Two-fer (two for the price of one)

10/27/07

Hi Everyone!

I haven’t written in quite a while… and a lot has been going on.

I have completed peds cardiology two Fridays ago. I loved it! It was a good rotation—I have learned a lot and had a lot of fun as well :o) I am now at a different hospital completing peds pulmonology. I hope I’ll learn just as much on this rotation.

The hospital itself (I’m leaving everything nameless so I don’t get stalked) is beautiful. It is about two and a half hours away from home. The housing they provided is… let’s just say: OY GEVALT! It is a small apartment with a horrible mold problem… EWWW! I wear flip flops in the tub because I afraid to catch something. I would do a good deep cleaning, but alas the mold is not just on the walls of the tub but it is on the ceiling and it it has spread away from the shower as well. Nasty. The bedroom is decent. I complained to the person who is responsible to our housing there, and she said she has been hearing it from a lot of people, but the cleaning crew does not belong to the hospital, and since it is a small town that’s the only cleaning crew they have around. So in essence, she said that she can’t do anything about it. Still, this really is nasty. I will be taking a big bleach bottle back there with me to attempt and get the walled cleaned up at least. You can imagine how happy I was yesterday to leave that apartment and go back to my own very clean apartment!

So I am home now. I was so happy to see Vega and KC—life is so much better when you have a purring cat on your lap. They didn’t even wake me up at 5:30 this morning!! They waited until about 6:45 :o) When I am away, they are being taken care of by my cat sitters. The sitters are wonderful, and I know the cats are well taken care of.

It has been raining since Tuesday. Yesterday I encountered horrible driving conditions. I left the hospital at about 5pm, which meant that I had daylight for about an hour or so… The roads were very wet and slippery. Every time a big huge truck would pass me, the car was washed with a sheet of water that the trucks picked up from the road. I had to really concentrate while driving and even considered stopping on the side of the road (but at the end felt like I did not need to). In any case, I’ve made it home safely, and hoping that the roads are better on my way back there.

What else… Oh yeah—Boards scores were up. I passed! WooHoo! Now I have got to concentrate on my interviews. My first 3 are in about a week and a half. I am very excited to start that process again!

Well folks, that’s about it… I’m off to play with my cats and dive into Q’s legacy by Helene Hanff (…Savta, have you read that one?)

Have a good week,

Reut

11-02-07
So… I didn’t get a chance to put last week’s entry up, and so it is bunched together with this one…

I had a very difficult time last weekend—

Omer and Abba bought Omer a cool new car (Omer, you still owe me the pictures :o) ) But they also traded in mom’s Jeep. I didn’t think I would have a hard time with it, but I really did. I know it is just a car… but it was mom’s jeep, and she was SO happy to get it and was so excited to drive in HER jeep… so just like everything else mom touched it had a million and one memories in it, and not being able to see it anymore is sad. Maybe for Omer and Abba the car elicited bad memories (the sickness, the actual death, losing the ability to do things) but for me this car was actually mom’s triumph over the cancer, so I had good memories attached to it. Obviously, I’m not dumb. I know mom isn’t here to use it. I also know that mom would have been thrilled to trade this car and get Omer a new car… Still, I had a hard time parting with this material thing. So now that the car is gone are we going to start giving away other stuff too? I hope not. Since I am not home I feel like I have no say in what goes on… I know dad said he wouldn’t give any of mom’s clothes away (we always shared cloths) and that he will consult both Omer and myself regarding our dog Daisy (bring her to me please). Because I am not there, I can’t be involved in this at all. To be honest, I would much rather be home than at the rotations, but I would like to finish medical school sometime this decade, so I can’t have a month off now. I should be able to take a week or two off in April, but it would be a bit too late for some of this stuff.

