This was my first week on the inpatient service at Flushing. After breezing through three relatively easy weeks on the Consultation Liaison Service (C&L) and the Chemical Dependency Unit (CDU), I was eagerly anticipating my time on the locked ward. Just to clarify, it's a voluntary unit; the patients can write a 72 hour letter and leave if they're determined to be stable - one of the end results is that we don't get any of the criminally insane, or any seriously dangerous patients (no Hannibal Lechter). In this week I've gone through a fascination and infatuation with being brought face to face with the things that first pulled me into psychology and psyciatry, as well as the emotionally taxing disappointment of realizing that serious clinical improvements are few and far between. When someone on the ICU starts not doing so well, consults are called, and hopefully they're stabilized - but it generally has nothing to do with the patient as a person. Here on the psych ward, the reason the patients may not be doing so well is intimately intertwined with who they are, and the heartbreak comes in when they're likable people. These patients, whose company I've come to enjoy, are at times their own worst enemies - and when they're at their worst, there's no amount of reasoning that can be done, and so, sometimes, all that's left to do is sedate them, and hope to talk to them later.
James was one of the first patients I was assigned to. He'd come in with severe depression and anger control issues - apparently he'd been working as a chef somewhere in the south and had to return to NYC to live with his mother, who was relentlessly verbally abusive. He'd brought himself to the unit because he didn't want to get angry and do something he'd regret, and because he'd felt that life wasn't worth living. James wasn't a physically imposing guy - he was about my height, heavyset, and sort of squinted through one eye. Superhero and sports team tattoos covered his arms. I talked with him, read through his chart, and wrote daily notes on him throughout the week, trying to get a feel for who he was. James wasn't a chatty guy; when I'd tell him that I wanted to talk to him, he'd tell me straight up that he didn't have any suicidal thoughts, didn't want to hurt anyone else, and wasn't hearing any voices; that he was doing good, looking forward to his 28 day rehab, and just wanted a cigarette. He was stable for days, and finally, Friday morning, a bed opened up in one of the rehab centers, and we all told him goodbye and wished him luck.
Jason was a big African who reminded me of one of my college roommates. At first glance, I liked him - he gave me a fist pound, and tried to convince me that he was well-enough to leave, and that he was thinking positively....but Jason is also the only patient thus far who has made my skin crawl. Each week, we have a session with an expert psychotherapist, during which he interviews one of the patients. Last week, it was Jason, and the more he talked, the more I became convinced that he was not at all ready to go. Jason had seen some war-time atrocities in his home country, but that wasn't why he'd come in - he'd been transfered from another hospital, to which he first presented complaining of neck pain, after losing his job and apartment. however, he'd been transfered to the psych ward because he was having intense guilt over obsessive thoughts about married women, and hurting the men they were with - in addition to depression, and hearing voices. When we tried to prod him and dig into his voicse during the session, he refused to answer - he told us that he didn't hear them anymore, but absolutely refused to tell us what they used to say; he just crossed his arms, shook his head, and told us that he was thinking positively. So this week, I began to talk to him, and I got them impression that he felt comfortable with me. He told me that part of the reason he felt guilt over the thoughts was because he was a staunch Muslim, and the Koran prohibited such sins. I suggested that he read and memorize passages of the Koran, so that he had them in his mind when the thoughts came back - because thinking positively was sure to fail eventually. He ran to his room, pulled out his pocket Koran, and began reading to me - in Arabic. he stabilized over the week, and we discharged Jason on Thursday to the care of his uncles, with whom he'll be staying while he looks for a job.
I first met Claudio while he was being processed up on our ward during the middle of the day. New patients are assigned to the students during morning report, and I figured I'd say hello to the guy, just in case he became my patient. Claudio is a big, half-Italian, half-something-else with several facial tattoos, among them teardrops - indicating time spent in prison for violent offenses (I believe). I sat down to talk with him briefly, and he seemed very on edge - he wasn't angry, he wasn't aggressive; he was just wound up. He'd come in with a giant suitcase for his stay, and was going through the things he wanted to keep with him, and the things he wanted locked up. When he pulled out his DVDs, I told him goodbye and went to write up some patient notes. Minutes later, he started yelling at one of the nurses, screaming about one of the violent DVDs he wanted to keep and watch in the TV room. Things escalated very quickly, and Dr. Strong (security) was called. I was sitting in a conference room with the other students, and one of the residents told us to stay in and shut the door - which of course we were reluctant to do. Granted, this was a potentially dangerous guy, but we didn't want to be left out. He began ranting at the top of his lungs how he wanted to kill himself, and 8 or so security guards surrounded him and tried to coral him. I headed out join the art therapist, where she was standing guard and keeping the other patients away from all of the action. My initial estimation was that he was too volatile to keep on this unit, but it would have been a nightmare to transfer him, and so he was sedated. The next morning, we were on pins and needles, until we'd learned in morning report that it had been an uneventful night. Later in the week, I spoke with him, got to know him, and met his mother. If I recall correctly, he was diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder in prison 20 years ago. Claudio's calmed down, is doing well, and is still on the unit.
