Wrap up

I had dinner with my friend Matt tonight. Maggiano's was crowded, so we took one of those tall tables in the lounge. I clamored on up, took off my coat, fussed with the contents of the table...at which point I finally stopped moving, looked at him, sat back and said, "Wow. What a damn week."

Farewell, stressful week.

We had a lovely dinner tonight, a languid affair of good wine and good conversation full of the esoterica and philosophical musings that tend to characterize our more casual discussions away from the hospital. With, of course, a heavy garnish of sardonic wit and punny entendres. After all, even outside the office, we're still us.

The folks and I had a good morning. I made eggs with stuff for breakfast (like an omelet, only more scrambled-y). I indoctrinated my mom to the Wii. My dad made a most excellent coffee mess.

I'm not glad my dad got so sick this week, but I'm definitely grateful for the extra time I got to spend with them.

And so, as it is, everyone's home safe and sound and tucked in to their beds. I'm cold (perhaps I'll turn off the ceiling fan) and have officially stayed up way too late on a school night.

Tomorrow? New week, new month.

So long, February. Don't hurry back. 

Wiiiiiii!

(You have to say that out loud. The double entendre is in the onomatopoeia. Gesundheit.)

I think that somehow today I recommitted to my "change your mind and change the world" plan, that I again decided optimism for its own sake was warranted. The last week has tried very hard to suck the life out of me, and rather than fight it, I've decided instead to simply refuse to let it.

Today wound up being another good day. In truth? Yesterday was pretty hard, but when I focused on the good in it, I found that there actually was quite a lot. Today had it's rough edges as well, but, you know...

I overslept a little, but managed to pick my cousin up in time for her to carpool with me to CH. I dropped her off at work, ran some errands, went to Starbucks and mostly played on Facebook worked (I'm still buried beneath a pile of unwritten and overdue notes. But I got two discharge summaries done this morning. There's hope). I met my completely awesome shrink (have I mentioned how much she rocks, offering me a Saturday slot and whatnot?) and we actually had a really good and productive session. I bummed around at Border's for a while, picked up a book for me, one for my dad, one for my aunt, and then swung by and picked up my cousin, who it turns out had a very interesting morning (and has also caught the plague, which is sad. Damn patients, can't keep their germs to themselves). I dropped her off, got lunch, hung out with my folks.

And? I finally broke down and bought a Wii. I? So totally heart that thing (don't worry, Claud, I don't have the cow game yet). It was a bit beyond my means, but my folks helped out and there were gift cards involved. I bought a second controller used at GameStop.

I have to say... it was completely and totally worth every penny, merely to play Wii Bowling with my dad.

I also sucked it up and bought Super Mario Brothers for Wii, which is not actually that good a Wii game, but totally makes up for it in nostalgia. If, of course, you're from the generation that spent countless hours of their childhood playing low-resolution but high-awesomeness games on the NES. It was remarkable, how I even remembered where the little one-ups and bonus boxes and whatnot were in the original game, like it was somehow stored in my body memory. And after my parents went to bed, I sat there remembering sleepovers and Skittles and Cool Ranch Doritos, summer afternoons with my cousin D (who saved the princess way before I did), big hair, "boy-crazy" friends, jelly shoes and Hypercolor t-shirts.

It made me smile way more than any of those things ever did at the time.

And in the midst of today I made plans for tomorrow. Family time in the AM, folks have to be at the airport by 3ish, and then they get on the big silver bird back to the Chi. After I drop them off, though, Cleo and I are celebrating our collective survival of the past two months or so in typical girly fashion (what isn't made better by a mani-pedi?). And then I have dinner plans later, although so far the plan is exactly as cohesive has, "Let's have dinner tomorrow. What, 7? Yeah, that'll work."

Plus, Maggie and I found the first evidence of daffodils poking through the ground today. Spring is coming!!

Even as completely stressful as this week has been, it's been good to have my family here. And the stress I know about (much less what's lurking in the shadows) doesn't show too many signs of letting up anytime soon. So, I guess there's a choice to be made. I have strong family ties, good friends around me, I have the best dog ever. And every day people let me intimately into their lives and get a fleeting glimpse of the boundless expanse of wonder that is the human psyche.

How can I pass that up?

