Monday. Again. Mondays are pretty nearly unbearable. Well, maybe I am exaggerating somewhat, but not much. We have class for 11 hours. Yes. You read me right. 11 hours. That is a long time to have information thrown at you. Well, by the end of the day, we are pretty much done for, and we still have four hours of pharmacology to look forward to. Pharmacology, the class that makes watching paint dry seem thrilling. The class that practically requires you to have a prescription to get an upper just to get through it. It isn’t our teachers’ faults, it’s the subject matter's fault. Really, I don’t know any way one could spice up what is really just a glorified version of reading of the boxes in your local drugstore medicine aisle. Okay, I’m exaggerating again, but honestly. This stuff is dry. Dry as a piece of toast dry. Dry as the dessert in a drought dry. Dry. So, of course, my girls and I do what we can to spice it up. For me, this state of mental fatigue is pretty much akin to how I’d be on one or two glasses of wine (for anyone who knows me well, they know that that makes for a pretty inebriated Stef). So, put that, along with a group of good girlfriends who make one another chuckle, add in a little inability-to-stop-laughing-itis, and you’ve got the ingredients for a pretty crazy time. Crazy in an understated way, mind you. The thing about all this that is really galling is that we need to know this info. These are drugs we will be prescribing for our patients in a few years, so it is imperative that we have this stuff straight. But it is just so HARD to sit through four hours with two ten minute breaks of monotonous drug talks that it makes you want to tear your hair out! Really, I’m surprised I haven’t been entirely reduced to a dazed, lazy-eyed, drooling mess by the end of class. These past two weeks have really been something else, too. Last week was the cardio drugs lecture, a lecture presented in powerpoint slides, three on an 8.5” x11”, double-sided, making a stack of papers that would make War and Peace blush with embarrassment, or whimper for mercy. Last week was mind-numbing enough, but this week…whoa. This week made last week seem like a night at the comedy club. This week was Osteoarthritis, Pain Management, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and GI stuff. Gig and I almost waved white flags for mercy, and we were only a quarter of the way through. But, like I said, the way I cope with and respond to stress is humor. Laughing. Making up songs and funny poems to get me through. That’s just how my mind works. Well, tonight, Gig and I came up with some doozies that had us laughing into our hands, turning red, and hoping the teach didn’t see us.
When we got to talking about arthritis, there was a lot of discussion on how it affected “weight-bearing joints”. Meaning, knees and such. Well, my mind was already so far gone that the only thing in my head was a picture of marijuana, a “joint”, with some barbells on it. A weight-bearing joint. I was picturing this marijuana going to the gym, working out, strutting around, showing the ladies its sleek new physique. I was clearly losing it. Then we talk about headaches. Our teach asks us what some abortive therapies for headaches are? Well, since I was working on a pretty good one right about then, the options of 1)leave class, 2)craniotomy and/or thoracotomy, and 3)sharp stick in the eye, seemed like pretty good ideas. Moving on to gastrointestinal issues, fondly known as GI stuff. I sat there thinking, “Wouldn’t it be funny if instead of GI Joe there was a whole series dedicated to the heroics of our gastrointestinal tracts? Like, a picture of an intestine wearing army fatigues, absorbing fluid and nutrients and just generally being a good guy. GI Smooth M (as in smooth muscle)!” Okay. Yes. I am such a nerd. Gig and I started writing songs, set to old tunes:
Based on “Shoop” by SaltnPepa
Here I go here I go here I go again Girls what’s my weakness? Dyspepsia! Okay then.
And more from “Shoop”:
On your mark get set go, let me go, let me shoop, to the next pill in the proton pump suit.
From “What a Man”, I can’t remember who sang this, maybe SaltnPepa again?:
What a duodenum what a duodenum what a mighty mighty duodenum…I wanna take a minute to and give much respect to to the bowel that made a difference in my digestion…
Based on Warren G’s “REGULATORS”:
Proton Pump regulators!!!! Mauna. It was a smooth pink esophagus, an acid-filled belly, Warren G was in the antrum, trying to consume, some acid for his G’s, so I could get some relief, Rollin’ in the juices, just chillin’ all alone…Just hit the PPI on the parietal cells on a mission tryna stop Mr. Acid G, seeing a stomach full of acid ain’t no need to squeak all you docs know what’s up with PPI
Stupid. I know. Our teacher had the tendency to keep saying “caveat” when she was talking about the exceptions to something with the drugs. I began to notice the people around me giggling whenever she said this, and thought that perhaps they were envisioning making a drinking game out of it. She must have said ‘caveat’ fifty times.
Anyway, thank the good Lord that Monday is done. Phew. Now just have to memorize all this business for the test next week…oh yeah. And for the rest of my life.
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