What I Think About When I Should Be Doing Homework

So I was reading Navelgazing Midwife, which is a fascinating blog, and very helpful to me, because I want to go into obstetrics and gynecology and the blog often talks about problems with OBs.

I was especially interested in her post about birth rape, because I honestly never heard of it before, but it really makes sense. Many women were saying how their OBs didn't respect their choices or tried to force or coerce them into things, especially involving sticking hands or instruments up the birth canal. I read several years ago about doctors who perform episiotomies when the mother doesn't need it, and I was rather horrified. One thing I always assumed about medicine was that you do what the patient (or their legal guardian) wants, as long as it is legal.

Now, of course, in childbirth there is the question of the child and sometimes things go wrong. But misrepresenting information to a mother, or treating her like she is stupid or imbalanced simply because she is in labor? I hope I never get that arrogant, and that if people see me becoming so, they will slap sense into me. I know that when I am in my residency I will have to obey the chief OB, but I hope I can get one who is understanding and compassionate towards the new mothers, and that even if I am not so lucky I will still focus on the mother and pay attention to HER demands.

I think when I get to that point in my life I'll take classes in midwifery, so I can do things like catch the baby no matter what position the mom is in, and learn what's best to say to mothers. And I intend, if at all possible, to hand the baby to the mother BEFORE it gets brought into the nursery. Unless the baby is seriously injured or drastically premature and needs medical attention, mothers should get to see and hold the results of their labor immediately (or when they wake up) and begin bonding (unless, of course, it is a case of the child being put up for adoption or surrogacy and the biological mother doesn't want to hold the baby).

One of the reasons I want to be an OB/gyn and not a midwife or a nurse, besides money, is that as an OB, I will have control, and be able to do things like kick out nurses who belittle the mother or try to pressure her into things she doesn't want. And hopefully in my own small corner of the world, I can start making up for all the shitty, terrible OBs in the world.

And as for myself, when I'm pregnant I'm going to do tons of research and walk into the OB's office (I don't think I'd want to do a home birth) long before labor and say, "I am informed and educated in the subject of childbirth, and I want you to understand that I expect to be in control. Do not try to treat me like a child or an idiot or a hysteric at any point in this process. If you do not agree ahead of time to listen to me and treat me like an educated equal, I cannot have you as my doctor." Hopefully by that point I will be in med school or an intern and have access to OBs I know I can trust.

And then I will probably have a perfectly normal, hospital birth, on my back with my only "unusual" demand being no epidural or offers of an epidural until I specifically request it. I mean, hospital births aren't all that bad. My mom had three healthy vaginal hospital births (even my sister, who was late) and she always talks about how the nurse-midwives who helped her were the most wonderful thing imaginable (there were a couple of other women in labor at the time and hers was fairly normal, so the OB was only really there to check in and catch the baby). But hopefully as an OB/gyn I'll be able to help some of the women who might otherwise have had a really terrible doctor who treats it as a disease instead of a normal biological process that just requires a bit of help and an experienced set of eyes and hands if something's wrong.


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Tonight Ryter suggested that he, Loquelo, Nonaestima and I all get a house in Dover next year, and I commute to campus...

Pros: I like Nonaestima and Loquelo, and obviously Ryter, and I would get to cook my own food and eat healthy. I'd have a real bathroom and a real kitchen and it might even be cheaper than living on campus, depending on where we go.

Cons: Ryter would have to be cleaner. I'm fairly messy myself but I have to have a clean toilet seat and no grime in my shower, and nothing sticky on tile floors or crumbs on the rug. Also, he figured we'd just share a bedroom, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that right yet. I wouldn't be living on campus and I'd bet money my circle of friends wouldn't be growing. I'd be paying for gas too. And even though I doubt it would happen (pray it won't), I have to consider what I would do if we ever broke up mid-semester.

Oh, and the number one con: My parents would NEVER agree to it. Not sharing a bedroom. My mom doesn't even want to have me live off campus at all, because she wants me to get the college experience, and she's already worried I spend too much time with him and that he's looking for someone to settle down with while I should be fun-dating. My dad... yeah. Not gonna happen. And they control the money.

Maybe senior year, if I proposed it right. But next year? HIGHLY unlikely. HIGHLY.

"We should fear the coming reign of the Idaho Global Domination."