Good things

Dad's home (well, at my house). He's feeling better.

It's Friday.

My cousin's doing a rotation out here at the Family Practice Center. She and I have been carpooling when we can. On our drive home today, I took the back way because the traffic on the I-40 was heinous. We were driving over Jordan Lake just in time to see the last glowing embers of the pink Carolina sky as the sun sank into the rippling water.

Today, my four year old patient asked me to kiss his boo-boo. I did, and then he gave me a very sweet small little wet kiss on my cheek.

I like today.

The smell of hospitals in winter

It snowed in NC again today.

Dad is getting better.

I am completely exhausted.



It's been one long-ass February.

First break

North Cack

Mom and I are back home in NC. Maggie is relieved. Dad is on his way by ambulance. He's feeling better, although not great.

I? Am tired. And have a thirteen-hour day tomorrow. Awesome.

Wrung

I am wiped. Out.

So, we're still in SC. My dad got himself admitted to the hospital this am (not near the ER that's five minutes away, but to the main hospital which is a half hour north).

He's feeling better - has stopped puking, is eating and getting some fluids IV, generally doing better - but my mom and I have had one hell of a long day.

I tried to take a nap this afternoon. I think it made things worse.

I think I need a few days off to recover from this "vacation," yo.....

We're not so good at this "vacation" thing.

So, day one of beach vacation wasn't a total failure.

We all made it up for the sunrise this morning. It was awesome. I took way too many pictures (duh).

Then the folks and I putzed a little, finally made it out the door, couldn't find the IHOP, finally found the IHOP, etc. I resisted the pull of the New York Cheesecake Pancakes. All was well, except my dad kept looking more and more pale. Which, okay, fluorescent lighting isn't flattering to anyone. But he finally says, somewhat nonchalantly, "I think my blood pressure must be low."

Which it was.

There was some calm, quiet arguing about whether or not to call EMS, but once I recruited the waitress onto my side (when she happened to walk up to the table, ask if things were okay, and agree with me), it was a done deal. So we got to meet the very nice people North Myrtle Beach Rescue Squad as well as the strapping young fellows from Horry County EMS. And as a bonus, the fine people of Seaside Medical Center (or Seafront? Seaview? No! Wait! Seacoast) were very pleasant as well, there in their giant 8-bed trauma center. Which was, also, pretty new, strangely high tech, and very charming. Or, at least quaint.

Dad got a liter of fluid, and his blood pressure came up a little. The doc suggested some med adjustments but released him into our care. He spent the afternoon being a little woozy, but, woozy in front of a picture window resplendent with panoramic ocean-front views. Dinner perked him up and he's actually looking quite chipper right now.

My mother and I are a little worn out, though.

But generally, the rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I cast on a new baby blanket (#5 of the season. Thanks to Carol for the pattern rec). Mom and I went to the BiLow. We overcooked a frozen pizza or two and I took a very long sunset walk on the beach.

I love the ocean. I think I've been ocean deficient since I got back from Hawaii. I think I must've been a mermaid in a previous life.

By the seashore

So the fam and I are in Myrtle Beach.

(Don't rob my house. The dog sitter's there. And Maggie will bite you.)

It was a long day. Picked up the folks at the airport, drove down south of the border.

But we have a great condo. And it's very pretty down here.

'Night, all.

I take a somewhat different approach.

I heart this so.

Wow, has it been a long-ass week. Maybe I should try blowing the dust out of my patient's ears...it makes about as much sense as many of the other things we do.

Did I mention it's been a long-ass week?

It just gets worse and worse.

Read this.

Huh.

In follow up to Tuesday's post, it seems that not only is there no such thing as safety online, but you're not even safe from the people who are trying to keep you safe.

Then again, I guess that's not a new truth, either. But this does rather take it to a whole new level.

You look tasty...

Scary out there

So, I've always said, you can't shelter your kids from the world. To protect them, you have to stay with them, know where they're going, teach them how to protect themselves when they're not there. No child-safe internet blocker is ever going to work, because kids will find ways around everything.

They're kids. They're adaptive, and creative, and sneaky. It's what they do.

Things like this prove my point.

