Considering myself tagged

So my cousin Danielle "created" this meme based on some questions from this book, which she notes was written by a psychologist in order to get yourself thinking. I thought it was interesting. I added a couple (from the first few pages, which are on Amazon). And I echo her terms - if you are reading this, and you like memes, then feel free, you are already tagged.

Do you believe in ghosts or evil spirits? Would you be willing to spend a night alone in a remote house that is supposedly haunted?

I do, which is to say, I believe that we don't really understand the world we live in, the nature and/or physics of consciousness or what happens in the afterlife. I think there are spirits, not necessarily "evil" or "good". And, yeah, probably. Could be fun.

If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?

Generally, I try to let people know what they mean to me. I've come close to dying a couple of times, and I've been around death a lot. I know how tenuous life is. I try to keep that in mind. I hope the people I love know that I love them.

If a new medicine were developed that would cure arthritis but cause a fatal reaction in 1% of those who took it, would you want it to be released to the public?

Absolutely not. That would never get past the FDA. And the class action lawyers would be salivating, regardless of how much time you spent on informed consent. Plus, you know, arthritis is debilitating, but not fatal. We can do better.

Do you think the world will be a better or worse place 100 years from now?

Yes. Also no. I think it depends on your perspective.

Would you accept a million dollars to leave the country and never set foot in it again?

Sure. I get to pick where I'm going, right?

Which sex has it easier in our culture? Have you ever wished you were a member of the opposite sex?

I think men definitely have it easier in our culture, and, really, in most cultures. Please, who hasn't wished that? You know, at least for a day or two. Generally I'm rather happy being a woman, but you've got to wonder what it's like on the other side.

If at birth you could select the future profession of your child, would you do so?

Nah. I mean, on the whole I'd prefer it wasn't a criminal endeavor, but beyond that, anything they want to do that makes them happy and through which they can support themselves is fine with me.

Would you be willing to become extremely ugly physically if it meant you would live for 1,000 years at the age that you choose?

Wait, I get to live for a thousand years?! How come nobody told me before?

If you could wake up tomorrow having gained one ability or quality, what would it be?

Teleportation. I'd never be late again, and I'd save so much on gas.

For an all-expense paid, one week vacation to anywhere in the world you choose, would you be willing to kill a beautiful butterfly by pulling on its wings? What about stepping on a roach?

Oh, I'll step on a bunch of roaches for, like, a Target gift card. The butterfly, well, probably not. It wasn't doing anything to me, and pulling its wings off is just sort of cruel. So it's a double standard. It's a double standard based on pestilence. I mean, really though.

If God appeared to you in a series of vivid and moving dreams and told you to leave everything behind, travel alone to the Red Sea and become a fisherman, what would you do?

I'd probably think about adding some Risperdal to my current medications.

You discover your wonderful one year old child is, because of a mix-up at the hospital, not yours. Would you want to exchange the child or try to correct the mistake?

No way. Although I'd want to have a relationship with the other family, for the sake of both kids. You need to know about your genetics, you know?

If you could spend one year in perfect happiness but afterward remember nothing of the experience, would you do so? If not, why not?

Absolutely. Because I think you remember in other ways beyond what this question implies.

Ohhhhhh, it's FRIDAY

Thank. God.

AND it's the last full weekend I have until MAY. 107 more days, yo.

Today...oh, my gosh, I'm just so glad this week is over. I finally made it to a Grand Rounds today. I was so disappointed. My attending was all excited about this guy. My shrink, last night, warned me that she was coming to GR because she was trying to get this guy to come speak somewhere else (and technically she's part of our department). And then I went to the "lunch with the speaker" thing, and wow, I thought he was just so cool. He was a profiler for the CIA. Oh, my word, talk about my dream job! I mean, okay, it's a little backwards; he used to profile actual people - political leaders, which, actually, isn't where my interest lies either. But still, wow. And he had such great stories. And I was like, how cool.

And then I went to his talk, which was about terrorism.

I was so disappointed. And then I asked him a question, which I thought was a really good question. I asked him, how does that line get crossed between activism and terrorism? And then he interrupted me and then he gave a very tangential answer about how we have to work against radical Islam, not just terrorists.

What?

I sat there with this bewildered look on my face, which usually prompts the speaker to ask, "does that answer your question?" Which typically gives me the opportunity to say, well, no, what I was really getting at was.... He didn't bite. But what I was really getting at was, you know, Rosa Parks met a lot of the criteria he mentioned for who becomes a terrorist.