Mom has a website (not had… has!). It has a password, and it can open only to those people mom chose to give permission into the site (basically, Omer, Abba and myself). When I asked her why she didn’t keep it open to everyone to view, she looked at me like I was insane (Duh… that was dumb of me). For about a year and a half, this was truly her diary—she designed the whole thing and put pictures and music on… it is really something. I am not sure if we’ll open it up one day or print the material (naturally written in two languages :o) ). But for now, I wanted to share mom’s entry about her Jeep… I was so worried when she drove it, but she told me to stop worrying and let her have her independence. Naturally, she was right.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 07, 2006 3:53 PM
It was a beautiful day
שנה וחצי בלי לאחוז בהגה של הג'יפ. שנה וחצי בלי להרגיש שליטה על החיים, רק צלילה למעמקים לא ידועים וניסיונות נואשים לתפוס בדרך ענף או אבן בולטת על מנת להאחז, על מנת לא לפול לתוך התהום. תשאלו מה מרגישים כשנופלים כל כך עמוק? את הרוח? את הקור ? אולי שומעים הד? אולי לא שומעים כלום? האם רואים משהו? התשובה היא כן! רואים ושומעים ועוד איך! כל החיים עוברים בראש כמו סרט דקומנטרי שיש בו דרמה, אימים, רומנטיקה וקומדיה, סרט שמישהו מימן ואתה היית השחקן הראשי. אתמול נהגתי פעם ראשונה אחרי שנה וחצי של תלות, של אין אונים. נכנסתי,הנעתי וכאילו כלום לא קרה. נסעתי אחורה וניסיתי לזכור על איזה כפתור לוחצים כדי לסגור את הגראז'.. לא להאמין ,שכחתי ! מלבד התקלה הקטנה הזאת, הכל היה כל כך טבעי. בזמן הנסיעה שמעתי מוזיקה ונהנתי מכל רגע של עצמאות ושליטה. מכוניות נסעו יחד איתי על הכביש, היו בהם אנשים נורמאליים אבל גם לא נורמאליים כמוני חהחהחה.... שלטי הענק הקוראים את שמות הרחובות ומספרי היציאות לא השתנו. הנוף היפה מסביבי מוכר וידוע, הנה ההר הגבוה, משמאל המדרון הירוק, מימין קקטוסים ענקיים עם זרועות מפותלות, שאם תתבונן בהם הרבה שנים תוכל להבין את הריקוד שלהם, מלפני הכביש מתעקל ומתיישר הכל כימים ימימה, אותה המנגינה, אותה המכונית, אותה הנהגת ואותו יום יפה

[A rough translation into English by Reut:
A year and a half without holding the Jeep’s steering wheel. A year and a half without feeling like I have any control on life, just a dive to unknown depths, and desperate attempts to catch a branch or a boulder on the way, to hold, to avoid falling to the abyss. Ask what we feel when falling so deep? The wind? The cold? Perhaps we hear an echo? Perhaps we don’t hear nothing? Do we see something? The answer is yes! You bet that you see and hear! Your whole life passes in your head like a documentary movie, and it has drama, horror, romance and comedy. A movie that someone produced and you were the star. Yesterday I drove for the first time after a year and a half of dependency, of helplessness. I got in, I started the car, and it was as if nothing happened. I drove back and tried to remember which switch I needed to press to close the garage… unbelievable, I forgot! Beside that small hiccup, everything was so natural. Through the drive I drove and enjoyed every moment of independence and control. Other cars were driving together with me on the road, they had normal people, but also, abnormal, like me hahahaha… The huge signs announcing the street names and the exit numbers did not change. The scenery around me was familiar… here is the high mountain, on the left the green valley, and on the right the humongous cacti with the torturous arms (if you’ll look at them for many years you’ll understand their dance,) in front of me the road turns and then straightens, just like always, the same music, the same car that you drove, and the same beautiful day.]

Beautiful Day U2
......"It's a beautiful day, the sky falls
And you feel like it's a beautiful day
It’s a beautiful day
Don’t let it get away


See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
See the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colours came out
It was a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
A beautiful day

What you don’t have you don’t need it now
What you don’t know you can feel it somehow
What you don’t have you don’t need it now
You don’t need it now
It was a beautiful day......"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I made dad take a picture of the car for me. I know it is stupid, but it made me feel a bit better.



