Episode 20: Owner of a Lonely Heart

I’ve had a lot of time in the last six months to reflect on what it means to be lonely. For starters, I know now that there’s a difference between being lonely and grieving. Although I was definitely grieving for part of that time, I know that some of my sadness of the last few months was loneliness. All those winter weekend days when the weather was crappy and I had nowhere to go but to the gym and home, when I took the long way home from the gym because I was listening to music and crying? I think a lot of that was loneliness. I spent a lot of the spring trying to figure that piece of the puzzle out. And, remarkably, I’m better. Way better.

So here we are in an episode about loneliness, and I have to rethink how this all went down. We open with Meredith’s voice-over:

“A great many of the lonely people come from hospitals. More precisely, from the surgical wing of hospitals. As surgeons, we ignore our own needs so we can meet our patients’ needs. We ignore our friends and families so we can save other people’s friends and families. Which means, at the end of the day, all we really have is ourselves. And nothing in this world can make you feel more alone than that.”

I thought about this a lot during my residency. It seemed so weird to me that I spent half of residency exhausted, depleted, and neglecting my personal life while spending so much time and energy trying to help my patients. There are doctors that get addicted to this life and end up living for work, often at the expense of their relationships, families, and friendships. (I remember one specifically-he always hung around the floors and would randomly show up in ICU late at night. One night, when I was on call in the ICU, the phone rang, and I announced. “If it’s for me, I’m not here, because I’m afraid that’s Dr. _____.” All of sudden, I heard a voice behind me. “That’s not me on the phone,” Said Dr. ______, because I’m right here.” Oops.)

There much discussion about Alex’s hookup with the nurse Olivia (which Izzie walked in on): 

Meredith: “You dodged a bullet. You’re better off without him.”

(Of note, more people have told me I’ve “dodged a bullet” in the last few months than ever before in my life. It has always annoyed me. And it annoyed Izzie in this case, too.)

Cristina: “Why are you even surprised? You sleep with a snake, you get bit.”
So true.

Later in the episode, Addison tries to “teach Izzie a lesson,” by making her stay overnight (when she is post-call!) to provide one-on-one care for a quint that is definitely going to die (a fact that was established earlier in the show but not revealed to Izzie.). Not only does Addision not back Izzie up when the baby is actually dying, when Izzie falls asleep, and wakes up to find the baby is dead, Addison reveals that she knew the baby was going to die all along. It’s not totally clear why this whole drama was a good idea- to “make Izzie a better surgeon by teaching her distance,” ostensibly. All I can say is that if someone did this to me, I wouldn’t be a better doctor, and I wouldn't just be furious that I was in the hospital for 48 needless hours without sleep or a shower, I'd be calling accreditation committees to complain about the way my hospital treats trainees.

Yeah, I'd be furious. And reporting my attendings to the authorities.

Rosanna Arquette has a pretty good turn as a mass murderer who has solitary-confinement induced Pica. She swallows 4 razor blades and, later, tries to swallow a lightbulb and nearly chokes to death. She also gets to utter the classic line,

“I only murdered three people and none of them were doctors.”

Rosanna, you were way better as a bisexual hottie. Maybe it's the just the hospital gown that's freaking me out.

Despite this modestly interesting character, I still think her turn as a bisexual hottie in the L word was far more compelling.

One of the other quints who was dying is saved when Meredith suggests cobedding the baby with a sibling. Nice idea, except it is not supported by current medical evidence. Sorry, Meredith, I do not agree with the assessment that your idea was genius. I think your improved outcome was more like luck.

The best I can say about this is that the picture is cute. Medically, it makes no sense.

Everyone ends the episode happier, although it’s not totally clear why. Meredith quotes a line from “No man is an island” and then the roommates get a dog, but other than that, their situations seem pretty much the same as when the episode began.

Great. Now you have a dog none of you have time to care for. And oh, also, your way too skinny legs still freak me out.

Last best line:


Bailey: "Just like interns, they're not ready for the real world."

In contrast to the Grey's characters, my loneliness is better because my life situation has changed remarkably in the last few months. Why am I different? My reasons:

1. Fitness camp: I am far happier, because today I've run the mountain (or gone to the gym, or been to spin class), and in doing so have proven that I love myself. And that alone would be enough.

But I also have:

2. Friends: My friends have been there for me, consistently, completely, and always without me even needing to ask. They have carried me through my loneliness and now I’ve come out the other side, and once again, I am reminding them that I am, oh, so grateful.

And, yes, OK, finally, the one new thing (some of) you have been so anxiously waiting for me to announce:

3. I have a new girlfriend. And she’s totally great.

Episode 10: Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head.

