I stayed awake until 10:30 p.m. last night and slept straight through until 5 a.m.! I’m currently ravenously, insanely hungry, however, because my stomach thinks it’s, what, time for whatever meal of the day involves a million calories of food? I don’t know.
I am now in Bangkok, at the blandly posh and international/Western-style Royal Princess Hotel. My last morning on the island was excellent – I walked down to the southwest coast of the island from Tubtim beach and back, and it felt really good to actually exert myself after 24 hours of prolonged immobilization on airplanes followed by 48 hours of complete sloth. Highlights of the hike were:
1. being offered a ride by a tiny little Thai girl on a moped (even though the whole point of the expedition was to get some exercise, I do not have the strength of character to turn down a free moped ride along a bumpy gravel road through the jungle in the sunshine). It was also my first conversation that was completely in Thai:
girl: thai thai thai thai where you thai thai? (gesturing at moped)
me: wai beach
girl: thai thai good (moving up so I could get on)
me: good thank you!
*insert fifteen minute moped ride*
girl: thai thai here wai beach
me: good thank you very much!
girl: you’re welcome
2. Running into a middle aged French couple in the middle of the jungle with all their beach paraphernalia. The guy sang out as I came near, “Bonjour!” and I was just so tickled that he would be so confident in his Frenchness to just say bonjour in the middle of nowhere, southeast Asia. They asked how to get to the nearest beach, which was also hilarious, because it’s like, OK, the island is something like a kilometre wide – it’s REALLY HARD to get too far away from the beach.
3. Finding little rocky place to have a totally private nudie swim in the ocean
After my exciting morning, I got a speedboat back to the mainland and found myself a bus back to Bangkok (no real highlights except for getting off at a rest stop, and I went to the little snack place to buy water and a Catalan couple were yackering away in front of me in line! They really are everywhere. It’s great.)
We finally pulled up at the Bangkok bus station after dark, and I got a tuktuk (instrument of death-by-traffic-fumes) to the hotel, where I was met by Max, the tour guide for the trip (lanky effeminate hipster Thai guy in his late twenties) and then had fifteen minutes to get myself cleaned up before we joined up with the rest of the group to go out for dinner at a little outdoor café place at the insane night market/tourist mecca/bar scene near the Khoi San road.
Brief first impressions of the group:
– Australian couple in their late thirties/early forties, seem nice, she looks/sounds exactly like one of the characters from Neighbours although I can’t remember which one.
– slightly dim but sweet Aussie girl; already worrying about spiders in the jungle.
– plump New Yorker in mid¬twenties; has strong opinions about things like beer and the 49ers, so perhaps not a lot in the way of common interests, but seemed like a cheerful kind of a dude.
- guy in late twenties from Toronto, eh, sat the far end of the table so I didn’t talk to him barely at all. I will need to overcome my instinctive dislike of creative facial hair if we are going to be friends. It will be an opportunity for self-improvement.
- chicky in early thirties, from Minnesota, was extremely jetlagged and having trouble staying awake, so didn’t say a whole lot, but I have premonitions of major personality disorder.
So the initial hit off the others in the group isn’t brilliant, but meh, we’ll see. After dinner we were let loose on the market; I know you’ll all be surprised to hear that I decided to ignore the girls in tight spandex dresses printed with major beer labels beckoning customers in to the bars with signs advertising “Very Strong Thai Cocktail 80 baht!” and I went instead to get myself a massage by a no-nonsense woman in her fifties who must have weighed about eighty pounds and who threw me around like a sack of potatoes, and from there back to the hotel to bed lovely bed.
Today we are going to do sightseeing around Bangkok, which I am a little terrified of, having now experienced Bangkok traffic first hand. This is a VERY BIG CITY and it takes a REALLY LONG TIME to go anywhere via any of the modes of transportation that I have experienced so far…
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Friday, 6 November 2009
more australians, snorkeling, beach massage
last day on the beach... after a day completely devoted to sloth yesterday, i am going to GO FOR A HIKE, just to prove to myself that i can.
