Lonely Nights in the Baptist

Being on call is not as sexy as Grey's Anatomy makes it seem - well, at least for not anyone I know. There are no call room sexual hijinks, no flirting with cute, single doctors, and no dire emergencies (or at least in psychiatry). Instead, call is really busy and very mundane. I usually wander around the ED, very cranky and irritable, wishing that I had become anything else in the world but a doctor, wearing an old UNC sweatshirt that makes the Wake Forest security guards who are inevitably stationed outside a suicidal/homicidal patient's door, telling me "I don' like yo sweatshirt....I'm a [insert any other shitty ACC team here] fan." At 4 AM, however, no one wants to give a dissertation on why you are a Tarheel fan, no matter how die-hard you are about the Dean Dome, Dean Smith, and Roy Williams.

However, probably what I hate most about call is not the work or the scary/depressed/psychotic patients who have decided that 3 AM would be the time they would come into the ED with their crazy command hallucinations or decide to cut their wrists with that trusty old razor blade, but my loneliness. When I'm on call, I swear I hear the Britney Spears' chorus running through my head as if a soundtrack for my current state of mind - "My loneliness is killing me....baby hit me one more time."

For psychiatry, we do not have team structure call - I am literally the only psych person on call - no on site upper level or attending in sight. So I wander the halls of the Baptist alone in my solitude. I wander into a resident work room and see at least 6 internal medicine residents all hanging out together, joking about patients, having human interaction at 3 AM, and I get jealous of their comraderie. The other night I went to the friendly bagel shop to get their disgusting asparagus omelette bagel contraption, and as I waited in line, I saw 4 handsome internal medicine residents drinking their chai lattes at 3 AM, joking and chatting amiably. I enviously looked in their directions in the hopes that someone would talk to me, but they didn't - cliquish as they were. I grew irritable and thought, "Hey, I have friends! They're just at home...sleeping right now, but when they come back, we talk and joke just like your program." And so, I bravely trudge on through calls, counting down the hours before it ends, because after all, the night eventually does have to end, right?

--By Mariam, who realizes the shitty nature of this blog but was getting tired of Farrah's constant reprimanding, "I am keeping this blog alive since residency started, Mariam." This one is for you, Fars.

Career-dropping

If I had a Match.com profile, my dislikes would include: the sitcom Two and a Half Men, tourist traps, and bragging. I absolutely hate when people brag about their fancy homes, cars, watches or their elite Ivy League education or the fact that they are the frequent object of admiring glances from the opposite sex.

How things have changed. Before I started residency, during my summer vacation, I wished that I could plaster "M.D." on my forehead so that the world would know all that I had accomplished. For instance, last month I was at our local department store Belk getting a gift wrapped at customer service. The elderly lady wrapping my box told me that she had an aunt that was a 100 years old and still lived at home and on occasion played ball with her grandchildren.

A thought suddenly flashed through my mind, I want these nice ladies at Belk to know that I am not an average customer, I want them to know I'm a doctor. So, as the lady talked about her amazingly healthy century-old aunt, I nodded in faux-admiration and casually inserted into the conversation: "That's so great she's healthy! These days people who are over-50 have so many diseases like hypertension and diabetes."

I thought I sounded knowledgeable without coming across as self-aggrendizing, but the lady continued to wrap the box with pink ribbon and did not ask me, "Well how do you know that?" as I had intended her to. This will not do, I thought. So, then I said, "I'm in the healthcare profession and people are so unhealthy these days! It's nice to see your aunt is doing great at a 100!"

And that did the trick. "Well, oh my gosh, what do you do?" the lady asked, finally going along with the script I had created in my mind.
"Well, I will be a doctor at Wake Forest in July."
"Well congratulations, that is just so great! What kind of doctor?"
"A psychiatrist," I replied.
At this juncture another elderly lady appeared from the woodwork. "A psychiatrist? You know you'll need a gun, right?" she exclaimed in her Gentile Southern accent. This, of course, was not the intended response and almost seemed as if it were a non sequitor and borderline offensive, mocking the career of a mental health worker who labors to ensure patients don't disappear into the abyss of suicide or psychosis.
"Excuse me?" I said trying to hide my annoyance.
"Well, those crazy people - they could hurt you! I saw it on the TV," she said, a firm believer of the scare tactics of the 5 0'clock news.
"I'll be okay. They treat us self-defense at orientation" (for the record, they do not). And so, with that I learned my lesson of casual boasting. It never does end well.

And now, that I have actually started my residency, answering pages with, "This is Dr. Qureshi" fills me with an unforeseen anxiety. I feel like a huge fraud - after all, who the hell is this Dr. Qureshi? Certainly not me; I feel like I'm playing pretend as my dad, who has been answering the phone with that line for the entirety of my life. Every time I have to answer a page on call, I never know what to say since Dr. Qureshi sounds so extremely prideful, and pride cometh before the fall.

And so, I try out different phrases, hoping one will fit comfortably; "Hi, this is Mariam, the new intern" or "Hi I received a page, I'm the new psych intern" or "Umm, hi did anyone page psychiatry?" or the now-dreaded but direct, "This is Dr. Qureshi returning a page."

--By Mariam, who is no longer an MS, and is now a PGY-1...Is that an upgrade or a downgrade? Jury's still out.

Bad Muslim Jokes

I was watching the latest episode of Party Down, a show on Starz that I am pretty sure no one has heard of but is actually really funny, and for the first time, I was offended by an offhand joke. In a rather farcical episode, the Party Down catering gang is at a gig for an after-party for the actors of a community theater play. Two of the main characters - Casey and Henry, her on-again-off-again love interest, are messing around with the costumes from the play backstage. Casey jokingly puts on a flamboyant pink burqa costume and Henry says, "I still can see your crudely wanton ankles," he says sarcastically.

I don't believe in censorship, and sometimes humor pushes the boundary of good taste. But I found this joke fundamentally annoying. It seems as if a new trend in comedy is to mock Muslim women's choice of modest dress. I haven't seen the new Sex and the City 2 movie (shoot me first), but I read in a review that there are hijinks involving "flaunt[ing] the flesh in front of Muslims." I find jokes where an enlightened Western woman shows off her beautiful tanned body in front of Muslim men and their covered women and the ensuing stares they encounter not funny at all.

