Tuesday Fragments

It's been a while since I did the whole "Friday Fragments" thing. But today was sort of all over, so it seemed fitting. Even if it is Tuesday.

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I spent a lot of time on the NOAA website today. I felt better. I now feel worse. The entire Eastern Carolina coast is under a hurricane watch right now. Seriously, if Earl invites himself along to our beach retreat, I'm going to lose my damn mind.
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I actually said the words today, "We had a big argument over Costco." That should just never be uttered.
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Hurricanes always remind me of a particular man from my past, who lived (lives? Who knows) in Hurricane Alley and allegedly threw a hell of a hurricane party. I learned more about hurricane proofing than I ever wanted to from him. Who knew it might actually turn out to be relevant?
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I got my stuff today for the conference I'm going to in New York in October. That made me a little giddy.
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Overheard on my walk in to work the other day (remember - hospital in the middle of a college campus): "I'm not sure this geology class is worth the half hour walk to class. I mean, I pass like fifty rocks on the way there, why not just study those?"
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Corny Joke #1 I heard at the Starbucks at work today: "Skeleton walks into a bar. He orders a beer and a mop."
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Corny Joke #2 I heard at Starbucks today: "Helium walks into a bar. The bartender says, hey, we don't serve inert gasses here! Helium doesn't react."
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Corny co-worker joke I heard today: "I bit into a pumpkin muffin and was like, 'wow, this is fantastic! Oh my gourd!!'"
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TV quote I love du jour: "Broken bodies are easier to mend than broken minds." From NCIS, about PTSD.
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Tomorrow my coffee shop is celebrating its 10 year anniversary. I'm excited about the discount. And wish them another 10.
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The hurricane is going to miss us. The hurricane is going to miss us. The hurricane is going to miss us. 
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I really like my coffee people. I'm a little bummer that after I get back I'm going to have to get to work earlier and not linger so long at the coffee shop in the morning.
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I really need to go to bed. I haven't been getting out of bed so well in the mornings...

Friday Fragments, inspired by gravity

So I'm sitting in the airport in Chicago. My flight, previously scheduled to leave at 7:40, is now scheduled to leave at 8.

Yeah, I got here three hours early.

Part of that was kind of unintentional. I had an awesome, awesome lunch with my folks and my cousins (who just got back from Mexico last night, and were very tan and still on South of the Border time). We met at 2, ate freakin' awesome stuffed pizza, and chatted and visited, and then, you know, it was a little earlier than I'd planned on getting here (I usually aim for 90 to 120 minutes before departure time. After the Christmas day loveliness, I thought I'd shoot for 2-2.5h), but, fine, whatever. So I got here around 4:40. I cleared security at 4:56. Aaaaand....so.....now.....here I am.

I bought a couple of books. I browsed in a bunch of kiosk stores. Starbucks got my drink wrong. I finally succumbed and let myself be robbed at gunpoint bought in to the ridiculous expensive airport wireless. So, while I'm at it, let's do a little Friday Fragments. Quickly, before my battery dies.
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I'm sitting on the floor against the window. It's 14 degrees outside. I finally put my coat on just now. But during this visit, I also acquired a lap blanket that my grandmother knitted. When I checked in my bag, it was 1 pound overweight, so I took the blanket out and put it in my backpack. I'm thinking about whipping that thing out...
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I've been watching a lot of men and women (mostly men) in fatigues in the airport today. And to them I'd like to say two things. 1. Thanks for serving. We feel safer with you around. And 2, couldn't you have worn your dress uniforms today? I know they're uncomfortable, but they're just so scenic...
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This guy sitting next to me at the gate doesn't know it, but I've been watching the movie on his laptop for the past 30 minutes. I'm thinking of asking him for an earbud.
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I struggle with the question every time I come home of whether to move back here or to stay in NC when I'm done with residency. I don't have to make this decision for at LEAST two years. I think, more than anything, it represents me being homesick.
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I really like the internet. It amazes me that I've been able to meet people all over the world, can share pictures and words, thoughts and experiences, philosophies, observations, and amusement. I can feel close to people who are nowhere near me, to some whom I've never met in person. The world is getting smaller by the second.
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My good friends introduced me to Skype this week. I've always been sort of like, yeah, yeah, Skype, I have a phone, whatever, but they regularly eat dinner with their parents/in-laws over Skype. I think this is very cool.
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Have I mentioned the adorableness of my friends' kids? I'd tell you more, but I'd hate to have to shout over that loud, infernal ticking...
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The title of today's post is a reference to an Indigo Girls song, "Airplane." Which is one of my all-time favorites and is quite likely my favorite travel song. You know, when I'm flying.
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In other lyrics-related news, Barb mentioned on FB the other day that her daughter was cracking up at her misinterpretation of the lyrics to Jay-Zs "Empire State of Mind." Google says the chorus starts with "Concrete jungles that dreams are made of." But I was listening to this on the radio today, and I'll be damned if it doesn't actually sound like Alicia Keys is talking about "wintry tomatoes."
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That story also reminds me of this SNL sketch, which I find hilarious.

