Katie

I'm trying to be better about keeping up with doctor's visits. I went to the dentist for the first time in 2 1/2 years by my best estimate (I was living at my mom's house at the time, around summer 2007). I needed 8 fillings, I was so upset, I felt like I failed my teeth. I've had my share of dental work with braces, retainers, and wisdom teeth extractions, but I only had one cavity in my whole life and that was in a baby tooth! Then I started to get paranoid, like maybe this dentist is too aggressive or too cautious and I don't really need it. He says I really need it... I got 3 filled today, it was simple except for the initial novacaine shot that hurt like a bitch. The dentist didn't make me feel bad or anything, he didn't say anything judgmental, it's just me being silly. But I really worried about this new dentist because I went from no problems to 8 in just over 2 years, can that happen?

I need to see the eye doctor too. I feel like I'm having a quarter life crisis or something, my teeth are going, my eyesight is going, what happened? I've been trying to exercise and get in better shape to combat the feeling that I'm getting old and lazy. I think it's working because I've gotten three compliments in the past couple of weeks that I look good. I've also been trying to count calories. That started as an experiment because I had never considered what I ate before and I assumed I ate the right amount of calories a day. I was so wrong. I got my estimated intake needs for my age, weight, and height of about 1800-1900. I was eating like 400 more than that everyday, whoops. It just made me aware of what was going on. I'd hate to say I'm dieting, its more like I'm sticking to what my body needs without going over.

Also, I'm loving Netflix. I saw Secretary last night, which I have been meaning to see for about 8 years. I love Maggie Gyllenhaal and to my surprise at the end she is full-frontal naked! I was so excited that I got to see her naked, Ivo thought that was a little weird, but hot. The guy who plays Daniel Faraday in LOST is her boyfriend in this. Every time he spoke I expected him to say "we are traveling through time", or "we have to get back to the island!" He was speaking in the same soft-spoken way that he does Faraday. It was a great decision to cancel the cable and get Netflix instead. Hmmm, $80 a month and nothing worth watching, or $9.99 a month and naked Maggie Gyllenhaal and Faraday, what to choose?

We discontinued our cable about a month ago. Now we pick up digit signals over the air, like the old fashioned way. Surprising, it works very well and comes in HD, who knew? I don't miss it at all, even now that I'm on break for 3 weeks. We got Netflix instead and so far have seen Pineapple Express and Milk (which us of do you think chose which movie?).

The story of Harvey Milk got us talking about gay rights. At one point in the movie they are working against a proposed bill that will make it legal to fire gay teachers. The argument is that gay teachers "recruit" kids to be gay because they cannot reproduce to make their own gay clan. I was thinking, damn it, 30 years later and we still here the same tired arguments. Gay marriages will raise gay kids, they are destroying the American family and that other bullshit. Ivo had a point that was, if this was all true then there has been 30 years for all the gay teachers and coaches and whoever to "recruit", but that clearly hasn't happened. In the movie Milk says, "if children modeled their teachers we would have a lot more nuns around." And I continue to not understand how one family's orientation effects other marriages.

I was also thinking about two of my aunts and their different theories on family parties. One worries constantly about whether the dinner will taste good, whether all the guests will like it, whether the butter is room temperature, whether people will show up late or early or with an unexpected date, etc. The other aunt, we walk into the house and she says, "Merry Christmas! You know where we keep the beer and wine, buffet is on the table, I'm not here to wait on you." Not in a disrespectful way or anything, just in a matter of fact, like it or leave it sort of way. I like the second theory.

Where to start...
Snow day today, I was supposed to go to brunch and then Christmas shopping with my mom, oh well. Instead Philadelphia is getting a foot of snow. I'm finished my semester now, which is awesome because it was really stressful in the middle and rumored to be one of the worst semesters of the program. So that's done with, yay!

The debate of what to do with my life continues, apparently "psychologist" still doesn't narrow down the field enough. By next year I have to choose a specialty (or I can choose not to specialize). I'm thinking either neuro or health psych. I've been working with people with chronic illness and thinking how much we need to help people cope mentally with diseases in addition to giving medical treatments. That's health psych. But I am also fascinated by the brain and all its inner workings, which is neuro psych. And neuropsychologists get paid a lot of money, which doesn't hurt either.

I like my externship this year, so that's a big change for the better since last year when I felt lost and incompetent. I saw more clients in the first 2 months then I think I saw all last year. It helps that my clients show up for appointments because the practice has a secretary that calls people to remind them. You really start to appreciate the little things. Last year I was responsible for making all my own appointments. When I was only there 2 days and never actually in my office room, it was really hard to get in touch with people. Someone would call Wednesday evening to cancel for Monday, but I wouldn't come back to the center until Monday to get the message. Here someone always answers the phone, this place is really on the ball.

I also like it because they specialize in biofeedback. I get to hook people up to heart rate monitors to show them how mental stress affects heart rate the same as physical stress. Then we do a relaxation exercise and heart rate goes down and they can see it on the screen, which is cool. I also hook up electrodes to client's heads to do neurofeedback and then they play video games with their minds. That is mostly for ADHD symptoms, it trains the brain to focus. It's good for me with my medical research background, if I'm not hooking someone up to something or sending them through a scanner I feel like I'm not doing anything.

This isn't the place to look for a feel-good story. At least not lately.

I went to a gyno appointment today, I just went to the campus health center for convenience. The check-up was quick and easy, and the nurse practitioner said, "everything looks ok in there" which amused me. But I also left with a laundry list of diagnostic tests she wants to run and I'm starting to feel anxious.

