The proper time to panic

I am starting to be concerned about this semester. Or, I have considered that now might be the time to panic. Granted, this is the hardest material in all of pharmacy school but my brain hurts a great deal after every lecture and I am less coherent in non-school related conversations than usual. Example: typically by the end of the semester, unless you are asking me something about a specific drug or treatment regimen, I have trouble putting together a sentence that includes all the words. I often lose one or more and then have to explain it. In the last few days though I have moved up to calling the girls by the wrong name about 30% of the time, lost the word for lunch and pizza (and probably more things, but it's really amusing to try to talk around those two. Me to spouse: "You know the food that happens about this time of day and it usually isn't the same for me and you because you eat nasty lunch meat and I eat something else and now I am hungry but the baby is eating and I can't think of the word for this? Could you help?"), and just felt overwhelmed by everything. Usually it takes a few weeks or even until after midterms to get to this level of absolute brain redistribution (that is, all brain for pharmacy school and zero for everything non-essential, and what is essential dwindles as finals approach toward sleep, study, caffeine).

Some of it is that we got a new learning management system so all of my class materials are hidden in new places in an interface that looks funny and doesn't organize things the same way at all. It triples the time it takes me to prepare for a lecture because I can't find the files to read and the textbook assignment is in page numbers and my e-book seems to have forgotten page numbers exist and soforth. It amuses me that while I like new tech, I hate having to adapt to it and it frustrates me until I've gotten to play with it enough that I know what I'm doing. I hate it doubly much when it is misbehaving and I know it but I can't make it stop.

I'll also add that I keep coming home and looking at the living room and thinking, "At any moment Little Monster will be mobile. She rolls but hasn't realized she could roll more than once, she bounces in crawling position and spins but doesn't quite crawl. Yet. At any moment..." and wondering how to keep the kid's tiny toys away from her and how we will ever barricade the TV and other cords and it overwhelms me very quickly. I just don't even know where to start. Probably with toy removal.

To boot, I have had what I suspect is a lingering very angry cyst for the past 2 months and I got fed up and saw my OB. Who is leaving. Just like every other doc I've seen in the past 10 months who had been with the clinic less than a year (so about 5 in a practice of around 35). Sigh. Anyway, it's the usual round of tests and trying to fix things. I am pleased that my doc was all "and let's check your thyroid because your hair is dwindling" without me pointing it out and asking "so... do we check my thyroid too?" Which means I am somewhat seriously considering getting a wig made with what's left of my hair for when it is all gone because it must be that noticeable to everyone else. Today's exam included a student (resident? I wasn't really paying attention) so I got double manual inspections and it hurts triple much as a result. OW. Hopefully it is a cyst and not scar tissue or some other ugliness. Endo folks, how did you get a diagnosis? I'm very pleased to know that it's PCOS but if it's also something else, I wanna know now so I can get this as fixed as possible.

And I suppose at this point, I am just trying to stay as close to caught up as possible at everything while still putting the computer away from 4:30pm until after bedtime. I think I may suddenly lose even more sleep this semester than the average person with a baby and professional school (and really, does that person exist? Doubt it.)...

Of course, there's the bonus stress of the spouse's career crash and current unemployment. It mostly looms beneath the surface at this point. I hate uncertainty and mystery and indecision and that is where we are. When you crash your career with one wrong move (since that's all it takes in this industry and that also makes me nuts... but it isn't my industry so I should just let it go...) it is hard to think of what is next and what should be next and what you'd like to be next. Hates-moving-so-much kid adds to the stress. Before we would just have moved for work and gotten over it, but now? Now we will try to move just once more, possibly ever, probably to at most one more community. That probably means following my job and that means a holding pattern until I have one. In 2 years or a bit less. Sigh.

For family movie night, I'm going to demand we watch Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this week because I need a 100 minute reminder not to panic. Assuming I have a hundred minutes to spare from studying. Sigh.