Procrastination
So I just took a peek at Residentblog and was reminded that its been about a year since I’ve posted there. Things are pretty different now. There were the Dark Times between April and October where I had six back-to-back intense call months: medicine wards intern, low-risk obstetrics, intensive care unit, high-risk obstetrics, medicine ward as senior resident, a month of night shifts in the ER. Now I am a student again (until January)! I’m going to PSU and working on a masters in public health and its wacky. I’ve got all kinds of final papers due right now. For most of the semester I’ve managed to use the time to become re-centered: I’ve taken up Ashtanga, I’ve been going to the local soto Zendo and I’ve been eating and drinking with AWARENESS. Now with the big-ass turkey day and all, all moderation has gone out the window and I found myself sitting in front of the computer all day eating and drinking and feeling bloatey- topping the day off with WAY too much thai food.
We had a lovely day on Thursday, though, cleaned our house like crazed weasels and had about 20 dear people over.
Here’s what I’d rather be doing than working on my paper:
* Working on my breast-pumping project. I want to put together a zine about women’s experience pumping at the hospital.
* Working on my memoir zine for my writing class with Ariel Gore at the Attic which is going to be all about my internship complete with my dazzling birth haikus!
* Looking into fellowships in addiction medicine and family planning. Fantasizing about a brief sabbatical to New York City.
* Just about anything else.
Well, since I’m not getting anything done I may as well join my husband-guy and friends as they play speed scrabble and drink white russians out in the living room.
lovelove
Amanda
November 30th, 2003 at 12:30 pm
Woweee. Are those Vegan White Russians? Good luck with the papers. I’ve found that listening to Disposable Heroes at 70 decibels really helps with writers’ block, but maybe you don’t suffer from that scourge. I’m in the final throes of the MSW application essay, and after the agony of a mere 5 pages of formal writing I wonder why I’m signing up to go into debt so I can beat my head against my computer and my syntax on a daily basis. Also I’m worried about the “professionalization of helping,” whether I really have the emotional constitution for the work, and the moral implications of colluding with the big bureacracies. And at the same time I have met many people who testified that they were helped, even “saved”, by social workers in various settings. I question whether I would be challenging the systems that create the conditions from which people need saving, but I’ve never been too good at that. Y’all are proof you can do both at once. It may be a blessing not to get into this program, though. Thanks for your work and enthusiasm. Love, Esme
November 30th, 2003 at 12:54 pm
There is an MSW at my clinic who rocks. I have some really challenging patients who need support and last January our failing state welfare system made therapy and anything other than emergency psychiatric care an impossibility for them.
One is a woman (I’m changing identifying details about these folks in order to keep them private) who is borderline functional but psychotic. She has an amazing amount of insight and is a delight but finds things such as her marriage and her being out in the world doing such things as grocery shopping, etc a challenge. She has been stable on psych meds for many years- before this current regimen she was hospitalized a couple times a year as she decompensated.
I saw her recently and asked what her psychiatric nurse practitioner thought of some of the side effects she’s been experiencing from her meds- she pointed at me and said “YOU’RE my psychiatric nurse practitioner now!” YIKES!
I called up our radical MSW who does counselling with the folks in our clinic without any access to mental health services (i.e. everyone pretty much) and now she is seeing her and sometimes her husband on a weekly basis! I sleep better at night.
She is also a really good person to have around to consult with and get reality checks about relationships. I get all concerned about boundaries, partly because it is a concept that is brought up so much by my teachers. I don’t have great boundaries all the time. I have a really needy patient whose life collapses around him often. We typically have appointments that extend 1/2 hour beyond what they should and he lies on the table and cries and asks me things like “Do you believe in God? Do you think there is a heaven?” I had a long talk with my clinical preceptor about this and he stressed the need to create healthier boundaries with this person. “Schedule him for 15 minute appointments and enforce that its not okay for him to be coming in and getting all disorganized each time. You are his doctor, not his friend.” I checked in with the MSW who is seeing this person weekly now as well and I asked her to help me to develop healthier therapeutic boundaries. She looked at me and was puzzled- “Sounds like you’re doing okay but the reality is that you don’t have time for that kind of thing- leave that stuff up to me.” It was cool because its true- I’m really doing okay and all of that boundary stuff is sometimes real and sometimes crap, just another way to get someone to comply with the system.
Blah blah blah. More procrastination here. I have about 17 more pages to write before tomorrow evening. Yargyarg.
love
Amanda
November 30th, 2003 at 5:30 pm
PS, took your reccomendation re: disposable heroes. Very effective.
November 30th, 2003 at 9:49 pm
Thanks for the vision of the radical MSW. Also the crazed weasel cleaning idea. You know, I’ve noticed my own unexamined neediness coming up in the presence of good medical personnel. Noting my desparate attempts to extend the attention I’m receiving. Probably will happen tomorrow when I go back to PP. I see a fabulous Nurse Midwife there. She did a three year-three month-three day Tibetan retreat. I can see how the people you’re treating could try to latch onto your presence. Sexy French doctor looking at me, aknowledging ME! More please! But not that conscious, always. Am really prefering the Ring, by the way. Thank you for getting that happening. Love!