SSDD

My poor neglected blog. I don't know what it is, but while out of school I find myself rarely on my computer. Sure, my smart phone is like an extension of my arm, but I rarely turn on my laptop and peruse the internet like I would in school. I guess that's what happens when you aren't trying to procrastinate every second of every day.

That and I really have nothing new to share. I've spent most of the summer working and spending time with family and trying to get back into shape. At this point I feel like I need a vacation from summer break, or maybe I just need an actual vacation. Actually what I need is a day (or three) where I can just lock myself in my room alone and read. I love being social, but I think I am at my limit and need some hermit time to recoup.

You know what I hate about community pharmacy? How it never fails that at 1 minute to closing someone will come in and one or both of the following will happen:

A) they need 5+ Rx's to fill (from like 4 days ago) that absolutely has to be filled RIGHT THIS MOMENT OR I'M GONNA DIE. And all I want to do is drop the metal door down and run.
B) person above will either have never been here before and suddenly have no idea which is their rx insurance card OR they have and don't have their new insurance card OR some other insurance headache

My favorite is that I've had two patients in the last week try to tell me that if I call their insurance company the insurance company will lower their copay. BAHHAHAHAHAHHAHA. What. Welcome to the real world, what am I supposed to say?! You want a lower copay why don't you complain and see how long it takes before your insurance company laughs at you. One actually said to me, "you must be new at this. If you just call the insurance company and tell them to charge me less, they will."

I nearly fell over laughing after he finally left. If shit like that actually worked, I wouldn't feel like a douchebag for having to charge an obscene amount of money for a poor person that needs their cancer medication because their insurance company is charging them a couple grand for a copay because I could get them to lower it. I always feel like an asshole, even though there's really nothing I can do about it and I'm really just the price messenger.

SUMMAH TIME!

The long anticipated summer has arrived!!! It feels so amazing to not have to study all the time or sit in a hot classroom all day! This will probably get old really quickly, but for now I am enjoying the lazy days, getting some actual sunlight time, and working. Ok, so I'm not enjoying working... but it's something to do and it pays me. Plus it keeps my counseling skills sharp.

It's going to be a busy summer hopefully. This is my last summer for forever since I go on rotations next summer. I have several graduations ranging from middle school all the way to pharmacy school, weddings, and hopefully I can squeeze in some traveling! I've also started working out 4 times a week, which is a huge change from my lazy sit in the library all week routine. It's kicking my ass, but it feels so good to really be challenged physically again. Plus I am getting fatter and fatter... that needs to stop!

I'm not sure how much I will update this blog over the summer. I'm  not even sure what I would update it with. Probably phunny pharmacy stories.

Like I have a pharm tech that typed a script I took from a physician and changed the refill qty to whatever she wanted instead of the number I clearly wrote. Apparently because she didn't agree with the number. Ummmmm yes, sometimes the numbers don't make sense because some physicians are special BUT you type what is written (as long as it doesn't break any laws) because it's their decision and this one actually had a valid reason. Which she would have known if she just freaking asked. She's been getting on my nerves mostly because I am pretty sure she has no idea what the f- she is doing which makes a busy pharmacy 10x more stressful. For someone that's been with the company for years, there's really no excuse for how incompetent she is.

Whoops. Sorry, left over work frustration. I have just wanted to scream lately at work because when I have to work with her, she is so slow that I end up answering all the phone calls while typing or filling prescriptions because she needs to stare at an empty bottle for 20 minutes in order to fill it?! If I don't the numbers just keep piling up and people start yelling at me.

If I could, I'd fire her ass.

It makes me grateful for the other (amazing) techs that I work with. But I seriously legit do not like this one at all.

It's also frustrating that the pharmacists I work with take advantage of my intern license which means I not only get to pick up the slack of stupid lazy tech, I pick up their work, too. I legit would rather go back to school, but being paid is kind of nice. They need to give me a fucking raise though. Jesus.

School's Out!

Another year come and gone!

Going through it all made it feel like an eternity. My last week of P2 year was probably one of the longest weeks of my life. Actually, aren’t finals weeks always the longest weeks of your life? It’s a weird time warp where you panic about not having enough time to learn all the material you need to study, but at the same time it feels like the week is never going to end and neither will the exams.

I have officially taken all my exams, passed all my courses and I am officially 50% of the way to my PharmD! It’s been a bit of a tough year for me emotionally which made this school year a bit tough. I somehow pulled through without too many hits on my grades. Trying to pull focus when you need it and your brain doesn’t want to provide it was probably the most challenging part of it all. I found myself sitting in the library for hours staring at the same page.

My melodramatic side was unsure if I could even finish out this year. By the time the last month or two of school rolled around I was out of motivation, focus, and fucks to give. Classic burn out? I guess it’s a good thing pharm school costs an arm, a leg, and probably your first born. It’s pretty much the only reason I didn’t fully give up. I did pretty mediocrely though.

Oh well, it’s my last summer before rotations! I am going to enjoy it and hope I don’t want to die this time next year.

just a quick update

As I am writing this a part of me is nagging me reminding me I have two exams to study for this week. One of which is tomorrow. I seem to have dropped into this lull and I don’t like it. I feel tired all the time, unwilling to do much aside from lie in bed and waste the day away. It took me 6 hours yesterday to drag myself from bed to get out of my apartment and just do…. Something, anything.
I’m not sure what set me off really. My ex and I are restarting our friendship. It’s actually been quite nice. I’m just worried because at this point I feel rather vulnerable and wonder if I may fall in love with her again for all the wrong reasons because it feels safe. I’m not sure what has brought me to this point, but I am trying my best to shake it off. I hate feeling this way. I hope it passes, soon.