Rosa Parks? Really, really, really not a terrorist. Just a tired black woman on a bus. Just an activist.

You know, a lot of people protest, and fight, and argue. A lot of people play the media. There's a pathology in there somewhere that makes protesters into terrorists. I think that's where it becomes fascinating.

Oh well. Whatever.

I had to more to tell you, but, dudes....we're tired....

How can you not love this?

Dude. It's a big, cuddly giant neuron.

Reminds me of the time my best friend gave me syphilis and the clap for Christmas.

That was a big year.

I'm very tired. Maybe I'll muster a meaningful post tomorrow.

Lip vs Goat

Was listed as the chief complaint for a patient in the ER tonight.

And that wasn't even a psych patient. Ah, the glamor and excitement that is my job. My life is so weird.

Well, not as weird as the person who got impaled in the face by a goat tonight...

Another very weird story. Also weirder than my life. I think even weirder than the goat. But this patient would definitely be one of ours.

109 days left. 26 more calls. Yeehaw.

Echoes

Well, I think it's good news.

You know how Pedigree has been running these pro-adoption commercials? You know how awesome I think that is. And you know I think shelter mutts are the best. dogs. EVER. Doesn't get any better. So, a while ago, they aired this commercial. Broke my heart. I almost went out and adopted a second dog every single time I saw it. Possibly made me cry once when I was postcall.



But then today? I saw this:



Yay, Echo! He looks so darn cute and happy, doesn't he? Look at that tail! And that big puppy grin.

Shelter dogs really are the coolest.

A Post-post post

Oh my GOD I'm so tired. It's weird - the post- post-call day is often worse than the post-call day in terms the exhaustion. And today was my first day on the Psychotic Disorders Unit (like, schizophrenia, psychotic mania, etc). Which....wow. I have some really sick patients. Whew. It would've been an exhausting day in its own right, but when you factor in the preexisting exhaustion, I actually nodded off in the work room. Oy.

It's chaos up there. Even logistically. Like, there's no space for us to work in, really. I have no where to put my lunch, even, much less work and type notes and make phone calls. And the unit is a lot dingier and more disorganized than the Crisis unit. In a weird way it sort of embodies the difference in the patients that are housed there.

I have, like I said, some really sick people. Fortunately for me, my co-intern and I have two very different services, and it's weird the way they're split. She has all the really aggressive and just batshit crazy ones; mine are more psychotic in that personality disordered way. Which is nice, because they're quieter, spend less time attacking people, and don't end up in seclusion as often, and I have a real interest in personality structure and disorders and formation and whatnot, so it's good in that way. But, it also means they're a lot harder to treat. Some of them are also sort of interesting - I've got a former nurse who keeps trying to escape in the laundry bin. I've also got a very sweet, soft-spoken, very intellegent African man who was so despondent he tried to immolate himself, which, his burns are pretty bad, but he took the whole house down with him and caused significant damage to both neighbors' houses (how he got out with just the burns he has beats the hell out of me). I have a couple of people who just don't know where the hell reality is. I've got one who had all manner of delusions about bringing a referendum to legalize marijuana - and curiously, he has a roommate who is a baker and thinks the panacea for everything is marijuana cookies. One woman had a big crying fit today because she wanted a room with a roommate and threw all her stuff across the dayroom. But seriously, kids. It's a weird place.

My co-intern, we'll call her Ruthie, is also crazy. I mean, I knew she was a little nuts, but she's crazy. Which, not in a bad way, and I really do like her a lot. But I think she's a bit nutser than I thought. We also have two medical students who started today. I got the one who is very small and cute but doesn't look like a Barbie doll. Which is good, because she's the one I wanted. Barbie...well, I hate to admit I'm making such a judgement on her looks when I get so annoyed when people do that to me...and maybe it's more her demeanor and carriage...she just seems a little too self-important for my tastes. At first blush. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, now that I'm finally up from my nap, I'm going to bed. Thanks, also, for all the supportive comments on the last entry. You guys rule.

Not a post to read if you can't handle profanity

But then, if that's the case, you should probably be avoiding my blog altogether.

So, call. I'll tell you something....while I'm not a huge fan of the sleep deprivation, and don't get me wrong, I'm SO VERY READY for this year to be over and can't believe I still have FOUR MONTHS of it left....I kind of enjoy call at Big Hospital.

