Couch 217: The Order of the Phoenix couch

Oh, that makes sense, thanks. Trying to learn enough now so that, if there's a normal season next year, maybe I could try being in a regular league (vs. a free one).

I also don't get the joke, NP.

I will say though that some people cope with their issues by making jokes about them. I'm not sure about the mechanism behind it, I don't do that myself, but I know people who do this. Maybe they think if people laugh about it, it isn't so bad?
And the people who laugh might do so since they are watching a show and aren't thinking too much, especially about sad or difficult things.

I'm taking my board exams at the end of the month and promised myself I'd start studying today after a month of pure vacation. My brain is protesting so hard! I think it's because the thought of going back to work as an attending makes me anxious, and studying necessarily involves thinking about medicine and the decisions I'll have to make.

Urgh.

I found a nest of baby bunnies in my garden, which happens almost every year, but this year I think one of them is dead in there. Lots of flies buzzing around and when I look, two of the bunnies try to hide but there's an injured looking haunch or something that doesn't move. I'm not sure what, if anything, to do. I don't want a dead rabbit rotting in my garden, but I don't want to reach in there and scare the live ones. Hopefully the mom will come take care of it?

If she takes care of it, it might involve eating it. If it died of disease, the two live ones might be infected.

Call animal control?

If ESPN has a news/advice section, like CBS and Fantrax do, I’d read through it regularly, even if they’re not talking about your players. You’ll pick up a lot of tips and names and information that way.

Hm, good point.

So h bought a treadmill cuz he wants to start walking (where he can watch TV while he walks) so anyway we somehow managed to get the thing in the house yesterday, and today opened up the box and it took us several hours but it has now been assembled!! Yeesh. I broke it in and walked a mere 1/2 mile and now I am tired. I need to work back up to 2 miles a day....

So a colleague just texted me. A faculty member in the sciences—don’t know him, but heard the name often—died of COVID last week. He had been sick for months, since April. And why did he get sick? It may have been because science profs with lab courses were required to continue teaching on campus a few weeks after the rest of us were allowed to work remotely; he tested positive along with two students in his class.

I think the faculty may be getting out their (metaphorical) torches and pitchforks for the administration.

Okay yeah now I'm panicking about studying/being an attending and also sad about the fact that J just moved a 90 minute drive away until COVID is over (he made the decision not to renew his lease in the town where I live right before we met due to a work related thing) and regretting the fact that I didn't do a better job appreciating my month off.

I am panicked and sad and regretful.

Hugs, that all sounds really difficult...

I'm having uncontrollable twitching in my jaw muscle on the left side of my face. It's happened a couple of times before but it went away after a day so I didn't think anything of it. This is the second day in a row, and I'm taking muscle relaxants for a bum hip, so now I'm really worried. I'm going to call the psychiatrist on Monday even if it goes away tomorrow. I don't want it to become permanent.

I don't want to have to go off my antipsychotic med because my anxiety gets out of control and becomes pretty bad agitation. I tried going from 10 mg to 5 mg last summer and couldn't handle it so I don't know how I'll handle stopping it altogether.

That's just awful. Masks are prudent but not a 100% guarantee. I'm nervous to go back and the only reason I'm doing it is because I believe we'll be switching to all online within a few short weeks so my overall exposure will be brief.

ETA One of my graduate classes has already requested to be all online.

Poor little buggers crawled out of the nest and died (three of them). Sigh. Sometimes the cycle of life kinda sucks.

Aw that does suck. I've been through it with litters of feral kittens, and it never gets easier. And most of the time, I never could figure out what was wrong. My vet seemed to think that most times it was a genetic problem, so even if they'd lived, they'd likely be sickly and unable to survive as ferals.

Oof, yeah. My brain is *really* not wanting to study. In med school I did 8-10 hours/day on weekends... not sure why I can't even one good hour at a time now. I guess it's like anything else where your body/brain can get out of practice and you have to ease your way back in. (Apparently, studying is the *opposite* of riding a bike...)

Good news is that I took my roommate practice-driving yesterday around my apt at 7am (so there wouldn't be so many cars) and she actually did really well!

If you could have done better C you would have done better. When's your next break coming up?

I only hit 8+ hours of study time when I have an exam coming up 1-2 weeks before. 11.5 hours the day before an exam. It's exhausting to maintain and it's usually only 3-4 hours with classes on top, sometimes even less than that.

I bought anki for my phone and would do cards when I was walking to the store and back which added something also I used to watch Dr Najeeb lectures at the gym. Two birds with one stone.

Love this!

As with anything you have to take baby steps before you learn to run. 1/2 a mile is still better then 0 miles.

I hope you can see a doctor soon. If the jump from 10-5mg was too high you could try to tapper off much more slower over a longer period of time.

It's back again today, although it doesn't seem as frequent as yesterday, so I'm definitely calling the pdoc tomorrow. Hopefully he'll have ac plan. Thanks!

Hahaha yeah I am an anki fiend!

I've scheduled myself 4h/d, 6d/wk but I'm not totally sure that'll be enough to get me through all the material--might have to do a bit more. I'm not sure which day I'm going to take off this week--it was supposed to be today because I was going to go to J's family's lake house but he got behind on work when he moved from his apt in my town to his house in another town and can't go. (Which tbh I'm actually fine with because I was nervous about meeting so many of his family members at once--I don't love being the only stranger in a group of people who all know each other.)

So all that talk about the NYT puzzles app a couple days ago led me to subscribe yesterday (a 50% off sale helped).

When my productivity declines...I’ll know who to blame.

Not me for oncet!

No, but thoughts of you keep me up at night.

I just got off the phone with my therapist. He thinks I should take some short-term disability leave at work. I don't know what to think about this.

Oof. That's always a hard decision for me, because I don't want to work if I'm too sick to get the job done, but also work can help me me from getting to a really bad place (it keeps me busy, makes me feel useful).

Do you have a gut feeling about what you want to do?