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Alright. I think I'm going to go read something now....

Friday!! Oh, wait...

Today has been weird. It's Friday, but, I'm still going to work tomorrow. And it feels like Sunday. So, in the spirit of disconnectedness, we'll commence with Friday Fragments...
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I was done with rounds and notes by NINE AM today. It effing ROCKED. It's been a light load over the holiday. But I'm quite certain the rest of the weekend will suck. We'll be out of beds by the morning.
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I was reading everyone's Facebook updates this morning before I went to work, and read the details of my crazy friends who had been shopping all night or were sitting for hours out in the cold, and I thought, hmm. I wonder how many suicidal Black Friday shoppers we'll get today...
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I took the opportunity of the early dismissal to finally get my knee checked out. Damn thing started hurting last Tuesday (so, like, ten days ago), and for the LIFE of me I cannot figure out what the hell I did to it. I was sick Monday, and the next morning I woke up and my knee was all swollen. So, fine, I finally went to the Family Medicine urgent care clinic today. And I have a very distinct clicking in my left knee that says I presumptively have a torn meniscus. I kind of already knew that. Which is part of why I put off going to the doctor. But, she said it'll probably heal itself. So motrin, no gym, watchful waiting for two weeks. If it still hurts, then we'll let the orthopods get involved.
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Read this. I stumbled upon it today. I'd love to hear more of her story. Except, I think it might make me want to vomit.
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I got home around noon after work/doc/Walgreens, and my dog wasn't home. I thought that was a little weird. But then I noticed her leash was gone, and I figured that she probably didn't take herself for a walk. Sure enough, the dog walker returned her about ten minutes later.
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Immediately prior to that, I got pulled over by the local constabulary. Who was like, your plate is expired, ma'am. I said, no, see, they transferred my plates. But then they sent me this other plate in the mail, which, I don't quite get...and then I handed him the license plate. He didn't quite know what to do with that. He didn't write me up. It's a long story that probably has something to do with someone at the dealership checking the wrong box when I bought Joe, but I'll try to get it straightened out next week. Sigh.
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From the Ralphie May comedy special I'm watching right now: "But in Hollywood, they won't call her white trash. They call her bipolar."
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I'm hoping to find my Christmas decorations tomorrow. We'll see how that turns out.

Fr d ay fra ent s

Because I wasn't fragmented enough by the end of the week....
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Apparently there's a nationwide shortage of propofol. The company is blaming a manufacturing error, but personally? I had no idea Michael Jackson's habit was that bad...
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The end result of the above is that this morning in the ECT suite we had to use sevoflurane, an inhaled anesthetic. I...I can't stand that stuff. I've had it a couple of times when I was under the knife, and I had a hell of a time coming out of it, I was nauseated; it's good stuff for most people, but I'm just not a big fan. And I remember when I was in GYN, when we'd have a long day of cases, I'd occasionally be quite woozy and wacky from inhaling that stuff all day. So when I smelled that this morning, I was not super pleased to be standing at the head of the bed.

One of my inpatients, however, came back up to the floor after his morning ECT treatment all like, "wow, they used this different anesthesia today, and man, that stuff was great! I feel so much better!!" I relayed this to the team downstairs between cases, and they all cracked up. Apparently he was one of the few people that had a pretty profound activation reaction to the anesthetic, and got rather giggly and was flirting with the nurses.
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My dog is sleeping with her back feet up by her head. She is the cutest thing ever.
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Here's a funny story I'm stealing from my cousin Danielle - her daughter, who's 2, came up and told her that the dog had nipped her. Danielle asked, why did he do that? Her too-smart-for-her-own-good kid says, "Because I pissed him off."
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I'm watching this week's SVU while I write this. All the major players are bickering at each other. That kind of makes me queasy, like watching your friends' parents fight.
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I do appreciate that Alex Cabot is back - again - though. And when the hell did Dickie Stabler grow up and get adorable?
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So things get a little loose in the psychiatry department on Friday afternoons. This evening, Eva comes into my office and convinces me and Betty to accompany her down the ER for a brief little thing she had to do down there. So we're on our way down, and we were contemplating what you would call a group of psychiatrists? A herd? A gaggle? Eva says, nah, I'm pretty sure it would be a murder, like crows. A murder of psychiatrists. I said, hmm....do you think we're really a murder? Or just, like, a homicidal ideation? So we start giggling about this. And relate the story to Sparrow, who looks at us, deadpan, shakes her head and says, "Word salad." Which lead to a lot of cackling (shrink humor. Not to mention that at this point, Eva, Betty, Peng and I were sitting in an office that belonged to none of us) and Betty howling, "We're a homicidal word ideation salad!" I, of course, couldn't leave that alone, and finally caught enough breath to yelp, "We're a homicidal salad!!!"

