circling around to the same old places

After a frantic 5:30 AM taxi ride to the emergency room, Tabitha was fully admitted into a nearby hospital on Thursday. She's still there, and they appear to still have no idea what's wrong with her. So far we've been told uterine cyst, kidney stone, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, plain old gas, and urinary tract infection, as well as being told that she was going to be transferred to another hospital where her insurance is more effective (which means she's getting charged ungodly amounts of money as we speak) followed by an announcement about fifteen minutes later that they were going to issue medication for IBS and send her home. (Hint: this didn't happen. We debated later whether or not that doctor actually mentioned his decision to anyone other than us.)
It's just frustrating that so little seems to have actually happened. I haven't spent a lot of time in hospitals proper (more in emergency rooms, and even that is limited), and I'm sure that they do a wonderful job but god, it can be hard to tell. Every order or change takes approximately 2 hours to go through; if Tabby is nauseous and miserable, it takes half an hour for a nurse to respond to the call button, another half an hour before a doctor is called, another hour before somebody comes in and gives her yet another anti-nausea shot. Then there's the mixed diagnoses, which, god, at this point I just wish they'd find something the hell wrong already. I'm afraid they're going to keep her there indefinitely, I'm afraid that all the medication is why she's still nauseous and unable to eat, I'm afraid that she's going to be bankrupt for the next twenty years because it costs so damn much to lay in a bed all day being served gross food that you can't even eat while the occasional doctor who wanders in just looks confused. I think I've been spoiled by those television hospital shows where half the time somebody walks in and spouts some symptoms and immediately a doctor says "Oh, it's this crazy rare syndrome you've never heard of!" Of course, half the time on those shows they're wrong and something goes horribly awry, so I guess I should be happy with slow-and-unsure.
We're hoping she'll get out today, prognosis or no. But I'm not holding my breath.

this could be considered an elegy

I had my last civic concert last night, which could conceivably be seen as an end to my life as a career musician. I've no plans to stop playing anytime soon, but it's fairly doubtful that I will ever again make the majority of my income from my music. As such, it was a fairly major event for me, and in many ways a sad one. I've truly loved my life in music, even when I thought I was going to freakin' die if I had to play, say, Mahler 1 ever ever ever again. (I did, and it was fine.) And it's difficult for me to give up on a dream that I've been cherishing for just over a decade. I remember exactly when I decided that this was what I wanted: I was in Las Vegas at a music festival in the summer of 1997, and Scott Yoo, one of our mentors and teachers and a passionate and opinionated violinist and conductor, asked the crowd of students around him whether this was what they wanted to do. That music festival was the first time really that I'd been surrounded by brilliant and older people who absolutely loved what they did, and it inspired me. I said yes, this is it for me, and I never really let that go until now.
But alas, sometimes a fifteen-year-old girls dreams have to be put to sleep. As much as I love music, and as much as it hurts me to think about possibly never experiencing certain things again -- the joy and clarity of Mozart with a great orchestra, the intense emotional output of a Shostakovitch string quartet, the absolute clarity of playing Stravinsky well (an anal, detail-oriented person's wet dream) -- I feel like it's time to move on. For every good Mozart moment there are thirty absolutely awful ones, and I don't have to constitution anymore to stick it out. Nor am I suited to the audition circuit; one of my teachers at Northwestern constantly told me that I was an excellent orchestra player but I'd never win a job because I just wasn't a soloist. As unkind as this could sound, I'm inclined to agree with him.
So while I'll miss this dream, I am starting to look for new ones. I am starting to think more about going the librarian route, or maybe something else will come my way. In the meantime, I'll keep playing my weird-ass contemporary music (slide whistles, anyone?) and doing whatever else I can. Chamber music will hopefully still exist in my life, as will gigs and maybe even the occasional Mozart moment.

zoom!

I have a new computer, courtesy of my fantastic parents! I feel like an internet god, shooting all over the place at the speed of light. Unfortunately, this is by far the best thing that's happened to me today, but sometimes that happens. Maybe this is a sign that things are headed up.

six words

This will be short, because I'm starving and at the library. As soon as I fix my computer there will be more, including perhaps a picture, and I will read the memoirs everybody else wrote. But here's my six-word memoir, finally.

Being quiet can be very educational.