In which she makes an idiot of herself...

So the plan is:

Tomorrow: 13+ hours travel to "foreign" country S (which is not absolutely true, because I don't feel as complete foreigner there, but still it makes me bit nervous)

Thursday/Friday: some rather short travels in country S because my accomodation is in another city than the inteview (as I am traveling alone I am uber-anxious that I will be so tired that I oversleep/be so anxoius and psychically exhausted that I won't sleep at all/get incorrect train or tram/forget my keys or money or bag somewhere/won't be able to speak in a language I am not 100% confident in etc. And than on Friday morning: Job interview.

I am beginning to think that I must be absolutely crazy, because the hospital/Uni is definitely one or two leagues higher than where I am. And with my ability to present myself + language it will look like four leagues. Sigh. I still think it is some kind of mistake that they have invited me. I am basically going to spend money and nerves on a trip where I will make an idiot of myself. I am trying to look for some positives like: first really serious experience, having nothing to lose, training myself in the language, some kind of exposition therapy for my anxieties (that unfortunately rise and rise after end of school and the Big Uncertainty Ahead)... well nothing of it makes me feel significantly better. Maybe little bit.

I was trying to prepare a bit, so here are some wins and failures:

• win: it's unbelievable, but I've spend more than 3 hours in shopping center (and only about 40 minutes in bookstore and no tears!) on Saturday and I have bought a decent clothes. Even more unbelievable is that I actually feel kind of good in them. It is just blouse and skirt, but for me it is a win.
• fail: I've emailed with the assistent of the Prof who is making the interview and I've copied part of another email (pretty insignificant, but still..:(..) into the email for her accidentaly. It wasn't visible before I've send my mail, but I've reread it after and..well it was there:/ Awkward.
• win: I've tried to exercise less and/or more careful (and partly succeeded), becuase hyperthermia, dehydration and fatigue are the last things I need right now. It wasn't some huge success, but given the anxiety, I did decent.
• fail: During these days and my attempts to exercise less, I was often panicking about how it will continue after/if I start work. I don't think I will get the job in S, but I don't think I will be unemployed either and I don't think I should stay at home, so that there is option full PhD (more time for my routines, less responsibility, less anxiety...) or clinical work with a perspective of PhD next year (step into uncertainty, adulthood, but also the thing I wanted to do when I was 8, 11... I kind of owe this kid a lot...).
• win: I've trained a language and a --ology during last 2 weeks. Partial fail: Can't believe how much I have forget! But I enjoyed it and I am definitely decided about one particular area of medicine, doesn't matter if it will be research or clinical work. I am starting to be curious again after couple of months of apathy and it feels good.

So. Now I should prepare myself for a first big professional fiasco in my life and how I will cope afterwards. It would be really The Dream if I got the job, but I need to be realist and figure out how not to feel like complete failure afterwards (idiot is ok), how to be able to go on with job search and how to not base my selfesteem on that interview. I am pretty unexperienced in this area, so both interview and my reaction to (in 99%- I need some residual childish hope, ok?) negative result will be kind of adventure for me.

Lonely as my discarded student card

My head is mess. Maybe I've read too much Faulkner lately, dissolved in his dysfunctional deep and broad families, relationships, ochre rivers and states between slow lifes and slow deaths. In his weird time and amazing language. Instead of reading, I should study for upcomming interview that I am dreadig. Oh I am really imagining the most catastrophic scenarios. Moreover I need to buy a ticket and some reasonable clothes and work a bit on the language (the interview is in the worst of 3 languages I consider as native and it worries me more and more) and I am doing nothing nothing nothing except reading even crazier than usually and being anxious. The thing is- when my anxiety is over the roof just because this one interview, how can I actually one day work with people? Maybe my place is really in the lab. Who knows. Probably I will end in the lab after all, because there is no way that someone with normal brain can see me as doctor. Do you want to have a doctor who thinks that her childhood probably should end, because there will be last Harry Potter movie? (And no- I am not sleeping with stuffed animals and I don't want to be pediatrician.)