Modest dress is a choice for most women, especially those of us who choose to do it in America. There exists no oppressive father (with a scary beard and outrageous temper) who tells their daughter in heavily-accented English, "You will wear zee hee-jab! I command it as does Allah!!!!" Of course, I admit, there are negotiations between parents and their kids when they are teenagers on what is classy and what is just plain hooker trashiness, but I assume that happens in white folks' homes, too. Classic example in Clueless, when Cher's dad says, "Cher, what is that?" when she's going on her "date" with the rather obviously homosexual Christian. Cher responds, "It's a dress, Daddy."
"Says who?" he commands.
"Calvin Klein," she states. There were many permutations of this conversation when I was a kid and wanted to wear some outrageously trashy Arden B. or Betsy Johnson shirt to high school, and my mother would argue against it.

And while I understand that some of us who do not wear the hijab make arbitrary choices on what we do and do not wear (no short sleeves or no sleeveless or no capris etc.), they are still our choices (not some ominous patriarchal figure who looms in the background at home), and they should be respected. Because on the whole, let's be honest, those of us who attempt modesty achieve it compared to mainstream America.

And I hate to be cliched, but the Sex and the City gals are not liberated in their scantily clad clothing. They are enslaved by it. Wearing low-cut tops or short skirts doesn't make you more enlightened or more free than a burqa-clad Muslim woman. Because men objectify you - you are not a sum of your parts, but just a faceless, mindless pair of boobs, ass, or legs to them. Female objectification is everywhere in movies (probably because of patriarchal male directors and crass American audiences). Ever seen a movie where the camera languishes over an actress's lean body (see: any Jessica Alba movie)? Or how about gratuitous female nudity, where an actress is dancing around in her undergarments for no apparent reason (ex. any Katherine Heigl movie)? Now that is female objectification. These kinds of movies make me want to put on a black burqa even in the 90 degree, sweltering summer heat of North Carolina.

--By Mariam, who apologizes in advance for not making this blog as funny as previous entries but blames Uzma K. for her influence in reverting Mariam back to her radical feminist ways.

Blast from the Past: Journal Entries

Last week, Farrah invited me to her house. She lured me to Perrysburg with the promise of home cooked fish and a tantalizing glimpse into her diary from the 12th grade. My interest was piqued - what was Farrah like at age 18? I was almost positive that although her comedic timing wasn't as matured and developed in the twelfth grade, it was well on its way. After reading an entry from 9/12/01, I realized I couldn't be more wrong. Senior year Farrah was not the person I know now - she was so incredibly earnest, very angsty, and tragically very, very Republican. A perpetual fear of terrorism, straight from George W.'s fear-mongering speeches, was a continual theme from said entry.

This prompted me to tell my parents to bring my diary from its hiding place in my room so that I could reflect on what kind of dork I was. Here is an entry from 5/22/97:

In science, Hardy [my 7th grade science teacher who was the Heidi to my LC, the Goliath to my David] goes "any gum 2day." I said "no." She told the whole class I got a demerit. I want 3, then I can get demerit SH [study hall]. He [?] gave me tips on how to get a demerit. Then we were taking notes and my light arrow was pointing the wrong way b/c I had no room. She was checking my notes and couldn't find anything wrong. So she goes, "Why is the arrow pointing the wrong way" "B/c I didn't have room." She tore out the page and goes "Now u do." I hate her.

In English - British tea party. During break, I was asking Lauren something near my locker and Nathan walks past a & hits me on the butt (this time no long object). I was like "U perv." He blamed it on Brice. More LATER! I asked Mrs. Horlacher 4 a demerit. She said no. Then I started chewing my gum really loud & she says, "You're chewing gum, automatic demerit." I was all excited and I thanked her. After I left, she said, "What's her problem." Mrs. Gibson never gave me a demerit. I asked 3 times. In Pre-Algebra, Nathan told me to get another demerit, just in case.

In history, I found out who Betsy liked - Nathan W!!! She said in her note, "he's so foxy." So she's over NF. In art, me and Jenna drew our houses and William told all the guys about how I live near him. Then I was like, "One time I said hi to u & u ignored me." Then Ryan and Nathan W said, "If I lived in your neighborhood, I'd ignore u 2." Whatever! Guess what I found out, Mrs. Morrison didn't give Betsey a demerit 4 chewing gum. I hate her! In PE, Saira & Nathan F. broke up. Now they're going out again.

And here endeth a typical journal entry from my seventh grade year. To glimpse into my twisted seventh grade mind is truly enlightening and frightening. I barely recognize myself - a boy crazy Valley girl whose greatest obsession was a guy who barely knew she existed. Hardly the pretentious, liberal hipster who references 30 Rock and I am Charlotte Simmons regularly that I am now. Most importantly, after reading this blast from the past, I realize how important it is to keep a journal. If we can't look back at our angst-ridden teen years and laugh, at least we can feel infinitely superior about how much we have changed. Or how much we have stayed exactly the same.

--By Mariam, who is an MS4 and thereby, INVINCIBLE.

Blog Submissions: Awkward Interview Moments Series

Welcome to a new series that will start after Match Day. Some of us have been through an exhausting, grueling interview season of fake smiling, wearing uncomfortable polyester-blend suits, and asking nonessential questions about programs that are all essentially the same. During these 3 months, most of us have probably encountered an awkward moment with an interviewer - whether it be on our parts or the assistant professor of [insert medical specialty] or current resident. And we want to hear about it! We will compose a blog about the most awkward moments we encountered on the interview trail 2009-2010. All submissions will be anonymous, and don't fret, overly cautious MS4s, this blog will not go up until everyone has matched. Blog readers, come out of the woodwork, and participate - send your most awkward interview moment to mariamq786@yahoo.com.

-- By Mariam, who will scream if anyone ever asks her, "Do you have anymore questions for me?"

The Poltics of Naming

When a group of 20-something girls congregate together, the discussion always veers towards baby names - what names we have picked out for our hypothetical kids regardless of our marital status. And my contribution to this conversation is invariably, "I will pick a name that is pronounced the same in Urdu and English so my kid won't have a weird name complex."

This is because I suffer from a so-called "name complex" because (Cosmo Confession) my name is actually pronounced Mur-ium, not the Anglicized Westernized version: Mary-am. When I was a teenager, I had no problem introducing myself to white folks as Mary-am. I didn't think twice about the identitarian politics associated with assimilating ones name to ease social interactions with mainstream society. I just wanted white folks to have an easier time with my foreign name, and so I was "Mary-am Qureshi." In fact, my Carlisle friends would tell me, "I love how your mom says your name: Murrrrium! Murrrrium!!" as they rolled their "r's" as if my mother was a sassy, sharp-tongued, South American tango dancer. Back then, I didn't have the cojones to say, "Yo, my mama says it the right way!" Instead, with a subservient smile, I would say, "I guess it's cool."