yesterday was quite lovely - a boat came onto the beach to pick me up, and after a couple of stops to pick up more people (a handful of thai tourists, a lovely scottish couple, and a pair of hilarious australians) we went off for a day-long expedition to the outlying islands to snorkel, swim, sunbathe, eat barbecue mystery meat and pineapple on the beach, and fish (this last bit didn't work because "they are making new fish farm," which was OK by me). the water is gorgeous and clear and green and warm and not like anywhere i have ever been before; the snorkeling i have to admit is a little depressing because the coral is about 99% dead as a doornail. we actually saw a guy sawing up chunks of what little live coral remains to hand out pieces to little thai kids who looked as if they were on a school field trip, which was possibly even more depressing. it's hard to get a sense of where the sensibility is in terms of ecological conservation - on the one hand, the beaches are immaculate, and there is almost no rubbish strewn along the roads as you see in a lot of the developing world (there are stretches of santa rosa where there is more) but there are no recycling facilities so far as i can tell, and the whole thing with the coral, so ???
at the end of the day i treated myself to a beach massage, which was hilarious - while the quality of the actual massage is not dissimilar to professional massages i have had in the US, you realize how much of the total experience is dictated by other factors. for instance, the woman who was massaging me kept up a running conversation with the massage lady next to her, and about half way through her kids turned up. she sent the eight year old to go buy groceries, and when the eight year old came back she scolded her for not having bought the right thing, and then told her to get a rag to swat away bugs, which the (now very sulky) eight year old did; meanwhile there were a couple of dogs sniffing around, and the lady's two year old lay down on the towel next to me and waved her legs in the air and sucked her thumb and eventually fell asleep with her back against me, which was lovely. a far cry from the soothing new age music and immaculately clean sheets etc of the standard first world massage. also thai massages have the advantage that they do your gluteal muscles (or what passes for muscles in my case at this point), which is great - in the US i guess it's illegal to rub someone else's bum for money :)
anyway. off for a hike! hope all are well...
yesterday was quite lovely - a boat came onto the beach to pick me up, and after a couple of stops to pick up more people (a handful of thai tourists, a lovely scottish couple, and a pair of hilarious australians) we went off for a day-long expedition to the outlying islands to snorkel, swim, sunbathe, eat barbecue mystery meat and pineapple on the beach, and fish (this last bit didn't work because "they are making new fish farm," which was OK by me). the water is gorgeous and clear and green and warm and not like anywhere i have ever been before; the snorkeling i have to admit is a little depressing because the coral is about 99% dead as a doornail. we actually saw a guy sawing up chunks of what little live coral remains to hand out pieces to little thai kids who looked as if they were on a school field trip, which was possibly even more depressing. it's hard to get a sense of where the sensibility is in terms of ecological conservation - on the one hand, the beaches are immaculate, and there is almost no rubbish strewn along the roads as you see in a lot of the developing world (there are stretches of santa rosa where there is more) but there are no recycling facilities so far as i can tell, and the whole thing with the coral, so ???
at the end of the day i treated myself to a beach massage, which was hilarious - while the quality of the actual massage is not dissimilar to professional massages i have had in the US, you realize how much of the total experience is dictated by other factors. for instance, the woman who was massaging me kept up a running conversation with the massage lady next to her, and about half way through her kids turned up. she sent the eight year old to go buy groceries, and when the eight year old came back she scolded her for not having bought the right thing, and then told her to get a rag to swat away bugs, which the (now very sulky) eight year old did; meanwhile there were a couple of dogs sniffing around, and the lady's two year old lay down on the towel next to me and waved her legs in the air and sucked her thumb and eventually fell asleep with her back against me, which was lovely. a far cry from the soothing new age music and immaculately clean sheets etc of the standard first world massage. also thai massages have the advantage that they do your gluteal muscles (or what passes for muscles in my case at this point), which is great - in the US i guess it's illegal to rub someone else's bum for money :)
anyway. off for a hike! hope all are well...
Thursday, 5 November 2009
thailand!
well, you all are going to have live without photos for the next little bit, unless i can find an actual high speed wireless hot spot. i tried uploading four photos and gave up after fifteen minutes of watching the little hourglass thingy sit there doing nothing. but! i am in thailand! yeehaw! and i passed yesterday's initiative test with flying colours!
after arriving at bangkok airport more or less in one piece (medium smelly and very tired after a million hours in the plane, although i did get to watch harry potter in chinese, which was fun) i sat in the line for passport control forEVUH behind the archetype of the ugly american - a fat sweaty dude who was talking to his friend in a REALLY LOUD VOICE about how 'we kicked the japs' ass in WWII' (i didn't know people under the age of forty even _said_ 'japs' anymore, let alone in a loud voice in a public place, and 'i don't see why guys can't get paid golf vacations, shit, after all, women get paid maternity leave.' at one point he stepped backwards onto my toe and when he turned around to see what he'd stepped on he asked me where i was headed and i completely ignored him. i don't remember the last time i was so overtly rude to someone. it was thrilling.
