It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. 

Because you have experienced love, which is really what life is about. I have experienced love, and also lost.  But have never gotten over the lost part.  The love story between Florentino and Fermina in "Love in the Time of Cholera", the angst and stubborn refusal by Florentino to forget and move on unfortunately rings true to my own story.  I feel, however, it's less a stubborn refusal than an inability to. We eat to live, we eat because we love food. We can't make ourselves forget about food. 

I dunno.  

After all these years. My heart hasn't skipped a beat. Well... except for that time a couple yrs ago when i got premature ventricular contractions 2/2 to fatigue, caffeine, and alcohol (stress of med school). Nonetheless, the first waking thought and the last wishful hope before sleep has always been the same.  

It can never come true.  Not again. 

Wish I had someone i could talk to about this. The solitude.  The fear and guilt of keeping this tragic "secret" has made this experience so much more difficult to bear!  Friends and family would roll their eyes in disgust.  Strangers would laugh and think i were crazy.  Spit at my weakness.  Love comes and goes.  Why won't mine go away. 

2004 and 2010.  i'm getting old.  :(

Started my final ENT subi today at SUNY upstate.  the vibe here is GREAT.  I like it a lot.  Didn't meet any of the attendings yet, but the residents warned me to read and prepare for pimp sessions in the OR, and i thought, YES!  Pimping = teaching and i know i'm going to learn a lot here.  As long as i hold my end of the bargain.

So, places i've lived and worked in since leaving Seattle

1) Bethesda, MD

2) Georgetown

3) St. Louis

4) Valhalla, ny

5) Manhattan

6) Staten Island

7) washington DC -dupont

8) Syracuse ny

surgery is such a... weird thing. Having studied the books, I have approached my clinical training from a scientific point of view.  The patient before me is a human being. I explore it's anatomy and wonder at it's pathophysiology.  The disease is what makes this person unique.  We operate on cases.

pre-operatively, i see patient's in a variety of moods.  Some are terrified, some are happy, some mellow, some unstable. And that's when I realize how weird this all must be.  We have our daily routines and nothing about our normal lives involves waiting in a stretcher, wearing a flimsy gown, just a few minutes away from having ur body cut open, ur tissues and muscles slashed and burned, needles and instruments poking holes left and right, blood being suctioned up...

it's just so weird to think about.  

ENT subi is going well.  Did my one week rotation at beth israel and saw lots of cool cases!  Notieably a parotid which turned out to be a huge facial neurofibroma, tracheoplasty to fix tracheal stenosis, a few pect flaps and fib free flap, a lympoepithelial carcinoma of the anterior cranial fossa which had eroded through the cribiform plate (resected endoscopically), zenker's, then ur standard neck dissections and thyroids and paras done by some world class surgeons.  The anatomy was amazing and learned lots.  Greatly enjoyed my week of otology as well where i saw a couple glomus tympanicums, canal and middle cholesteatomas that were very erosive and complicated, lots of otoscleroses and tympanoscleroses. And of course, it's not all about the OR, and seeing patients in the clinic has been great.  Gettin' pretty good with my head and neck exams.  

one more week before i head down to DC for my next ent subi.