Heh. And our patients think we're sane....

Randomness

Well, we haven't had a good Friday Fragments post in a while...and yes, I know it's Sunday...but nonetheless....
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I am now completely caught up on my discharge summaries. Which is helpful, because I was about to get suspended for delinquency. Which...I have to say...I think is completely ridiculous. I take good care of patients. And they're going to suspend me for paperwork. I mean really though....
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I still have two weeks' worth of clinic notes to do, however. All that damn patient care gets in the way, you know?
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Maggie and I went to the Cook Out for dinner tonight. I live right behind it and every now and then the smell gets the best of me and I cave. That's some good stuff, man. What was even funnier was that I put Maggie in the back seat of the car instead of in the way back, which is her spot. Because it was easier, and we were literally going like two blocks. I had to pick her up and put her in the back seat (she jumps readily into the cargo area), and she refused to walk up into the front seat to get out. Wouldn't budge, just kept standing there in the back seat looking at me through the window with this pleading, "don't leave me here!!!" kind of stare. One foot in front of the other, pup...
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There's a show coming up on National Geographic Channel called Search for the Amazon Headshrinkers. It claims to be about a tribe in the Amazon jungles who still practice the shrinking of their enemies' heads. I think, though, that if you based it purely on the title, this search could end in my office.
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I FINALLY unpacked the new vacuum cleaner I bought like two months ago to replace the one that died about then. I vacuumed up a whole new dog today. Not to mention about a jillion little dead bug carcases. I even pulled out the little tools and did the stairs. Meanwhile, my floors may be cleaner, but my allergies are through the roof...
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This was on my radio this morning. I cracked up.

(And ps, what horrible videography we had back then...)

Such a throwback. I love my satellite radio.
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I'm so completely appalled at what happened at Ft. Hood. And have so much to say about it. I'm hoping to finish that post later this week.
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I'm the ECT resident this month, right? So two weeks ago, I get really lost wandering around the second floor. They do ECT in the main OR procedure room, which is at the back of the PACU. Which I finally found, and had a panic attack walking through post-op. Which is when I realized I hadn't been back in an OR since the Emerald Palace.
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I got over it.

It turns out I really like doing ECT.
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Look! Here's a picture of my cute dog....

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Yeah, it's time for bed........

Breaking it down...

Thankfully it's Friday, because wow am I fragmented after this workday...

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I didn't leave work until 7:45 today. I would've left earlier, but I returned a call to one of my patients, who wasn't surprised that I was still at the hospital. She'd called for two reasons - one, she was having this persistent hallucination of smelling something rotting. I said, well, okay, it's possible we need to push up the dose of your antipsychotic, but first, why don't you go see your PCP and make sure this is actually an hallucination, and not, say, a sinus infection.

Two, she said, was that she'd seen her GYN, who has this knowledge of psych meds because of X, and she recommended we try Y, which would possibly fix both her pain problem and address a psych issue (it was a very reasonable and interesting suggestion, by the way). When she's telling me this, she laughed and said, "I told her, 'how interesting. My gynecologist knows psychiatry and my psychiatrist knows gynecology.'" I agree, that's pretty funny.
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By the way? I'm really much happier to be back doing inpatient psychiatry. I think that should tell me something.

Of note, however, even though I love my job, I wouldn't mind doing it a couple less hours per day...I'm just sayin'...
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I'll admit it, I've become completely addicted to FarmTown on Facebook, which is a game where you create a little farm, and plant things, and sell things, and have livestock, and it's very cute.

On a related note, I'm worried that these 12- and 14-hour days are cutting into my Facebook time.
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I'm a little worried about my proclivity for unavailable men. Not, like, married unavailable, just emotionally so. I have theories about this. Somehow, that doesn't seem to keep me from collecting them.
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I picked up a patient this morning whose H&P said she was drinking "between 6-121 beers per day." We had fun with that. And it was clearly a typo, but we learn not to assume in this business. We have another guy on the unit who was taking roughly the equivalent of 120 tablets (not milligrams - tablets) of valium per day. For reals. We think.
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I got all excited when I came home and checked my email, because I had a message offering me a "free gift" from Filatura Di Crossi yarns, which are Italian and typically lovely, or at least interesting. It turned out to be a pattern.