My best friend is for two months in another continent watching ants and my "best czech freind" has just married and is traveling around Europe and school is definitely past and I miss my classmates more than I thought. I feel weird when I visit M. and I am not a student anymore. I can't wear my white coat that makes you feel like you are bit covered, that you have some kind of identity. I can't use my student card to open the doors. I am a sister visiting her anorexic brother. I am not hurrying to the lecture or to the library. M. is gaining weight and I don't see it, he is stil rachitic and sad in my eyes. But my eyes are fucked up. My sister is going to holiday and I feel really lonely. And than again I am absolutely glad I am alone and don't have to speak and I am really ambivalent and emotional and bit overwhelmed with everything.

...when we say we're looking for a spiritual adviser, we're really looking for someone to tell us what to do with our bodies. Decisions of the flesh. We forget to learn from pleasure as well as pain."

--Anne Michaels

You can't. You have to.
--Wiliam Faulkner

how(l)

Sometimes my hope to desperation ratio is really getting near null. Weekend was more or less ok-ish, but since yesterday I am feeling like nothing is on its place and I have no idea how to be normal human, how to want something else than calm down the obsessive thoughts in my head, how not to be so lonely among loving family and friends. How to live purposefully.

Mum is in San Diego on conference and because M. has been gaining weight for 2 weeks in the row according to his plan, he was allowed to have another weekend with us. We decided to go to weekend house with my Dad, sister and M. The weather forecast was really bad and we all planned to do some paper/school/writing work, watch a movie or play scrabble, but in the end, it was bit cold, but not raining and we got one nice short hike with M. and I was able to run a bit, we worked a lot in the garden and repaired a fence and we picked wild strawberries in the hills like crazy. I think Czech has mastered their berries picking talent during the times of war and then during communismus when there was relative lack of fresh fruits. Strawberries reminds me of childhood and of the fact that easy things like sun, sugar and bright colours can make someone really happy. I would prescribe everyone 2 handfuls of wild strawberries with their morning antidepressants. Actually I would prescribe it for everyone in the world. I've prepared huge pan of granola with almonds and these strawberries in the morning and it was nice.

 Greenest green.

¨

Rest of the strawberries.



I wish I could really enjoy it, feel the joy of being with my family and eating nice food and my body being able to climb a forest path and have a nice landscape view. I  like the World, I am trying to like it, its complexity amazes me, but I feel tension and weird thinking patterns in my head and anxiety all the time and one of the big big fears is that this will never change. Another one is that the next X years of my brother's life will be similar to my life. It is nightmarish prospect. Why did it happen/is happening now?

monstrous exercise-addiction post

While reading this genial post by Carrie Arnold on exercise addiction, I've felt like reading about my (past-)self. Fortunately, I don't met more than half of Carrie's points anymore. I have still quite a love-hate relationship with overexercising and it still is a problem for me (actually probably bigger problem than eating itself), but compared to where I used to be, I am 90% better.

I think my eating disorder probably started with exercising. If only I knew that these first "extra" 20 minutes exercises before going to bed (for some reason I thought that it is weird laying for so long in bed without moving) will gradually become a nightmare and hours and hours and...years. Anyway now I probably exercise somewhere on the upper border of what is considered "normal". BUT: as Carrie wrote: "...it isn't duration of exercise that provides researchers with a definition of exercise dependence. After all, plenty of athletes exercise long and hard without any signs of eating disorders. Instead, it is your attitude towards exercise and how you behave when you can't exercise that is the most telling." Amen. Example: In my first treatment, I was quite compliant and eating more than the most patients. But I was exercising secretly. Not to lose weight - I was eating 4000 kcal and I thought couple of knee-bends wasn't an issue weight-wise. Now I see how this little addiction was quite central. Actually I don't exactly know why I was exercising there and why it was so important to me.  For weeks was doing 100 knee-bends every 2 hours and If I have to skip one hundred, I was uncomfortable, if I have to skip two or more, I was really distressed and subsequently did 2, 3 or more hundreds. It took me just maybe 2 minutes or less and I didn't do it at night, so that it was maybe 15 minutes in a day. But it was exercise addiction. If you know what I mean :(

I think Carrie's points are excellent and comprehensive and what I will write next probably is just a sub-points or variations of her points, but because this is quite an important subject for me, I am going to mention "my" extra thoughts/rambles on exercise addiction I see as important:

• Comparison. Example from days when my exercise addiction was monstrous: my classmate mentioned he is doing crazy number of repetitions of one particular exercise every morning. Maybe he did it for a week, maybe longer, who knows, but my brain immediately told me: Oh crap Míša. See how trained he is. You have to try it as soon as you come home. And I've "tried" for year or so. Example from now: I still feel a prickle of jealousy/panic/distress, when I "just" walk or "even" drive and see someone (especially someone my age) running fast around me and have a feeling I am inferior, lazy, I should jump out of a car and run as well etc etc. (And my parent's house is in the area where a lot of people are doing sports...). Sometimes even hearing someone talking about exercise makes me uncomfortable (just a little bit).
• Irrational believes about relationship between body and exercise. Tough one for me. I'v enever had significant body dysmorphia, but I have kind of anticipation-muscle-dysmorphia. I KNOW that my muscle cells won't miraculously transform into fat cells if I won't exercise for 24 hours or even 48. I know rest is essential for regeneration of muscle cells, but I am still scared that after some resting or long drive I will wake up transformed into pillow of fat. Moreover, I can't get rid of the feeling, that I need to do more exercise than "normal" people do to prevent this transformation. Akward. Wow. Probably now I should give my diploma back and start first year biochemistry and physiology again.
• The burden of uselessness. Sooner or later I've realized how much time-consuming my exercise habits are and what things I could and should do instead. I like being productive. I don't want to think about how many academic, social, volunteering, traveling...possibilities I missed because of that, but obviously the shame and unpleasant thoughts about uselessness and unproductivity didn't stop me what I was/partly am doing. The fear of not-exercising was more dominant.
• Basing self-worth and self-respect on how much I've been exercising. I know. It is pathetic. Exercising won't make me better person, better daugter, sister or friend, it won't make me better student or doctor (maybe if I plan to spend my life as mountain doctor...but I don't! I am scared of heights!) or better anything. This point is probably about the mood and endorphines in Carrie's point #3. (Btw. I wonder if there is any self-respect center in the brain...and what exactly "creates" this feeling. Or is self-respect a feeling? Excursive me.).
• Ignoring injuries or illnesses. I am lucky, because except of osteoporosis anorexia left my body pretty functioning. But I am a catalogue of sports injuries. Stress fractures, broken pelvis, tendinitis, frost bites from long runs in the winter and  on the other side 2 episodes of bad hyperthermia. Needles to say ihese injuries didn't stop me from exercising - I've always found an alternative to running. And I think all in all I am lucky again- not until medical school I realized how deadly could be exercising during virosis which I - surprisingly- did as well. And if Carrie says that people with exercise addiction should seek help, because "It can be the difference (literally) between recovery and a life spent tethered to the treadmill." I say it can be the difference between recovery and life spent on the waiting list for heart transplant or death spent somewhere, but probably not on the treadmill.
• Doubting about "the right exercise". The number of "new" kind of sports (when I was a kid, there were just "aerobics", now there are 97890 subcultures of aerobics + plenty of boxes and kick boxes and boot camps and screaming frantic instructors on DVDs and weird machines) is enormous. Help! Am I doing the good one, the effective one, the healthy one? I think this feeling is similar to grocery shopping for someone with eating disorder. Probably professional trainer would give me advice, but I have never been member of a gym and I am not going to change it. Gyms scare me more than heights (see "Comparison").

I think there were enough awkwardness and you either think I am crazy and/or have lived on similar crazy exercise planet.

Last note: I think the addictive potential of exercise is generally underestimated. Honestly even with my history I don't ask the patients profoundly about exercise. I just ask-do you exercise regulary? And that's it. I've seen only one patient with officialy diagnosed exercise addiction (btw in orthopedic, not psychiatric or psychosomatic clinic) who was a succesful lawyer with history of kokain addiction. He started to train for a marathon as a part of getting rid of drugs. He told me that his exercise addiction has bigger impact on his work and marriage than kokain had.