When I got to college, though, the politics of assimilating ones name became more complex. At Carlisle School, the vast majority was of Southern white people, whose only interaction with Pakistan or its people had been through a copy of National Geographic at the local library (sigh in the pre-9/11 days). At UNC, though, brown folks abounded - there were academics in every department.

When I took a women's study course my junior year of college, I discovered two horrifying facts: 1) my professor was a short, thin Indian lady named Dr. Chatterjee and 2) class participation abounded and this was just the type of subject where I'd be continually raising my hand. The first time anyone wanted to participate, Dr. Chatterjee would say, "Your name, please?" Even though I really wanted to participate in some of the riveting discussions about the gender politcs of the egg and the sperm and how scientific language made menstruation seem so wasteful, I held back for fear of how to say my name. Should I say "Mary-am" to appease my classmates or "Murrium" for the Indian professor? Now, at this point, dear blog reader, I can literally hear the groans from people like Amar or Erik Peterson as they collectively sigh, and say, "JESUS, why is this such an issue for you Mary-am? I mean, seriously, who cares? Can't you make fun of sick children or the homeless some more?" And in my defense, I can only say, yes, this may seem trivial, but it still haunts me to this day, and the egalitarian nature of self-publishing on the Internet allows me to post absolute shit if I want to on this blog.

In the end, I decided to raise my hand and participate in a discussion about women working "pink collar" jobs in the West Indies for Western companies and pronounced my name is "Murrium." I figured that a women's studies professor whose particular interests are in colonization and post-colonial gender studies would notice me selling out to Western hegemony.

However, the problem persisted, especially in medicine, where every rotation I had was filled with some brown person. I got confused literally at the start of every rotation. And so, I came up with some general rules to live by:

1) Say "Mary-am" to patients because usually they are small town white folks who have never seen a Pakistani and would get really confused if I said my name the right way.
2) If there are only white doctors around and white students, pronounce it "Mary-am."
3) If the doctor is Pakistani/Indian and everyone else is white, then pronounce it "Murrium" because the highest authority figure who is grading you matters the most, and you don't want them to think you are an Oreo (white on the inside, brown on the outside).
4) If the team is a mix of Pakistanis/Indians and white people, pronounce your name both ways depending upon whether the person is brown or white. I have to make sure that the other members of the team can't hear me during each introduction though. That leads to confusion within the team and no one ever saying your name because they don't know which way is the right way and are too lazy/embarrassed to ask. This happened to me during my pediatrics rotation in my 3rd year when the team was a mix of Bengalis, white people, Hispanic people, Indians, and Persians.

And so, this is what happens to you when you are a first generation American - I have now realized that straddling both your parents' culture and being an American is not as easy as they make it seem in heartwarming immigrant movies or that documentary they show you when you visit the Statue of Liberty. It involves a lot of complicated, minor and major compromises with your identity continually in flux as you negotiate the Old World and the New.

--By Mariam, who is so sorry she hasn't blogged in so long, but life got in the way.

Singles Vs. Marrieds: A Comparison Study

In the Sex and the City episode "A Woman's Right to Shoes," Carrie attends her married friend's baby shower. The host insists she take off her Manolo Blahniks upon entering her penthouse apartment. But when Carrie leaves, the Manolos have been stolen, and the hostess refuses to pay the exorbitant $485 to replace them. At the end of the episode, Carrie registers herself for the same shoes she lost at the Manolo Blahnik store and announces her marriage to herself. After all, she reasons, "Think about it. If you are single, after graduation, there isn't one occasion where people celebrate you. ... Hallmark doesn't make a "congratulations, you didn't marry the wrong guy" card. And where's the flatware for going on vacation alone?"

I never really thought there was much of a difference between married and single people. Weren't we still a part of the human race? Recently though, after spending quality time with married people and observing them in their natural habitats - one-dish dinner parties and Ikea - I have realized that singletons and marrieds have diverged into two different species - call it homo marritus vs. homo singletus. The question remains - can we still co-habitate?

Recently, I was sitting at a table with married people who were slightly older than me, but not so old that they wouldn't get the Jesse Spano, "I'm so excited!" reference. As I sat there, attempting to make conversation, I realized that for the first time I was at a loss for words. One girl discussed the difficulties of building a home - picking out the tiles, the sinks, the appliances etc. I had been renting since I was 18 and would probably continue to do so until the age of 31 when I finished residency (i.e. when I could finally afford anything that didn't have linoleum floors and a shared wall), so I merely said, "Yeah...Home Depot is a confusing place" awkwardly.

Another girl discussed how her son had just gone for his first soccer practice and how confused he had been by the concept of kicking the ball into a large net and had merely wandered off to pick daisies instead. I didn't have a 4 year-old son or ever play soccer, so I merely "awwww'ed" accordingly as is customary to do so when someone tells you an incident about their under the age of 10 child.

Another day at a post-Ramadaan brunch, I once again found myself at a table full of married folks. The restaurant was taking a long time to fulfill everyone's orders, and one girl's husband rushed to her side and gave her a Danish pastry he had ordered so that she wouldn't get hungry. "Awwww!" the other marrieds cooed, "My husband doesn't do that ever!" they said with mock-jealously. There was congenial laughter about how sweet this said husband was and how their own spouses were too busy watching football to care that much. I was the only single girl at the table and by this point, I had learned the value of silence.

During my one-month stay amongst the Marrieds, I felt less like the independent Miss Mary Tyler Moore with her "you're gonna make it after all" attitude and more like an old unmarried lady with other unmarried lady doctor friends who only had a wealth of arcane medical knowledge and a litter of cats for company. Even Carrie who felt inferior to the smug married people got her Manolos at the end of the episode and could drown her sorrows in her fabulous wardrobe. But where are real single people supposed to find solace? In their crappy H&M and Banana Republic-on-sale button downs and poly-blend work pants (which is all one can really afford on a resident salary)? Or perhaps we can find silver lining in that our conversations haven't solely degenerated into the chemical composition of baby vomit and home moldings. Yet.

--By Mariam, who feels bad because she hasn't blogged in so long.