I mean, on the whole I'd rather be lounging at the beach with a tropical drink and a handsome traveling companion. But I kind of enjoy the work. I thought I'd hate it, right? The responsibility for the decision of whether someone stays or goes, all the damn paperwork, calling insurance companies and talking to other hospitals about bed availability - unlike at State Hospital, where you know they're staying, insurance isn't an issue, and the paperwork is less. And I'm not crazy about any of those things, but...I don't know. I like the diversity of it. I like the process of it. I mean, I guess what I'm saying is, I like psychiatry.

And yesterday was kind of nice, because I get along well with the second year I was paired with, and he gave me all sorts of tips for next year (primarily about what to do with my office and how to organize my clinic stuff). And I'm really starting to get excited about second year. Which is nice, considering how long it took me to even acknowledge that there was going to be a second year here (it's leftover from the Emerald Palace, where they tried to screw me about second year. One of the many, many ways they tried, and occasionally succeeded, to screw me). And he was supportive, but let me kind of do my own thing, which is a good balance.

But the unfortunate part of this job is that part of what makes me good at it is also sort of my Achilles' heel. And that's part of why training is four years or more. That's part of why I stay in therapy. That's part of why I dutifully take my Effexor every morning. And honestly, I've always been one who's in favor of pushing my own buttons and provoking things, because that's how you work through them.

That doesn't make it suck any less.

And let me say right now, the rest of this post isn't my usual lighthearted babbling. I won't be offended if you stop reading here.

Yesterday, I get called to evaluate this kid. This kid, who isn't in our system himself but whose father's therapist is one of ours and told them to bring him in, I get called to see this kid because he was caught molesting his younger brother.

Externally, I said, "yeah, okay, I'll get there as soon as I can." Internally, there was a maelstrom going on.

I totally had this kid sent up the river the moment I heard about this. I was pissed. How dare he do this, and then come to me for help, you know? Why did *I* have to deal with this? Call fucking law enforcement, nail his ass to the wall for taking advantage of a younger kid like that, slimy asshole predatory motherfucker. And of course I had warning that he was coming in before he actually got there, because of the dad's therapist, so I had plenty of time to anticipate and convict and work up a good froth. I thought about making my second year (whom we'll call Matt) go see him, which I could've done. I probably could've asked him to do it, you know, because it was sensitive and complicated, without even divulging my history, because he's good like that. And I thought about asking him outright, could you do this eval, because I was molested and the acuity of this, and him being the perp, is all just too much for me right now. I think Matt would've handled that well, and although I rarely offer up the info, in general I'm reasonably open about what's happened to me (obviously), because I don't think it's anything I should be ashamed of anymore. But I didn't. I just said, okay, I'll see him. We didn't even wait for the ER to call us, we just kept watching for his name on the ER board. And then, there it was, sooner than I'd expected. I wanted to throw up. Instead, I emailed a friend, took half an Ativan (they're prescribed. I don't usually take them with me on call, but for some reason I threw the whole bottle in my bag yesterday morning), and steeled myself against this rat bastard.

Now, obviously, this is a sensitive case (unlike, say, my patient who thought he was a bear) and I'm not going to post the details. But suffice it to say that what I discovered when I got down to the ER was more complicated than I could possibly have imagined. I expected, he was molested when he was little, now he was molesting his little brother, whatever, cry me a river. I seriously walked into that ER ready to nail his pig-fucker ass to the wall, commit him to the worst place I could find, and, to be perfectly frank, use him as a surrogate for confronting my own abuser. Two hours later I was arguing with my program director (the call attending) about why he should be allowed to go home with his family instead of admitted to the hospital. Two hours after that I was so physically angry with the people who were insisting I admit this kid without actually evaluating him, I was close to kicking something in the workroom. Two hours after that I chewed out a nurse who called me because she didn't have a private room and they usually put those kids in a private room.

Twenty-two hours after that, I still want to throw up.

Okay, "chewed out" is an extremely exaggerated view of what I said to her. But the point is, "he molested his brother" is not the whole story and is probably kind of inaccurate. And can I just say, the mom in this situation, wow. Every mom who gets a disclosure - much less whose husband catches her sons in the act like this - should be as amazing as this woman was. It was everything I could possibly do to keep from hugging the stuffing out of her.

I felt so bad for this kid. In the end I was so mad that I got forced into admitting him. I think he felt like I was punishing him for telling the truth, and even if I knew it wasn't true, and even if admitting him may well have been the best thing for him, I kind of felt like that, too, to be honest. I think he was likely the most victimized person in this whole story, when you get right down to it. And even if I wasn't necessarily successful, I tried like hell to advocate for him.