I think it's overpriced.
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I have this clinic patient who's being extremely difficult right now. So I was in Mikaela and Scott's office today, generally ranting about how it was already 3:30 and I still hadn't eaten lunch and I had this patient to deal with and these three very borderline-y patients on my service and blah, blah, blah, and Scott says to me, "Well, now, some people think that you attract and collect specific things for a reason. And we do know what your professional interests are, now, don't we?" (This conversation, of course, followed one about dissociative disorders, which are totally my cup of tea and also very highly comorbid with borderline personality organization/disorder.)

I kinda hate it when he calls me out on stuff like that. I'm also typically really impressed by it.
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Spinning class starts Tuesday!! Not the kind with the bike, the kind with the wheel. And wool. And happiness.
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I'm working this weekend. With Peng, although we won't be covering the same units. And also with Dr. Jabba, who'll be my attending (I'm pleased with that). It's both Peng and my first weekend of coverage. It should be interesting.
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My neighbor is outside revving his engine incessantly. I'm a little annoyed by this, because I'm going to want to be asleep soon. In related news, the new people in apartment D, with whom I share a common wall, are REALLY FREAKIN' LOUD. And I blame them for the roaches.
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On the roach-y front, I found like a dozen of them in the kitchen tonight. Mostly these teeny-tiny little ones who are barely bigger than a fruit fly. A couple were bigger. I also found a really big cricket. I squished them all, and then found a collection of roaches hiding in the corner of my counter under the cutting boards, which I promptly stamped out. The exterminator came today, and is allegedly coming every week for the next few weeks. In the interim, you can call me Dr. Kate, Slayer of Roaches.
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I didn't make it to the gym this morning, and am a little disappointed with myself, although, it's fine. Instead I laid in the dark for 30 minutes and ruminated and made myself anxious. But I'll go tomorrow. In the afternoon, because I'm going to still get up at 5:30 tomorrow to go in and round.
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I'm really, really, really tired...

Manicures done. Dresses on. I look ike the prow of a ship...

Having lunch with Mom, Peng, and the 'maids. Lovely. There were grilled peaches involved. Mmmmmm.

Saturday Fragments

It's PenguinShrink's wedding day!! Since I (am already late, and) clearly don't have time to do a real blog post today, I'm going to try and do some random post-by-text entries. We'll, uh, see how it goes....

But also - yay!!! Big congrats to Peng and Chef!!

Friday Fragments, first edition

So, if you look hard enough in the blogosphere, you can find at least six themes for every day of the week. Barb recently introduced me to the idea of Friday Fragments, though, which I loved. It's basically a melange of randomness.

Much like my brain.

I can't say I plan to do every Friday like this (look at how Love Thursday goes most weeks...) but it's worth the old college try, right? So here goes....

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I had the weirdest day today. Perhaps the highlight was that one of my patients announced their engagement to another patient they met at State Hospital last month. It's a match made on Axis II...

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Little Maxine is staying with us for the weekend, which I think I mentioned yesterday. She really likes to sleep under my bed. She's just barely small enough to do it. I find this a little weird.

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Here's a funny link.

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My therapy kids (15 and 16) never cease to amaze me. I don't remember high school being so rough. I mean, I guess when I think about it hard enough, it probably was just as bad, but I don't remember having to deal with quite as much as they do on such a daily basis.

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Never, never never, never never name your child Crystal. Or Destinee. They run a exponentially higher risk of ending up in the mental health system. It's a fact.

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I often will fall asleep watching Law and Order:SVU. Somehow, it makes me feel safer... I met the Olivia Benson of our county one day at work. She was very nice, and I'm glad there are real people like that out there doing their job.

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In related news, I'm already over the Michael Jackson thing, but it's been really interesting to watch the Facebook feed about all of this. Half of them are like, "I can't believe he's gone!" and the other half are "Good riddance, pedophile!" The man made some really classic music for my generation (my cousin and I used to play the "Thriller" album over and over in his room on this ridiculous brown tape recorder with gigantic buttons that was probably from, like, Fisher-Price or something). But he was a sick man and a lost soul and I think he appeared to be severely mentally ill. Which does not excuse what he probably did do to those children (and many others), but makes it somehow less malicious.

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(Come to think of it, though, there WAS an SVU episode about him, without actually being about him....)

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Next weekend, we're having Peng's bachelorette party. In the middle of the afternoon. On a Friday. But, that's okay, I like a challenge. So in the midst of planning this, I got recruited to be a Passion Party representative. I was like, um, I'm a doctor; my day job is more than enough, thanks. But where were you when I was selling Mary Kay in college?

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I like this: