Where I Stand Now

A tremendous amount has changed in the past year, and even more is going to change in the year to come.  And so it occurs to me that now might be a good time to take stock of my life, my writing, and myself.

I set out to write this blog about medical stories – you know, those anecdotes where doctor sees a patient and learns something profound about herself or the human condition or how to be a better doctor.  At the very least, patients often say funny and entertaining things.  But it turns out I haven’t seen very many patients in the past several months; most of the stories I have written have been about old patients or my own patient and family side of interacting with the medical profession.

It isn’t as if the patients I have had have been uninteresting.  I had one particular patient that presented a fascinating medical mystery and was a great character that I really clicked with.  I meant to write a post about him for months, but I never really knew what to say about it, there wasn’t really a point or a lesson to the story.  Talking about how well we got along seemed a little self-congratulating.  And also, the story of what happened to him wasn’t my story, it was his.

I tried to re-read Kitchen Table Wisdom recently and I couldn’t make it through.  It’s a book of essay/stories about healing, you would think it would be right up my alley, but I just found it annoying.  Because every patient story had to have a lesson or universal truth you could extract from it.  It just seemed so reductive and a bit contrived.  Sure, sometimes my patients remind me of things going on in my own life and that lends itself to good blog posts.  But should it?  Maybe if I were less self-involved, things wouldn’t have to relate back to me all the time.  Maybe I would be a better healer if I were focused enough on my patients that they reminded me of themselves. 

Writing a blog makes you look a little self-obsessed by nature.  It’s a place for self-reflection, yet that reflection is all public. And really, self-reflection for public consumption is a strange phenomenon. 

I re-read all my posts so far and I realize that I have mostly been processing the same theme from every angle: the medical experience is dehumanizing.  I am so glad to have gotten a chance to process this, to move from analyzing my own experiences as a patient to integrating how I will do better as a doctor. 

Personally, having this time and space for self-reflection is a blessing. (Both the blog as a place to record my thoughts and having the past two years of relatively relaxed academic schedule to have time to reflect).  This time and space was instrumental in my re-defining myself as a healer, re-examining existing relationships and forming new relationships, and re-engaging with some of the “big issues” that had gotten shoved aside for lack of time.

But one of the most important transformations that I’ve been taking stock of lately is one that I haven’t written much about.  I’ve become an adult.  I’m twenty-seven years old.  The process feels a bit delayed to me.  I thought I was an adult at fifteen.  I thought I was an adult at twenty.  I thought I was an adult at twenty-three.  So maybe this is nothing new or special; maybe at thirty I will think how silly I was back at twenty-seven.  And I’m sure part of me will think that, because I don’t think I will ever be done growing. 

But I do want to acknowledge that an especially important transition has been happening over the past two years.  The major transition has been in the relationship with my parents.  I haven’t written much about this, because it has been incredibly difficult and feels very personal to be putting on the internets (even though I realize that functionally means sharing the information with about six people). 

But here is the shortest of short stories:  I got engaged to Benjamin and my parents lost their minds.  They strenuously objected and tried to break us up.  We got married anyway. 

This whole situation has exposed an area of my life that I don’t know I ever would have examined if I weren’t forced to.  I thought my relationship with my parents was good.  I knew we had some differences during the teen years, but I thought that we had a good relationship now and didn’t need to work on it at all.  But it turns out I had never actually separated from them in any meaningful way.  I was still looking to them for approval. 

The wedding situation became explosive because it was one of the only times in my life when my parents had actively disapproved of something I was doing.  Growing up, I was always looking for their approval.  I always wanted to impress them.  Nothing I ever did seemed to be enough; I distinctly remember my dad saying he was proud of me at my white coat ceremony because it was the only time I remember hearing those words. But nothing I did was ever met with active disapproval either.  Every accomplishment seemed expected rather than noteworthy, and every decision I made was merely interesting, never good or bad. 

Now, in the aftermath of this explosion, it’s really clear to me just how much I crave their approval, even as an adult. It’s also clear to me just how unhelpful that is to me having a good relationship with my parents, to my growth as an individual, to my marriage, and to adult functioning in general.  Seeing how much I want my parents’ approval also opened my eyes to how much time and energy I spend ferreting out approval from others as well. 

And ultimately, it is unimportant.  I don’t know how I came to this place, really.  I have always been so driven by external judgment that it would have felt impossible to accept that this is actually unimportant. But now, I find myself at peace with it.  It feels like a weight has lifted, like a requirement has been dropped.  It feels like getting to the end of the semester and having your professor tell you there won’t be an exam after all.

Approval-seeking is still my M.O. Unconsciously, I will slip back into this mode almost automatically.  It takes mindfulness to break out of it.  But now that I have given myself permission to do so, I feel stronger, more centered, more myself.  I look forward to seeing how this plays out in my role as a daughter, partner, parent, and healer.

Quick Updates

1.  I got my maternity leave details - they are simple pushing my start date back from 6/25 to 9/17.  So yay, I get maternity leave and don't have to worry about working when I am about to pop.  I will have to make up the three months later.  Also, this means I don't use up my vacation time, which is excellent because I am betting I will want some vacation.  The only bummer is that health insurance coverage does not start until the start date.  Welcome to the world kid, don't you wish you had been born in Australia?

2.  The day after my post about how I don't like to cook and am not good at it - I got volunteered to be the assistant teacher of a cooking class.  Woot.

On Cooking

I am not good at cooking.  I don’t particularly like doing it.  It’s not really my thing.

Turns out, cooking should sort of be everybody’s thing, because everybody eats.  If cooking isn’t your thing, you end up eating a lot of EZ-mac and Chipotle.  I didn’t eat great when I lived alone – things certainly got repetitive and sometimes there was some emergency EZ-mac.  Ok, there was a lot of canned soup.

Choosing, preparing, and eating food has always been sort of stressful, actually.  In high school, my mom had what I would now call an undiagnosed eating disorder and there wasn’t a lot of edible food in the house.  (Though there was always a lot of spoiled, slimy, or mold-covered food that she felt too guilty to throw away).  So perhaps I did not have the sturdiest food-behavior foundation.

Then, when I lived alone, food choices always represented this three-way balancing act between cost, health, and time.  If it was healthy, it took forever or cost too much.  If it was cheap, it was full of processed sugars and simple carbohydrates and had never seen a vegetable.  If it was quick, it cost too much and had never seen a vegetable.  As a medical student, I was short on both time and money and felt like a hypocrite if I ignored my health. 

One of the best things Benjamin did when he moved in was start cooking me dinner.  I was trying to drag myself to the finish line of my semester fueled only on coffee and desperation, and he swooped in and steamed some broccoli.  I thought he was a god. 

And he still often does this.  Last night, a girl friend came over and we hung out and Benjamin made turkey burgers and oven fried potatoes and mixed vegetables.  It was amazing.

But I’m not really pressed for time so much these days.  I have my internship and my thesis, but it is nothing like the end of the semester crunch.  Or, you know, residency.  So I feel like I should still contribute to the household eating by occasionally preparing a meal.

And it is still stressful.  I still feel that juggling act between health, time, and cost (though I have both more time and money than I did before). But the new layer I have to deal with now is performance anxiety.  I want Benjamin to actually want to eat what I cook, and I feel self-conscious about my lack of culinary talent.  Perhaps it’s some internalized sexism that makes me feel that as the woman, I should be better at cooking than he is.  Or maybe I’m just a competitive person.  But in any case, I just want to be better at it than he is.  And I am just not.  The man has talent.  And I have...a semi-edible track record.  There was some artichoke pasta I made recently that he soldiered through but I just could not even stomach.

Tonight, I made this recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Mashed-Potatoes-with-Carrots-and-Leeks-109125.  It’s really just mashed potatoes with leeks and carrots thrown in.  It tastes like mashed potatoes with leeks and carrots thrown in (nothing magical happens with them really) but it was pretty tasty once I got enough salt in there.

I was feeling very flustered and hypoglycemic the whole time I was cooking.  And I thought seriously about just asking Benjamin if we could divide up the food chores from here on out – I would shop and do dishes if he would cook all the dinners.

But I didn’t.  Because I don’t think partnership is necessarily about specializing and not developing diverse skills.  It’s about specializing in the moment – dividing and conquering everything that needs to get done that night and still being flexible enough to switch jobs the next night.  Deconstructing rigid gender roles should mean something more and better than “I always mow the lawn and my husband always cooks dinner,” it should make men and women more competent and flexible. 