I met Timothy the same way I met Claudio - he was sitting at a table near the nurse's station during the middle of the day, waiting for his admission paperwork to go through. Once again, I introduced myself, and told him that I might be working with him. Tim is a short and very slender Cuban, very obviously homosexual, and he didn't meet my eyes that day. The next day during morning report, I volunteered to take his case, since I'd already been talking to him. That was the day that we discharged James, and so I was sitting in the conference room madly scribbling away at his paperwork, when Tim popped his head into the room. He said that his social worker was out on vacation, but asked if he could talk to me instead, since he knew the psychiatrists were busy. I told him that I'd definitely talk to him - I don't know why he singled me out; he didn't know we'd been assigned to each other at that point. Perhaps I was just nice to him. We sat that morning as I did his initial paperwork, and he told me about how the love of his life - his boyfriend of 5 years - had recently died in a car accident. The more I talked to him though, the more I questioned his admission - he didn't seem to have any of the serious signs of depression (no suicidal ideation, despite a past attempt; no trouble eating, concentrating, no decreased energy, etc). However, he had been diagnosed Bipolar after spending years being abused in the foster care system before being adopted by a loving family, but had been off his meds for 2 years - and, since he'd going back to school to be a CNA, figured the inpatient route would be quicker than the outpatient route. I'll see how he's doing on Monday.
Heriberto was another one of my patients who didn't really want to talk. He came in with major depressive disorder, and, if I recall correctly, suicidal thoughts. His eye contact was terrible -after I'd been assigned to him, I found him in art group. I went in, introduced myself, and, without looking up at me, he said that he didn't want to talk to anyone. That sort of screwed up my day - it was my first time working through the very detailed paperwork, and I didn't get to start with him until the afternoon. When we finally got to talk, he gave me one-word answers, and it went rather quickly. The next day, however, we found out that his insurance wouldn't cover an inpatient stay with us, and rather than incur a huge hospital bill, he simply chose to go to another clinic. So I did his discharge paperwork a day after his intake paperwork.
Those patients were all interesting, but no one holds a candle to Sunny. She's gotten to be a legend with us medical students - for reasons I'll get into in a bit. I knew about her going in, and, like Jason and Claudio, I just had a feeling she'd be assigned to me. She was in the art group with Heriberto that Monday morning, when he didn't even look up at me. When I told her that I'd be working with her also, she looked up and said "Can we go talk right now? Because you're hot..."
"No - you have to finish your picture", said the art therapist.
"Are you gay?" Sunny continued.
"No I'm not, but I'll talk to you later on, after you finish", I said, as I turned to leave. I later learned that some of the promising artwork on the wall was hers - she'd very briefly attended some art and design school here in NYC.
Sunny is a 5'2, 100lb, 22 year-old Chinese girl. She talks in this surfer-ish valley-girl drawl that I haven't heard from anyone else in NYC, and since she's frequently heavily sedated, it almost sounds as if she's drunk. Three months ago, she shaved half of her hair and dyed the other half - so part of her head is a short, spiky, glossy black, and the other part is a wildly disheveled blue. She has a new eyebrow ring, a tongue bar, and a belly-ring. She has also paid a friend of a friend to cover both her arms in some elaborate tattoo. Her style of dress recalls the grunge scene from the 90's. Sunny also has horrible breath - her gums frequently bleed, and we have to bargain with her to get her to use mouthwash and toothpaste. She does't like to shampoo, and doesn't like to shower, and when I was walking with her one day, one of the nurses called me aside and said "Don't let her touch you - she doesn't wash her hands after using the bathroom". I thanked her profusely. Sunny is gripped in the chaotic, tempestuous throes of her very first manic episode.