And frankly, I had a lot of trouble with that.

My shrink and I have been working a lot lately on the sort of Stockholm Syndrome piece of my symptom complex. Any my abuse was nothing like what was going on in this house. My abuser didn't just try to badger and convince and get me to consent. He coerced and threatened and manipulated and if that didn't work (and often when it did), he raped me. He beat me. He tortured me. He completely fucked with my head and left psychological scars so deep I won't ever fully know the depths of them. He took things away from me I didn't know I had, and I'll never get those back. He's tainted and soiled pretty much every piece of my life. He was a sadist, and a monster, and I can't believe he's still out there in free society. And I still have this very conflicting piece of me that feels bad for him. Because sometimes in those nights I learned part of what made him so evil. And because I am who I am, I can't help but have compassion for that. He was innocent once, too. He didn't just become a monster - someone helped make him that way.

It's not an excuse for what he did to me. Notice that compassion and forgiveness are two very different things.

This kid yesterday really activated that part of me. Like, I was sitting there looking at my patient, thinking about him when he was this kid's age and what might have happened if someone had intervened then. Would he have been different? Would I have been spared? Maybe not. I mean, it's not all about perpetuating what's been done to you. I clearly had a different reaction to his evil that he did to his abuser's. He clearly had tendencies towards violence and sadism. He became a monster. I became neurotic. He perpetuated the cycle. I push men away. I learned to subjugate my own needs. I learned to read people and preemptively meet theirs. I still fight with the negative self-esteem, the constant self-criticism, the worthlessness he left behind. He turned outward; I waged a war against my body, myself, everything I am. I still fight every damn minute with PTSD and bulimia (we'll talk about that someday, too). But while my life may often be hell, and it's in large part his fault, his life hasn't been what it should've been, either. And ultimately, I'm a survivor. He'll never be anything but a victim of his abuse.

There's something innately pitiful about that.

Look! I figured out how to post!

I'm on call. For some reason, the computers here at Big Hospital don't let me click on the little banner buttons that say things like "log in" and "new post." So I had to be a little subversive...I logged in to leave a comment on Barb's blog. And then I clicked on my profile. And then I clicked on Edit My Profile, then on the Dashboard link, and then I had a real link to "Add Post". I felt just like James Bond.

You know, if James Bond was really bored and on call at a psych hospital instead of an international spy. I'm currently fielding a lot of calls for sleep meds. Ahh, the glamorous life I lead.

It's actually been a really rough call. I'm on with a good second year, though, we're having about as much fun as you can have being as busy as I've been, but he's been really helpful with things like paperwork and such. During the week, we have this coordinator, whom we're going to call Tyler. So during the week I usually see the patient, decide to admit the patient, and then come upstairs and say, "Tyler, what do I do now?" and he hands me things and says "Sign here." It's a good system, really.

It doesn't hurt that he's 24, devilishly good looking, and offered to marry me last week.

No, really.

As it turns out, there's another resident here, a second year, who has the same last name as me. And the same first initial. This confuses people to no end around here, and next year - when we both have clinics, etc - it's going to get a lot worse. Apparently Kyle's been dreading me becoming a second year for just that reason. So last week, when I was on call and he was on night float (the night I lent him my ID badge because he'd forgotten his, and you know, everyone thinks we're the same person anyway) we were discussing ways to preemptively troubleshoot this. What I finally concluded to be the best plan was me finding some guy who does NOT have the same last name as Kyle and me and running off to Vegas sometime in the next four months (113 days and counting....). All I need is to find a suitable groom, and this plan is golden, right? So Kyle recommends that if I can't actually find the love of my life, I could just find some guy with a good last name, marry him, get it annulled, and keep the name. At which point Tyler promptly pointed out that he was free this weekend and his surname was legally available.

Which was when Kyle pointed out his girlfriend. She? May not be so thrilled with the plan.

Ah well. He does have a pretty good last name, though. Short, easy to spell...but I'd have to rework my whole signature, and I've finally got that "K-scrawled line" thing down so well...

I really should go lay down while I can. Because it really has been an very rough day, partially because I've been crazy busy (no pun intended). Partially because I had one really rough case. Maybe I'll tell you about it tomorrow....maybe not.

Love Friday

Ohhh, so not feelin' the love today.

