What would I do without him?

Thank God my husband was here last week.  Because it was a bad week.

In med school, certain rotations are dreaded by all.  Well, one specific rotation, really.  Both because of the intense nature of surgeons pretty much everywhere and because of the impossible work hours.  And I'm definitely not eager to start my surgery rotation at the end of the school year.

But as of tomorrow, I will have completed the rotation I was dreading the most: Neurology.

It's only a 2-week rotation (thank goodness), but the course director is one of the most terrifying men I've ever met (because he's manic and opinionated and loud and not very nice).  And neurology and I did not get off to a good start my first year of med school.  Let's just say me and the brain do not get along.  So I was NOT looking forward to this rotation.

That may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy, because sure enough, by the 2nd day, I was holding back tears.  My mind was blanking during lectures, and I was completely incapable of answering such basic questions as "What are the parts of the cerebellum?"  I mean, come on, I should know this stuff.  But I didn't.  My mind was dead and I couldn't even come up with good B.S. answers.  Needless to say, I embarrassed myself pretty thoroughly and spent the rest of the week frantically trying to improve my performance, and failing miserably.  By Friday, I was a nervous wreck.

D and I had last weekend to ourselves.  So we saw The Reader, which was very good, but made me cry.  Now, I'm the type of person who cries a lot during movies and not very much in real life (well, except for certain times...mod people, don't tell on me).  But I guess I opened the floodgates, because once we got home, I succumbed to about an hour of torrential crying.  Over stupid neuro, for goodness' sake.

I have to say, I've had some low points in my life, but I've never felt truly depressed until that night.  I felt hopeless, as if things were never going to improve, and like I was completely incapable of doing anything right.  I wanted to quit med school.  I was reminding myself of all the things I've given up in order to be where I am right now, and telling myself that it just wasn't worth it.  And in retrospect, I was just scared and exhausted and stressed and tired of holding myself together.  I just needed to let it all out, but at the time, I thought I wouldn't be able to move on from that point.

But I did.  Because D was there, holding my hand and patting my shoulder the entire time.  I was feeling so sorry for myself that my own mother probably would have given up and walked away after about 10 minutes, much less an hour.  But D stayed and said all the right things.  And he said one thing that really struck me and has been kind of a mantra for me this past week:

"The real world hasn't changed.  We're still here.  Just come back to us."

...this week was much better.  I can do this.

Stacy London, we've done something awful

I made the mistake of putting the TLC show "What Not To Wear" on our DVR list last week.  All the episodes that were running.  So by yesterday evening, I had about 12 episodes to watch, and that didn't include the repeats...  Needless to say, this weekend I spent a lot of time clearing the list.  And my poor, hapless husband and son were forced to watch with me at times.

This came back to bite me.  I was at the mall today, engaging in some intensive retail therapy.  I happened to be in a clothing store, examining the shoes, when E piped up from behind me: "Oh, no, Mom, not those."  (Now, I must admit, I'm always "involving" him in the process by asking him what he thinks, so we had established a premise for him to give fashion advice long before this.) 

"What's wrong with these?!" I gasped.  (And I'll have you know, they were adorable.)

"Remember?  'What not to wear?'" He replied, with a rather "duh, Mom, they're awful" intonation.

I'm not sure what he meant, exactly, but I know that [straight] men everywhere are screaming in horror.