A Complex Person

This week, I discovered new medical school blogs from strangers by typing in "Medical school" into the magic Google machine. I found entertaining blogs about medical school and the standard woe-is-me entries about how tiring, entertaining, pointless it is to be a medical student, even though we will go on and become the top earners in American society. The backrow blog has had its fare share of bitch sessions about medical school, and I realize now that these stories aren't universally entertaining. They are only amusing to our small, select audience of secret medical student readers, Jack's dad and sister Eileen, and Lindsay, our friend from the Detroit suburbs. What this blog needed was wider appeal like my hero David Sedaris.

And what I want to say is: yes, I'm in medical school, and it consumes a lot of time, but I am still an interesting person, regardless. In essence, I want to reclaim my identity from medical school, and I want to say to UTCOM, you have not destroyed me - I am still desperately clinging to the last shards of my personality. For instance, I do a funny white person voice with Farrah**, I really like zombie movies, and I love Sephora. In other words, I am a person without you, medical school. I am a person of varied interests, and I will now have to end my affair with you. We are officially on a break until I reclaim myself from your tyrannical clutches (really, medical school, you are as possessive as a jealous mistress). No more, I say! Down with medical school entries about butt abscesses and patient care! Viva non-medical school-related blogs!

**Really, it's very humorous. I wish blogs had audio capabilities.

--By Mariam, who can talk about things other than rotations and medical school. Just ask her about the Nazi plundering of art treasures during WWII.

"It's all fun and games until someone gets shit in their eyes."

Although I blogged on this topic not too long ago, I firmly believe in knocking down the facade of the seemingly glamorous lives of doctors. Everyone sees the fancy cars, the long white coat, and the self-assured and cocky attitude of doctors, but rarely does anyone realize what this job actually entails.

My mom was always enamored by doctors. She didn't get to go to medical school and always regretted that decision. She said things that were classic of a non-doctor like, "Wow, you get to be economically self-sufficient" or "Doctors get so much respect," or "You help people!" In short, the classic immigrant lines about the American Dream. She, of course, had me at "economically self-sufficient."

I find that it is my duty as the resident blogger/muckraker to dismantle the myths about this seemingly dignified, respectable profession of the bourgeois class. I realized this year that being a doctor involves doing a lot of shit, literally.

For instance, last week, I scrubbed into a procedure that I thought would be simple - a mere colostomy and central line placement. But then, suddenly things took a dark and sinister turn as the patient was placed in the lithotomy position. The surgeon started to explore this lady's anal cancer as if he were the Vasco da Gama of the anorectal canal, and I was his humble skipper there to help with whatever was needed.

The scrub nurse (who had the attitude of a cab driver in rush hour in NYC) aggressively forced a small yellow bowl and suction into my hand and told me place it under the butt hole (for a lack of a better word) as the surgeon irrigated the fistula that had developed there. As he cleaned out the fecal matter from the vagina, I got to suction the lovely contents up like a dutiful Vanna White that I was. It was at this point that I thought, I went through 8 years of extra schooling to do this? To have the dubious honor of suctioning up shit?

My internal diatribe was interrupted suddenly with a huge splash. The saline and fecal solution that the surgeon had been irrigating splashed on my face and eyes. The moment was very surreal - did this really just happen? I didn't say anything at first until I heard the scrub nurse making a huge commotion about how it got into her eye.

"Uh, can I, uh, please get a towel?" I asked timidly still thinking that my job of holding the feces bowl was still relevant despite actual contact with someone else's bodily fluids.

"WHY?? DID IT GET IN YOUR FACE?" the nurse said in a panicked voice.

"Yeah, um just in my eye and face," I said. I was then forced to de-scrub and promptly head to the eye wash to irrigate my eye.

The doctor looked at me with bemusement and said, "It's all fun and games until someone gets shit in their eyes." Ah, a surgeon's sensitivity.

When I told my friends about this incident, they couldn't stop laughing. "This happend to YOU? YOU?" they said with incredulity as they pictured their prissy blogger friend in such a horrendous, disgusting situation. And then I had an epiphany as I filled out an incident report at the nurse's station that day: that being a doctor doesn't require the intellectual mind of a great thinker. Because when all of that prestige and respectability and glamor is stripped away, all you're left with is someone who is willing to get down and dirty and deal with all the literal and metaphorical shit of people's lives.

--By Mariam, who loves the "Wedding & Celebrations" sections of the New York Times, just like Katherine Heigl in that crap movie 27 Dresses.

The Death of Blogging

We rarely update this blog anymore with an average of 2 blog posts per month, a far cry from the BackRowBallers' heydey when we posted at least 3 times a week. Of course, this is a sad turn of events, but the daily grind of life prevents us from having the time to be witty and engrossing. Or it could be that I have simply run out of material - there are only so many funny, foreign stories from childhood one can share. Or perhaps, on a larger scale, blogging is no longer the "rage" anymore with short twitter posts by Ashton Kutcher (which are a disgrace to the craft of writing but whatever) becoming the new style of self-expression. And so, my suspicions about the End of Blogging as We Know It were confirmed with this recent New York Times article with a quote from a former blogger that I can especially relate to:
“I just wanted to post something interesting and get people talking, but mostly it was just my sister commenting.”

I sometimes feel like Paula Cole, singing "Where have all the blog commentators gone?"

--By Mariam, who hates surgery with a fiery, burning passion. June 26th will be a magical date.

Musings while on Surgery Call

I imagine that when you used to tell people you were in medical school in the olden days (i.e. the 90s), they would think "NERD" or "GEEK" or something decidedly low on the social ladder. In the'00s because of popular primetime dramas like Grey's Anatomy, medical school is one's path to a life of nonstop glamor and sexual hijinks with fellow residents. For instance, the "on-call

My On-call room. Notice the Coke. A call must!

room" has a whole new connotation since the crazy cast of Grey's has popularized it with extra-curricular activities other than sleeping.

But here I am, nearing the end of my third year of medical school, and I can definitively say that while there may be some eye flirting between MS3s (the equivalent of "fresh-meat" in college) and the tired residents, life as a student is just one large charade of pretending to be a doctor. Here are some examples:

Seemingly Glamorous Activity: I'm on 24-hour call tonight, and when I tell non-doctors this fact, they are probably thinking, "Wow impressive! Saturday call - you must be really committed to be a doctor to sacrifice weekends." People might wonder what kinds of fun things I do when there is a trauma emergency - as I run in scrubs that fit me perfectly to the ER.
Reality: I've been sitting in a windowless call room with no cell phone reception for over 12 hours. No one has paged me to do anything, and my afternoon has been spent studying and watching a documentary on Roman Polanski (he was unfairly convicted!) and Little Mosque on the Prairie episodes. If there is a trauma, I'll most likely walk at a brisk pace to the ER and then act as an extra as real doctors run the show.

