"I want you to fail"

I’ve been wanting to post this since Monday, but life got a little weird and a little crazy, and I’ve been behind.

On Monday my group and I (six of us in total) went to our orientation for the community health program we’ll be doing here in Hilo. It involves rotating through the Hilo, Kea’au, Pahoa, and Ka’u community-centered clinics, and so far, it’s awesome.

On Monday, we were all still trying to get used to the new location, schedule, and lifestyle that is already by now becoming second nature. I know that I personally felt a little off my game, and the bottom line is that we accidentally went to the wrong place for our orientation. Perhaps not totally unprofessional or irresponsible, but a little embarrassing. We worked it out though, and everything turned out just fine.

I’m actually glad we went to the clinic before we went to the headquarters, because we got to meet the medical director that we’ll be working under before orientation, and man do I love him.

One of the first things he said to us, before he hopped onto his little scooter and buzzed off to lead us to HQ, was:  “I want you to fail.”

Think way outside the box, because nothing matters at this point. You’re just stupid first years, no one trusts you anyway! Medical students who keep their heads down, fly under the radar, and don’t take any risks end up becoming the kind of doctors we don’t want. So I want you to mess up as big as you can. I want you to fail.

It was beautiful, I tell you. He went on to say:  “You can fish, or you can hunt.”

I want to teach you to work with your hands and your head. Medicine has been going towards this style of diagnoses that are based on labs, where you sit and troll through the labs and the x-rays and try to come up with a diagnosis. That’s ineffective. Do you think it’s better to sit there trolling through the file, fishing for an answer? Or better to really think, use your head, use your hands, use what you know, and hunt for a solution?

There’s more, of course, including a brief discussion of the new ACP recommendations for parsimony. And I think I had originally planned to write more of a synthesis of my thoughts on the matter…but for now, that’s all I have.

The rest of this post has nothing really to do with the above, and I almost don’t want to post it because I feel it will distract what I head meant to be the focus of this post. But I wrote it because I need some way of processing it, and…blah. Just don’t read anymore.

Actually, maybe the following is a good example of me failing. Haha.

Monday concluded with us finding out that one of our classmates had to go back to Oahu for certain reasons, including a lack of professionalism. Again, I had wanted to write some thoughts about that, because it’s been a recurring topic in my life (actually our whole group and class has been hearing and thinking a lot about it lately, I think/hope), but I just can’t right now.

The classmate that had to leave happened to be the one that I was sharing a room with, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t happy to have the room to myself now. Monday I had had big plans for getting a lot done, but with the news about our classmate and the collective processing and group support we gave her, the day ended up going to shit. Plus she kept me up until 330 am packing, and I had to get up at 530.

That’s part of why I feel so off my game, I think…Tuesday I managed to pull through the exhaustion and be remarkably productive, but then Wednesday I slept in because our flexible schedule allowed me to, and I just haven’t been productive since then. Yeah, I’ve been running and going to the gym, but that’s about it.

Thursday we had dinner at our PBL tutor/CSP preceptor’s house, and we all got ridiculously drunk. He was pleasantly surprised by our willingness to drink with him and his wife, and we were pleasantly surprised by the amounts of alcohol they had available for us and the amounts of hard liquor they consumed while we went through five bottles of wine (yes, that’s one bottle each).

Then came the really bad decision-making…we went out. From about 1030-230. Sure, it was fun, and I “rode” a mechanical bull. Which means I was thrown off the mechanical bull in short order, four times. 

I don’t remember holding the “bull” like that. I thought I looked more like a “normal” cowgirl. Apparently I suck. This probably explains why I was thrown off in such short order. Also, can you tell that I’ve been lifting lately? All upper body. I look like a damn man.

In the course of the evening, I consumed two shots of Jameson, one beer, approximately one bottle of red wine, one shot of tequila, and probably the equivalent of one very strong mixed drink (the boys kept having me hold their gin and tonics and rum and cokes while they tried to pick up girls. I imposed a holder’s fee).

I was very drunk when we got home and attempted to watch Grey’s Anatomy. At one point, all I remember is that I was dog-piled on the couch with the boys. The girls were sitting on the floor in front of us, and we were all squinting at my computer screen, trying desperately to follow the drama that is Grey’s Anatomy in an effort to sober up before bed. I don’t know how it happened. I think there’s a picture of it somewhere.

We failed. Brandyn went to bed, and Genia took that as her cue to escape as well. Sara and I stuck it out until the end, but neither of us remembered anything from the episode the next day. Mark had taken three benadryl at dinner (because the house has cats), and he was unconscious on the couch. I covered him with a blanket and went to bed after unsuccessfully attempting to vomit.

The next day (yesterday) was hangover city, and I didn’t do shit all day. I slept, watched TV in bed, ate (a LOT), and then went to Walmart to get equipment for jello shots.

I had such big plans for this weekend, too. I have so much work to catch up on.

I’m telling myself that this post is step one back towards productivity.

This morning I got up at 630, ran, went to farmer’s market. It was a good start. I planned to take a short nap and then get back in the groove…instead I slept almost four hours and have now spent the last two and a half hours screwing around.

Wow.

This is the life of a med student in Hilo, folks.

Ok, I’m gonna go work now.

Promise.

(PS, Sarah, if you made it this far, I hope this kind of explains why I haven’t tumbled lately. I’ve been busy.)