after collecting all my luggage (hurray! everything arrived! not that it matters - most of it is things like bikini bottoms and extra sunscreen) i took a taxi to the ekkamai bus terminal (sort of a cop-out, not taking public transportation, but i figured i already had enough of an initiative test ahead anyway), got myself a ticket, and within half an hour was speeding through the countryside on an erratically air-conditioned bus (pink viennese confections for curtains and a kungfu movie for entertainment) towards the coastal town of ban phe. the countryside is very lush and green and pretty, and while there is definitely evidence of poverty, it's not horrific and desperate african/indian level poverty. there are lots of road-side businesses that could be anywhere in the developing world (cafes with plastic tables and stacks of coke bottles, carparts, rebar, tires, building materials, dogs, plastic bags, laundry hanging up), but every so often you pass a yard full of dazzling golden buddha statues for sale, which is not anything i'd ever seen before. everyone seems to have one outside their house, but there are also buddha statues at random road intersections, all public buildings, etc., as well as gigantic billboards of pictures of the royal family in full royal family regalia.
on arrival at ban phe i had missed the last official ferry BUT luckily there were a handful of others in the same situation wandering haplessly around the pier, so we joined forces and chartered a boat (for a whopping $3 each) out to koh samet, the island/marine nature preserve that is famous for having the whitest sand beaches in all of thailand (so there). sunset from the boat, then arrival on koh samet, then via back of a jeep to ao tubtim beach resort, where a dish of sinus-clearing green shrimp curry, a shower, and a little beach bungalow with a comfy bed had my name ALL OVER them.
things i am nervous about: heat (it is 9:15 in the morning and 80 degrees already - i think this afternoon may be strictly limited to mad dogs and englishmen, or at least mellow beach mutts and sunburnt australians), state of intestines (two medium-urgent trips to loo so far. but some period of adjustment is to be expected).
things i am pleased about: dearth of mosquitoes on island, high-level yumminess of food, fact that i have places to stay now booked for entire trip, snorkeling expedition planned for this afternoon.
love to all!
after arriving at bangkok airport more or less in one piece (medium smelly and very tired after a million hours in the plane, although i did get to watch harry potter in chinese, which was fun) i sat in the line for passport control forEVUH behind the archetype of the ugly american - a fat sweaty dude who was talking to his friend in a REALLY LOUD VOICE about how 'we kicked the japs' ass in WWII' (i didn't know people under the age of forty even _said_ 'japs' anymore, let alone in a loud voice in a public place, and 'i don't see why guys can't get paid golf vacations, shit, after all, women get paid maternity leave.' at one point he stepped backwards onto my toe and when he turned around to see what he'd stepped on he asked me where i was headed and i completely ignored him. i don't remember the last time i was so overtly rude to someone. it was thrilling.
after collecting all my luggage (hurray! everything arrived! not that it matters - most of it is things like bikini bottoms and extra sunscreen) i took a taxi to the ekkamai bus terminal (sort of a cop-out, not taking public transportation, but i figured i already had enough of an initiative test ahead anyway), got myself a ticket, and within half an hour was speeding through the countryside on an erratically air-conditioned bus (pink viennese confections for curtains and a kungfu movie for entertainment) towards the coastal town of ban phe. the countryside is very lush and green and pretty, and while there is definitely evidence of poverty, it's not horrific and desperate african/indian level poverty. there are lots of road-side businesses that could be anywhere in the developing world (cafes with plastic tables and stacks of coke bottles, carparts, rebar, tires, building materials, dogs, plastic bags, laundry hanging up), but every so often you pass a yard full of dazzling golden buddha statues for sale, which is not anything i'd ever seen before. everyone seems to have one outside their house, but there are also buddha statues at random road intersections, all public buildings, etc., as well as gigantic billboards of pictures of the royal family in full royal family regalia.
on arrival at ban phe i had missed the last official ferry BUT luckily there were a handful of others in the same situation wandering haplessly around the pier, so we joined forces and chartered a boat (for a whopping $3 each) out to koh samet, the island/marine nature preserve that is famous for having the whitest sand beaches in all of thailand (so there). sunset from the boat, then arrival on koh samet, then via back of a jeep to ao tubtim beach resort, where a dish of sinus-clearing green shrimp curry, a shower, and a little beach bungalow with a comfy bed had my name ALL OVER them.
things i am nervous about: heat (it is 9:15 in the morning and 80 degrees already - i think this afternoon may be strictly limited to mad dogs and englishmen, or at least mellow beach mutts and sunburnt australians), state of intestines (two medium-urgent trips to loo so far. but some period of adjustment is to be expected).
things i am pleased about: dearth of mosquitoes on island, high-level yumminess of food, fact that i have places to stay now booked for entire trip, snorkeling expedition planned for this afternoon.
love to all!
