overheard at lunch

A sentence starter unlikely to be heard anywhere other than a medical school for international health:

"Every morning as I walked past the slaughtering of water buffalo on my way to clinic. . . . "

I am sad to say . . .

that no. . . still no special lady time for me.

And I so wanted to believe!

When you know your country is way too small. . .

So first year, in a moment of insanity, I auditioned for a community theater production of Anything Goes scheduled to tour Israel in the spring. I was cast as the lead and spent the rest of the year in a panic, frantically hiding pharmacology cards in my costumes to glance at backstage between scenes and rehearsing dance numbers in my head during microbiology class and generally being underslept, overstretched, and ruing my decision.

I had effectively put the whole experience out of my mind until this afternoon when, sitting in a coffeeshop downtown, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a familiar red dress on the large television screen behind the counter. Casually looking up, I was horrified to see. . . me, dancing in a red velvet dress with a feather boa. I then appeared, just about life-sized (which isn't very big but still), in a slip and my voice, singing "Blow, Gabriel, blow," assaulted me from what felt like ten million hidden loudspeakers.

This commercial for the theater group, featuring a good 90 seconds of garishly becostumed me, was repeated six times as I sat trying to have a very serious (very doctorly of course) group meeting.



Kind of fun. Kind of painful and embarrassing.

Miracles! A personal note

I just received my first email addressed to . . . . Dr. Me And on the residency website they list me as "me," MD. I wonder when this will stop being exciting.

In personal medical news, ever since leaving Israel last summer I have for all intents and purposes dispensed with menstruation (it's been about 10 months now). While I like to believe that my uterus has simply evolved beyond the need for such barbaric and messy practices, I realize that this is probably not indeed my ideal state of being.

I saw my ob/gyn in the states and we're trying out some meds, discussing fertility options. But my husband also insisted I see his Chinese doctor/acupuncturist, Larry. Since he also plays ocean sound music, shiatsus my shoulders, and the room smells like lavender, I have no problem acquiescing.

So Larry takes my pulse, shakes his head and clicks his teeth, asks to see my tongue, looks terribly disappointed in me, and tells me he wishes I had called him when I had my worm troubles because all I needed to do was warm my spleen either externally or with ginger tea, and I could have been symptom-free my entire trip. If only I had known it was my frigid spleen causing all the trouble!

So then, he focuses on my ovaries: massages my tummy for a while ("you have a lot of fire in your liver which is overheating your heart leading to obstruction in your thyroid- I've got to get things moving"), and then he sticks two needles in the webs between my first and second toes, and in both wrists.

About 7 minutes later, he holds his hands over my head for a few minutes and then says, "Okay, you're better now. You'll get your period tomorrow I imagine, and you shouldn't have any troubles with menstruation any more. I've retaught your nervous system how to regulate itself."

Amazing!

Hee. I'll let you know what happens tomorrow. . .

And for your viewing pleasure. . . a polycystic ovary:

depressing but true

Our ortho rounds finished muy early today, leaving me with a whole afternoon free to run, yoga, make salad, do laundry etc.

Having completed all those things I now have three glorious empty hours before bedtime in which to read a new novel, play catch with the dogs, paint my toenails, catch up on 30 rock or Grey's Anatomy, lie on the couch and look at the ceiling. . .

What am I doing?

Studying ahead for residency.

Oh medical school, look what you have wrought.

Squeegees in the storm

Would be a decent to excellent novel title, but I'm stuck after that.

Perhaps you can tell I have some free time these days?



Okay, I know I've ranted about this before but it continues to baffle me. Israelies are excellent at architecture, they're technological masterminds, they can irrigate anything into vibrant fertility (I trust that my husband could make the kitchen floor sprout tomatoes with a Nalgene full of water if the need arose). So I cannot cannot cannot wrap my head around the bathroom design here.

Essentially they take a room, put a hole in the floor, and then stick a shower head, a toilet, and a sink in said room. Perhaps an ornamental shower curtain separates the elements. Perhaps there's even a symbolic ridge on the floor loosely denoting the shower area. But the water in no way is funneled towards the drain and in no way is the shower head one of those yummy rain ones that pours straight down. No, it's generally one of those detachable shower hoses with a penchant for wildly ricocheting from wall to wall when you turn the faucet on. Which really doesn't make a difference since the bathroom is continuously soaked any way.

Now you have to admit it's thrifty, and I do take some pleasure in peeing, brushing my teeth, cleaning the bathroom, and showering simultaneously.

But here's what I hate. After the shower, you're expected, while cold and wet and freshly scrubbed, to grab a giant squeegie on a stick, and futilely attempt to shovel all the water into the drain. I tolerated this in my old apartments, but my new apartment takes things a step further.

So the floor here actually slopes down away from the drain, out of the bathroom, and bottoms out somewhere in front of the living room couch. And the water pours down this slope much faster than the meager little drain can collect it. The end result is that for literally the entire duration of my shower I have to continuously squeegee the water back towards me as I attempt to shampoo, shave, and soap one-handed, or I flood the entire apartment.

This ruins showering for me to such an extent that I chose option B. Flood the Entire Apartment for the first week and a half, until my husband gently informed me that this is not good roommate behavior.

cross cultural miscommunication of the day

Believe me, I am far too deeply familiar with the perils of navigating a second language, and am generally happy just to properly phrase a coffee order without offending anyone around me. So I do my best to be understanding and to not overtly giggle when our Hebrew speaking professors pronounce something wrong or have a spelling error on the board. But today's mistake was just too cute to handle.

The topic of the lecture? Child abuse

The header on the top of every single powerpoint slide?

"Buttered Babies."




Hee.

Oh yeah, that old conflict

In celebration of my almost-doctor status and impending midwesterly relocation, I registered for this year's Indianapolis marathon.

I decided to go out for my first base-building run this afternoon and casually asked my husband if there's a good trail to run on in the area (we're living in a suburb outside Beer Sheva surrounded by desert).

"Sure," he said, "there's a trail that starts right down the road."

I headed off to the bedroom to get changed. He stopped me on my way out the door.

"Wait. . . make sure when you get to the water tower that you don't turn right. That will lead you into an Arab village and they've been shooting towards bikers in that area. And if you get to a fence or a guard tower, you've gone too far and you're in the Palestinian territory."

I had a perfectly lovely sunset desert run (holding rocks in both hands in preparation for the frequent packs of wild desert dogs. [no, seriously]), though I did encounter the relatively anticlimactic fence half an hour in and had to turn back earlier than I planned.

I'll miss this crazy country.

Only in Israel or Ahh, home

Husband: "I know the perfect place to practice driving manual. No traffic, no hills, all you have to worry about is the rockets."

Oh!

And I can drink the tap water!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!