So, a friend commented on Facebook that she had to look up this thing she'd heard about called Chat Roulette. I, of course, tend to be curious about everything, and also, I have two adolescents therapy kids with whom I work closely (and, as I've discovered lately, I have to keep up with my 66 year old patient as well. But, I don't worry as much about her being preyed on. She's pretty sharp). Plus, I'm on the child unit, and headed into a child fellowship. I like to keep an eye on the landscape, know what's out there for them to get into.

The concept of this is kinda cool, right? You log on...well, not even that, because it's completely anonymous. You click a button, and you get matched up with a random stranger anywhere in the world. In one respect, this is awesome. I spent about 20 minutes wandering around, chatted briefly with some very nice people in France, and Australia, and elsewhere in the US. I talked for a bit with a nice man in China who's trying to improve his English. I got to use a little of my terrible French. The worst thing any of them said to me was that the one of the people in France told me I was old. I guess when you're 18... But in that aspect, it makes the world a little smaller, allows you to interact with people in other cultures, etc.

That, I recognize, is a tremendously idealistic view.

So, many of the people on this thing have webcams. I saw a lot of high school and college kids, who, yeah, kind of a vulnerable group. Especially considering some of the other things I managed to see on there. Wow. Not enough eye bleach in the world.


::sigh:: It's amazing. I'm guessing that wouldn't even be blocked at the hospital (whereas, you know, everything else is). The anonymity is superficially protective, but also disinhibiting. It perpetuates this idea that you can say or do or be anything you want, and not worry about it, when in fact you should worry about it quite a bit. Especially if your judgment isn't very good because, say, your frontal lobes aren't fully formed yet. There's no guarantee that the people on the site are over 16 (by clicking the button you agree that you're over 16. There isn't even a checky-box. Oh, yeah, that's gonna work...). Or aren't, say, serial killers and pedophiles. In fact, I'm guessing this would be a deviant Mecca in a way that Facebook or MySpace or any of the other sites we worry so much about never could.


Yeesh.


Now, admittedly, I'm a hypervigilant, socially suspicious psychiatrist with a trauma history. But, seriously, folks. The shit that's out there is scary. 

Run under

So I'm back on the child unit for a month.

Kevin, who of course has the same last name as me, is my co-resident. Our attending's last name is two letters off from ours.

It's going to be a long month.

I'm exhausted.

Plus/minus

It's been a good weekend, in the balance. But there's been some darn annoying things as well.

I've been stood up no less than four times this weekend by four different friends. Two of my friends bailed, independently, for the movie last night (you know, after I'd bought the tickets, so like ten minutes prior to the start of the flick. Fortunately, the theater refunded me for the two unused tickets). Another friend was supposed to go with me to see tigers this am, another thing involving tickets, but I woke him up when I called to say I was ten minutes out, and he was...clearly not feeling so hot (ahem. I got in at 2, okay? I was moving. AND I had coffee waiting). So he bailed. I was a little annoyed when I hung up with him (not as much because of the ticket, not so much because of the last-minute-ness, but mostly because I had to drive 45 minutes out of my way to get him and didn't realize how far away CH is from Pittsboro, and I was already running a little late). I was pulling off the highway, so I gave his coffee to the guy panhandling at the exit. Who was very kind and grateful, and I think might have been a patient of mine at some point. So that made me feel better.

Today is the Chinese New Year, and it is, of course, the year of the tiger. In fact, it is also a metal year, the combination of which is associated with white tigers. And my friend happens to volunteer at the Carolina Tiger Rescue, where they just happen to have a white tiger. His name is Jellybean.

So she invited some of us to come take her tour this am and ring in the Year of the Tiger with...well...actual tigers. It was awesome. They have a bunch of different predatory cats in their sanctuary, most of whom have remarkable stories (i.e., the two that were found wandering down the street in a town in MO. Or the one chained to a lamp post. Or the one who turned up on the CTR doorstep one morning in a crate with a note, like an abandoned baby. Or the two that lived in a junkyard, and one of them is blind, which the owner didn't know. How does one miss something like? Anyhow...). Jenny's been a tour guide there for a number of years now, and the cats love her. It was a great tour; very informative, and a lot of fun. Not to mention, of course I took WAY too many pictures.