Today is the Vestalia, a festival to honor Vesta/Hestia, goddess of the hearth. On this day the Vestal Virgins drew water from a sacred spring and made sure the water did not touch the ground, which would contaminate it; to do this, they had a special narrow-bottomed vessel. They would take salt specially made from brine brought in a salt pan and ground up, then baked in a jar and cut with an iron saw. Ears of grain gathered on the 7th, 9th, and 11th days of May were used for flour, and that, the salt, and the water were used to make the mola salsa, the holy cake, which was used in the celebrations.

Women would then make offerings to Vesta in her temple with simple food sacrifices, and would enter the temple barefoot. Men weren't allowed to enter Vesta's temple, save the Pontifex Maximus.

The day was also holy for bakers and millers, and they would adorn their millstones and the animals that turned them with garlands of violets and small loaves of bread.

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I went to visit Ryter today. Since the bumper incident he needed to go get a rental car, so I took him over to the Enterprise place, where they gave him a shiny Nissan Altima, complete with optional stick shift and an ignition that only requires the key to be inside the car somewhere, it doesn't need it to be in the ignition itself.

The part I was jealous of was the CD player (my car doesn't have one), but his old car had that too.

It took him a while to get used to the Car of the Future, partially because it took a call to his dad yo figure out that the stick was optional, so at first we were wondering what kind of crazy rental place gives a person a standard without checking to make sure they could drive one first. But it worked out, and his rental is very nice, and I trust he'll fight the urge to wreck it just because it's a rental.

We tested it by going and getting the crickets to feed Ryter's bearded dragon, which he's getting Sunday. We also went to IHOP, since I asserted that I hadn't been there in forever, and I tried every kind of syrup, even Boysenberry. Mmm... syrup...

Nonaestima, who is Loquelo's housemate and a friend, came over and we went out for ice cream, then watched Futurama for a while. It was a fun day.

"Use proven methods, avoid shortcuts."

Besides being the Faunon (about which I know nothing except that it's probably related to Faunus, the goat-legged wilderness god), today is Lincoln's birthday. Not being one to celebrate the birthdays of dead presidents, I did not properly honor this occasion. I did, however, honor another birthday: that of Charles Darwin (who was a president, but of the Council of the Geographical Society, so I'm letting it slide). I honored this great day by not taking out the trash, thus allowing evolution to continue in that location.

Happy birthday, Darwin, I'm sure you don't look a day over 198.

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So...I had a sort of meltdown today, after the Health care seminar ended. My RA happened to be wandering around and he came in to talk about something going on this week and he noticed I had been crying, so he talked to me about it. I'm calm, now-- not over the crisis, but not crying, either... Still, this is the blog entry I wrote mid-meltdown.

I can't do this. I can't be a doctor. I can't go to med school and I can't do the career I always expected I'd do. It was never real to me, the idea of me as a doctor-- it was this distant, intangible idea where I had more marketable skills than a little bit more intelligence than Average Joe.

I don't really want to go into medicine. If I could have any career in the world, I'd write bestselling novels or screenplays or the scripts to comic books, or someone would pay me to draw whatever I wanted. I wouldn't be in science, I wouldn't be dealing with people every day...

There are two worlds that I live in at the same time. One of them is the real world, and the other is the one in my head. In the real world I'm a painfully shy, unattractive, reasonably intelligent but completely antisocial college student with no useful skills who's too afraid of human interaction to do what it takes to gain those skills. I want to do so much, I'm interested in so many things, but every time I learn about something new I want to do I find out that it requires social skills and I seize up. There was a woman at the Health care seminar today talking about international research opportunities and I was thinking, "oh, that sounds cool" and she mentioned that part of it was finding faculty mentors and convincing them to support you, and then going abroad and working with the professors one-on-one and with the natives, and my first reaction was "well, so much for that idea, I could never have the confidence for that." In the real world I'm hopeless and relatively worthless and have very few prospects, career-related or relationship-wise.

In the world in my head, I could be a doctor. Or a physician's assistant, or a lawyer, or a politician. In that world my books would actually make money or my sketches could actually sell or I'm attractive, thin, and sociable enough to marry someone rich and powerful and spend my life organizing charity functions and raising kids. Heck, in that world I can befriend a centaur or walk on the moon or have some important role in the destiny of the earth. In that world, I've lived my life; I'm not some sheltered girl from suburbia who thinks she's capable of independence.

I can't tell my mother about this little crisis, because she'll tell me to major in creative writing or something I love, and then I'll have to point out that my writing is mediocre and I refuse to be a starving artist. I'm beginning to see the power of the lines between dreams and reality. I will never be an artist or a professional writer or a politician; I've known this for years. I'm beginning to wonder if I need to add "doctor" to the list.