Monday: I sat and talked with her, trying to get a feel for what was going on. She told me how she was going to marry Lady Gaga, and how she was going to become the President of the United States, talking a mile a minute, jumping from one thing to another, eyes wide with excitement. Frequently, though, those big brown eyes filled up with tears like a flash flood coming out of nowhere. Just as quickly, these crying jags disappeared when the subject changed. I had to sit back and just watch her - it was literally like turning on and off a light-switch. At one point, I interrupted her tears, and asked her to tell me about something she liked. Her facial expression changed completely, and she said that she liked swimming, and she began to tell me about how she used to swim in high school, but just then, everything changed, and another crying fit started, as she told me through tears about how her friends never came to her swim meets. I interrupted her again, and she told me about skateboarding. We talked some more, and she told me about how her father called her a loser and had hit her when she was a kid, and how her mom should have gotten a divorce, despite the proclamations of both parents that the marriage was happy. At this point, I was sensing some feelings of betrayal, though how much of it was real and how much of it was the mania, I couldn't tell. I asked her if becoming the President was the only way she could get her father to stop thinking she was a loser. She said yes, and burst into tears. She also told me that she didn't think she bought friends, but said that she felt like she had to pay for things so people would like her. I'm including below the diagnostic criteria for a manic episode, which necessarily makes her Bipolar I.
Manic Episode
DSM IV Criteria
A) A distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive or irritable mood, lasting at least 1 week (or any duration if hospitalization is necessary)
B) During the period of mood disturbance, three (or more) of the following symptoms have persisted (four if the mood is only irritable) and have been present to a significant degree:
1) inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
2) decreased need for sleep (e.g., feels rested after only 3 hours of sleep)
3) more talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking
4) flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing
5) distractibility (i.e., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli)
6) increase in goal-directed activity (at work, at school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation
7) excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g., engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments)
C) The symptoms do not meet criteria for a Mixed Episode
D) The mood disturbance is sufficiently severe to cause marked impairment in occupational functioning or in usual social activities or relationships with others, or to necessitate hospitalization to prevent harm to self or others, or there are psychotic features.
E) The symptoms are not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication or other treatment) or a general medical condition (e.g., hyperthyroidism)
Tuesday: In between my regularly scheduled duties, I watched Sunny interact with the other patients. Being the only young female on a unit mostly populated with guys, she had no shortage of the attention which she craved - she'd walk up and down the long hall, talking to some guy or other. The nurses say that she's sexually preoccupied, but I don't think that's the case; she just seems to want attention. When she tries to get into other patient's rooms, it isn't for anything lewd, it seems, but just because she's bored. It isn't a far stretch to liken her to the Energizer Bunny, because she literally won't stop, and is constantly on the move - she has a million disconnected things to say. When I got the chance to talk to her that day, I asked her if she felt like her thoughts were racing. Her jaw dropped and her eyes got big as she leaned forward and asked "How did you know?" as if I'd just done an amazing magic trick. I told her that it was obvious because of the way she was talking, and she immediately went off about her hair - asking if I thought she should just grow it out and go back to natural, etc. She told me how she wanted to become a nun to help people, and how if she got to be President, she'd make it so that it was legal to be gay in all 50 states, but that abortion would be illegal unless it was due to rape. She asked me if I thought it was better to be a rockstar, or be married to a rockstar - because rockstars have a lot of temptation. When I asked her why there had to be a rockstar involved at all, she giggled shyly and said that that was just her type.
I'm not sure how long she's been there, but the nurses are all very obviously tired of her. She's constantly on the go, like a rambunctious toddler, and the more I thought about it, the younger she seemed. When she'd told me she was 22, I'd initially been surprised, and chalked it up to one of her delusions, thinking to myself that she couldn't have been over 18. Speaking with her, one gets the distinct impression of speaking with a child. At first I'd thought it was just certain phrases and words she used (if something is good, it's "epic"), but I soon realized that it was a part of the pervasive pattern of her personality. In speaking with her, I never get the impression that I'm talking to someone who could have graduated from college - it feels like I'm talking to a hyper little girl. I occasionally have to tell her that I can't understand her when she's crying, and she dries her eyes and repeats herself.