I was supposed to have lunch plans today as well, but, once again, got stood up. The friend I was supposed to have lunch with never called and didn't return my text, so, I decided to wander my way home and stopped to take some more pictures of the Haw River. Which was fortunate that I didn't just turn around and grumble my way home, because shortly after I stopped Jenny texted me and asked if I wanted to join them for lunch. Which I did, and had a wonderful time with her, her boyfriend, and a coupled set of their friends. It was also a really good time. Plus, it got me over by the Target, where I needed to go anyhow...

When I consider the things I got ditched for this weekend - the movie, the tigers, lunch - I really can only come to one conclusion, though: Wow. Four of my friends did a really good job of missing out on some seriously awesome stuff.

Like Pocahontas, but bluer

I had a lovely evening tonight. We went to an Indian restaurant in Durham to celebrate the February birthdays, which turned out to mean Tyler's (Mikaela has a bday this month, too, but she couldn't join us). The food was really good, the conversation and company were especially awesome, and we drew a good crowd. I think there were 17 of us, which was awesome.

In the course of dinner, we started talking about things and decided that we were going to the 10pm showing of Avatar in 3D. Six of us were going; two bailed at the last minute (like, after I'd already bought the tickets), so it ended up being me, Sonia, Bernie, and Liam. Which is a good bunch.

Ohh. It was awesome.

Wait, wait - who is this?

Right?? Totally looks like Sigourney Weaver (which it is. Well, sort of).

The effects were awesome. It was definitely worth seeing in 3D. But I'm kind of glad we opted for 3D and not IMAX 3D, because about halfway through I was so queasy I had to leave.

Seriously. I've never been carsick, airsick, seasick, ever, ever, ever in my entire life. I've been on some pretty rough flights and choppy seas. But, apparently, Pandora did me in.

I went back in after about 5 or so minutes, though, and watched the rest of the flick with my left eye closed. It was a great story, kinda predictable, but awesome. And the title is a criticism I've heard often, but frankly...I saw a lot of Hawaiian mythology in it, but it might be that I'm more familiar with that than the Amerind counterparts (and given that somehow the Na'vi speak English with a softly West African accent, there's probably some African allusion in there as well). It was visually stunning and outright epic; the attention to detail was incredible. But I really enjoyed the undercurrents of mysticism and various allegories that were woven subtly into the landscape of the story. I'm never sure if those are things I see or things that were actually intended, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. As someone whom I've since forgotten once said, what the reader sees in a novel is what matters, more than what the writer tells.

But, now it's 2am, and I'm getting up to go see tigers in the morning (more about that later), so maybe I'd best get to bed.....

Gratuitous cuteness

It was a long day. And a rough day. And I've spent way too much time looking at online knitting patterns (because I refuse to knit ANOTHER color-block baby blanket. Four in three months is my limit). And I found this, which is not a blanket, nor is it knit, but I think is really quite cute...

You betcha

One of my med students pulled this up at the end of team rounds yesterday. If you haven't seen it yet, I think it's one of the very funniest most fucking retarded things I've seen in a long time....

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sarah Palin Uses a Hand-O-Prompter
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

From the Windy City, South

(It's windy, windy, windy in NC today.)

Headache

Ow.

But in related news, it got me out of my god-awful meeting tonight. Which probably wouldn't actually have been that awful if I wasn't headachy and crabby. But still.

Margarita therapy

Today was, I think, one of the worst days on record. Oyyyyyyyy.....

But, fortunately, I had dinner with friends, and that helped a LOT. It's amazing what can be healed with chips and salsa and raucous laughter.

It reminds me how grateful I am to have the kind of people in my life that I have in such abundance.

Super Sunday

Wow! What a game!

Yeah, I gave in and watched the Super Bowl. (And flipped between that, SVU, and the Puppy Bowl. Which was equally awesome)

It still wasn't as good as this one:

Rainy Saturday

Today was not super productive...I'm cool with that.

This is our Second Look weekend. Now, see, in the cluster of ridiculousness that is the Match, you interview at a program, and you get the interview day experience, so often people go back for a second look to get a more informal view of what the program is like. We here at Baby Blue started my intern year trying to consolidate that experience, so that the kids that did come back could get the best bang for their buck. So we have this weekend when we try to get everyone to come back at the same time, and try to organize things like tours of the state hospital, a real estate tour, case conference, and lots of face time with the residents and faculty. This year, it started Thursday night with a dessert for the applicants and some members of the PGY1-3 classes (not including me, because I have class on Thursday nights now).