Raindrops. You can say that again. I’m one season in, and it’s been on my mind that I should quit writing this blog. I’m writing whiny post after whiny post about a show that I hate, all for a paltry two hits a day. But today was a turning point. I’m not quitting anytime soon. I am rapidly moving through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief (more on this below), and it’s kind of fun to be publicly documenting it. This episode, the first of the second season, was far more interesting than any of the first season duds.

We found out at the end of last season that McDreamy is married. He is married to, and separated from, a smokin' redhead named Addison Adrienne Forbes Montgomery Shepherd. She is a neonatal surgeon, and a super-hotshot at that. While she and McDreamy were still together and living together in New York, she had an affair with McDreamy’s best friend, prompting McDreamy to leave her and move to Seattle. Addison has now arrived to Seattle, ostensibly for work, but we all know where this is going. On first seeing McDreamy with Meredith, she says of Meredith, “She seems sweet, which is what you were going for, right? The anti-Addison?”

                              McDreamy’s Ex. Attractive, mean, adulterous redhead. 

 
I actually have some experience with attractive but mean adulterous redheads, and I, too, hope for someone sweet on the next go-around. So I get that he went for sweet. Otherwise, though, Meredith is whiny, anorexic, boring, and a surgical intern, and I can’t imagine he’ll overlook these drawbacks for long. Not while he has the hot Addison trying to win back his affections. (Note to future self: be smarter than McDreamy is about to be: If she shows back up, don’t take her back.)

The real star of this episode is a type of brain surgery called a “standstill operation.” I’d never heard of this before, and when I tried to google “standstill” the only hits I got were Grey’s Anatomy episodes. Still, this type of surgery is a legitimate medical entity; it’s a brain surgery that can only be performed while the patient is cooled into hypothermia and the heart is stopped. It seems like it was more popular in the 90s than it is now, but it isn’t totally unheard of. Burke and McDreamy do the operation together, and, for once, Burke’s patient lives.

Cristina hasn’t told Burke that she’s pregnant, and before she gets a chance to, he breaks up with her. We’re meant to think that Burke has finally realized that dating an intern is a mistake, but some part of me thinks that the minute his surgical outcomes improve (they have been abysmal until now), he no longer needs sex with an intern to fill the void. Cristina ends the episode bereft, drinking in a bar with Meredith.

My favorite moment of the episode is the last scene, when Cristina tells Meredith that she has made her the emergency contact at the abortion clinic.

Cristine: “I needed to designate an emergency contact. That’s why I told you I’m pregnant. I put you down as my emergency contact. You’re my person.”

(Grey leans in and puts her head on Cristina’s shoulder.)

Christine: “You realize this constitutes hugging?”

Grey: “Shut up. I’m your person.”

I have heard people say before that the most interesting relationships on this show are the friendships, and this was one of the first moments on this show where I felt any deeper interest in any of these characters. Maybe it was the cute chatter, but maybe it’s because friendship is a theme that certainly resonates with me right now-I have amazing friends who have been there for me in a major way, and I’m so lucky to have the support I’ve had. Sorry, friends, that I’ve been so bitchy and negative these last weeks. And thank you, thank you, thank you for being my people in spite my flaws.

Best lines:

Bailey: “Who’s Dr. McDreamy? I’m doctor McDreamy. I’m tall, handsome, I like to lean against things and ponder the difficulties of dating beautiful women. Come on, I’m trying to be a surgeon here.”

Burke: “I noticed we’re both off tonight. I made reservations. I have a favorite restaurant.

Yang: “None of those were questions.”

Chief: “I just had brain surgery. I’m surrounded by fruit baskets.”

Alex: “Surgery is the only specialty where we don’t waste time getting to know the patients.”

Best line I’ve heard this week, actually from the movie Date Night: “You think I want to spend the rest of my life stealing wheelchairs for a living?”

ps: Those Kubler-Ross stages of grief? The ones we all learned for Psych 101 and in medical school? You know, the ones that were a theme of every single episode of "Touched by an Angel?" Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. They ring so true and I do feel like I'm moving swiftly towards acceptance here, which I was feeling really good about. Well, I was feeling pretty good until I reread an article from one of last year's New Yorkers: "The trouble is that [Kubler-Ross's theory] turns out largely to be a fiction, based more on anecdotal observation than empirical evidence" and oh, also, according to Slate, Kubler-Ross "went round the bend," becoming a believer in reincarnation and engaging in all sorts of odd behavior. Finally, she suffered a debilitating stroke, and was left to die alone. This is from one of her last interviews: '“I always leave the television on,” she says. “That way something is always moving.” An English muffin hardens next to her on a plate. She says that she got in the habit of saving food in case she is hungry later in the day. She seems as hauntingly alone as the patients she interviewed some thirty years earlier.'

Now I'm back to freaking out again.