a book of ordinary people

Lithium is Monovalent just like Na (sodium).
Two and then one, it will become happily stable if it loses ONE..
They even compete in Loop of Henle...

They come in here Manic, hyperverbal, hyperactive, grandiose,hyper-everything.....
Nobody knows what is the pathophysiology, what is the scientific explanation behind their illness.

Lithium brings them back to life....
Nobody knows how it works...
The discovery was just serendipity..

I am not a religious person, I do not believe in miracles.
My only religion is science

Psychiatry scares me, I just want to be normal, I want to go back to my own ICU....
Fluids, hypotension, respiratory failures, and septic shocks.
Death or Life... They will either survive, get better and go on with their lives or go to morgue. Either or...
Everybody here is alive though, and will go one living with this thing in their head. Today one of them said that he thinks his brain is "Overdeveloped.." And yeah they can stay on Lithium, but how many of them will follow through ???
I once had a boyfriend who was bipolar, he never knew though, I realized years later. The manic episodes made it hard for any guy to compete with him, he was beyond entertaining. But the reality is that these people are depressed 75% of the time. And then he would lie his ass off to justify his manic episodes without even knowing or believing that he was lying. Maybe if he was started on lithium I would have stayed with him, I lie I left him because I knew he was sick and did not want to bring drama into my life. There was so much of the mood changes that I could take. It hurt a lot at first, but then things started to fall into place.

If I go back to ICU, I will be a notch above mediocre. I might be able to work my way up to ER and Trauma. I might become someone, just MIGHT..

But if I stay here I will become someone. It is not that hard to tell, I am one of the few people people who does not struggle with Pscyh. Hell I even aced Dr.P's test and he is the god himself. Just like chemistry back in high school, it is like a breeze to me.
Our chemistry professor once said : It is not a rule in chemistry unless there is an exception. It is even better down here there are no rules, everything and everyone is an exception. I guess I always do better with the chaotic science.

I miss ICU, death I can handle, but uncertainty I know will get to me one way or the other. It did once before when I left him, even though I thought I loved him, and thought that I could stay, but at the end I just got tired and left.

Will see where the life will take me though, somethings are just out of your hands...

Labels: rotation diaries

You know that perfect moments that you have with your friends. When you are walking out of a Crazy Irish Pub towards your car and you say : "If Only I had a cigarette tonight would be perfect." And one of your friends hands you a cigarette and you start smoking while the other friend looks at you with disbelief :" You smoke?" and You reply : " Oh yeah and I teach smoking cessation classes too!!!" And then all of a sudden everyone bursts into laughter. Remember the expressions on everybody's faces....
When people are making love, or simply having sex and are really enjoying it.Remember the expression on their faces? Nobody is laughing, or having a good time. Sometimes it feels like they are suffering, as if they are in pain. And when it is all over, you can even hear the sigh of relief. People don't really laugh after having orgasm. With sex, pleasure is pain and pain is pleasure. Not in a sadistic-masochist sense, just a simple observation.

These days I am down in ICU. So far we have had three people coded on us. One of them tried to drink himself to death after his wife left him for excessive drinking. The other two had multiple complications. One of them kept coming back from dead and we persuaded her family to stop the resuscitation. We let her take her sweet time dying and walked back to our stations.I will never forget the expression on her face, her eyes were closed and it seemed like she did not want to be bothered with Life.
The third was an amputee, nobody exactly knows what happened ( most of the time that is the case). Massive organ failure. I ran down the stairs from the fifth floor down to ICU with the blue box in my hand. I never got to see his face. He was sent to the hospice in the next day or so.
I like it down here in ICU, in a very strange way .ICU is Full of expressionless faces of people who are heavily sedated in order to be mechanically ventilated. Some of them may never get to wake up.
When you look at it from a distance : Joy, death, pain, pleasure, life, sorrow and so many other words are just arbitrary. Why do we Scream while having an orgasm? Aren't you supposed to scream when you are scared and need help or maybe are angry? Why pleasure can be painful but death feels like nothing?
I am not trying to be philosophical here,no on contrary I am learning how to be normal. How to let everything just be.....
Be it death, Orgasm, or Joy....
I have started to like hospitals, I think I am staying....