Yesterday was, like, holy cow. I started the day...well, I started the day by realizing it was 57 degrees in the apartment and that the heat was out. It took some fussing, but I figured out it was the circuit breaker and fixed it, but needless to say between the getting home ridiculously late Thursday and the cold apartment, I didn't sleep so well. So there was a triple-shot mocha involved in my morning as well. I co-led one of the small groups ("small" being something of a relative term here, I'm noticing. They're, like, 30 students. Mine were 10. But there were still pterodactyls around when I went to med school, so...) for the second year medical students, ran back to the unit, got to rounds late (which was planned), did a discharge, scarfed some lunch, saw my therapy kid, and then went and was part of the panel discussion for the applicants. I had another patient at 3 who took until about 4:30 (I anticipate this about her), then I tried to get as much of my shit together and paperwork done, etc, as I could tolerate before heading off to the dinner party at the chair's house.

At which point it was a monsoon. I mean, really, the standing water was amazing. And of course the chair lives out in a more rural area where "only part of our road is paved" (we estimated about 10 feet of it). So Scott rode over with me, preferring to let me and Joe the Jeep traverse the rivers of mud instead of his decidedly non-4WD car with bald tires. Shortly after we got there, Annie's husband showed up and got his car very stuck in the mud in front of the house. I offered to make an attempt, but, no, no, we've got it, burly men, blah blah blah. So, okay. I wandered off, talked to people, schmoozed a bit. And when they came back in, having failed with all of their manly brute force, I offered again. You know, before they called AAA.

I? Am from Chicago. Where we get stuck in the snow all the time. I got behind the wheel and had their car out in under two minutes.

The party itself was a very good time. I had a lot of fun, both with some of the applicants as well as with my friends. It was a nice excuse for us to hang out in a fairly informal way on the department's dime. Scott and I cut out around 10, which was of course some 16 hours or so after I'd left my house that morning.

Today was much more laid back. We had a brunch for the applicants at one of the fancy hotels near the hospital (so, you know, 30 miles from where I live) and it was really quite lovely. After that I ran a couple of errands and wandered over to Starbucks, where I met up with Matt and we were so very productive that I'm not sure he ever opened the textbook he brought with him. I did manage to get a little bit of work done after he left to go hang out with another friend of his, but decided my table by the door of the 'Bucks was too cold and I left and wandered back to my house.

After that...hmm...I know Maggie and I must've done *something*...in fact, I did accomplish a couple of things, although not as much as I would've liked and nothing work related, but got some important stuff done nonetheless.

Tomorrow is all mine. I have no particular Super Bowl plans (I'm not much of a football fan, but, I do sometimes go to these things and socialize). I'm foreseeing some grocery shopping, a little note writing at Starbucks, and some reading for my class....

...probably along with a nap and some catching up on my DVR, because next week's going to be chaos again.

Quirky

Okay...so....included in this video are (I think):




1. My old roommate
2. A handful of my childhood friends
3. Several of my old teachers.

Oy....

Brr

It's been a long ass day. But not a bad one.

Work was long. And chaotic. But I only have six more days on the crisis unit.

We went out for dinner after work - it was Mikaela's birthday today, so she and I and Scott and Wren (the small but motley crew we could cobble together at the last minute) went out, and Peng joined us later. It was lovely. There was a lot of laughing. Then I had class #2 of my mindfulness course, which was...I dunno. I'm finding it to be kind of disappointing, but I'm sure it will perk up soon. And one of my previous classmates has joined our group, which is pleasant. After class, though, in a remarkable joint display of poor judgment, I ended up standing in the parking lot talking with a classmate of mine for two hours in the 38 degree weather. At one point he looks down and says, "My toes are frozen." I said, "Yeah, we should go." So we walked ten feet down the parking lot and then talked for probably another 45 minutes.

Y'all, I'm cold.

And I need to go to bed. Because morning does come awfully early around these parts....

Hip hop hooray...ho....hey....ho......

Please turn the crazy down.