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
woohoo! made it to taiwan in one piece!
... for which really Eva Air should get the credit, not me, but still I feel bizarrely proud of myself.
The flight started off with a very unfortunate bang (on the head) - an elderly lady was trying to climb up to put stuff in the overhead bin, lost her balance & fell down and backwards, whacking herself on the head on the metal armrest of the seat across the gangway. She didn't actually lose consciousness, but it was not a good sign that she didn't say anything other than ohhhhhhhhhhhh and then start throwing up, so the paramedics arrived in short order and whisked her off the plane right before takeoff. Not that this is anything to do with me, but it was one of those situations where you realize just how entirely useless doctors are with medical situations out in the field: she fell practically right in front of me, and the sum total of my contribution to the whole thing was to say, oh my god, ma'am are you OK? before she was surrounded by five jillion stewardesses talking high-speed Chinese (I didn't, to be honest, feel I needed to be more aggressive about intervening, because they lay her down without moving her neck and then said chinese chinese chinese chinese chinese 911 chinese chinese chinese chinese paramedics, which is pretty much what needed to happen, but still.) I hope she's OK.
Flight to Taipei long boring long boring long boring eyeballs scratchy nose dry tired stiff, remarkable mainly for truly horrible food - I am usually vegetarian for airline purposes, and sometimes it really pays off, but sometimes, like this time, it, er, doesn't. My dinner was, I am not kidding, five different scoops of gelatinous goo, in varying subtle shades of grey: the entree was yellowy-grey, the rice was off-white (that's how I knew it was rice), the vegetables were just grey, and the pudding was purple grey (I think there might have been beans involved).
But hooray, here I am in Taipei airport. Highlights so far include the orchid garden inside the airport (how cool is that? will post photos later), the kids' play area that looks like someone vomited Hello Kitty all over five hundred square feet of space, the fact that all the dutyfree shop staff (not just food service people, but the people who sell overpriced luggage sets and ipod chargers) are wearing face masks - super sinister, as if there is an alien virus running rampant and only the duty free shop staff are going to survive the coming plague - and an exhibition of industrial design thingies intended to encourage people to save money. My favourite is the troche to help combat the desire to go shopping. it contains lemon verbena. i don't know if it works or not.
I am also very excited about the fact that the computers in the little internet connectivity station have Chinese character keyboards! I am using mon petit netbook maintenant, but I'm going to have to get a closer look at the keyboards of the other computers, because that's just flipping cool. Also, Google came up in Chinese when I first logged on. crazy, man.
The flight started off with a very unfortunate bang (on the head) - an elderly lady was trying to climb up to put stuff in the overhead bin, lost her balance & fell down and backwards, whacking herself on the head on the metal armrest of the seat across the gangway. She didn't actually lose consciousness, but it was not a good sign that she didn't say anything other than ohhhhhhhhhhhh and then start throwing up, so the paramedics arrived in short order and whisked her off the plane right before takeoff. Not that this is anything to do with me, but it was one of those situations where you realize just how entirely useless doctors are with medical situations out in the field: she fell practically right in front of me, and the sum total of my contribution to the whole thing was to say, oh my god, ma'am are you OK? before she was surrounded by five jillion stewardesses talking high-speed Chinese (I didn't, to be honest, feel I needed to be more aggressive about intervening, because they lay her down without moving her neck and then said chinese chinese chinese chinese chinese 911 chinese chinese chinese chinese paramedics, which is pretty much what needed to happen, but still.) I hope she's OK.
Flight to Taipei long boring long boring long boring eyeballs scratchy nose dry tired stiff, remarkable mainly for truly horrible food - I am usually vegetarian for airline purposes, and sometimes it really pays off, but sometimes, like this time, it, er, doesn't. My dinner was, I am not kidding, five different scoops of gelatinous goo, in varying subtle shades of grey: the entree was yellowy-grey, the rice was off-white (that's how I knew it was rice), the vegetables were just grey, and the pudding was purple grey (I think there might have been beans involved).
