Thursday, October 25, 2012

Sex Therapy

A lecture we had during psychiatry clerkship was on sex therapy.

The lecturer touched upon paraphilias (sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation, causing distress to the individual or harm to others) for a while and described an experience she had:

One night, the phone rang and she went to pick it up. On the other end, a man breathed harshly before diving into obscene comments and lewd suggestions. Instinctively, she slammed the phone down.

Then, with her hand still on the phone, she thought about this.

The phone rang again and she picked it up. It was the same guy making the same crude remarks and this time, she informed him, "This is an impulse disorder you have, which I imagine would probably cause you a lot of distress. I know where you can get professional help -"

The guy hung up on her before she could finish.

But then, a few minutes later, the phone rang again and when she answered, he asked, "Does the place accept Medicaid?"

"True story!" she stressed as we all laughed in disbelief.


Sorry for being awol. Been really busy lately. I finished my psychiatry and neurology clerkships and I'm now on my pediatrics clerkship. I'm on nursery week and all the babies are so, so adorable - even though a fellow student said that he's since realized all newborns look like Winston Churchill.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Once Again, No Plagiarism

Please Do Not Plagiarize. Honestly. I can't believe how many times I have to stress this. Since there are actually people out there who would not only steal my stories, but also blatantly lie to readers, claiming that I had given them permission to do so, I'd like to make a note here as well as on my fictionpress profile: I have never and will never give anyone permission to repost my stories on another site. Especially when they're changing the names of the characters. As if that's not fishy enough.

Is that clear enough? 

I believe I had already mentioned before in a prior blog post that I absolutely do not want other people to post my story up on other sites even if they say that they'll credit me. If I want the stories up on any other sites, I can very well do that myself, thanks. 

My deepest gratitude to the readers (special thanks to Sarah) who informed me about the wattpad plagiarist. Thankfully, with their help, this incident seemed to have been resolved before I even got home from the hospital today. I am so relieved. Frankly, I'm pretty tired after call and I really wasn't looking forward to dealing with this issue yet again. I'm so thankful that there are still awesome, conscientious readers out there who would take the time to actively help correct a wrong. You're the best.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Psych Ward

Been rotating on the psych ward. Had a full week of orientation stuff which included getting a large set of keys since the entrances to the wards all have sally ports, a personal alarm (essentially a panic button that I should press in case I get trapped with a violent patient or something so that in the security guards' office, my picture and my location would flash on their screens and they can come rescue me) and a brief defense training which involves basically how to take down a patient without really hurting him/her. It involves two staff members and if it was two of us girls vs. a large, hostile man, would probably not bode very well for us girls.

All in all, it has been a nice experience so far. The attending seems to really enjoy teaching and the fellow is really nice. The patients are allowed to roam freely through the halls so a lot of times, when we're meeting in the office, the patients would stare and tap on the window on the door to the room as they mumble to themselves. It feels a bit like we're in a fishbowl sometimes.

We had a new patient transfer into the ward the other day and the woman seems to be bipolar with religious delusions and hallucinations. She also has a long list of serious medical conditions including breast cancer which had metastasized to her bones, but she has no insight regarding her problems.

During the initial interview, she refused to talk to the fellow, calling the doctor a prostitute who had tried to pretend to be the patient and had stolen her stuff to go to heaven. But that was alright because she had a bright light named Abraham who protects the patient and had impregnated her so that she gave birth to the other student with us.

The fellow tried to ask her a few more questions, but the lady refused, screaming, "I'm not talking to you! You're evil! I'm the prophet and the mediator of the bible and you're going down!"

The doctor gave us a look and I jumped in with a question about how long had Abraham been visiting her.

To which, the woman grinned. "He doesn't visit me. I go to see him. He's right there in the other building, helping the people find heaven. You can go there and see him, too." She sighed. "I like talking to you. Chinese people are always nice. Nice and delicious."

The room went quiet.

"I'm delicious?"

"Yes. Nice and delicious," the woman laughed.

"What do you mean by that?" I inquired to fill the silence in the room.

She just beamed and continued to giggle.

"Okay ... thank you," I said at last.

The fellow has since decided that since the patient "liked" me so much, I should follow up on the woman.

"Don't worry. We'll be with you," another student declared. "... so she doesn't eat you."

"Gee, thanks."

Sunday, June 3, 2012

tltr

One of my cousins and I like to bicker a lot. Most of our interactions consist of mocking each other for fun though unfortunately, I think he has a lot more embarrassing stories to make fun of me with.