1) Cholesterol test- makes a lot of sense because my mom has high cholesterol, and my dad died from a totally blocked artery. I'm somewhat worried because the nurse said with a family history, I probably should have been screened 4 to 5 years ago.
2) Thyroid test- I came in with concerns about missing several periods for no apparent reason (I wasn't pregnant, I checked). She wanted to test my thyroid function because my glands were swollen, the period thing, and my hands and feet are always cold. Apparently that can be a sign of low thyroid function, along with fatigue, which I have definitely been feeling. But I have many reasons to be fatigued at this time, so who knows.
3) EKG- and she found a heart murmur. Awesome. And just what I wanted to hear right now- see #1 and past couple entries. It's probably fine because its very slight and many people have a slight murmur, but... gotta check.

So, that was cool, I went in for a routine check-up for the lady parts and instead found out that I possibly have a thyroid and heart problem. Then again, I could be fine, I guess its better to know.

My Dad had a heart attack on New Years Day. I’ve been in the hospital since then; he has yet to wake up. The doctors tell us different things every day, there’s no way to know what to expect from day to day. His heart is healing, and now it’s beating on its own. But his heart had been completely stopped for 15 minutes. They can’t tell us yet what kind of brain damage he suffered from oxygen deprivation. There is going to be brain damage, they prepared us for that, there is no way to tolerate the oxygen loss for that long.

It happened at the end of our performance in front of the judges during the Mummers Parade. If anyone in the Philadelphia area has been keeping track of the news, my dad is “the mummer”. Almost the entire family was there. Ivo and I were in the parade along with my cousins and aunt, my mom and the rest of the relatives were on the street watching us. We filled the ER waiting room with mummers in full costume, must have been quite a sight.

So far mom and I are coping, about all I can tell people when they ask is that we are hanging in there. My family has packed the ICU waiting room everyday, we have had so many visitors and it has helped to see how many people come to see him. We can only hope for the best, even the neurologists have said that they won’t know much of anything until he wakes up.

My car was towed yesterday, and I was very upset about that all night. But then, talking over the experience at Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA) with Ivo, I realized that it was quite funny to the outsider.

( The Story )

I saw a commercial for electric heaters supposedly made by the Amish. First of all, electric? Really? Having lived in Lancaster for four years I felt the need to point out several things about this.
1) The "Amish" workers were on TV, except they don't let you photograph them, 2) The storehouse they were working in had electric lighting (oh well, they were building electric heaters), 3) One guy was wearing jeans (they don't use buttons or zippers), 4) Another guy didn't even have a beard, 5) I'm pretty sure one of them was Latino.

Anyway, it was amusing to me, maybe to a few of my F&M buddies too.

My last post was kind of whiny... I was in a venting mood.

The semester is winding down, I still love grad school, despite the finals. I hope that's a good sign that I'm doing what I am supposed to be doing. I still don't like my externship, but I tell myself that is over in six months, its not my real job anyway! The problem with counting down to the end of my externship is that I get married the week after that ends! And I'm not ready for that yet, in planning terms of course, I'm ready to be married to Ivo. I have been thinking lately that I want to go into school psychology and work with kids, K to 12 and all that jazz. Maybe college counseling too. It's funny, because I went into this thing thinking I wanted adults and specifically said I wasn't interested in their school psych license. I even got the adult intelligence testing kit... whoops. Or maybe I just have kids on the brain, we talk about them a lot in school, both academically and socially because like 50% of the program is married and dealing with the children now vs. finishing grad school debate.

( And now for TMI girly content, seriously )

I haven't written in awhile, but unfortunately I'm only writing because I'm really frustrated and preoccupied. I work at an externship site as part of my doctoral program at a community mental health center. I am supposed to see clients but I hardly ever do because I have only been assigned two, one keeps canceling, and the other is homeless with no contact info so I have to wait until he shows up at the clinic again. So basically I have been seeing no one for weeks. My other classmates at the site all seem to have clients! I looked at one of the schedules today and my classmate had three people with scheduled appointments, and she was just given another one today. I know I'm too competitive and I've had bad luck with people showing up, but I was really upset that she has four clients who will actually meet with her and I have no one! I've only been able to meet one of my clients one time. I really felt that was unfair, but at the same time I know its wrong to feel this way when it's no ones fault that my clients are no-shows.

Then I started having thoughts that maybe my supervisor isn't giving me anyone because she doesn't think I'm good, which is totally baseless but I couldn't shake the thought. She said the other day that you can tell a good therapist as soon as you meet them, they just have that certain quality. And of course, I am terrified of amorphous qualities that you can't measure or study for, so I immediately worried that I don't have "the quality" and now what am I going to do?

I met with my advisor from Widener about the one client that has showed up once, but he just made me feel worse. He thought the girl's diagnosis was wrong based on my report of the situation, and I did not diagnose her, she was assessed by the clinic. He made me feel like my approach to the therapy was wrong because the diagnosis was wrong, but how was I supposed to know that when I was told she had a certain disorder? I just feel like I am getting no where and that I'm not going to be a good therapist. I wish that I didn't need someone to hold my hand and tell me I'm doing a good job. At CHOP at least I knew I was doing a good job, I miss that environment of phrase from my boss and manager. But then that makes me feel weak and like a child, that I need some parental figure to always tell me what to do. So tonight I'm just upset and frustrated that I'm not doing anything right at the clinic.

I don't even know what to add since last time I updated last month. This past weekend was good, I finished some midterms and went to happy hour with a couple people from school, then dinner with my parents. When I came home I discovered hulu.com and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episodes. That show is so messed up and wrong, but so funny.

At happy hour we were discussing Freud because that was the subject of one of our midterms. I cut this for general Freudian craziness, in case you don't care to read about Oedipal loving-your-mother ramblings. Now you have to click, right?
( I swear this isn't all there is to psychoanalysis )