I wish I had the energy to tell you about the wackiness that's gone on this week on the unit. But I don't. So I tell you what I do love.


5. It's spring in North Carolina.

4. That Snoop Dogg is on Monk tonight.

3. That the new meat next year's intern class is identified in less than two weeks (it's like a light at the end of the tunnel, you know?)

2. I'm done (DONE!) with Crisis.

1. I'm on call tomorrow. Not normally a cause for joy, BUT, Daylight Savings Time starts Sunday morning. We spring forward! For the first three years that I was doing clinical medicine, I was on call for the fall back. Every year. This year, not only was I not on for that, I'm on call for the call that's a whole hour shorter! And, it turns out I'm on call with a resident I really like, instead of the one I thought I was on with, whom I don't really know but haven't really cared much for the limited times I've met her.

In less lovely news, ANOTHER ONE of our interns announced that he's leaving today. He's got good reasoning - he can't get his research funded here, and he's the one that's part time and spends the rest of his time doing research. But it's sad, because I really like him, and his partner.

Something is wrong with today...

Today was wacko. I had this massively psychotic patient on the unit today. The whole milieu was worked up. My patients were pulling on me and hanging on me and swearing at me and...oy.
Plus, we made CNN. It's completely tragic.

And...dude, what the hell is going on here?

And, not to mention, I'm really glad this story didn't run two weeks ago, considering where I was then.

Oy.

I was on call tonight, so I'm going to bed. It was a loooooooooooooooooooong freakin day. Stay tuned for Love Friday.

Devil dog

Taken shortly after her little walk-about.

Cracks me up.

Ohhhh, today was such a long day....

So I'm dull. It's not such a bad life

Apparently Mr. (Ms?) Anonymous hasn't been too thrilled with my opinions in the comments over on the Shrink Rap blog and felt the need to come over here and make a couple of snide remarks. He/she seems to be someone who feels like psychiatrists are misanthropic snake oil peddlers (which seems like a strange sort to be lurking around a blog written by three psychiatrists, about mental health issues).

It's not a unique viewpoint. And you know, in a way, we are. Well, maybe not misanthropes, but a lot of our treatments are based on anecdotal evidence of what works instead of hard biological data. I mean, you can say that about a lot of things in medicine, but it's even more prominent in psychiatry, I think. Each patient is such a unique mixture of chemicals, experiences, conditioning, and genetics, that one size fits all treatments are usually inappropriate. Now, I concede, that doesn't mean there aren't shrinks out there that think the answer to everything is higher and higher doses of Seroquel or that dole out SSRIs like candy. I quite often get patients who are followed by providers outside our system whose med lists leave me scratching my head (or occasionally outraged). I got into quite a battle last week about a patient who has a diagnosis that not everyone believes in, and how everyone then blamed her therapist for destabilizing her with this voodoo instead of admitting they didn't know much about or understand her diagnosis. I had a doctor send me a patient yesterday -on whom he hadn't come close to exhausting all her medication options, who wasn't catatonic, who wasn't suicidal - and more or less tell me that if I wasn't going to give her electroshock therapy, I might as well send her home, because that's the only reason he was involving us.

Which is not to say I'm the best doctor ever. Far from it. I have a lot to learn, but at least my knowledge is sound on one point: these are the lessons I'm going to learn from my patients.

And let me say this...you know, I'm actually relatively slow to medicate people, but I do think drugs are an important adjunct. Otherwise it's kind of like withholding insulin from a diabetic - you can monitor their labs and check their retinas and take meticulous care of their feet and watch their kidney function and they can do everything else right, but if they don't have the chemical that makes things work, things are going to go wrong. And like diabetes, brain chemistry comes in a spectrum of qualitative and quantitative deficits. Also like diabetes, if you supply the chemical but the patient does all the wrong things, then you're still aiming for disaster. Mental hygiene is exactly the same - balance the chemicals to provide relief and remove any biological impairments, and then find the therapy to move things forward. But where mental health veers from the diabetes analogy is in that afore mentioned idiosyncrasy of being human. Despite our best efforts to diagnostically lump patients, each one is a singular event. The choice of which chemical or combination of chemicals to alter, the utility of what kind of therapy is appropriate or potentially harmful....it's as different as a fingerprint. The DSM is useless as anything but a guidebook.