My room in pictures

Hi there! Apparently I have too much time on my hands/ in my amygdalas = too much space for anxiety about future and bit of ED thoughts. But I am trying my hardest to do some useful and less useful things in order to stay away from danger zone. It was raining all day and I hate being all day at home I need to apply for a job. I am not sure about PhD opportunity I was given. Anxiety rising. So between writing some application letters (and 2 anxiolytic ice-cold showers), I decided I will make some pictures and "show" you my room. I like reading this kind of bit intimate posts about someones's rooms or wardrobes or bags, because I think it tells a lot about the person and his/her story and mentality. Or maybe it doesn't. (I hope I am generally not too judgemental, but yep, I am sometimes judging labmates/doctors by what they have or doesn't have on their desk and how entropic it looks.) And sorry for the quality of photos, I love taking pictures, but I am not very good at it... It is also bit sentimental for me, because so much has happened here and I will probably leave it soon and because M. won't probably be able to go back to boarding school in the fall and he will do his IB in Prague, he'll live in "my" room. So here we are:

 My wardrobe. "She"'s been through several sizes...

 2 glass beads necklaces from my grandaunt I don't wear, but like them and familiar window view.

My non-existent lamp. I got the wings from my classmates couple of years ago. And James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause. Some days I wish I could hide in some big sweatshirt like he's been doing since my teens.

 

Even though I am not reaching 1/10 of my dad's book-hoarding talent, I am getting closer every year...

 More (school) books (ant these are just the ones I want to keep... and my bed.

 Desk. One of my favourite places (well not in exam times, but still- I love it).

I am not much into jewellery, but I am quite a fan of earrings:)

That was it. Do you have some indicator like desks or shoes or nails or bags or anything else to "standardize" people? And don't worry- I often change my mind later, don't care about the messy desk and like the people with everything they are.

some good news

My little big cousin graduated from high school and in the fall she will be on her way to GB to study classics. Doing something like old Greek, Latin or literature is really awesome in this crazy scientists/doctors family. I hope she will love it. I am sure she will love it, becuase she lives in her books(she's probably the only person I know who reads more than me and my brother).

Dad's 65th birthday or it's celebration is on Thursday and I'm going to make a special cake for him. I haven't baked for ages!

M. is allowed to come home for the whole weekend. Sure it will be lot of stress, but I believe and hope the antidepressants (ok, + the infamous therapist) are starting doing their job in some ways. We had ice cream!

I've been running outside today for a while instead of my usual exercise and I am really determined to cut down the time on the cross-trainer. This metal ad rubber guy is safe, but boring. Well one can read or listen to some podcast, but I swear too much crosstrainer makes me dumb. I am in kind of tricky relationship with all taht "glorious" sweat, but it deprives me from all the sun and gardens with ripening berries and cherries and smell of lime-trees and red of poppy flowers. And the numbers on the display have way too high OCD potential. I need to stop the numbers game.

I've survived the law (I have had a question about substitute family care and family law and we spoke predominantly about Midsummer Night's Dream and Oedipus haha.) So: since now I am M.D. It will be a lifelong journey and I will probably soon post something about how scared I am, but for today I am supposed to be happy. And I am, it is just this weird kind of uncertain happy.

I hope good news are global issue and you all have some! xx

on (un)certainty

Reading a book about developing child's mind:

"Less pleasant certainty is for every child much more acceptable than more pleasant uncertainty."

(not sure about the translation)

Extreme case of this sentence is about last 11 or more years of my life.

Law, ozone, triggering ice and music

In high school I was in mathematic-science class and somehow I don't know many people among law students or lawyers. I always thought law is tough, but it is much worse than I thought! How the hell the peole can remember (and reproduce) sentences with structure where the relationships among strange words are purely arteficial (I know they always are, but when you don't have anything to imagine beyond these words it is double-arteficial)? My brain was probably washed for so long with medical logic and now I really have problems with memorizing words that don't say much to me. Huh. At least I get to know brand new unit in all these hygienic and goverment and ecologic regulations (I love units in case you didn't know. There are some not so popular like grams, kilograms, tons...and I never fully get the radioactivity units, but in general I am unit-freak.). The new one is Dobson Unit (DU), unit of measurement of atmospheric ozone columnar density.

Speaking about units... friend of M. is usually sending me a school stuff for M. Scanned notes and homework and to-do lists. M. can skype with him and with his teacher, I just print it and bring it to the hospital every week. This week this friend (let's call him V.) wrote me, that he is not sure about some exercises in physics and I should check it. I was bit confused, until I opened the file: Thermodynamics: how many -20°C ice cubes (each is 50 g) a person need to swallow to lose 5 kilograms of fat? During burning 1 g of fat a heat of 38 kJ is set free. And I still don't have any idea if this really is triggering or not. It is physics. I've studied so mcuh about human body and of course there were all types of bodies and weight changes and diets and calculating meals for patients, but it didn't trigger me very much. I asked the infamous therapist and he told me it is absolutely ok to give him the exercise and that he needs to deal with it and he would be probably furious if he realised we are trying to "protect" him like this. What do you think?