Sorry about the not so uplifting post.

Starting over?

"Can we start over?"

A few weeks ago I woke up one morning to an email from my ex entitled just that. I thought I was still asleep, surely she wasn't really going to try this again? It had been months since I last heard from her and our last words were not kind words.

I haven't opened it yet. It is sitting in my inbox and I am wondering if this is a path I want to venture down. I fought so hard to remove her from my life because it hurt too much to keep her in it. All the pleading, phone calls, and texts she had sent me came flooding back. How could I keep her in my life when I wanted to hate her?

All the anger has subsided, I've moved on with my life. A small part of me does still wonder if one day we will find our way back to each other. This email threw me though. I want to talk to my friends about it, but I am scared that they'll just look at my disapprovingly that I will even consider reading what she has to say. I guess I really should be studying for my barrage of exams instead of worrying about this.

It's nice though, that the email didn't draw more emotion from me other than a bit of confusion and apathy. I think I'm more worried about whether or not I'm ready to read what may be in this letter.

Maybe next week!

School, Smash, and Prop 8

Holy what it's February?!

Pharmacy school is notorious for two things:

1) Making each block fly by
2) Making many courses drag by

It's not contradicting! In a few of my classes I swear every minute feels like a year, but then I look back on the whole block and I can't believe it's time for finals again. Commence sleepless nights, anxiety, and self diagnosing yourself with every disorder you are studying. I'm not kidding, we were covering mental health and it stated "Patient A is depressed because states that she finds it hard to get out of bed in the morning and when she goes home all she does is crawl in bed and watch TV."

Um, excuse me, that's what I do EVERY DAY. Actually, we pretty much all looked at each other and thought the same thing, "Wait, that's not normal?!".


Enough about school. Let's talk about my new love: Smash. Not Hulk Smash! Not the sound of students banging their heads against the walls in frustration. I am talking about the new TV show. I never would have heard of it had I not seen the ads for it during the Super Bowl. You know you've been in pharmacy school too long when you spell bowl, bowel repeatedly. Aside from my obsession with musical theatre, they hooked me with Megan Hilty. I love her voice. I could listen to her all day, and then I watched the show.

WHERE HAS KATHARINE MCPHEE BEEN ALL MY LIFE?! I'm pretty sure I swooned when they did a duet.

Let's be real here. Any show centered around Broadway that has amazing voices I will love. I'm not saying I will love the story line, but I have a wonderful skill where I just enjoy the songs and the beautiful voices.

And last, but not least:

Prop 8 was ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL by the ninth circuit court!!!! Just another step in the long uphill battle.

From the LA Times:
The court concluded that Prop. 8 served no purpose other than to "lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians."

Now if only more people could see and understand that. It's not a matter of religion. If it was purely religious, I'd say keep it. We can come up with a better name for gay marriage, well not me because I have the creativity of a potato. But we could, and it'd be fabulous. It's the fact that "marriage" in the United States allows for certain RIGHTS and BENEFITS to married couples, including but not limited to: tax breaks, medical and legal rights, things that the government grants couples with a legal binding contract that is not offered to single people (or gays). No, civil unions do not grant the same legal benefits and nor is it recognized on a federal level. It's like saying you get a tax break for being white, but not if you're black. Or, white people get this tax break on the state and this from the federal government, but you can only have it on the state level because you're not white.

Is that fair? Is that equal?

Let's face it, it's not. And really this is just my "logical" argument for gay marriage rights and rights in general. Separate is not equal. My heart tells me that it's not right because you are denying couples that love and adore each other (certainly more than Kim Kardashawhatever did that dude and Rush and his 3 divorces) the right to marry. Sanctity of marriage my ass. If people can get married to someone they just met in Vegas, then let Adam marry Steve and Eve marry Kate. The world will not implode or explode, life will go on.

P.S. Just because I like women does not mean I want to marry a toaster, a horse, or a building. That argument doesn't even make sense. Consenting adult does not equal inanimate objects, animals, or children.

She's gay, you all know each other right?!

Let's get one thing straight folks (aside from the fact that I am not). Being gay does not automatically mean you know every single gay person in the area, or in my case, school. Sadly, I know maybe 2 (out) gay people at school. I know there are more, yes I know they must exist, but no I have not met and befriended them all. I'm not saying that I don't want to. It'd be really nice to not feel like the only lesbian on campus (even though I know that is definitely not true). I would like to meet and talk to them, but how awkward would be that interaction be?

"Oh hi, um so my friends tell me that you're gay, too." And that would probably be the end of our awkward exchange.

We're in grad school guys! 95% of us are very awkward people! (true for my campus at least) Granted, some much more than others, but I am not about to become a gay seeking missile (similar to a heat seeking missile?) and find every single gay person that people tell me about. I've thought about it... because though I love my friends, sometimes being the token gay is not so much fun.

I just find it strange and sometimes hilarious that people will say things like "OH! So I met this gay girl, you know her right?" or "You must know her, she's a lesbian."

That's like walking up to an Asian and saying "Hey this person is Asian too, y'all know each other right?" or "Hey, you're a Jew, you know so-and-so right?! Cos he's a Jew, too!"

Sorry to slip in the Jew comment, because people actually have come up to me and asked if I knew this person because he was an Asian, too. Some people are kind of special.

So public service announcement: Just cos someone is gay doesn't automatically mean they know all the gays in the world.

You're welcome. Now go be awkward about something else.