Manhattan Tour

Finally, after the first two weeks of psychiatry (I'll get to that at the end), Nicole and I got to go on our tour of Manhattan. This way of doing things brought back memories of traveling and sightseeing through Europe with my family when I was a child, and so I looked forward to the exciting cultural mixture of history and sights to see, all wrapped up in a neat, organized package. We got up Saturday morning, hopped a train to Manhattan, and found the Gray Line Tour offices. I'd thought that we'd be taking an open-air, double decker bus, but ours was closed, which was probably for the better - it was a hot day. The tour began in Midtown, just down from Times Square, and we quickly made our way through Harlem to Central Park West, where we stopped for our first photo op.

As we drove along, our Croatian expat tour guide gave us historical tidbits, telling us about how the various neighborhoods changed, and which musicians and artists populated which areas at which times. I had an aisle seat, and so couldn't take too many pictures, but this one I just had to steal from Nicole - this is the Apollo theater, in downtown Harlem!

It was a whirlwind tour - there was so much to see that, unfortunately, there simply wasn't time to stop everywhere. We drove past Grant's Tomb and saw many of the luxury apartments where movie and music stars have dropped millions to overlook central park. We passed the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, all the while receiving liberal doses of historical NYC trivia. Around 11:30, we stopped for lunch in Little Italy. After my chicken parmigiana at the Grotto Azzura, we walked around a bit, and after crossing one street, suddenly found ourselves in Chinatown. Due to the time constraints, we didn't get to peruse Canal street, although I have the feeling that if I pick up a nice knock-off purse for Nicole, she'll never know the difference.

One thing I'd wanted to make sure to return for was the Wall Street Bull. Much to my chagrin, not only did we not disembark for photos, but even if we had, I'd never have gotten the shot I wanted; the crowds were too dense. Note the woman's who's got the bull by the balls.

Passing the Bull placed us squarely in the financial district, and our next stop was "the site where they're rebuilding the towers". One of the tour guides said not to call it Ground Zero anymore, since "Ground Zero" was a location of terrible destruction and loss of life, and that this area was no longer a place of destruction, but a place of rebuilding. Our Croatian guide told that that he was actually supposed to have taken a tour up into the towers on 9/11, as he had done with every tour, but just didn't for some reason that day. The more I think about it, the more I recall stories like this. When I watched the towers fall on the news that morning in my senior year of high school, my microbiology lab-partner remarked very casually that her father was supposed to have been in the Pentagon that morning, but was delayed for some reason.

After our tour of the Rebuilding, we headed to the New York Bay for our ferry tour. Part of me had been dreading this - the last time I'd been on a boat was on the return trip from St. Lucia to Dominica, and I'd been so drugged up on bonine and dramamine that I could barely walk. Fortunately, despite some expected rocking, the ride was smooth, and the sights were fantastic. We started off with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, and quickly made a circuit of the city, viewing the other side of the financial district.

As we moved past the Goldman Sachs building on the Jersey side (quite a ways after that, actually; beyond rail stations and such), we came into sight of Ellis Island, where millions of world immigrants had stopped on their journey to becoming American citizens. Apparently, 1 in 4 Americans can trace at least one grandparent to Ellis Island - I'm certain I'm part of the majority.

Lady Liberty, it seems, was the gem of the ferry tour - it was nice to finally see one of the most well-known American symbols in person. There's one little agency that's licensed to take people onto the isle of Lady Liberty, and the line to get tickets stretched literally a half mile on the mainland. The tour we were taking recently lost the right to take folks directly to the front of the line, so they opted for the ferry instead of the 3 hour wait. Also, apparently, you need special tickets to get up into Lady Liberty's head, but it's 365 steps and is hot and frustrating so, according to our tour guide, we weren't missing anything. I'd like to go up into her torch, but I'm not sure they even do that anymore.

