Focus. Focus.

Shout-out to UnsinkableMB: I have your avatar on the back of my hospital ID! Back when The Hair was still growing out--before it had become its own separate lifeform with its own desires and demands--I looked something like the woman with the coffee cup. It gave my patients pause.

*sigh*

Tomorrow starts class. The first couple of days will be cardiovascular stuff. If what I remember is what's going to happen tomorrow, it'll be horrendously dense, full of all sorts of things I probably ought to remember from school (how long ago was that, exactly?) and all sorts of things I never learned properly in the first place.

I have a confession to make: I never learned exactly how many chambers the heart has, how it repolarizes, and why exactly it beats. I'm not even sure any more how blood goes from one place to another. Seriously. Might be the pull of the moon, might be the contraction of one of those "ventricle" thingies that people are always talking about, might be the will of Jello Biafra. I don't know.

This fits in with my hypothesis, not yet disproved, that people who really get CV stuff rarely really get neuro stuff, and vice versa.

Anyway, my CV knowledge is built on an extremely shaky foundation. I know that there's something pumping away in the left-center of my chest; I can feel it. I know that there's a similar something in other people's chests; I've felt it there, too, going at various speeds. I know that that something that's bonking away in there has a lot to do with whether or not you keep blinking and breathing and scratching the eight hundred mosquito bites you got yesterday while mowing the lawn even though you were wearing Deep Woods Off and what the hell is that all about, anyway, did they import mosquitoes from Alaska? but I'm not real clear on anything beyond that.

Plus, after two days of CV Hell, we start intensive Neuro Hell. The internship group will be splitting up for that, with the CVCCU folks going off to learn more about that mysterious bonking thing in the chest, and those of us in Neuro CCU staying to learn more than we ever wanted to know about neuro anatomy, infections, tubes, machines that go beep, and complications. There are two of us going into the Neuro CCU; I do not expect to be able to hide in class.

But oh, my blessed (prize to the first person besides Beloved Sister who can identify where that phrase comes from), I am distracted.

It is cool out, finally. Although it hasn't rained enough to relieve the worst drought in central Texas in my lifetime, it's rained enough to make things resprout and turn green. The Hill Country is almost, almost pretty. North of the Hill Country, the weird mesa-like outcrops are covered with oak trees that, from a distance, look kind of healthy. It's cooling off. (Note to self: take next year's vacation in late September.) The days are beautiful and clear, and the nights have just enough chill to them to make me thankful for two cats at my feet.

My nose is waking up after a summer of air-conditioning and dust. This can be inconvenient, as smells that have nothing to do with critical care tend to lodge in there. I want to make soup, go to Central Market and buy marinated roasted long-stemmed artichoke hearts, and make a pilgrimage to Fort Worth to feed the koi in the botanical gardens.

And to top it all off? I'm sure this is news to nobody but me, but guys? Rock.

Focus. Focus. Calcium channels and independent wiring and aorta here and ventricle there and atria on top somewhere and somehow blood gets reoxygenated through the lungs. Yep. Lungs. Heart. Lungs. Heart.

Focus.