Wednesday: We have two lectures on Wednesday - grand rounds, which was about dream therapy this time (previously something in which I was intensely interested), and a second, smaller lecture in which an old-school psychotherapy expert interviews a patients in front of us. As luck would have it, he chose Sunny. We all piled around the table in the conference room, and she came in and sat at the corner, next to him. They began to talk, and she quickly launched into the labile mood swings, from crying jags to normalcy, that I'd seen the first day with her, but not so much Tuesday. She talked about how her father called her a loser, about how she wanted to be a nun and President, and how she's been locked up in her house for 4 years because she didn't want to go out - now, her slowed social maturity made more sense. This session was difficult for me to watch - it felt very impersonal, compared to my talks with her. However, I came to realize that she had different kinds of crying jags - there were those that seemed to be just the mania, just the frustration of being caught up in something unknown and scary, and there were those suffused with actual emotion and sadness. Sunny is more easily snapped out of the former; those mania crying spells are quickly forgotten, but the latter, such as when she's crying about being discharged and going home to her mother - those persist a while longer. She generally tells us that she's all better and has made a "360 degree turn", but at one point, during one of the many crying fits during the session, she said that she knew something was wrong with her, and that no one would want her.
It was this day that I got the distinct impression that something had changed with her. After our therapy sessions, I stayed and talked with the psychotherapist about her, telling him that I felt like I was talking to a child. He explained that it could be a bit of regression, or perhaps it was a coping mechanism - that playing the winsome little girl was something that got people to react more favorably to her. He said she was incredibly lucky in that she was likable and cute, and described her personality as "impish". The word "pixie" came to my mind, and just then I heard her crying out in the hall, talking to another med student. I left and went to see what was the matter, and as soon as she saw me, the tears dried up, she wiped her eyes, and put on a smile. I asked her what was wrong, and she said "nothing...nothing - everything is ok." Was it that she didn't want me to see her crying? I chalked it up to the nefarious influence of the mania on what was, deep underneath, a normal person.
We talked more throughout the day, and she told me that, in addition to being President and a nun, she wanted to become a veterinarian and help poor kids. I asked her what she'd do with a million dollars, and then two, and then three million, and rather than listing expensive purchases as I'd expected, she listed charities - "the poor kids, people with AIDS, breast cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer" etc. Since her father called her a loser, we explored what that word meant to her - she told me that a loser was someone who didn't have a home, and didn't have lots of clothes, and I had to cut her off in the middle of another crying jag to tell her that, by her own reasoning, she obviously wasn't a loser. She nodded and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her grey hoodie.
As I said before, she had no shortage of male attention. There was one patient, Bill, mentally retarded and schizophrenic (entirely harmless and likable but for his child-like intrusiveness) who followed her around like a puppy-dog. He'd come up to us in the middle of our conversation, and she'd wave him away. At one point, she tugged on my arm, and said "let's walk that way", in part, I think, to get away from him, but there was something else in her demeanor that made me feel like it would have been a bad idea - and so I followed Bill and went to sit in the TV room with the other patients. Two of them were very highly educated - one was a lawyer, and another was something else. They'd both read James Patterson, and the lawyer had read Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth, which I'm now reading. James was there, and soon we were talking about different parts of the country. Through it all, Sunny just sat there on the couch across from me, not saying a word but watching me through heavy-lidded eyes, rocking back and forth...for all the sedation, she couldn't sit still.
Later that day, she came to find me, and asked if we could "do therapy". At first I didn't know what she meant, since, despite my best efforts, I had yet to make it to a single therapy session - and then I realized she just wanted to talk. I told her that, once I'd finished with the other patients and my paperwork, I'd come find her. This scene began playing out with increasing frequency.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that as her familiarity with me grew, the amplitude of her mood swings diminished. Her crying jags were less intense, and the conversations soon came to feel almost normal. At the end of the day, when I was doing some paperwork, she came up to me and said "So you haven't told me if you have any brothers or sisters" - which shocked me, because it was as if the mania had abated for a moment. Talking to her is enjoyable, and her excitement can be infectious. While the other patients are frequently suicidally depressed, she's very often talking excitedly about something or other, and is honestly, at times, a pleasure to be around. Such is the expansiveness of the manic mood.
I left that day buoyant and excited about psychiatry - this was why I'd loved abnormal psychology and chose to be a psych major. This was why I'd initially planned on becoming a psychiatrist. It was the fascination of a subjective reality that only existed in the mind, and the fact that various chemical imbalances and environmental factors caused various iterations of that subjective reality to manifest in multiple people - that drew me to this field. I went home and researched combined psychiatry and internal medicine residency programs.
