I'd like to take back everything I said about Hurricane Irene being a dud. Turns out, while Jersey City was spared, a lot of inland areas of New Jersey are underwater. Of course, these places happen to be right next to where my new pediatrics rotation is. The part of the highway I have to take to get to the suburbs flooded and collapsed. Who knew that could happen?
On a normal day, it takes nearly forever (or 45 minutes) to get out there. Yesterday it took me an hour and half to get there and two hours to get home! Because that major highway is closed for the foreseeable future, all the other highways are overloaded. On my drive home, I ended up taking 6 different highways to get home because everytime Judy the GPS found me a new route home, the road would be closed. She finally diverted me onto a toll road that only had two ticket lanes going. Guess who had to sit in line for 30 minutes because her EZ Pass is still sitting on her desk?
I took the wrong route home yesterday, which I realized about 4 seconds after I got on the highway onramp and it was too late to turn around. I kept telling myself that the other route must be equally bad because the thought that I more than doubled my commute was going to make my head explode. Sure enough, I took the other highway today. 40 minutes. Needless to say, Hurricane Irene is officially dead to me.
Also, I'd like to break up with Pediatrics. I like kids and all, but mostly when they're happy and cute. They're so much less cute when they scream. And yesterday, they all screamed. All. Day. Long.
Kill me.
I think my problem is that I like control and calm. Pediatrics is uncontrolled chaos. There's just way too much yelling and crying and crazy moms threatening to leave their crying kids with the doctor if they don't behave. Don't even joke about that. I will walk out of here and never come back if you leave that screaming kid alone with me.
My attending's practice attracts a lot of autistic kids, whom I normally love because they're quirky and socially awkward and way too smart for their own good. Autism plus doctor's office equals full-on Linda Blair nightmare because on the whole, autistic kids don't like to be touched and here's this stranger sticking point objects into their ears and nose. Oh the torture. For everyone involved.
It's just a matter of time before I come down with some sort of fluminant upper respiratory Strep-fluenza-croup infection because kids are big walking fomites.
The bright side is sometimes I get to hold babies, and discuss favorite Michael Jackson songs with 8 year-olds, and watch my attending give the sex talk to embarrassed 16 year-olds. Oh, and I have a 5 day weekend.
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