So in the name of self-improvement and a flexible partnership, I will continue to struggle through preparing dinner once in a while.  And Benjamin will continue to struggle through eating those dinners.

At least until July, when I fully anticipate everything to go to hell.  

Race and the "Default Experience"

Following the Trayvon Martin story has gotten me thinking about race. 

First, I just want to say that I am probably not properly qualified to speak on any of these topics.  These thoughts are not the well-crafted ideas of someone who has a deep and nuanced understanding of race issues.  These are the fledgling ideas of a privileged white woman who learned the word “privileged” within the past year.  So bear with me. 

As a white blogger, I feel it is important for me to share these thoughts, rather than just, say, continue to whine about the uncertainty of my maternity leave status.  Because the black community doesn’t have the option of not being affected by this story. 

I was listening to Elon James White’s podcast, “Blacking it Up,” where he describes just feeling hopeless and confused about what to do.  An older woman called in and said she was just “broken.”  How do you react to concrete evidence that your society simply doesn’t value the lives of people who look like you?

I have trouble wrapping my mind around that, I have trouble engaging with it.  It’s too big, too scary, too unjust.  And I think this is why a lot of people just walk away from this discussion – or justify why Zimmerman’s actions were legitimate.  It’s a lot easier to deal with one kid who really was up to no good than it is to acknowledge that the society you live in (in which you may be personally very comfortable) is fundamentally dehumanizing, wrong, and unfair.

I’m not ready to bite off a chunk that large.  So, I have tried to stay aware of race in other ways.  Here are just two of the things I noticed in the past few days:

1. I volunteer at a sliding scale clinic and wellness center in East Baltimore.  Most of our patients are black, most of our staff and volunteers are white.  Today I was helping with a session on stress management and we showed a movie about the physical effects of stress.  The doctor they interviewed was a black man, but all the actors that they had demonstrating the effects of stress were white.  Moreover, they were all white men in ties.  The language the narrator used was generic, he would say “stressful jobs,” but the actor would be a white guy in a tie massaging his temples as he sat before a computer screen in an office.  Clearly, he had a very stressful pie-chart presentation to give.  Bummer. 

This is not the kind of stress my patients are dealing with.  My patients are dealing with losing their jobs for taking too much sick time after their daughter was killed and they took over raising their autistic grandchild.  My patients are dealing with having a stroke at 45 and re-learning how to walk.  My patients are dealing with being laid off from the job that was already barely getting them by.  And sure, on some level stress is stress and we can all relate to that experience.  But it’s always non-whites who have to do the relating.  Because my experience as an upper middle class white person is always the default experience, even in places like Baltimore where it is not the majority experience, either in terms of race or in terms of class.

When I can expect that my experience as a white person is the default experience, that is privilege.  When you are in a position to craft how you represent the default experience, and you perpetuate that privilege – is that racist? It’s not racist the way not arresting Trayvon Martin’s killer is racist, no.  But I think it’s probably a more subtle angle of the same beast.

2. Later, I was working on my thesis, which is about obesity stigma.  I was doing some research into the Body Mass Index and found that one of the problems with it is that the cutoffs for overweight (>25kg/m^2) and obesity (>30kg/m^2) is that they were developed based on studies of mostly white people.  Theoretically, the normal weight range (BMI 20-25kg/m^2) was chosen because it represents the range associated with lowest all-cause mortality.  But it doesn’t apply to non-whites. 

For African-Americans, the lowest mortality rates are found at BMI values in the “overweight” range.  This means the NIH has duped thousands of (probably) well-meaning doctors into nagging black patients to lose weight when they are already in the healthiest range. I myself have done this, I am sure, trying to be the good little medical student supporting lifestyle change.

Here we see the consequences of white being the default experience.  Studies are done on whites and results inappropriately extrapolated to every other race.  Even when studies on other racial groups demonstrate that there are differences, the guidelines remain rigid.  The NIH claims that “there are no studies that would support the exclusion of any racial/ethnic group from the current definitions of obesity.” 

I think this example is particularly interesting because it exists at the intersection of two different kinds of prejudice – that based on race and that based on body size.  (Please note that I am not stating that one is worse than the other or that they are comparable, just that both are coming into play in this situation.)  It isn’t overt racism – no one is using the N word or shooting anyone.  Instead, it’s just this insidious and officially sanctioned suggestion that black people should internalize discomfort with their own bodies, that they should conform to medical standards designed for white people. 

