hospital day 3

Today I spent the morning in the OR and stepped foot inside for the first time as a health care worker and not as a patient. It was fascinating and gory and not a bit scary. I felt privileged to watch 2 bilateral tubal ligations but the first surgery I ever witnessed will stand out - just by virtue of being an elective penile implantation. My clinical instructor sent me down to the OR and there waiting for me fully draped was a big, shorn scrotum. Not even a triple-shot espresso will wake you up like that. It was a beautiful feeling, even from the back of the room, trying not to touch anything, trying not to get in the way. I was also pretty proud that the med student didn't know how to put on sterile gloves, maintain a sterile field, or insert a Foley. And I do. Damn proud day if I do say so myself Though the med students have a serious purpose, as my pharmacology lecture seems like it's in Japanese.

stereotyping

Manhattan is pretty damn great and living here is a lot about letting go of the stereotypes you see of the typical New Yorker in the movies. The reality is the melting pot. Most people on this little island are either from somewhere else or live out of town giving the whole place a strange transitory quality.

And then just as I was musing about how different New Yorkers are that the people you see in the movies, I saw a middle aged guy pull his car over in front of my building, get out of it and scream into it in his thick Brooklyn accent 'Yer a feckking aaaaashole ya fat fack. And i'll tell you fackin what. Don't facking call me on this number. DO NOT facking call me you facking fuckface.' Sometimes, I suppose, things are just what they seem.

manhattanism of the day

At the Running Center near my new shoebox on the well-to-do Upper West there is a listing for a MODA class. Feeling silly I wondered what MODA was. Obviously MODA stands for 'Michelle Obama Defined Arms'. I'm such a country bumpkin. I understand these sessions run around $20/hr.