so luckily my intern year has been pretty chill thus far. a few bumps here and there, but totally enjoyable. i'm down to one, that's right, one patient now, but this might be one of the toughest i've ever had. she's sweet, emotional, almost too emotional, filipino, and came in because she thought she fractured her hip in a fall seven months ago. everything was manageable until an exacerbation a couple days ago. she gets admitted, has a scan, and now it looks like she has metastatic cancer, primary unknown. so instead of coming in for a basic orthopedic procedure with the hopes of walking again after a prolonged course of rehab, she gets a veritable death sentence. life is hard.

everybody's got that somethin'

is it fucked up to hate on someone that's retarded? not, 'haha, you say such stupid shit retarded.' i mean, really, cerebral palsy, mental retardation retarded. i guess i should explain myself. i'm on night float now (overnight, 9pm to 7am shifts, kinda like baby-sitting sick adults), and i overheard some other residents going over signout for this one patient. it was the typical, 'patient x is a 40-something year-old male with a history of cerebral palsy, mental retardation, blah blah blah..." until they got to the part about his wife being his health-care proxy. it was the mention of a wife that broke me out of my ipod-nano induced absence seizure-like state. how the fuck could this unfortunate bedbound, motor-compromised, man of less than average mental capacity find someone to marry him, while i remain single? (of course everything always comes back to me). seriously though. so i ask the resident about that, and he says, 'oh, his wife has mental retardation too,' which oddly enough, provided even more discomfort. how could two mentally retarded people find love in new york city while i remain single? whatever. i'm probably going to hell for that.

anyway, i'm finished with about one-quarter of my intern year before i head back to nyu for ophthalmolgy. for the most part, it's been pretty chill. no major problems and the workload has been completely bearable. the one disconcerting fact is that you don't really need to know much to do my job, as long as you can speak confidently and emphatically.

blindness

i don't think anyone outside of the deep south can truly comprehend what the fuck is going on down in new orleans and vicinity, myself included. i just don't understand how something like that can happen. the idea of a fucking lake opening up and drowning a city seems so damn antiquated. and now the egocentric ny media can't help but talk about themselves again, now citing the anguish we went through with hurricane gloria back in 1985 (20 years ago! i was in the 1st grade...hi miss sal!). fucking fox network. anyway, the whole ordeal down at the superdome reminds me of saramago's blindness. when nature takes over, the laws of civility fail and desperation sets in. what can we do?

sometimes life just doesn't make sense

we'll all miss you luigi. rest in peace.

people that fall make me laugh

back when i was interviewing, i always hated when they would ask what my biggest weakness was, because mine is that i laugh hysterically when i watch people fall (as long as they're not seriously hurt. i'm not a sadist). i've been working on it for the past five years, and honestly have improved greatly. but i saw these clips relatively recently and i've regressed. maybe cause they're celebrities (or semi-celebrities like constantine maroulis, a.k.a. my big fat greek asshole). or maybe i'm just a dick. enjoy.

separate but equal

yesterday, i went to kevin's girlfriend's apartment on park avenue for an american idol finale party. before heading over, i stopped by rite aid to pick up a six pack of stella. i arrive and tell the doorman what where i'm headed. as i enter the regular elevator, he yells and tells me to use the freight elevator. a bit confused, i complied nonetheless. you see, her apartment has an elevator operator, and i thought he told me to use the freight elevator because the button pressing guy was too lazy to come over. but i was wrong.

apparently, he mistook me for a delivery man. granted, i was dressed casually in jeans, flip-flops, my recently purchased triple 5 soul jacket (sample sale until 6/5/05, 24th st between 5th & 6th ave) and a hat cause it was raining. plus i was carrying a plastic back from rite aid with the beer that i guess could have been misconstrued for take out. but still, other than my skin tone, i would hardly say i looked like a delivery man. i wanted to confront him about it, not necessarily yell (because honestly, where does that get you), but unfortunately he had left by the time i had gotten back down.

after i got home, i was still bothered by the whole incident. it's been a while since i've experienced any racism or racial profiling (boston, prudential center, summer of 2000), and i'd frankly forgotten that it could still happen to me. but still, it was more than just the actual incident itself. i was more annoyed by feeling annoyed at what happened. i know i sound classist, but in some way, it felt like an affront towards everything i had done in my life. my family's not poor, but definitely not well off. while both of my parents are college-educated (in the philippines), they often had to take menial jobs due to their immigrant status. so yeah, i could've been a delivery man. but i'm not. luckily, i've been able to go to college and medical school, and not feel like such an outcast walking on park avenue. but all it took was one second, one glance, for this asshole to dismiss the last 9 years of my life and put me in my place. fucker.