Thursday: Sunny was very agitated Thursday morning - standing at the nurse's station, crying about calling her mother and being discharged. She went around, trying to find the attending psychiatrists, trying to get them to let her go. She cried about how there was some kid she knew who she thought had bipolar disorder also, and about how she was better already, and it wasn't fair that they were keeping her. Sunny currently gets Haldol and Seroquel twice a day, but if she becomes especially agitated, she gets a cocktail with Ativan, Benadryl, and Haldol. This is what she got that morning, and she spent the rest of the day very lethargic, but the nurses were pleased; she wasn't in their hair. (The levels of these drugs she's getting would put a normal person under for hours - so great is the magnitude of Sunny's mania, that these powerful sedatives only calm her down... a bit.)
Several times as I was working on something or talking with other patients, she came up and just stood there expectantly. As usual, I told her that I'd find her when I was done. She'd stand at the nurse's station, looking like she was about to fall asleep, and upon the suggestion that she should go lie down, she fought through it like a toddler, declaring that she wasn't tired. When I finally got the chance to talk to her, she was asleep in the TV room. I woke her and suggested that she go to her room, but after a few minutes she was back in the halls. Occasionally, during our talks, I wont say anything, to watch for the pressured speech. She'll just stare at me, nodding, and saying "yup", until she's onto the next topic.
When we talked, I repeated to her the things she had to work on - to be more conscious of her emotions (though obviously she can't control them), to take care of her hygiene (mouthwash, toothpaste, showers, handwashing, etc.), to keep her hands to herself and stay out of the other patients' rooms, and to take her meds without arguing. She burst into tears and said that the medicine wasn't working - that she'd always be like this.
Friday: It was a difficult day. She hadn't woken up for breakfast, and so I went to wake her, to briefly see how the night was. Minutes later, we could hear her screaming and crying all through morning report, and I think what set her off was seeing some of the other patients - who'd arrived after her - being discharged. Soon thereafter, she had a titanic, cataclysmic meltdown - screaming and crying at the top of her lungs as she sat on the floor, kicking her feet like a child throwing a tantrum. The other patients looked on but quickly lost interest - they'd all gotten used to her. She scooted along the floor on her bottom, and made her way into an empty patients' room. Another student and I followed her, and tried to calm her down and coax her out, but she was completely beyond reason - alternately screaming that she wasn't going to stay here, and that she wasn't going to be discharged - she didn't know what she was saying. Finally, security was called, and one big guy gently lifted her like a little doll and carried her to her room, where the screaming continued. As expected, she got her cocktail, and the wrath of her mania subsided for a while.
I sat with Timothy, doing his intake paperwork, and she very quietly tried to sneak up on me. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw her shoes - white Crocs - and told her hello. She exploded with a child's surprised "How did you know it was me?" Timothy laughed and said "because he can smell you!" I didn't quite know how to react to that - seeing as how it's entirely possible that I could have -and just told her that we'd talk later. She came back again before Tim and I had finished.
I talked to her briefly about her earlier meltdown, citing it as an example of why we were keeping her. She told me that she had to get out and that time was money - she had to make up for the time she lost locked up in her parent's house. Her mom had told her that people had been calling her cell-phone, and she was afraid that her friends would forget her. She mentioned she felt like a burden to her family, and wondered if it would have been better for them if she had not been born. She was frustrated that people who arrived after her were being released and she wasn't - she told me that she knew they'd just go home and be lazy, but that when we discharged her, she'd go and join the Salvation Army to help the poor kids. Making up for lost time and doing good works in an attempt to erase what she saw as a waste of time and money is a constant theme in the her skewed logic.
I worked with the other patients as usual that day, spending a large chunk of it sitting in the psychiatrist's office going over Tim's records of previous admissions, and figuring out his medication. Several times Sunny walked by with a few of the other new patients, talking about how she should be discharged. When she saw me, she'd give a smile and a wave, and then it was back to her soap-box.
That afternoon, I spoke to her father, who clearly doesn't get it. She's been like this for several months, and he spoke to me about how she'd listen to her ipod too loudly on the subway, and how she sat at home all day for years watching TV - is that what did this? It isn't normal, right? He talked about how she couldn't come home until she was normal, because she couldn't hold a job - just look at her, he said; she'd put out hundreds of resumes, but no one wanted to hire her because of the way she looked. I tried to tell him that we'd keep her until she stabilized, and then we'd talk about what else could be done for her. He told me to tell her that her mother would come visit, and to stop calling.