So I'm at work today, and I'm at the nurses station, amidst the cacophony of the unit, simultaneously on the phone with an outside therapist, text paging my attending, trying to keep one of my freakinawesomeintern's more irritating patients at bay, and trying to keep my black-belted freakinawesomeintern from slugging said patient...when one of freakinawesomeintern's other more annoying patients jumps up so he is leaning onto the counter, pushed up on his forearms, feet off the ground, and leaning so far forward he's about six inches from freakinawesomeintern's face. He said something to her, and I didn't hear what, but I quickly interrupted Outside Therapist with a, "hang on." And I covered the mouthpiece of the phone and I gave him what my friend Robin would describe as a "teacher look." You know - the very pointed, you know you're not supposed to be doing that, you'd better stop it now or there's going to be hell to pay, every schoolchild fears this look, that teacher look.

And I said - again, very directly - "You need to get down off that counter. Right. Now."

He backs about halfway off (this is when I knew I was going to win), and says, "Why?" I said, "Do you want to go into seclusion?" And then he was like, yeah, seclusion would be fun, blah, blah, blah.

That was a gaffe. What I should've said was something more along the lines of, "If you don't get down, we will put you in seclusion." Or, even better, said nothing. But I recovered with my best alpha dog staredown (in which you look fixedly and directly into one eye - normally we look back and forth between someone's eyes. Only looking into one produces a much more unwavering stare and thus confers much more dominance). He mouthed off to me a bit, but backed off, and walked away.

Later, I walked on to the unit, and he gives me this shadowboxing bob-and-weave kind of maneuver. I gave him the teacher look again, and pulled out my best Dog Whisperer calm assertive energy. He backed down immediately.

It never fails to amaze me how much people are like dogs.

And how unlike dogs they are. Because dogs let go of things, run back and play, tails wagging.

And that was just one of our patients.

People are crazy.

My head hurts.

Proxy

So, I read this today on Paulo Coelho's blog. And I really liked it. So I thought I'd share...

On the importance of “No”
Published on February 1, 2010

Paulo Coelho

“Hitler may have lost the war on the battlefield, but he ended up winning something,” says M. Halter. “Because in the 20th century, men created the concentration camp, resuscitated torture, and taught their fellow men that it is possible to close one’s eyes to the misfortunes of others.”

The most important words in any language are small words. “Yes,” for example. Love. God. These are words that are easy to utter, and they fill in empty spaces in our world.
However, there is one word – also a small one – that we find difficult to say:
“No”.

And we see ourselves as generous, understanding, and polite. Because “no” is considered to be cursed, egoistic, not at all spiritual.

We have to be careful here. There are moments when we say “yes” to others and in fact are saying “no” to ourselves.

All the great men and women in the world have been people who, rather than say “yes”, said a very big NO to everything that did not fit their ideal of solidarity and growth.

We may often be called intolerant, but it is important to open up and fight against everything and all circumstances if we see injustice, manipulation or cruelty. No-one can admit that, after all is said and done, Hitler set a pattern that can be repeated because people are incapable of protesting. And to reinforce this fight, let us not forget the words of John Bunyan:

“For all that I have suffered, I do not regret the problems that I have faced – because they are what brought me to where I wanted to arrive. Now that I am close to death, all that I have is this sword, and I hand it over to whoever wants to follow their pilgrimage.
“I carry with me all the marks and scars of the combats – they are the witnesses of what I have lived through, and the rewards for what I have conquered. It is these cherished marks and scars that will open for me the gates of Heaven.
“There was a time when I was always hearing stories of bravery. There was a time when I lived only because I needed to live. But now I live because I am a warrior, and because one day I want to be in the company of Him in whose name I have fought so hard.”

So scars are necessary when we fight against Absolute Evil, or when we have to say “no” to all those who, sometimes with the best of intentions, try to impede our journey towards dreams.

It's interesting, to me, as someone who has difficulties saying "no," to think about this. Particularly the idea that every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else, and what it means what that something else is you.

Hmm.

In other news, Mags and I are back home. She got to spend the day with May's (whom I think I called June the other day. Damn pseudonyms! June is engaged, though, BTW) wife (we're going to call her Juliet. Like July, but girlier. She needs a pseudonym, because I hope to be spending more time with them as life moves forward). Apparently they had fun. Work was fine, although not especially "fun".