when it's over

last thursday (may 12) i finally graduated, marking the end of my days as a tuition-paying full-time student and the beginning of my life as a loan-repaying struggling intern. the all-university graduation in washington square park was okay, despite the lame, pretentious speech from the wack student speaker (some boring chemistry major from cas, bitch). but the med school graduation in carnegie hall was fantastic. i'm not typically sentimental and mushy and shit, but almost all of the speakers (john sexton, ben carson, even our class president) had me beaming like a little schoolgirl. i'm always happy when i'm reminded that five years of this stuff hasn't totally snuffed out my emotions.

being rudy huxtable

it's already may but it's still cold and wet. i didn't think i'd ever miss southern california, but months of this shit on end isn't doing anything to help my seasonal affective disorder. nonetheless, i still find i'm not dressing appropriately. in college, i used to make fun of all those assholes from california who were seemingly in denial about the cold northeastern weather. you know those guys, the ones who would wear cargo shorts and flip-flops (and sometimes the unmentionable combination of socks with sandals) in the middle of december. somehow, i've become that same dickhead that i so abhorred six years ago. anytime the temperature's over 40 degrees, i'm out in my flip flops and flimsy puma track jacket like some asshole that lived in california for a year. i'm kinda like rudy huxtable in that one episode of the cosby show where it's almost or is springtime but still cold as witchy titties and she sits up in her room for what seems like hours sulking because the beautiful mrs. clair huxtable, esquire, didn't want her to wear a flimsy sundress to her friend's (outdoor?) birthday party. i always hated that episode because i couldn't understand why someone would do that. oh how life imitates art.

happy wedding

quick question: what's the etiquette for when a somewhat obvious post-op transsexual catches the bouquet and no one really wants to catch the garter out of sheer homophobia of touching former man-leg but also doesn't want to offend the aforementioned post-op transsexual? this sounds like one of those "gray area" sociologic scenarios that could've been an episode on seinfeld, but it actually happened at...



my sister's wedding. i know it's nine days late, but my sister cheryl got married on april 3rd to the dude she had been dating for 6 years. the ceremony was in hackensack while the reception was at the glen island harbor club in westchester. you can check out pics if you really want on my other website. despite the vignette above, everything went pretty smoothly, much more so than i had anticipated given her tendency towards micromanagement and perfectionism (she's kinda like a petite, brown skinned pre-incarceration martha stewart). but yeah, it was cool and fun and very typical filipino-american wedding and now they're in fucking maui on their honeymoon. the only caveat was that i think the reception hall totally watered down their liquor. i, along with at least twenty other people, must have downed at least 10 to 15 shots of so'co' & lime, yet NO ONE was ass faced and messy, which i guess isn't such a bad thing after all. here's my favorite pic:

homeless genitalia

finished my last med school clerkship on friday and now just waiting for graduation in may. i was expecting it to be cathartic, but it turned out to be anything but. i didn't really react with any emotion. maybe i'm anhedonic, maybe it's cause i'm staying in the city for residency, or maybe i'm delirius because i haven't left my apartment for the last 48 hours studying for the boards (it's been raining). regardless, it does mean i won't have to be confronted with homeless genitalia for a while (two months, at least), which was at its peak in january on my dermatology rotation. maybe i'm naive, but i didn't realize that's what dermatologists had to do--a lot. you've never really lived until you've had a homeless man's penile shaft in your left hand and a cryogun (nitrogen gun) in your right asking him to move "your scrotum...huh?, your scrotum...what?...your balls" to the left so you can freeze his genital warts. good times.

anyway, it's a little sad how all the attendings and residents consistently refer to this (fourth year) as the best time of your life. makes me wish i could enjoy it more. i'd travel, i'd go out eating & drinking every night, but i'm poor. P-O-O-R, like tiffany from america's next top model of the "that stank ho poured beer on my weave!" fame. alright, we're not that bad. we're just a middle class family from suburban northern jersey. but unlike some of my classmates, we're not independently wealthy, i don't have a trust fund, and i can't ask daddy for a couple thousand dollars so i can explore china for a couple weaks or go surfing in hawaii until graduation. bitter? a little bit. resigned? yeah.

butches & brown bears

is it wrong that i like to watch women's college basketball? there's just something about those butchy bitches runnin' up and down the court that's so sublime. i don't know. i can't explain it. like my dreams. for some reason, i've been remembering my dreams lately. i thought i'd forgotten about this one, and i really wish i did, but i saw this on gothamist and had a strange visceral reaction. then i remembered the other night, i had this dream where i woke up and started wandering around my apartment. like typical dreams where things are so non sequitir, i ended up at some party. but it wasn't just any party. a la shelly duvall in the shining, i happened to stumble upon a group of copulating furries. that's right, a fucking furries orgy. i'm dreaming about furries! what the hell does that mean? please, someone tell me cause i can't afford psychotherapy.