Seemingly Glamorous Activity: Pre-rounding on patients at 6 AM and writing notes about their progress overnight. Improving patient care, saving lives, and taking names.
Reality: I write progress notes that I can't put in the medical chart or the attending physician will get sued. No one ever reads them so my elaborate works of progress note art are relegated to my pocket. The question remains: if a SOAP note is written in the forest, and no one reads it or acknowledges it, does it even exist?

Seemingly Glamorous Activity: Scrubbing into a radical neck dissection surgery in the OR. This is preceded by going through the entire procedure of scrubbing and possibly flirting with cute resident/student by the metal sinks while soaping up one's arms into a heavy lather.
Reality: Scrubbing in for a student means holding a retractor at an awkward position for hours on end. The uncomfortable angle makes me wish that I could cut my arm off just to end the misery. And unless I want to stare longingly into the eyes of the middle-aged scrub nurse, mother of 5, then it's best to look straight ahead into the sterile field.

And so, while rotations are a necessary part of preparing us for the responsibilities and hardship of residency, the tediousness sometimes makes me wish I were an intern already, despite the low pay and lengthy hours. After one year of this, I'm ready to stop playing doctor, and actually, you know, be one.

--By Mariam, who hopes that no one gets drunk and hits their head or gets run over by a car tonight (i.e. the bulk of traumas at the UT ER).

UNC: 2009 NCAA Champions

Naadia and I ventured off to Motown City to attend the Final Four last week. Sure, it cost us an arm and a leg for tickets. Sure, we were in virtual nosebleed territory despite sacrificing aforementioned arm and leg because of the shitty seating system at Ford Field. Sure, half of the crowd cleared out 1/4 of the way through the Villanova-NC Final Four game. And sure, we were surrounded by a literal sea of Spartan forest green. And no problem, that we were late to both games due to technical difficulties beyond our control. And, sure we got lost both days because I-75 S to Toledo was closed and we had to take a scary detour for almost 30 miles before we got on the right track. And finally, no problem that when NC won rather anti-climactically in the final game Monday night, the Michigan State fans cleared out like someone had yelled "fire" in a crowded theater, and no matter that there were about 200 people left to celebrate the glorious Tarheel victory. And also no big deal that the next day during surgery lecture I was so tired that I hallucinated that the professor was talking about going to Costco to buy normal saline when in fact, he was talking about cholecystectomies.

In the end, despite all of these factors and the subzero Detroit tempeartures in APRIL (April is the cruelest month when you live in the Siberain terrain of the mid-West), it was still worth it to see Tyler Hansborough and friends single-handedly crush the dreams of an entire city on its last legs as it is mired in an economic depression and soaring unemployment rates. It was still nice to see Goliath take home the glory for my home state of North Carolina. Because even though we always love an underdog to come home with the prize - a la Ralph Macchio at the end of The Karate Kid - it so rarely happens in real life. Because hell, Goliath is an unstoppable machine with at least 6 future NBA players. Eat it, Detroit.

--By Mariam, who thinks that she should have gotten AP credit for the surgery rotation since it literally has taken the life force out of her.

Cosmo confession: I was a TV Extra

We all do embarrassing shit when we're younger. We wear hideous clothes like tie-dyed T-shirts or Hard Rock Orlando sweatshirts. We may get high on caffeine pills and accost our Upper School director. Or we may have had a profound love of Boys II Men. But there comes an age when your misguided thoughts on what seemed like a good idea are actually just unforgivable.

For instance, when I was a junior in college, my friend Bushra and I decided to be extras on the teen drama One Tree Hill. We got the call from a casting company asking us if we'd like to be extras, and I thought, "OMG OMG OMG CHAD MICHAEL MURRAY IS A HOTTIE!!!EEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKK. THE SHOW IS SOOOOOO AWESOME.!?!" in the manner of a teen girl with the latest copy of Tiger Beat. And so, we took the day off from our classes and drove down to Wilmington, NC (known as Wilmywood by locals) to participate as glorious extras and get paid a tremendous sum of $60 for 14 hours.

I am not sure how I imagined my stint in show business - maybe some glamour and fraternization with the talent. I rehearsed what I'd say to Chad, "Hey, I think you were so great on Gilmore Girls! Want to chillax later?" Maybe one of the actresses would like my top and ask me where I got it, and I'd tell her with an air of sophisticated casualness.

What I imagined in my mind's eye was far from reality. When we got to the designated meeting spot, the extras from all walks of life (mainly unemployed townies and trashy bottled blonds from the local high school) were ushered into yellow school buses like cattle. Inside makeshift tents, the production assistants told us to keep quiet and not to ever talk to the talent. We were lowly human beings or "background artists," not worthy to be spoken to by superior Hollywood folk. If we did dare talk to the actors, then we'd be banished from the set, never to work in the "biz" as background artists again.

Our assignment was simple. Walk back and forth in a club scene. Bushra, sensing her inner hotness, whispered urgently to me, "Mariam, they are picking cute girls to dance in this 'club' scene, and that's haram, let's move to the back so we can lay low."
Never one to rock the Islamic boat, I hid behind some tall African American guys. And so, we merely walked back and forth, mouthing to each other, even though we were not in the shot. I stared at Chad Michael and all of the other D-list actors with great awe, and I thought, someday I'll be back, but I'll be a part of the crew! And as you blog readers can see, that wish certainly didn't come true, because here I am, in medical school and not in Hollywood (or even Wilmywood).

Anyway, Bushra started to sense the low-class nature of extra work and started to get agitated.
"Let's go! This is so lame!" she whispered.
"We can't! We'll ruin the continuity of the episode!" I said, ever the ye old faithful to Hollywood magic.
"This whole scene is so trashy" Bushra countered. She was my means of transportation so I finally acquiesced begrudgingly. I had realized early on the trailer-trash nature of the whole activity, but I didn't care - so caught up was I in learning the anatomy of making a TV show. We grabbed our stuff and I sadly made a run for the parking lot, fearing that the One Tree Hill crew would hunt us down and make us return to the "club."

And that was the day I gave up hope of working in Hollywood. I should probably thank Bushra for crushing my dreams like a cockroach on the wall, but I realize what could have been: I may have ended up a washed-up, 40 year-old extra in Wilmington, hanging out at the local casting office, begging to be cast in a high school classroom scene or the big prom episode. Instead, I sit back hundreds of miles away from Wilmywood and watch Chad Michael Murray's shitty acting chops on my 42" TV. Ah, the life.