So… I am childish, and I just shared it with the universe. Oh well. I too thought about keeping my journal with a password, and I will probably do so once I am a doctor, but for now I share my silly thoughts with everyone who feels like reading it.

I don’t know—By the Hebrew Calendar, 6 months have already passed. By the world’s calendar (how do you say Lu’ach Shanah Loazi in English?) it will be 6 months this Tuesday. Mom died just as summer entered, it is 6 months and now winter is entering. I really hate winter. Winter sucks.

One night last week I accidentally dialed mom’s number. We have cancelled the number a while back (didn’t have a hard time with that surprisingly), but I refuse to take it off my phone, so it is there, and when I tried to call Omer, I dialed mom instead. I hung up when I realized what I have done, and didn’t think about it too much. Later on though, just as I stepped out of the shower, my phone rang and the caller id said: “mom”. I stopped and stared at it for a long while. I fantasized for a second that it was mom calling me and not some random person who has her number now… It was a wonderful illusion but knowing that if I were to answer it wouldn’t be mom on the other line put me in a rotten mood.

To add to everything, I had to switch the last two weeks at my rotation to something else (long story and quite insignificant at this point, but it was really frustrating at the time.) I am happy that things worked out, and I am starting the last two weeks in adolescent medicine. I hope it would be a good rotation.

In the hospital I met a really sweet girl from Florida—Karen. She is just so much fun. Since I didn’t have a resident and didn’t have any other medical students with me, it got a bit lonely at times… I was so happy to meet Karen and I enjoyed going to dinners with her, adventuring out in the little town, and just talking. I think I’ve been somewhat of a hermit in the past year or so, and I feel a bit awkward having fun and doing things with people I haven’t known for a long time. But just like Azadeh, Karen is one of those people who you just love talking to—so all of my own “hermit-ism” is of no significant. Please kick me in the butt if I don’t keep in touch with her.

Last week when I was just in a bad mood, I went up on the internet and talked with dad via Skype. He put this huge smile on my face. I know I vent a lot, and I am sure it is no fun to listen to me whine about this and that, but dad just tell me to suck it up and deal with it, in such a way that makes me laugh and be happier. We talked about how once Omer and I will have our own families and children, if any of the kids will look like mom (dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes), we are never going to see them, because they will be hogged by their grandpa. :o) I liked that!

To put all of my annoyance and misery into perspective, I have just heard from my friend Kishore… he lives in California. I called him last week to see how everything was, and to make sure he was okay. He told me he had to be evacuated from his house due to the fires. They were actually only 6 miles away from his house. I was happy to hear his house was okay and that he didn’t lose any of his possessions, but so many other people did. I also saw on TV that some border crossers didn’t make it and died either from smoke inhalation or by the fire itself. That’s just horrible. Nature is so powerful, and we are like insignificant bugs on the surface… it is amazing that we have time for silly human problems and such.

Well, I am now home in NJ. I absolutely love my home. I think the main thing is my cats. They make life so much better!!! They have such personality, and I know I am biased, but I think they are a hoot! On my drive here today I thought of all the things they must have moved during the time I was gone. They actually surprised me, the only thing they really moved were some random boxes I had on the floor. Oh, and Vega climbed on the top shelf in the closet that had the quilt I’m making… it it is a bit furry now…

I stopped at the public library and got two movies to enjoy this weekend. One was “The Children’s Hour” with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. I really enjoyed it—the topic was about homosexualism, and the power of words, assumptions, and lies. The acting was superb—Obviously, both Hepburn and MacLaine are amazing, but… well, I was impressed! The movie was made in 1961, and so some of the topics were taboo back then, and are now discussed much more openly, but the idea of hatred of the different still holds true. The only thing I didn’t like in the movie was the ending… The other movie is second hand lions. It looked good, but we’ll see.

Well, it is 1AM here in Jersey, and I talked about this and that, vented, gave my opinion of a movie. I think it is time for me to go to bed…

Wish me luck on my interviews next week!!! I will have only two this week, as the last interview was moved to December by the hospital.

Good night!

Reut