i want my MTV

August 4, 2004

a rather blah day today filled with ADHD “checkups”, which means that frantic parents and hyper children were flowing through clinic today, all clamoring for adderall and concerta prescriptions. this is because north carolina schools are (already!) starting, many of them tomorrow. time to get those rambunctious kids zombiefied so that they can pay attention to their phonics! not that i blame these parents for wanting pharmacologic interventions for most of these kids. some of them were practically vibrating.

personal annoyance of the day (only one, then i promise ranting time will be over): amoxil prescribed for . . . a nosebleed!? the mother was all, “when he has nosebleeds i know he is going to get a sinus infection! maybe not this week, maybe not the next week, but he will!!!” he did not even have a stuffy nose. he had no fever, no sinus tenderness, no gunk in his throat, completely perfect ears, and he gets amoxil. for what, i ask? aren’t antibiotics supposed to be for people with infections? oh, the humanity.

craziest piece of lumbee/rural NC lore (i’m not sure which): putting used chewing tobacco on your bee sting to bring down the swelling. a ten-year old girl told me that she did this, because her grandpa told her to. i was speechless.

y’all are reading this thinking, “but what does this have to do with mtv?” well, typically at my gym here (which is frequented by many old men & ladies), there are these TVs above the cardio area. there are 4 and there’s a console in each machine so that you can plug in and select your channel to hear the audio. this set-up sounds good, but usually the elderly folk tune each tv to a different news station. which is SO BORING! especially the local segments, because obviously nothing happens in lumberton.

today i was at the gym and was really really happy because by some miracle, TRL was on one of the tv sets, which meant some trashy music to listen to during my run. yay! i got to watch about 5 minutes of TRL when this big old lady got on the tradmill next to me and asked the staff to see if anyone would object if he changed it. i was slightly embarrassed but i wanted my TRL so i waved my hands (to make sure the guy saw me) and said, “noooooooooo!”. the old lady didn’t much like this, but i’m sorry, that’s too bad. i had a hard day. i deserved my mtv. besides, was her news channel really going to have anything on it that the other 3 did not? i think not.

i’m going to go to bed way early tonight because i’m tired and craving a full 8 hours. i think i might have slept the most of any med student this year, because i value my sleep. it is precious gold.

so, good night.

random fact: i was once on the carson daly show/primitive TRL, during the summer of 1998. i got to ask kevin williamson (director of scream and dawson’s creek) “so, who’s pacey going to get some from next?”

i didn’t know who pacey was, but i wasn’t going to turn down a line on mtv. this makes me only slightly less famous than the girl in my med school class who starred in elimidate earlier this year. (which was awesome, by the way).

ok good night for real!

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