I don't remember exactly what we were texting about - maybe discussing which laptop I should buy to replace my old one or the crazy price increases in external hard drives after some Thailand floods hit manufacturers hard - but at one point, I must have text/ranted.

His response: "tltr"

At first, I was like did he sit on his phone and texted me by accident?

Then, pathetically, I went to google what tltr stood for just in case it was one of those newfangled text speech.

It was. Urban Dictionary revealed tltr = "too long to read".

Stupid cousin.

My response: "sorry you're illiterate."

And that's how part of Adel's text conversation with her brother, Adam, came about.

Other sparkling texts I've exchanged with cousin:
Him: can i come over bored
Me: you can come hang with bro. cramming until dinner tonight.
Him: u should just wing it
Me: I wing you!
Him: Wing isn't a verb
Me: You just used it as a verb. Ohhh winged.
Random Food Photo to bring flavor to this post:


One good thing about cousin though is he can be a really handy garbage disposal. We were at a Japanese food buffet and I, overestimating my gut, ordered one too many rolls. And the thing is the rolls look better in picture than in reality. They had mixed in some fried tempura batter in with the fish in the center, but something about the oil was really heavy and tasted horrible. I couldn't stomach it and was literally breaking out into a sweat, getting a tad nauseous. I felt especially bad because cousin was treating and I expected to just pay the extra fee myself for not finishing the rolls.

However, cousin finished his plates and simply reached out for mine after I ate all the raw fish lying on top of the rolls like sashimi. Even though the remaining rolls were really bad, he still claimed he could finish it all, saying it was no problem at all. And he did. By breaking it down, grain by grain, separating the mass of pink fried concoction in the center, and forcing all of it down. It was simultaneously hilarious and touching because I thought it was so cool of him to just shovel it down for me, taste buds of steel.

So yeah, I suppose he's one of my favorite cousins.

Even though he's still an illiterate fool who should really stop making fun of me.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Through Me Chapter 30

Through Me Chapter Thirty has finally been posted! The end, at last.

I'm so sorry about the ridiculously glacial speed I've been updating this story with, but thank you all so, so much for continuing to support me and the story.

Been sitting on this chapter for a while now. My cousin had started to despair of ever seeing it posted up. I'm still not sure why I took so long to put this up, but I do have 63 pages of TM outtakes at the end of this all so maybe it was because I still wanted to continue revamping it or maybe subconsciously, I just didn't want this to end haha. 

Or maybe! I'm just really scared of more plagiarists popping up now that TM is fully completed. Plagiarism has totally left a bad taste in my mouth. I will destroy you if you steal my stories, including those of you who have stolen the basic outline, edited scenes and lines to try to paraphrase your way out of outright verbatim. You know who you are. I'm glad you've decided to edit your story so it reads less like False Facades now, but I was really furious in the beginning. Decided not to call you out on it because it looks like some readers have picked up similarities since they took the time to alert me and you seemed to be aware that you needed to back up that road fast and fix up your story so the plot is more of your own. Hope you continue to work at it. To others who are contemplating doing the same, you won't be so lucky.

Anyway, as to the tltr part (tltr is short for "too long to read") which you'll get to at the end of this last chapter, I'll probably blog the background story that served as inspiration for the exchange tomorrow or so. It's not much of a story, actually, but based on some of your responses to my previous blog posts, I think some of you guys are surprisingly interested in reading how dorky I am.

It's been a while since I updated this blog as well so I wanted to say: I'm alive! Happy Very Belated New Year 2012! And hope you all recently had a great Memorial Day weekend for those of you in the U.S.

Everything's been going well. Got Step 1 (one of the first medical licensing exams) over with a while back and that went well too. Will blog more about phlebotomy training and clerkships.

This is a bad habit of mine, but I think I've been avoiding the blog until I finally finished TM 30 so I could update with happy news at last, but now that it's done and over with, I should be able to blog more with no guilty conscious lurking over me! Granted, they'd probably be more random ramblings, but at least, you guys won't be left wondering if I'd collapsed into a black hole or something.

So thanks for following Through Me and I hope you all have enjoyed this supremely lengthy time with Tristan, Adel, and the rest of the gang.

You're the best!

P.S. To the random people who have been sending me repeated requests to purchase the rights to False Facades for $199, my answer is no. Thanks for the offers, but no.

To all others who have sent me reviews and PMs that I haven't gotten back to yet, I'm sorry! I'll try to go through them as soon as possible.