's bitch. You basically babysit patients while everyone else works them up and treats them. Every once in a while there is an interesting case, but the general rule is just a shitload of scutwork all day. Calling people to make sure that your patients have places to go after they get out of the hospital, making hospital appointments for them, calling their families, etc.

Damn...seriously, I hate my team. I haven't learned a thing since I've been at the med center. I feel like I'm following the patients, but not taking care of them. There is no motivation to work hard anymore because I don't really get anything out of making lots of phone calls or being scutted out. Nowadays, once I finish rounding on my patients and I'm out of my resident's sight, I get the fuck out of the hospital. I'm probably not gonna get honors, but I don't really give a shit.

Maybe I'm tired, but I don't really fit into medicine. For the first time in my life, I don't think I'm type A/obsessive compulsive enough. Mostly, I don't care enough. I just want to get through the next few months. Just finished watching some gray's anatomy...so true. In the beginning, it's all about being the best. By the time you get to med school, you just want to finish. I don't know how my classmates stay so focused and motivated. I know now is a critical time and I should bust my ass, but I just really haven't found anything in my 3rd year that I've liked. Peds was alrite, but ob/gyn sucked, outpatient medicine sucked, I'm pretty sure I won't like psych. That leaves me with medicine and surgery. Looking pretty grim. Starting to think maybe I made a bad career move. Hmm...I wonder how PM&R is like...

It's funny what a difference the people with whom you work with makes. Seriously...good times. Ugh.

-bender

yikes...

 i hate taking poops. especially when I'm sick.

well I'm feeling better, and got to see my boys tonight. The last time I saw them all at the same time was new years. It's weird cuz I knew I was going to make my presence scarce once school started, but once it actually happened, it just felt weird. To say, long time no see, to people I used to see on a daily basis, it just feels strange.

It was chucks birthday so we all showed up and it was fun. Damn that homie has got a hot girl on his jock and he deserves it. One of the nicest guys I've met ever, and a bright guy as well.

As for me, I pussed out again and hopefully I get some balls and ask jennifer out this week. If not, I'm gonna kick my own ass.

iron man out