Mexico Medical Student |

OK, so I’ve about had it with this teething crap. We already have a high-energy, go-go-go, sleep-fighting, hell-on-training-wheels toddler (16mo) as it is. The two upper canine teeth are coming in simultaneously, and it’s about all I can do to keep it together. After the Tylenol and topical Orajel have run their course and the wailing STILL doesn’t stop, I start having sick fantasies of injecting *caine right onto her superior alveolar nerve for certain relief; if I’m a little too trigger-happy on the plunger and she doesn’t wind up feeling half her nose/cheek, well, it will wear off eventually.

Of course, in terms of development, this is also the period where screaming is a “normal” part of starting to assert themselves–aka, the “temper tantrum.” This is often accompanied by a complete loss of skeletal muscle tone as the child goes completely limp. If she were an adult, I’d be calling the neurologist. With wall-to-wall tile floors, this a great way to hit her head–making me not lose that neurologist’s phone number after all.

All in all, it’s been rough. I work from home now, so I’m around baby noise ALL. THE. TIME. All my noise-cutting tricks for studying are still being employed. I think I’m the only med student in the western hemisphere that actually uses ballistics/gun earmuffs as part of their study arsenal…and I’ve never owned a gun! But there’s my ace-in-the-hole secret weapon, fellow med students. If you can tolerate looking like a total dork (and at my age/status, it’s not like I’m trying to score), putting on what looks like headphones from 1975 combined with inserting foam earplugs first, will give you (theoretically) over -60dB noise reduction. Some people get freaked out with near-silence; they always need some ambient noise (other than the blood rushing in their ears). I am not one of them. There are only a few select genres of music I can listen to (and classical is certainly not one of them) that won’t have me audibly distracted, involuntarily processing the music instead of processing what’s on the page.

When I was a kid, it was determined that my auditory processing was not up to snuff. In the classroom, I often didn’t do what I was instructed partly because I just didn’t assimilate what was told to me. As an adult, this has not changed. Everything has to be written down. Thankfully, it’s limited to verbal auditory processing. As a musician with a super-finely tuned ear, one would be surprised that I have to think about what’s told to me a lot harder than most. I can musically process a song instantly, but I can hear the same song 10 times and probably recite one line of lyrics. If you give me the lyrics written out, such as on liner notes, I’ll remember most of them at first glance, because I processed the information visually. At work, people would tell me any number of things, and I’d famously say, “Send me an email so I’ll remember.”

I should clarify that this is a problem only if I’m not 100% “on task” with listening (which, for most people in busy situations, is almost 100% of the time). But I can’t audibly multitask. If I’m talking to you on the phone, you have my complete, undivided attention–not because I care so much about you (but of course, I actually do), but because I really have no other choice! You’d know if I started trying to investigate something around me if we were on the phone, because suddenly you’d hear, “uh huh…*silence*….what was that again?”

It’s this same “odd” auditory sensitivity that makes living with a loud, active, fussy (but thankfully healthy-as-a-horse) toddler a mental drain. The distracting auditory input that would be annoying to anyone is crippling for me (as far as high-level mental processing goes). The same goes with many different types of “noise pollution” around me. Am I making a problem worse by finding new and better ways to give myself quiet? Should I be going the other direction, slowly desensitizing myself so that I can cope better in the “real world?” I haven’t figured out how to accomplish the latter yet, but something’s gotta give. I can’t have complete quiet and no interruptions doing an H&P like we’ve done as students in the real world. One often doesn’t have the ability to scribble anything until, say, outside the hospital room.

This is one of those unforeseeable things I didn’t know I’d have as rough a time with. The other is social isolation from working at home/not seeing classmates, but that’s for another post.