Later that day, she had another meltdown - I told her I'd talked to her father, and she burst into tears and say "But why? He beats me!" I told her that her mother was coming later on that day (as she does every day), and through her tears she asked me when. I told her that I didn't know when, and it was all downhill from there. I went back to another patient, and she went over to the nurse's station to call her mother. They shooed her away as usual, quickly growing impatient. The tears continued, and one of the nurses who speaks some Chinese dialect (which, apparently Sunny's parents speak) tried to calm her down. Once again, she was out of control - almost as bad as before. We tried to get her to sit and she shoved the chair across the hallway, luckily missing the guy in the wheelchair. I thought we'd have to call security again, and give her another shot, but one of the residents walked her away.
I went back to work, and she came up again and wanted to talk. I could see that her gums were bleeding, and suggested that she go use some mouthwash. I didn't know where her dental care stuff was - and so when she went into the open "clean utilities" closet to reach into a plastic container, the nurses and social workers swarmed on her like riot-breaking police-officers, shouting at her like she'd done something terrible. I quickly intervened and immediately felt terrible - I told them that I had told her to get her toothbrush and mouthwash, and that it was my fault. She glared at a couple of them, giving them looks like they were idiots, and went to brush her teeth.
We talked a bit more later that day - it was the end of the week and I wanted to get home and go to the gym, but I felt that I owed it to her to talk for a bit. She sat there, sedated as usual, and slowly nodded while I talked, her eyes heavy-lidded. She always seems calmed by this simple exchange, and it's no surprise that she always comes looking for me; I am perhaps the only one who has the patient left to talk with her like a human being.
This being the locked ward, the students don't have keys, and we have to wait to be let out. When one of the other students poked his head into the lunch-room to tell me that someone had opened the door, I reminded Sunny of the things she had to work on, told her that I had to go, and that I'd see her Monday. I don't think she likes having her "therapy" cut short, because when I say that time is up, she always gets up and goes away very quickly. This time, however, some nurses were standing in a knot, talking in front of the open door, and I couldn't get past them. Sunny just stood down the hall, waving like a lost kitten until I finally got out. I was in a funk all the train ride home, because as likable as she is, she really isn't getting any better.
Sunny is a fascinating clinical case; over and over the doctors remark how fortunate we are to see a first-time manic episode. it's incredibly interesting - I could sit and listen to her delusions all day - but it's also heartbreaking, because her future looks bleak, and she seems to know it. She'll occasionally cry about how how she has to do something with her life - she apparently was asked to leave the art school because of a huge temper tantrum, and has since had a string of short-lived jobs that never amounted to much. I know intuitively that, eventually, we'll stabilize her and she'll get over this first episode, but I can't help but wonder what lies in store for her.
"Countertransference[1] is defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client -- or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client."
There is perhaps some counter-transference going on - I feel the need to calm her down, and to help her feel better (though the nurses are all tired of her, she seems to inspire nurturing instincts in all of the other patients). Part of it may be that, in watching the change over time as she becomes familiar with me, I feel that I am doing something. Part of it may be that she reminds me of someone else.
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I had to go the gym on Friday, in part because that's what I do, and in part to clear my mind of her, and to get myself out of the disappointment of watching her apparent improvement combust in the fiery wreckage of her titanic temper tantrums. It was my and Nicole's 3rd year anniversary, and we went to Trattoria L'Incontro, a famous Italian restaurant here in Astoria. The wine was excellent, the food was even better (delicious shrimp and pasta), and afterwards we watched Date Night, with Tina Fey and Steve Carell.
The big finale came on Saturday night, however, when we went to see The Lion King on Broadway! She'd already seen in at home, and, apparently, my family all saw it when they went to Vegas, so I was the last one to catch up. It was fantastic! We sat decently close, just behind the orchestra pit, and it was absolutely amazing. The costumes and masks were ingeniously designed, and the acting was absolutely perfect. 2 hours passed like seconds, and, for the first time, I understood all of the Buzz about Broadway. I doubt showtunes will have the same effect on me, but if ever another Disney musical is adapted to the stage (Jungle Book, anyone?), you can count me in.