Labels: rotation diaries

For the first time in two days she looked at herself in the mirror, in a restroom where god knows has what kind of germs in it, she had two minutes only two freaking minutes to herself. Nobody will ever know of the phone call that she received the other day. Sometimes one of the most decent people that you come across your life can call you and shake you to the bones, not that he/she wants to do it intentionally.
Nobody will ever know about the call if he does not need to call again, not that he really wants to call back , nor she really wants to answer his call. Something told her that everything will be alright....
But something inside her has been shaking in the past two days....
Nobody will ever know what she has been feeling for the past two days, because it is part of her jobs. " You owe a smile to the people that you see at work everyday, never forget that." Someone told her awhile back. When you see someone in pain all you do is smile, because that is all that you have to offer them and you can't deny that from anyone....
She looked at herself again, everyday she walks by the people that she knows too much about .. all their histories and stories... but the more she knows about them, the less she knows them...
She wished she could throw up, because she has been feeling nauseated for a while now...
She wished she could just give up and leave....
She only had two minutes, people were waiting for her...
She still has those pills that her father gave her, in case she became insomniac, or too nervous and became paralyzed. Insomnia, whomever thought she will suffer from it? Once her sister confronted her about sleeping 12 hours straight, she joked to her " I live to sleep.."
Yeah that was two years ago, now a good night sleep has become a luxury that her busy mind can barely afford, once a week maybe...
Her father only knew too well what her life was going to be like. The other day she has found yet another white hair...
The other day they held a moment of silence for some patient who would not be around much longer and thought he was fighting a fair battle. None of them had the heart to tell him that at best he would survive another year, and that would be the best case scenario, if he survived longer he would be begging for his death....
And yeah there is a newborn kid somewhere around whose mom might not make it to his college graduation, or maybe she might who knows.. She will smile at the young boy whenever she sees him and his mom ..
Her Life has become all about the random phone calls from hell, the secrets that need to stay safe with her, and the two minutes that she gets to be herself. She has no complaints, nobody has it easier.
In this mad house that made her fancy a vomit once in a while; the mad house with the secrets so burning that most people running it take those little happy pills to sleep on them. In that very place, she had found herself....
Out to the world with a smile on your face, the two minute bathroom break is over...

Labels: rotation diaries

Labels: rotation diaries

1. I saw an ordinary man in the street wearing scrubs only the pants though, I was wondering how come I don't know him. He must work in the same place as I do, he came closer he was wearing jeans. I did not know him, he was just an ordinary man.....

2. I do not believe in Sacredness of life anymore, sometimes ones life becomes a burden on everyone. We are getting better at shutting the door on death's face just to have him come back from the back door and surprise us. I do not know if my mentor believes in sacredness of life or not, but he treats every life as if it is sacred. He is too smart to even contemplate about moral dilemmas, he channels all his nervous energy into Caring for every single person that exists on the face of earth, by passionately doing his job....

3. There is no such a thing as mistakes, there are things that you do and there are things that you do not do. The other day I did not DO this thing that I could have done, just because I would never do such a thing....

4. He told me I need not to judge people who I am caring for, all I have to do is to do my job. If I can not do that, I have to pack my bags and leave. And no it was not my boss who told me this but my dad....

5. I have never lived in a city with so much negative energy surrounding me , for the first time in my life I have given up on pushing things forward, all i do these days is just sit back and watch.

6. For the first time in my life I am not a even bit confused about my life, it is what it supposed to be. As scary as it sounds I am pretty much enjoying every moment of it, even if I am pretending that I am suffering....

7. I can not stand people who promise you hope even though everyone knows that you can not deliver hope. I for one never promised something I am not able to deliver...

Labels: ordinary stories, rotation diaries

She tells me too bad that it is cloudy today, and i ask her how does she know it? she tells me she has looked out the window .." oh, windows yeah that..." i reply

I occasionally look out the windows when i am in between rounds, or lost in this intertwined maze of a hospital looking desperately for some poetry. I see my father walking in front of me feeling suffocated without any luck in finding poetry. It took me all these years to feel his pain, his love and hate for at the same time for his job. " I have everything that a man desires in this world and yet I am not happy, I don't know what it is that I want out of life. " He once told me when I was in my late teens and up until now I was not able to forgive him for saying that very sentence ...

"A" tells me we better get the hell out and go sit somewhere quiet so we can hear each other and I can exactly see what his job is all about. He finds couple of empty terminals and we sit in front of them and there we go , he starts quizzing me. It is the nature of the job you have to be suspicious of anything and anyone even the tiniest bacterias in the world. The guy next door has been moaning in pain non-stop since morning and everybody seems unaffected by it. "A" tells me that I can go and consult him if I am really curious, and laughs " I was only joking." That's his only flaw; he is too soft, too sweet , and too caring. I don't tell him that we all like working with "J," a bit more . "J" always has some surprise up his sleeve; at first he teases you, lets you down and makes you to fend for yourself. He makes you learn on your own , but watches you every step of the way. Maybe it is because "J," is old enough to be our father or maybe its that "J," is a big tease by nature . Unlike "A" he is not much into calculating the whole situation and factoring in people's feeling, he just likes to play the game. "J's" playful nature makes him a better teacher, maybe because it makes him more real than "A," or maybe it is just the Age..


