Unfortunately, at this point in the week my pain issue kicked up to the point that I have few notes. Dr. Thompson, the intensivist, was exceedingly kind to us, in both our excessive questioning and tour of MICU/SICU. His offer to share his recent book was also kind, and something I plan on taking him up on.
The extreme cold in our classroom chased me away from AMC shortly later, and I went home to nap. Against my better judgment, I did join everyone for dinner — and am glad that I did. Sitting with Alicia, Glenn, and Sean at dinner was an amazing treat, and a lot of fun. It reawakened a bit of the passion that I was starting to miss, under bad sleep, stress, and pain. Unfortunately, it took its effect on me, and I spent the night with pain keeping me up, Lunesta be damned. When I did finally wake Friday morning, my right arm, shoulder to wrist, was locked firm against my body, and any attempt to move sent shattering, lightning pain through my body.
I was able to eventually get it under control, with judicious use of hot water and pain medication, and made it to campus barely in time for our presentation, which went as badly as I thought it would. I’ve kept most of my thoughts about the LIM students to myself, as well as project preparation, but I was exceedingly frustrated with the students I had to work with. They had no concept of time, no idea how to manage their presentation, and wouldn’t shorten what they had for anything; when I shortened their slides, they simply put them back in, or talked as though the slides were there anyhow. You simply cannot read 10 slides in 2 minutes, I don’t care how fast you speak. So of course, the end result was that both Peter and I had to shorten, or fully stop, what we were saying.
The audience critique of the presentation felt rough, too. Having Larry there was not easy, and I didn’t like feeling responsible for the misunderstandings of my team members — especially when they were misunderstandings that we’d argued over for nearly two weeks, and they simply would not listen.
Of course, when you’re in pain, everything is blue and cranky, which is definitely where I am right now. I’m sure, in a few days or weeks, when I’m back under proper pain management, I’ll have much fonder memories of the whole thing!