But hooray, here I am in Taipei airport. Highlights so far include the orchid garden inside the airport (how cool is that? will post photos later), the kids' play area that looks like someone vomited Hello Kitty all over five hundred square feet of space, the fact that all the dutyfree shop staff (not just food service people, but the people who sell overpriced luggage sets and ipod chargers) are wearing face masks - super sinister, as if there is an alien virus running rampant and only the duty free shop staff are going to survive the coming plague - and an exhibition of industrial design thingies intended to encourage people to save money. My favourite is the troche to help combat the desire to go shopping. it contains lemon verbena. i don't know if it works or not.
I am also very excited about the fact that the computers in the little internet connectivity station have Chinese character keyboards! I am using mon petit netbook maintenant, but I'm going to have to get a closer look at the keyboards of the other computers, because that's just flipping cool. Also, Google came up in Chinese when I first logged on. crazy, man.
Thursday, 15 October 2009
furniture, pathology, misinformation, plastic children, and true love
So tonight I did a workshop in papier mache furniture; I almost almost almost didn't go, because I was feeling very faintly fluey, and papier mache furniture is one of those things that the Internet is brilliant for, so why spend the money on a workshop that will be full of crazy middle-aged ladies, but OMG, so worth it, for several reasons:
The most obvious good thing was that the lady who ran it, despite having a high battiness-quotient on first appearance (house absolutely packed with garage sale finds, feral cats, and the fact that she spends all her free time making enormous papier mache animals), was actually quite organized (and her work is lovely), and she had several good structural pointers for the specific project that I am hoping to embark on (elephant, howdah, don't ask) that I don't think I necessarily could have found on the Internet, and I think she saved me a lot of time and frustration. And she had good handouts, AND party favours! my very own pint of resin glue. Worth every moment, and now I have my own little papier-mache mini-cupboard to show for it.
The cherries on the top of the evening, however, were the seriously crazy middle-aged lady fellow students. Crazy #1: as I was driving up, I saw a woman wandering around on the street looking distressed (I knew she was a fellow student, because she had a pile of cardboard boxes with her), and so I said, "Oh, are you looking for the furniture workshop thing? Follow me, I know where it is; you can even hop in the car if you like." She went into a tirade about how this was ridiculous, she had been looking for this place for over fifteen minutes, she couldn't possibly get in my car because it was unsafe, it was completely inconsiderate not to have street numbers properly marked on the houses (note that on the 'how to find it' instructions/map, it said "look for the house with the giant yellow egg in front of it," and I had this conversation with crazy middle-aged fellow-student lady #1 standing approximately fifty feet from a house with a gigantic yellow egg and a big sign saying "Art Workshops!" in front. Excellent. On arrival, she said to the teacher, "I need to speak to you in private please," and then from the next room we all heard her sobbing (I am not making this up) about how traumatic it had been for her to be driving around for fifteen minutes unable to find the place, this was completely unacceptable, she was going to have to go home immediately to recover, it had ruined her entire week... etc. (She didn't stay).
Crazy lady #2 was the misinformation queen. I think I can honestly say that I was completely delighted with every single thing that came out of her mouth. She started off telling us all about her cats ("Cats can't digest anything except protein. Anything other than protein kills them dead instantly.") and we ended up in a long discussion about her heroine, Frida 'KahlOO' (pronounced to rhyme with Baloo, the Bear from the Jungle Book, and incidentally played by 'Thelma' Hayek in the movie). For instance, did you know that no man would have survived Frida Kahloo's terrible accident, because men have much less flexible internal organs than women, as it turns out; this is also why women can bear children and men can't. (Here was I thinking it had something to do with uteruses (uteri?) and ovaries). My favourite bit was that Frida apparently told the apocryphal story of her body being blasted suddenly into an upright sitting position by the heat from the incinerator at her cremation [that part really is true, apparently; I Googled it when I got home] in her own autobiography, which seems like kind of a neat trick.
Crazy lady #3 was a woman who was just regular baseline crazy. She was the kind of person who was not content to let anyone, least of all the teacher, be the expert in anything. Any topic that came up, she had a degree in/had done a class or workshop in/had been asked to do that by a such-and-such important person. There was paramedic in our Pediatric Advanced Life Support class today who was the same way - the teacher couldn't mention a possible clinical scenario without this guy coming out with some macho story in which he'd saved the day by inventing some makeshift solution because the regular PALS guidelines didn't cover it... oh my GOD people like that are exhausting. But I was in superzen mode today, and I didn't mind at all, I just did my papier mache cupboard/megacode and was happy. I am pleased that I have now done PALS enough times that I can actually run a megacode on a plastic child with confidence (admittedly, I am sure I would totally fall to pieces if I were ever to have to run a pediatric code for real, but it's nice to see some improvement in skills. When I did ACLS and PALS in medical school, I spent the whole time hiding at the back thinking, oh god please don't pick me don't pick me don't pick me. Now I think, oh god, please don't pick the obnoxious paramedic guy, because then we'll be here for another half an hour while he pontificates.)
