Saturday, August 8, 2009

Words to survive by

This last week was hard. Things just weren't clicking like they had been before. I'm still doing the same things I have been, but something was just off... I felt like I kept screwing up. I was too independent or not independent enough or asking too many questions or not enough. Everyone has different expectations of you, and it's really hard to keep them straight. I feel pretty stupid and useless on a regular basis.

Anyway. I've been falling back on some mantras to get me through it (also on some chocolate).

There's are the classic intern mantra:
They can't stop the clock. ("They" can be attributed to anyone making your life unnecessarily difficult - attendings, patients, nurses, co-residents, whomever. Time will keep passing, no matter what.)

There's the residency mantra:
There's a reason it's a four year residency. (If we were supposed to know it all on Day 1, it wouldn't need to last as long.)

And there's the little mantra I picked up from (no joke) The Next Food Network Star:
I might fail, but I'm failing at the right thing. (There's nothing else I'd rather fail at.)

Anyone out there have any other suggestions?

Monday, August 3, 2009

This bodes poorly

Things I have eaten today (keeping in mind that I am on nights, and my "today" is from last night until now when I am about to go to sleep):

-bowl of cereal
-cherries
-Diet Pepsi
-icelandic grapefruit yogurt
here's where it gets bad...
-
paper cupful of ice cream (it was Pablo's birthday...)
-Whole Foods frozen mac and cheese
-large coffee

Um....yeah. I had good intentions. But then the patients kept coming and I never got to the cafeteria and I was stuck with the ice cream and mac and cheese. This is kind of how things have been going lately. I eat a healthy breakfast (at about 5 pm) and then degenerate throughout the day (night) and by the time I get home I'm too tired for real food. Real food takes time. I have a couple of zucchini in the fridge that I'll eat tonight. But who's to say where I'll be at 4 am. Sigh...

I do have a bag of organic cheese puffs (ha!) that I could take in tonight...