Like love from a drunken sky

2003-05-06 - 7:47 p.m.

This afternoon I was in such a horrible mood that someone actually noticed. For me, that's bad. I spend an amazing proportion of my life completely unnoticed and that's what I'm used to and what I like. It's my comfort zone, as they say. I'm such a loser. The person who noticed was the Mole. I was thinking not nice thoughts in his direction during our resident meeting today and forgot to forego the accompanying nasty look. Oops. What can I say, the drugs were wearing off by that time. And he was forty minutes late to the meeting. It's always nice to know that other people think your time is valuable.

It's funny how far my emotions can range through the course of the day. This morning I was feeling so good. I actually thought to myself, "What were you thinking? You were made for clinical work! How can you work anywhere besides a hospital?" I wish I always felt like that, but I don't. By the end of the day I was thinking there's no way I'm cut out for clinical work. At rounds this morning the attending asked me what I knew about BNP. Actually he asked me if I would like to explain to the team about BNP or if he would prefer if he asked one of the medical interns to do it. All I know about BNP is that it's brain natriuretic peptide which is a misnomer because it is actually produced by the heart. We use it as a prognostic marker in acute myocardial infarctions and we give it extrinsically as Natrecor to certain people with heart failure. That's not much. I deferred to the medical intern. That was basically the only thing I didn't do well on during rounds, but as rounds were ending my preceptor came up to us and asked me how things were going. I said they were going pretty well and then my attending chimed in and told him about how I was quiet and letting other people answer questions. Great, thanks. So they had a discussion and decided that the attending would start "turning up the heat." I spent most of the middle of my work day working on my project. Then I worked on antibiotics. At my hospital we have this system where every patient who is on antibiotics gets their therapy examined by a pharmacist every day. Each clinical pharmacist prints out a list of patients in their area on antibiotics every morning and at the end of the day they have to "check out" with one of the infectious disease pharmacists. It sounds like a good deal, and for the patients I guess it is, but I absolutely detest doing it. Mostly because I'm so stupid. I even took an ID rotation and I still know nothing. How do I manage that? By being lazy and procrastinating, that's how. But anyway, Scotch is the ID pharmacist that we have to check out with most often. She is so good at making me feel small and worthless. So I left her with tears in my eyes thinking about how attempting suicide in a hospital would be so pointless since they'd just resuscitate you right away anyway and went downstairs to the resident meeting.

On the way home from work today I stopped to get gas. Gas is so cheap these days! I got it for $1.71 at the local cheapie station. The guy that works there in the afternoons is kinda creepy though. He always gives me these looks. You know, the kind of looks that just make you feel...violated. Ew. Today there was a grungey woman in the little store area who was quite obviously an alcoholic. She was in there buying a bottle of booze, a pack of smokes, and a lottery scratcher ticket. I'm mostly anosmic, but apparently she was pretty rank. I came in to get my change as she was paying. As she was leaving, before he helped me, the creepy guy came out from behind the counter, grabbed one of those air fresheners that hang from car mirrors, opened it and set on the counter behind him. It was odd. And as he gave me my change I realized that the money he was giving me had just been given to him by the grungey woman and I wondered where it had been...