I am addicted to the American version of 'The Office' right now. I have watched the entire first three seasons, and I am in love with John Krasinski. It has completely replaced the Harry Potter books and "So You Think You Can Dance" in my affections.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
paintings...
I am irrationally excited by the first day of my paintings being up at the North Hill Bakery in Seattle. It is probably a good thing that I am not actually in Seattle at the moment, because I would drive the bakery staff mad, spending the entire afternoon in there harassing all their customers as they tried to buy their lattes, cakes, etc., tugging at their coat sleeves and saying, "Hey, guess what?! I'm, like, a REAL ARTIST! You can tell because something I painted is HANGING IN A PUBLIC PLACE where, like, ANYONE can see it!" Is this normal? I didn't do this when I graduated from medical school...
Thursday, 17 September 2009
quotes of the day
...from a patient with a completely, totally squashed fractured foot, on being told that he would need to pick up copies of the xrays he had done at our wee primitive local emergency room to take to his followup appointment with the orthopedist, so the orthopedist could look at them:
"I'm not fucking going to any appointment with a doctor who doesn't even have a way to look at my fucking xrays on a computer. I'd rather have the broken foot." What can you say? I said "Okay then."
...and as a runner up: "I just don't know what to do - they told me at Planned Parenthood that I'm six weeks pregnant with twins, and my boyfriend took off when I told him and hasn't been answering phone calls - I mean, he's not allowed to see his two other kids, so I guess it freaked him out a little bit, and we've only known each other like a month - and I'm really scared because I use cocaine and I drink like 10 beers a night - and I don't have a job and I'm not done with school, and if I had a baby I'd have to drop out of school, and I'm living right now on my friend's sofa because I can't afford my own place and it's really loud there and I wouldn't be able to stay there with a baby, but... I just can't decide what the right thing to do is." oh, sister. the right thing to do involves a suction device, a drug rehab program, and an industrial strength piggybank.
I also had one of my sweet lovely postpartum girls - in the agony of indecision about what kind of birth control she wanted to use - ask me what kind of birth control _I_ use. I was totally taken aback. She comes from a tiny little village in Mexico where you hang onto your virginity like grim death until you get married at seventeen, and while I'm not making any assumptions about what the men get up to, it's really, really unusual for the women to have had any partners other than their husbands. Once I'd turned pink and said, "er, nothing right now; I'm single," I didn't want to horrify her by then saying, "oh, but with previous boyfriends I've used xyz" because, really, who wants to know that about their doctor? eeuw.
okay, enough procrastinating. I still have seven charts to finish.... urgh....
"I'm not fucking going to any appointment with a doctor who doesn't even have a way to look at my fucking xrays on a computer. I'd rather have the broken foot." What can you say? I said "Okay then."
...and as a runner up: "I just don't know what to do - they told me at Planned Parenthood that I'm six weeks pregnant with twins, and my boyfriend took off when I told him and hasn't been answering phone calls - I mean, he's not allowed to see his two other kids, so I guess it freaked him out a little bit, and we've only known each other like a month - and I'm really scared because I use cocaine and I drink like 10 beers a night - and I don't have a job and I'm not done with school, and if I had a baby I'd have to drop out of school, and I'm living right now on my friend's sofa because I can't afford my own place and it's really loud there and I wouldn't be able to stay there with a baby, but... I just can't decide what the right thing to do is." oh, sister. the right thing to do involves a suction device, a drug rehab program, and an industrial strength piggybank.
I also had one of my sweet lovely postpartum girls - in the agony of indecision about what kind of birth control she wanted to use - ask me what kind of birth control _I_ use. I was totally taken aback. She comes from a tiny little village in Mexico where you hang onto your virginity like grim death until you get married at seventeen, and while I'm not making any assumptions about what the men get up to, it's really, really unusual for the women to have had any partners other than their husbands. Once I'd turned pink and said, "er, nothing right now; I'm single," I didn't want to horrify her by then saying, "oh, but with previous boyfriends I've used xyz" because, really, who wants to know that about their doctor? eeuw.
okay, enough procrastinating. I still have seven charts to finish.... urgh....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