--By Mariam, who is loving OB/GYN!

Those Cute Slumdog Kids

I will wholeheartedly admit that I loved a mainstream movie - a film for the whole family, one even my 12 year-old cousin in Pakistan loved - Slumdog Millionaire. The kids in the movie were adorable - with their wide, sad eyes and grubby faces and their precocious acting. The movie had a real-life dimension, too, as the child actors, who lived in Garib Nagir in Mumbai (which literally means Poor Corner), got to attend the Oscars a few weeks ago. The two youngest kids looked so excited even though they probably had no idea who Kate Winslet or Mickey Rourke were. In one interview with the E! Channel, Ryan Seacrest asked one of the little kids how he liked working on the film. He looked at him in a puzzled manner the way my grandma used to look when a white person spoke to her. Then the other kids piped up excitedly, "He doesn't speak English." Watch the video of crazy Oscar hijinks below:



This moment reminded me of my own childhood because for the first few years of my life I only knew how to speak Urdu. Here I was, a little foreign FOB preschooler despite having been born in the whitest area of America - the Midwest.

When I got to preschool, my parents did not seem to be concerned that they were sending their FOB-ish 4-year old, who did not have a basic grasp of the English language, into the proverbial lion's den of little white kids, who could attack the foreigner in their midst at any time (this was the South after all, with its dark history of the KKK and lynching mobs). However, once I got to preschool, there were only minor kerfuffles with the whole language barrier thing. I remember getting Urdu and English words confused a lot, and I would tell my teacher about "anecks" (eyeglasses in Urdu). She would look at me in confusion and probably thought I was a kid with neologia.

Now, since I lived in the country with no siblings, I also developed a selective FOB accent. Once in kindergarten, I told Mrs. Caldwell about how my dad went to the "e-mur-gen-cy room" for his job, and I ate "veg-e-tables" at home. She looked at me with a casual disdain and said haughtily, "It's ee-mur-gency and -veg-table!" That day I promptly went home and told my parents that they pronounced these words incorrectly. And so, we sat in the car together and worked on our pronunciation chanting, "ee-mur-gency" and "veg-table" over and over as if we had just invested in Rosetta Stone: English edition.

--By Mariam, who has returned from blogging hiatus.

"Mary" @ Tech Support

My dad calls me daily with a different question, but the conversational theme is always the same: electronics.
"Mariam, my iPod isn't turning on. What do I do?"
or
"Mariam, how do I raise the volume of my phone?"
"How do I listen to my voice mail?"
And my personal favorite: "Mariam, how do I email?"

Everyday, it's either some vaguely described technical issue with an electronic or it's a huge, broad question about the modern technology as a whole (for example, how to email). Now, since I have no brothers, I always had to play the role of a dutiful son within our family unit; for instance, I had to help my dad carry the heavy TVs up a flight of stairs or movefurniture (I can almost picture the naysayers, reading this in disbelief, and thinking Yeah right, like she ever did that! But full disclosure: this is true). I also became really interested in electronics so my dad could have someone to bond with when we went to Best Buy or the now-defunct Circuit City. We would read Consumer Reports (one of my favorite magazines until age 12) and read online reviews on CNET of various electronics from TVs to cell phones to blenders together. These were truly moments worthy of a Norman Rockwell painting.

When I moved away for medical school, though, these moments came to an abrupt end, and I think my dad is still dealing with the after effects. And hence, the daily phone calls to technical support: me. As a busy medical student, I really can't help him trouble shoot over the phone, nor am I exactly trained in dealing with issues such as, "My computer has been running slowly. How do I make it faster, Mariam?" Usually, if it's an easy question, I'll break it down in layman's terms: "You see that circle white thingy on the iPod? Make circles with your finger and that will increase the volume!"

At other times, I admit, my patience wears thin, and I say, "Dad, why am I in to school?"
My dad will say, "So you can be a doctor!"
And then I'll respond with: "I'm not going to school for computer engineering! I'm not Mary, technical support from India, am I?"
My dad, unfazed by my catty sarcasm, will merely say, "I know, Mariam! But I expect you and your generation to know everything about technology!" And with logic like that about Gen Y, how can you argue?

And then I realize that there is a beautiful analogy hidden amongst this daily back and forth. Doctors go to school for years to fix people; people come in with a vague constellation of symptoms, and the physician basically figures out what went wrong with the intricate machinery of the human body. And in theory, how is this cognitive process any different than technical support at those call centers in India?

--By Mariam, who is so excited for the Jon Hamm-Tina Fey event on 30 Rock!!

I, Robot

In many Hollywood films of the action/sci-fi genre, the plot starts with strange, unexplained happenings such as street lights changing unexpectedly, computer screens blinking randomly, and then, people start dying in strange and unseemly ways. Who is this terrorist that lurks within, the audience wonders. And then, all is revealed - the enemy is really a huge supercomputer housed somewhere in the D.C./Virginia area. The supercomputer has taken on a life of its own and has started to destroy the life that it helped make easier. The metaphor is this: society is too technology dependent, and if we do not rectify this immediately, BAD THINGS will happen, like the deterioration of human relationships or even, DEATH.

When I was in grade school, computers were just starting to gain popularity in the average home. My dad brought home a computer when I was 7 - we were the first people to have one on our block, probably in the entire county, because I live in the literal backwoods of North Carolina, where running water and grocery stores are novelties. Anyway, our computer had a tiny screen with literally 10 color graphics and was very, very thick (about a foot in diameter). I played Wheel of Fortune on it and different addition/subtraction games ("educational" CD-ROMs were the only computer programs my dad approved). To play these games (that seemed wondrous at the time, but now in retrospect I realize were really ghetto), I had to navigate complicated command lines in MS-DOS like "C://execute: game.exe."

One day, I remember my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Billera made a general, sweeping statement that many grade school teachers are prone to: "Computers are going to change the way we live. We may not even need certain jobs anymore because computers will be doing stuff for us instead of real people!" Now, I'm not sure if Mrs. Billera had read the completely wrong predictions of Orwell in 1984 one too many times, but I do think this was a tremendous overstatement.

Anyway, I took her very literally. Suddenly I imagined a world where my dad's job was replaced by a cold, steely robot. I imagined this robot examining and diagnosing sick patients quickly and efficiently, and my dad pathetically begging the robot for his job back. The robot would ignore my dad, since human physicians were now as irrelevant as VCRs or record players and continue coldly and methodically about his day.

I immediately went home and asked my dad in a panic: "Can a robot do your job, Dad? Can you be replaced by a robot?" My dad was foreign, so he didn't understand the concerns of children who lived within the cushiony comforts of America. He was used to children wondering whether they'd get dinner that night because there were 10 other siblings to feed that night and only so much chicken, and so my dad merely stared at me in confusion, as if to say, "WTF?"

Needless to say, I never got a satisfactory answer to my pressing paranoia as Michelle or Stephanie would have gotten at the end of a 30-minute episode of Full House, like "No, daughter, we're going to be okay. Computers will make our life easier, but your dad won't be jobless, on the street, asking for money because of technology. Rest easy, little one." Instead, I was left with my stream of paranoid, OCD-like thoughts, thinking that one day welfare and a soup kitchen were in our imminent future as technology advanced (i.e. humans pushed towards their own self-destruction, just like in the movies).

It is 2009, and we now have the iPhone, robotic surgeries, and a robot vacuum cleaner, and my dad luckly still practices medicine. No sirree, no robots doing his job as of yet. But I guess the ultimate point was this: children have the darndest imaginations.

--By Mariam, who realizes the substandard nature of this blog, but feels the need to keep the BackRowBallers blog alive.

The Pathophysiology of a Butt Abscess

During my family medicine rotation, my very important role amongst the "team" of healthcare providers is to merely shadow a resident around as he sees patients with the usual holy trinity of diseases - diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension. It gets really boring after a while, and I keep myself from gouging my eyes out by looking up sports statistics on my iPhone surreptitiously as the adults talk about boring stuff. Sometimes, though, God hands you a little gift by making life interesting.

A few weeks ago, I was following around this Indian resident. A young girl came in to follow up on her gluteal abscess - i.e. butt ulcer. She exposed the affected area, and the ordeal, I mean, exam began. Firstly, there was this strange yellow discharge coming from her buttocks. Then the doctor proceeded to clean the wound and "pack" it with new gauze. The patient screamed her head off and tried to grab the resident's hand mid-procedure, which really annoyed him. She would yell, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WAIT!!!!!" while the nurse told her to just hang in there and let the doctor do his work so the ordeal could be over and done with, but the girl continued to protest and yell. The whole thing was grueling because the girls' screams reverberated through the office walls as if she had just come back from the trenches of Flanders Field in World War I and had a horrible case of trench foot. I, too, was getting annoyed with the patient's dramatics and thought unsympathetically, "Geez some people have such low pain thresholds" I smiled at myself smugly and proceeded to condescend down to the patient, "It's okay! It'll be over so soon!"

After the wound cleaning, screaming, and general torturing was over, the girl asked how she had gotten this gluteal abscess. And this, dear readers, was the resident's explanation (insert New Delhi accent here):

"Vell, you see, this is how you get this butt abscess. It is wery common. If you are overweight, the hips, you see, they are rubbing together more. And then there is also hair there in that butt area. And then the hips of the overweight person are rubbing together, and then you are also sweating a lot there. And then there is the hair, and it gets infected. And then you are in a car for 6 hours, and your butt cheeks are rubbing against each other, and then with the hair and the sweat, you get that infection and then the abscess." So, the basic medical pathophysiology of a butt ulcer was this:
Overweight sedentary person with large hips + hair + sweat = Gluteal abscess

I tried not to laugh as he explained this in layman's terms to the patient, but I couldn't help it. I literally started to laugh in front of the patient. In order to remain the ever-neutral professional, who never judges a patient's problems, I tried to compose myself by ordering myself to think of the tragic day my grandmother died. But the above equation was too much, and I laughed despite forcefully recalling the hard, unfunny times I had experienced. The resident left the room and merely said to me, "That was funny how I explained it." I wasn't sure if it was a rhetorical question or a statement, so I just nodded and wished I could have appropriately memorexed the moment with a tape recorder or video camera.

--By Mariam, who is glad that the hellish experience of family medicine will finally be over.

The Amazon Wish List

The days of getting crappy birthday presents that you have to trudge down to the mall and try to return are long gone. The Amazon.com wish list function has changed all of that. However, since becoming a popular trend amongst the Dream Team, I realized that a public wish list comes with its own baggage and potential for embarrassments.

I pride myself on my cultural pretensions - deeming myself a literary conossiuer. For example, I'd like to read about Sophia Hawthorne (Nathaniel's wife) and her sisters. This shows the world (i.e. people who stalk my wish list) that I am interested in American cultural history - I am no Joe Sixpack! But look a little closer, and one realizes that this book has been on my wish list since 2006, and the paperback version has been available for one year now.

Sometimes I look at my wish list and think of it as a work of art - a mix of eclectic and intellectual - not too geeky and not too mainstream. A great way for my future husband to look at the list and say, "Wow, Mariam seems very interesting. I'd really like to get to know a girl who wants to read a book entitled Heavy Metal Islam!"

That all changed yesterday. Sarah told me she had been stalking my wish list to find me birthday present.
"I found this wish list, and I was really confused - all the books were chick lit. I wasn't sure it was yours because it had books like In Your Shoes and Loose Lips."
As I stared at her in shock, Farrah helpfully added, "Maybe that was another Mariam Qureshi!"
"Yeah! There's a Maryam Qureshi right here in Toledo" I exclaimed. I'm a horrible liar so I mumbled, "Um I had different reading tastes back then."

When I got home, I typed in my name into the "Wish List search" box and sure enough, the embarrassing list that had 8 chick lit books from circa 2003 appeared. Teenager Mariam liked to read books with shoes and bows on them, books with little character development, a formulaic plot, and a saccharine romantic ending. And so, I did what any self-respecting, pretentious hipster who had a reputation to protect would do - I made that list private.

But then I realized we spend so much of our time ignoring the fact that we were geeks way back when. We weren't always the picture of the cool, self-assured future professional who likes NPR, Ethiopian food, and the complete works of Ian McEwan. At some point in our lives, all of us (with the exception of Gwenyth Paltrow) were nerdy 17 year-olds who read those dumb romance novels with the sad hope that we, too, could find love in the most unrealistic, unreasonable place imaginable. And then I had an epiphany - the fact that we were not always the epitome of cool was okay, and we should own our high school geekiness and blog about our embarrassments for the world.

Full disclosure: my current wish list
My wish list as a teenager

--By Mariam, who has to get up at 5:30 tomorrow so that she can vote. Who knew being a good citizen would require such grave sacrifice?

The Sarah Palin in All of Us...

Most people think Sarah Palin isn't very smart. Palin has sounded like an idiot on more than a few occasions in recent weeks - the train wreck Katie Couric interview comes to mind.

Now of course, it wouldn't be such a big deal if Sarah Palin was Just One of Us (i.e ordinary folk). But her nonanswers crumble under the intense scrutiny of the 24-hour news media and the persistent vivisection by the blogging elite. Palin's opponent in the election for governor in Alaska says: "During the campaign, Palin's knowledge on public policy issues never matured—because it didn't have to. Her ability to fill the debate halls with her presence and her gift of the glittering generality made it possible for her to rely on populism instead of policy."

But really, let's think for a second. In reality, we all know someone like Palin - someone who thinks CNN.com is a haven for intellectual discussion but doesn't read anything beyond that because said person is too busy reading pink books with shoes or clothes on them. (For example, Sarah Palin reads all newspapers). Of course, people are way too self-absorbed to notice that the person they are conversing with is not actually saying much of anything - they are just repeating generalizations and stereotypes a la Willy Loman. Here are some common scenarios that we have all encountered:

Scenario 1: You are having man problems. The guy you like or are vaguely interested in may possibly be an asshole. So you turn to your Palinesque friend for advice: "Wow, I mean I think he's cute, but he's been really critical of me - like he told me that I just 'borrow' my opinions about important subjects from The New York Times. I mean, it's rude, but am I being too hard on him?"
Your friend says, "Oh wow, he doesn't deserve you! You deserve way better."

And so, all you are left with is that you deserve better, but she really doesn't specify as to what kind of guy you deserve exactly. Maybe you deserve a guy who reads The New York Times, too, and also lacks original opinions. Or maybe you need a guy who actually has opinions so you can borrow his. Whatever the case may be, she just provides a stock answer that you could have gotten from talking to yourself or from reading an article in Cosmo.

Scenario 2: Your favorite new show is Mad Men, which is complex and symbolically rich, so you would like to discuss it with someone. Say you are confused about what happened on this week's show, where the metaphors and themes are not as obvious as Meredith's voice-overs at the end of Grey's Anatomy. You come up with an articulate-sounding analysis about the show, a skill you got bullshitting as an English major at some pretentious liberal arts school. You present it to your friend, and he/she says, "OMG Don Draper is so hot!" Nevermind the fact that Don Draper is an amoral philanderer who is going through an existential crisis, but the way he slicks back his hair and handles a martini is...hot. Of course, your friend did save you from sounding like a pretentious, pompous drone, so there's that silver lining.

While Sarah Palin may show what is great about America - a place where dreams can come true - where a simple, folksy hockey mom with a funny accent can become a GOP vice-presidential candidate - it also reveals its fundamental weakness. The American political system rewards mediocrity; if Sarah Palin is Just Like Us with her plain speaking and vernacular expressions of "goshdarnit," then she deserves to be VP. At the same time, Palin reveals the human weaknesses of ordinary folk - how in a time when it is suddenly cool to be a geek, many of us fumble unarticulately about things we know absolutely nothing about.

--By Mariam, who thinks it must be bad for McCain-Palin campaign if North Carolina is a battleground state.

My Sparkling Personality....

I am a huge fan of self-aggrandizement. For example, I think about my sparkling personality quite often. Other adjectives I use to describe my personality are "infectious," "witty," "sweet," "quirky," and even "eccentric."

In my 19th century British lit class, my professor once said of Oscar Wilde: "He was such an incredible conversationalist that his friends were amazed at his on-the-spot witticisms." At the time, I thought how weird it was that Wilde was remembered for his conversational skills rather than say, the convoluted genius of The Importance of Being Earnest. But then, eventually I wondered if I was the reincarnation of Wilde, an incredibly witty conversationalist, a type of person whose witticisms people remembered and posted on their Facebook profiles under "Quotes" (the 21st-century version of Bartlett's).

Of course, I thought that my comical and enthusiastic conversational style would be very helpful to me on my medical school rotations. I thought that 3rd and 4th year would a time when I would shine - I would literally charm these overworked, tired individuals with my exaggerated Southern drawl and cute expressions. My friend Blase even told me, "I'm sure patients love you!"

Ah, Blase, if that were reality.In fact, I have had a fair share of strange, awkward moments rather than charming moments of cuteness. Instead, I have found that some of my more awkward, decidedly less personable classmates have had a better time integrating themselves into the hospital hierarchy. Here is a round-up of some awkward moments for your reading enjoyment:

1) Last week, when rounds ended, I asked senior resident whether I should shadow him for the rest of the day. He told me, "Sure, I'm going to get a drink." I started to converse with him about some inane topic, and we kept walking down this really narrow hallway. Suddenly he stopped outside a door and said, "Uh, I have to use the bathroom." I had literally followed him to the door of the men's room without realizing it.
"Uhh..sure! Sorry!" I said and quickly booked it down the hallway. Yesterday, he actually told me in advance he was going to the bathroom so I wouldn't make the same faux pas again.

2)I was obsessed with trying to bond with our senior resident even though he was a strictly business. One day, he told us to read a boring biography about some doctor dude. I randomly said, "I started a humanities club at the medical school!" Silence all around. Yauss merely stared at me with an uncomprehending face that seemed to say, "Why did you just say that?"

3) One day, I went to use the phone on the hospital floor at the same time a rather heavyset nurse with over-processed blond hair reached for it. Ever polite, I said, "Oops sorry." She gave me the once-over, and rudely said, "What are you? Like 12?" Instead of saying, "Actually 11. And I'm going to be your boss one day. Unfair and scary, isn't it?", I said, "Uh, no...uh 24?"
"I must be getting old!" she said (most likely).
"Are you...uh...going to trust me when I'm a uh doctor?" I said nonsensically.
"If you learn to talk," she said. And scene, conversation over - no witty comeback, no biting remark. Just me mumbling and making no sense whatsoever. I resolved that I would give her one of my trademark withering stares the next time I saw her, but unfortunately, I have already forgotten what the nurse looks like, since all old, large ladies look the same to me.

4) #4 if too sensitive for blog, so if you are my friend and a girl, please ask me about the Aveda make-up bag incident.

Hopefully, my next rotation in pediatrics will go better - I love cute, fat babies, so if I'm unable to charm people my own age, maybe a kid will be easier to please.

--By Mariam, who thinks the Palin lady is very pretty but at the same time scary with all of her gun and anti-abortion talk.