I guess I am frustrated and anxious to move on to the next step.  I’ve noticed this, so now what do I do about it? Even the relatively smaller examples seem too large to wrap my mind around when I consider how to eliminate them. 

So, in conclusion, I am frustrated that racism still exists.  I was raised by hippies and would say I am oriented towards activism (not that I am particularly good at it).  But I have a feeling that on this one, I have a lot of internal work to do before I start grabbing petitions or taking to the streets.

Trauma Surgery

I wake up in the pitch black to a sound, some sort of beeping that won’t go away.  Waking up is arduous; my limbs feel like tree branches, even my blood feels sluggish.  I don’t just not know where I am, I don’t know who I am, or what “awake,” is.  That is how deeply I was asleep. 

And then it dawns on me, that I am a medical student and I am in the on-call room, and that god-awful noise is my beeper.  I reach for my glasses and end up knocking the lamp and my pager off the bedside table.  I flail around in the sheets, trying to reach down and right the lamp.  Finally, I close my fingers around the pager and silence the alarm.  I think seriously about going back to sleep, but I don’t.  I read the tiny display on the beeper, “trauma alert: 39 yo male.”  I struggle to stand.  The beeper goes off again while I am still holding it.  More details: “trauma alert: 39 yo male. sledding accident.”  This should be good.

I stumble into my clogs, pull a surgical cap over my bed-head, and put on my white coat.  I shove a granola bar into my mouth as I trot off down the hall to the maze of tunnels that will take me to the trauma bays.

Trauma Male #1 is just being rolled off the ambulance as I arrive.  He is sitting up on the gurney, neck braced, moaning and holding his stomach, a line of blood dripping from his right nostril onto his shirt.  I pull on a gown, gloves, and a mask, and dig the shears out of my white coat pocket.  As the medical student on the trauma team, my main job seems to be Carrier of the Shears, which are useful for removing pesky things like clothes and bandages.

And this is no exception.  As the nurses swarm the patient and start shouting out vital signs, my chief motions me over, “Cut off the shirt and the pants,” he says, and then whirls off to make sure we are next in line for the CT scan.

I sidle up to the gurney, trying to introduce myself to the patient before I cut off his clothes and avoid getting in the way of the nurses, who seem to be doing actually important things, like placing IV lines and taking a history.

I stand to the left side of his head as he tells the nurse, “I was in the toboggan and couldn’t steer and we turned sideways and slammed into a tree.”  He points to the upper left side of his abdomen. “It hurts right here,” he draws a perfect circle over his spleen.  Hmm. I remember that spleen lacerations are graded, but I can’t remember what the criteria are.  Hopefully I will have time to sneak off and look this up before my resident pimps me on it.

“Hi sir, I just need to cut off your clothes so we can see your injuries without moving you too much,” I tell him. 

“You don’t need to cut them, it’s just right there, I can just pull my shirt up.”

Well shit.  Cutting off the clothes is my one job, and my resident will not be happy with me if I fail to do it.  Also, while I see his point that the area is already pretty accessible, it could be that this pain is distracting him from other injures. 

“I’m sorry sir, but we need to make sure you don’t have any other injuries.  I will cover you up with this sheet--”

He cuts me off, “please don’t cut my clothes.”

My resident appears behind me, holding his own pair of shears. (Way to make me feel useless.)  “Sorry sir, it is protocol here in the ED.” And then starts cutting.  “You get that side,” he says to me.

So I do, despite the fact that I am pretty sure this is assault.  Gritting my teeth, I start at the ankle and cut his jeans all the way up the leg to the waist band.  My resident does the same, and soon we are able to peel off his pants.

Which is when we notice that in addition to whatever sled-related splenic injury he has sustained, Trauma Male #1 has been shot in the penis.

My eyes dart up to the patient’s face – he looks horrified and humiliated and also a bit pale.

I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Partially, I am sure it is a visceral reaction to this type of injury, which I must admit squeaks me out the same way the all-wrong angle of broken bones still makes me queasy.  But the other part of this feeling is just knowing that we are in a rural hospital in Virginia.  I don’t believe the social and psychological awareness of the medical staff here is going to be sophisticated enough to deal gracefully with any of the scenarios that could lead to a man being shot in the penis.  We deal well with tractor accidents.  But mental illness? gender dysphoria? domestic violence?  These are not our strong suits.  And above and beyond the relatively temporary violation of having his pants cut off against his will, I have the sense that this man is about to have a whole prolonged interaction with healthcare that will be marked by violation.  And of course, I will participate in it. 

The resident raises one eyebrow and then sort of shrugs.  There is some dried blood around the patient’s crotch, but no active bleeding.  No one else on the trauma team seems to have noticed our discovery – it’s a small caliber hole and I guess most people make an effort not to stare at the patients’ junk.  My resident grabs the sheet from my hands and covers the patient up before directing the team to roll him onto one side and inspect his back.  We roll him up, and the intern runs her fingers down his spine. “No visible injuries,” she reports, and we lie him back down.

The resident listens to his heart and abdomen, pokes his belly a bit to elicit some groaning. Apparently nothing is concerning.  “Ok,” he says, “take him to CT.”  Lead-covered technicians appear and whisk him down the hall to the radiology suite.  I stay behind and look at my resident.  “I’m paging urology, go see if he has any spleen lacs.  If not, he’ll be on their service.”

Obediently, I trot off to the radiology control room.  If his penile injury is visible on CT, it certainly isn’t visible to me, and no one else comments on it.  We stare at his spleen, which looks normal.  The radiologist confirms – no laceration to the spleen.  We also “clear” his cervical spine – meaning we don’t see any fractures, so he is allowed to remove the horribly uncomfortable collar.  Normally we would probably discharge him now, but the resident appears to tell to technicians who are maneuvering him off of the CT scanner and back onto the gurney, “take him to room twelve.”

Room twelve is one of the more private ER rooms, with a real door that closes and is not made of glass.  Usually this room is occupied by women with gynecological complaints, so that a pelvic exam can be performed in relative privacy.  We wheel Trauma Male #1 in there.  A nurse gives the resident a questioning look and he says, “we’re waiting on a consult from uro – just keep him comfortable until they get here.”

And then the pagers are going off again – mine, the resident’s, the nurse’s.  “Trauma alert: 62 yo male. MVA.”

“Motor vehicle accident,” my resident explains, “bay two.”

I ready my trauma shears, hoping my task is less complicated this time. 

After the whirlwind of Trauma Male #2, I try to go back and check on #1, but he is nowhere to be found.  It is hours later, he could have been admitted to urology’s service or discharged home or he could have left AMA (against medical advice).  I don’t actually know his name or medical record number, so I can’t check the computer.  On our next shift together, I ask the resident, and he says he has no idea either.  Then he says, “I hope that guy did ok.”

I’m impressed with the way the resident handled the situation – maybe not with a nuanced theoretical understanding of the various issues that could lead to someone shooting himself (or being shot by someone else) in the penis – but at least with decency and discretion.  Decency and discretion delivered immediately after he cut the man’s clothes off against his will (which I still think is wrong and feel wrong for participating in).  

But it’s good to be reminded that people aren’t all one thing.  We aren’t either all good or all bad, we have good moments and bad moments.  I hope that Trauma Male #1 did ok, too.  And I hope that I will do better next time.

Match!

I matched!  To my first choice program in Baltimore, where I already live.  No moving!  Now all I need to do is figure out the best way to tell them I will need maternity leave immediately following orientation. 

Thursday night, Benjamin and I went out to dinner with an old friend of ours from the youth group where we met.  We went out to the Indian restaurant that catered our wedding, and I got the same dish we had at the wedding.  I had been feeling pretty queasy all day, which was unusual since this has been a fairly nausea-free pregnancy. 

Next thing I know, I am excusing myself from the table and hanging out in the restaurant bathroom, splashing water on my face.  I threw up a few times, rinsed my mouth out, and went back to dinner.  I still felt queasy but not terribly sick.  For the ride home, Benjamin fashioned me a bucket by sawing the top off of a plastic one gallon gas can with his leatherman. 

We woke up early the next morning to drive down to Charlottesville for the Match Day festivities (makeshift vomit bucket in place).  And my financial aid exit interview.  Let’s just say that over the past five years, I have borrowed an absurd amount of money.  It’s not that I couldn’t have figured this stuff out on my own, but I feel very lucky that Benjamin happens to love financial planning and filling out forms. 

Benjamin thought it was fun to keep saying things like “only eleven hours until Match,” “only four hours until Match,” etc.  I found this very helpful and calming.  I only hope he is this supportive during labor. <eye roll>

Finally, it was time to go.  It isn’t traditionally a formal event, and I opted to wear a maternity top that is form fitting enough to make it clear I am either pregnant or shoplifting a frozen turkey.

We gathered in the Old Medical School Auditorium.  Since we are now on the 3^rd medical school, I guess I should say that this is the oldest existing medical school auditorium.  The atmosphere started off festive and escalated to insane.  Benjamin and I found seats in the back but quickly realized that we were in the middle of the loudest, drunkest group of medical students. 

The Student Affairs folks stood at the podium and began reading names.  When a name was read, that person would go down the aisle, deposit a dollar in the box for good luck, get their envelope, hug the dean, and pick up a champagne flute.  Then they had to sit down, holding their envelope but not opening it while the rest of the class was called.

When my name was called (mispronounced though it was), I waddled proudly down to the front and got my envelope and my sparkling cider.  I had forgotten to count how many names had been called before mine (and they are not called in alphabetical order) so I had no idea how long I was going to have to wait to open my envelope.  The ceremony went past noon, and my phone was already buzzing with text messages from friends, asking about the result.

Then, finally, the last person was called, and we all toasted and tore open our envelopes.  University of Maryland Family Medicine, my first choice.  I was very happy, of course, but it was also a bittersweet moment, because it meant closing the door on all those other possibilities.  Having all those open doors had been frustratingly vague, but the not knowing was also sort of magical.  I was especially sad about giving up my second choice program in Greensboro, NC.  I think I would have been very happy there, but ultimately UMD is a better place for me.

I am usually excited about setting off on an adventure, but in this case, I am really excited to be staying home for an adventure.  Baltimore is my home.  My family is here, however dysfunctional my relationship with them is at the moment.  Benjamin’s sister and her husband are here – and they are expecting a baby, too, so the cousins will get to grow up together.  Benjamin’s parents will be returning here after their year in New Zealand. 

But even aside from the family, Baltimore is the physical infrastructure of my childhood.  The culture here is the one that shaped me, for better or for worse.  I went to these city schools and learned about the Chesapeake Bay and Lord Calvert and the Dominos Sugar sign on the harbor.  I know how to say ‘hon’ and pick crabs and cheer for the Orioles even though you know you will be disappointed every year.

I get to be an adult and a parent in the city where I was born; and that is really cool.  I get to bring back all the things I learned in Virginia and use them to serve my home community, and I am really honored to have that opportunity.

And now, all the things I can’t do until after Match – I can do them now.  Yikes.  

The Waiting Game

In my life right now, there is a spectacular amount of interesting stuff that is about to happen.  And what that really means is that none of it is happening right now.  Right now, I am just waiting.  Waiting to find out where I matched for residency (and all that entails), waiting to find out how much maternity leave my residency program will give me, waiting to graduate, waiting for my family drama to get better, waiting to meet this little person I’m growing in my abdomen.

I’m not a good waiter.  I’m on the cusp of all this life-changing, interesting stuff, but right now I am mostly just bored and frustrated.

Picking up where I left off yesterday: after interviews are over, the Match starts.  You (the applicant) rank the programs in order of preference and enter them into the National Residency Match Program (NRMP) website.  They give you several weeks to agonize over this list and make changes before locking it down in February.  I changed mine three or four times.  It was just tortuous. 

The programs, meanwhile, are making a ranked list of applicants, in a process that I can only imagine is more tortuous, as it involves group decision-making.  They enter these into the NRMP website as well.  And then the computer runs an algorithm and spits out a letter that tells you where to move.  Theoretically, the algorithm is applicant-centered and attempts to give all the applicants the highest ranked program possible. 

If you want to see how it works, a fairly good explanation is here http://www.scutwork.com/cgi-bin/links/page.cgi?page=Algorithm

I like how they stress over and over that you should rank programs according to your true preference.  As if “true preference” is totally obvious to everyone.  But really, how do you weigh “close to my family,” when that family is only 17% speaking to you?  How do you weigh, “I feel comfortable around these residents,” when you can’t ask them how they would feel about you having a baby as an intern?

Whatever, there is nothing else I can do about it now.  I just have to breathe deep (increasingly difficult) and wait for Friday.