The man in pain is still moaning, and everybody is doing their job. Me and "A" digress from learning into our lives, and talk for an hour . I like talking to him, he is not sarcastic and I do not have to be sarcastic when I am around him. He is a quiet guy by nature, and I have never been much of a talker either, and surprisingly there are no awkward moments of silence, but plenty of moments of mutual silence. Despite being quiet and calculative he has these little moments when all of a sudden he bursts into laughter and fesses up like : " That is why it is called a JOB, so you can hate it."And then goes back to teaching me more about his JOB, which will one day be my job. Or " The reason I went to school out of state was that my application for USC got delayed, well I got rejected." And then creatively ditches me so I can get out earlier and He can go online and surf the net continuing his furniture shopping.
I leave him and the man moaning in pain behind following my father who is still in desperate search of poetry in the hallways of hospitals and look out the windows.
I know that I have a choice to make here: I either have to become like "A," and live a rather normal life sans poetry , or get the hell out of hospitals and live with my current job which is practically a Shakespeare festival days in and out, or as my friend "S," told me the other day :" Learn to write your own poems anywhere in the world that you are....." All I know is that I did not turn out to be as much of a daydreamer that my father used to be. If I am good at anything it is at being able to untangle myself when i am stuck. I look out the window and know that i will never let this maze of intertwind hallways get into me , because the moment that you have let the poetry out of your life is the moment that you are dead....

Labels: ordinary stories, rotation diaries

I find myself staring at a bowl of cereal at 5:30 am trying to decided if I am able to eat any of it? I have to be at work by 6 am , and I know that the only thing that I can do right now is to go back to bed. I am feeling funny and the nagging headache does not leave me alone.
"It must be from yesterday," I tell myself. I had to rush back to school to drop off couple of stupid papers so that the school fascist administration, thats what I call them, does not pull me out of my rotations. It was hot out there I had to drive in the worst time of the day, and run around between buildings and yeah I got dehydrated. The whole dehydration thing is new to me, but has been happening a lot lately. So much that I have become Heat-o-phobic , the worst part is the debilitating headaches and my ever increasing hesitance to take any medication, ironic I know but you study them enough you begin to resent them as much as I do.
I head back to bed and wait until it becomes 6 am and I leave a message for people at work to let them know that I will not be coming, not that they care nor will be needing me. I am an extra body anyways, I have to call them to remind them that I do exist.
By 12:30 pm I drag myself out of the bed, eat something get into the car and drive myself to my parents house. At first I am hesitant to go, my mom might think that I got kicked out and get disappointed. I think that makes me a perfect Persian kid , between death and disappointing my mom I prefer the former rather than the later. I have no idea how do I do the drive, but I am at my parents doorstep some 45 minutes later. And tell my surprised mom that I did not go to work today and head to my room. Six hours later I get up and go to kitchen, my mom tells me that the dehydration should be the result of my low blood iron.
The other day I read somewhere : "In U.S you might live a better life than Iran, but you will die alone. In Iran you will never be left alone even in your death. " Good thing I brought My Iran with me to the U.S , my family does not leave me alone even in my death.
Other than the recurring dehydration episodes, life is lovely. There is a deep seated happiness inside of me these days, that has become a part of me even in the darkest of moments.
I have become a regular this European Cafe' that has really good salads and free wi-fi , and a patio. I go there and sometimes when my best friend is online I describe the other customers to her and we make up stories about their life. And from there I can walk to my favorite chocolatier in the world. I am going to buy their assorted handmade Artisan whatever chocolate box for my aunt. Whom I am going to see this coming August after so many year in yet one of my many adventures, I have bought two mascaras for my other aunt who will be there too and will not be caught dead without eye make up even after having two kids.
I am most likely going to skip the party tomorrow night, since "A" did not responded to my text message. I need a sober driver and all these years he has been the one who drives me to parties, buys me drinks and then sits in a corner and starts conversations with random strangers and tells them the story of his life. He has been having family issues or something like that lately and flat out ignores me. I am on the lookout for a new sober driver who can drive me around to parties and does not like to party himself.
Happiness is having a job which you like, guarantees you a good salary and not that many people are crazy about. It is the awesomely fresh salads at the European cafe' in downtown and the box of chocolate that you will buy for your aunt and know that she will have everybody indulge in it with her along with some tea. Happiness is the best friend that is there through it all. And the mother who will remind you that you will not be left alone even in your death. Happiness is the sober driver who will always stay one and nothing more...

Labels: ordinary stories, rotation diaries