I've finaly put together some CD for M yesterday. Music was always a big part of our life and I believe in its magic. I can't sing, but listening to music makes me happy. I've seen patients who didn't remember their daughter's names or thought it was war or were basically mute after a stroke or strongly mentally disabled children who still could reproduce a familiar rythmus or a song with hand clapping-- and what's better- you could see the joy in their eyes. Like real joy. So I want to believe music and rhytm is somewhere beyound/under disease, pain and suffering and it can bring us into some another level of perception. I am RANTING again! Instead I want to share couple of links. I think everyone has their own music which tells their own story, but I love being given advices in music, because I don't actively searching for it and I basically listen to very similar things for couple of years. So here are some of my favourites I put on the CD (I was trying to make a optimistic collection):

Chapelier Fou: Les Métamorphoses Du Vide (I have no idea whether this Mad Hatter- it's what it says in French- is sipping mercury in his tea, but whatever he drinnks, it works! LOVE it.)
Julia Kent: Dorval (cello!)
Patrick Wolf: Time of My Life (everyone likes Patrick Wolf)
Fanfarlo: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (I put it there, because we've seen Fanfarlo with C, AK and M almost exactly one year ago in Berlin; this one is cover of Neutral Milk Hotel song about Anne Frank)
Andrew Bird: Tables and Chairs (and yes, there will be snacks)
Gustav Holst: Jupiter (...)
Bratři Orffové: Nevypínám (it is in czech and it is about turning our brain down; you can try to translate it A.:)

fake smile #84954

Probably he knows about my brother, because in our school everyone knows everything, but it is still hard to say it aloud.  

where are we?

One course + rather small oral exam in medical law (I didn't take this course+exam last spring because I was in Berlin) in the middle of June is what parts me from being a medical doctor allowed to work as a medical doctor. I did my last clinical exam yesterday and it went much better than I thought!
It is surreal.
It feels great and scary at the same time.

"Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting."

— Haruki Murakami

More things are surreal.
My sister (AK) has somehow managed to overcombine her school-senator, multiple students clubs, organizing summer school and some workshop stuff, but among all these things she hasn't had any time to write her diploma thesis properly and 1 month ago she realised she won't make it until this summer. SO instead of graduating in June/July, it will probably happen in late fall/winter. She is mad at herself and she is generally pissed at everyone in her visual or audible field and dad is mad at her and mum isn't mad just because she's worried about M. Sigh.
M. isn't doing very well. Last week after the visit of his classmates I believed it is getting better (although I remembered me in my first treatment after I begun to eat having kind of "honeymoon" phase as I thought I will simply eat and things will get better. And it wasn't so linear...), but this weekend he was really low. I was nervous because of the exam, so that I may have seen everything bit blacker or he may have felt my nervosity- I don't know. But I know he barely spoke to me and he was so resigned that I wanted to shake with his shoulders and head if I wasn't afraid I will cause him shaken baby syndrome, because he's so fragile. He has written me very short email the same day in that he wrote he was sorry. He hasn't gained ANY weight during his stay (he has lost a bit during the first week and since then gained just tiny amount) and last week he+mom started the multiple-family group therapy and his roommate who was quite nice and supportive will leave the clinic soon for 5 weeks, comming back only for some check ups and ambulant therapy. Everywhere are final exams in high schools and parties and graduations and I think these things may be bit emotional and confusing for brother and visits are tough however both sides are trying. I quess silence is better than fake smiles (I used to practice in similar situations years ago).

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"
— Haruki Murakami

Better things: I am now free to read a book that weights less than 4 kilos. I have still a supply from Christmas! I missed fiction books. I will read all the magazines from Deutsche Guggenheim Club I got and stored unread in a box. I will clean my room and pass some on my books and notes for exams on my younger friends. I am also enormously looking forward to continue with my piece of writing and drawing in next weeks. There are lots of less pleasant duties needed to be done, but I think I will get some rest and hopefully I will write some more spirited posts or even pictures in between. Have a nice relaxing weekend!