Something went wrong with our tour bus after we left the docks - apparently it was brand new and computerized, and there was something wrong with the computer. We waited, and several times were told that it'd be "just 5 more minutes". After about half an hour, our tour guide called his company and requested one of the open-air double-deckers to take us to our final stop, Rockefeller Center. However, just as that second bus arrived, our motors started up, and we were on our way.

This was what I'd really been looking forward to - Nicole had wanted to discuss all of the little particulars of the various tours, playing the pros against the cons and figuring out which was best. I told her that I didn't care about anything else, so long as the tour included the price of admission to the top of Rockefeller Center. From the pics below, you can see why.

Those first two show Central Park surrounded by downtown Manhattan.

Here are more view of the rest of NYC.

Here's the Empire State Building.

See that teeny little screen down there? That's Times Square - the subject of my last blog post.

If you look closely at those two bridges in the center, you'll recognize the big red arches of the Hells Gate bridge and the blue green beams of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, which connect Manhattan to my neighborhood, Astoria in Queens.

After the tour, Nicole and I roamed 5th avenue for a while - she wanted pictures of the Cartier and Tiffany stores, and she popped her head back into St. Patrick's, but they were having mass. So we wandered around a bit, tired from the day of sightseeing, and stopped in at a Starbucks near our subway stop. Once we got home, we watched the Hangover, and ate the chicken tikka masala we'd ordered, since Nicole had never had Indian food (and all of the places around Times Square had gotten lackluster reviews).

Now. Perhaps I can finally tell you a bit about my psychiatry rotation (now that I'm 2 weeks in). Towards the end of my internal medicine rotation, Ross e-mailed me to say that I had to be in Flushing 7-10 business days before the start of my rotation to get medical clearance. Clearly there was no way that was going to happen; there was the internal medicine shelf (on which I performed very well, by the way), then there was a flight Saturday morning, and the clerkship beginning the following Monday. I managed to get an appointment on Monday morning, but wouldn't be able to start until Tuesday. Nicole had initially been scheduled to have her appointment on Tuesday, but the nurse let both of us do our clearance on Monday, fortunately.

When we started on Tuesday, there was already a group of Ross students who'd gotten their clearance (and one girl who didn't get that taken care of until that day). Anyway, the program is somewhat prestigious; since they're so accommodating to foreign grads, they have tons and tons of applicants, and they're in NYC. There are multiple positions available in an externship, and then there's a house examination to see who gets to be a first year resident. Anyway, they have us splitting our time between Consultation and Liaison services (C&L - 1 week), the Chemical Dependency Unit (CDU -2 weeks) and the inpatient locked ward (3 weeks).

I started out on C&L, which was housed in the locked ward. I was a little wary - the program director unlocked the door, opened it just a crack and peered inside. She then quickly pushed it open and looked behind, and then waved us in quickly, like we were escaping from prison. It was a little unnerving, but it's a voluntary unit; no one dangerously psychotic, no patients in four-point restraints - no Hannibal Lechter.

Anyway, I was paired with another student and two externs, and we had a lot of down time that first week during C&L. We went on the occasional consult to determine the extent of the patient's altered mental status, or to assess the depression of the patient who'd come into the ER (one such patient was admitted immediately to the ward, and was just released last week). The C&L director was in a foul mood the whole week - apparently, in the months of July and August, he's inundated with stupid requests from the brand new first-year residents.

Last week, I was on the CDU, with the addicts who'd come in for detox. It was more interesting than C&L, but there was still a lot of downtime. I'd expected rock-bottom, high school drop-outs - instead, I was surprised with the part-time piano teacher with a graduate degree in classical music who blew her cash on booze and weed, and the unemployed heroin addict with a master's degree in theater. Later on, though, things began to even out - I interviewed the high-school dropouts, and spoke with one patient who was so acutely suicidal that the unit director confessed that even he was scared by this guy. So we started him on an antidepressant, and placed him on 1:1 - which means that he'll be watched at all times.

I wanted to be a psychiatrist once. This certainly isn't changing my mind, but I do find it interesting so far. I'm looking forward to the end of this next week, when I'll finally begin my time on inpatient.