8/17/2008

Family & Friends-

Because it has been a while since I last wrote, this letter may jump around a bit as I remember what has been going on.

To begin, I took a girl from the ward out on a first date this week and had a really really good time, but the whole asking a girl on a date thing got me thinking about the dating scene in which I have become something of a permanent fixture – a kind of Rock of Gibralter, not to be moved or swayed from my station.
I am daily grateful that, as a guy, I don’t have to endure some of the things that are uniquely female (such as long lines waiting to use the restroom and a very participatory role in the miracle of birth). BUT, least anyone think that guys are completely off the hook, let me state that Fate pointed its ugly finger in the direction of guys when choosing which sex had to make the first move and be the ones who did the asking out.
Ever since the tender age of 16 years and 10 month when I finally mustered the courage to ask out a girl for the first time (she said her “dad wouldn’t let her go”), I have gone through the anxiety attack…errr…I mean process of asking a girl out time and time again. Let me illustrate how this usually goes:

Let’s say that I want to ask a girl named Sarah if she will go to dinner with me. Even getting to this point usually involves several weeks of convincing myself that this is a good idea. I usually require a minimum of 3 or 4 decent conversations in a platonic setting before I’m persuaded that asking her out will not result in undue embarrassment and deep emotional scars. Once I’ve finally made the decision to ask a girl out, I begin the process of mustering the courage – or perhaps it is stupidity – required to call her up (this usually involves several quarts of vodka…just kidding…but sometimes I wonder if that wouldn’t help a bit!) Once the courage is in place I make the call.

**ring, ring**
(Eric secretly hoping that I will get her voicemail)
Sarah (in an unsuspecting tone): “Hello”
Eric (with all the subtly and smoothness of, say, Hurricane Katrina): “uhhh… hello dinner, this is Sarah. Would you like to go to Eric with me?”

Usually when this happens the girl is bright enough to figure out what I meant to say and if she has the common sense that God gave to gravel she will hang up and move to another country…Just kidding! If I’m lucky she will realize that my awkwardness at asking her out is actually the highest form of compliment, and if I’m REALLY lucky she will realize that if I freeze mid-sentence with a panicked “deer in the headlights” expression on my face during the actual date that just means that I’m really enjoying myself and find myself facing the terrifying prospect of asking her out for a second time!!!
Oh, those fond old memories! I have them often, although I can usually control them with medication.

This leads me to another line of thought completely different from dating. The girl I went out with is a little more established than me, in the sense that she lives in a real person house with curtains on the windows and pictures on the walls. I have lived in “college houses” for so long now that it is always fun and a bit shocking for me to realize that I have friends who live in real houses, pay mortgages, paint walls and install sprinkling systems. For the last decade I have lived in a string of apartments that have no discernable yard, have Goodwill furniture the color of an improperly treated wound and are painstakingly decorated with: nothing. I do put a lot of work into stacking the empty pizza boxes nicely in the corner and for good measure I keep a sizable pile of laundry on my bedroom floor right next to an empty dresser. I realize that these are the kind of admissions that make mothers and grandmothers worry (it might also have a bit to do with why I’m still single), but don’t fret! If the aroma begins to get too pungent, I have a can of aerosol deodorant that I can spray around as a kind of poor-man’s air freshener! If anyone comes to visit, you can rest assured that you are sleeping on the finest couch Goodwill has to offer for less than $35 and that the beach towel you are using as a blanket has been washed some time in the last presidential administration.
Okay, it actually isn’t that bad (I’m exaggerating a bit for humor’s sake…but only a bit). I’m simply trying to make the point that I get a total kick out of seeing my friends living in places that I associate with “grown ups” while I am still living in the Never-Never Land of higher education.

As far as school goes, I’m halfway through my combined anesthesiology/ emergency/trauma rotation. Every time I begin a new rotation it is my goal to try and rule out or rule in if it is something I could see myself doing as a career. Sometimes it is just as helpful to rule something out as something I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do as a career as it is to rule something in as a possibility to look into further. This month has taught me that anesthesiology and emergency are probably not what I want to do with the rest of my life. These are careers for some people…just not me.
As part of the emergency portion of the rotation, we had to become ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support) certified. This basically means I had to memorize a big old algorithm of what to do when a person’s heart stops beating or goes into a dangerous and irregular rhythm. Then I had to take an oral exam and explain how I would try and keep someone alive under whatever conditions the doctor threw at me. Fortunately in the oral exam you can get a couple of things wrong and still pass (in the real world, you can’t mess this stuff up) because if I had been working on a real patient I might have killed them. In one portion of the test I needed to administer a pain killer and all I could think of to give was fentanyl (a narcotic approximately 100 times stronger than morphine). Because of its potency, fentanyl is usually given in doses of micrograms. My mistake was to get all nervous and give the dose in milligrams (a much larger unit). The doctor was nice but had to inform me that if I’d given that big of a dose to a real patient they would probably stop breathing…but hey! Now I’ll remember that for the rest of my life!

Anyway, that is about it for me! Love you all and hope you are doing well!
-Eric