And since I've beaten that to death...I will concede that even I think my posting of late has sometimes been lackluster. I think it's mostly exhaustion and a touch of being compelled to daily blogging by this Blog 365 business (i.e., you get more verbiage, but it's less profound). Blame the pox. Or the not-court. Or the Flu not-A. Or life as an intern. Or maybe I'm just boring. You know, there's something to be said for leading a life that isn't overrun with drama. A life of contentment with what is and little complication.



I wish I felt like I was living such a life right now....

I dream of angels but I live with demons

Today's SVU quote. From a schizophrenic suspect who refuses his medication. Which, incidentally, drove me crazy about this episode because, seriously, we force meds on people who aren't sane enough to want them all the damn time.

But I do feel like this is a nice summation of the struggle that is mental illness, regardless of whether it's schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, trauma, eating disorders...no matter if you actually hear voices, or just deal with the voices in your head.

I feel like this a lot myself, actually.

Today was...not a good day. Got some bad news. My dog ran away when I opened the door to clip her out (she's back, but not before she got about a hundred feet from the big major street by our complex, which is on the other side of an on ramp for the highway. I was already getting a little screechy, I was a hair's breadth from hysterics when she finally turned and came back over to me). It turns out we lost in not-court, despite the fact that the plaintiff has NO EFFING CASE. I tried to redo my nails and got smeary goop all over everywhere. Blogger freakin' refuses to upload my pictures.

I'm not pleased with today.

I did go to the yarn store, though, and got replacement yarn for a new shawl. I spent about twenty minutes picking up the same three balls of Encore and being displeased with my choice of the same three balls of Encore when I finally spotted this hand painted yarn called Elaine by Schaefer Yarns. I'd show you a picture, but.... I also got more Lamb's Pride for my friend's baby blanket. I'm going to be doing an awful lot of garter stitch in the next few weeks...

And this is why I rarely mess around with gauge swatches...

So you'll remember how a couple of weeks ago I learned that my friends' mom was diagnosed with metastatic amelanotic melanoma.

(By the way, if you can say that five times fast without massively flubbing it, I think you automatically get admitted to an Oncology fellowship. If you say it in front of a mirror Biggie Smalls appears and gives you skin cancer.)

(Yes, that whole joke was in very poor taste. We doctors love our gallows humor defense mechanisms...)

(Anyway.)

So, since I can't actually cure cancer and am in fact pretty much powerless to help in any way at all (see above gallows humor), I picked up my needles. And began knitting a shawl. Because interferon doesn't make your hair fall out, and besides, she's been part of our social "family" for nearly fifteen years now, and very dear to me for at least the last twelve of those (I don't think I knew her very well until my friends actually started dating). She's a good lady. She deserves something warm and cuddly. So I had this Cherry Tree Hill marl in my stash. It was like 500 y and I thought, ah, this will work.

So I cast on 220 stitches, and worked and worked and knit and knit and knit and even put a little design in on the bottom.

And I started worrying that it was going to be a little short. Which I kind of figured, which is why I'd cast it on width-wise instead of height-wise. And so as the yarn began to run out, I started worrying that it was going to be too short and too narrow.

Well, it is a little short (I stole Barb's cork-for-size-perspective device, here). It's about 14 inches, top to bottom.

And close to eight feet long.

Frack.

I even did a damn gauge swatch. It was supposed to be about 5, 5 1/2 feet. Comfortable to wrap up in, but, you know, not actually long enough to TRIP OVER.

Here's another size-perspective device.

If it were symmetrical, it'd be a dandy table runner.

But, alas....I wasn't trying to knit a table runner. And as a shawl...well...

So I can't decide what to do with this. I might just keep it as a scarf. I might rip it out and start over again. I started knitting a new one, but I pulled this green mohair out of my stash to use and I'm a little worried. I was thinking "frothy" and I have a bad feeling it might come out looking more along the lines of "Muppet pelt". And it's sure not washable. I may just stop and pick up a couple skeins of Homespun on my way home tomorrow. Every prayer shawl ministry on Earth seems to make that stuff work.

Lost Day

I've done absolutely nothing today. I'm not sure how that happened. No, I mean it. I don't know where today went. I don't think I actually left the house (and it was a beautiful day in NC). I don't think I had a real meal. I did knit a little, and actually, I ended up finishing the project I was working on (but...eh, it came up way short, and way too wide). I took a nap, sort of. I watched a lot of DVR'd TV. There's seriously like six hours of today I can't account for, though. And now my dog is being all cute and I can't even find my camera.

::sigh:: Maybe I'll just give up and go to bed, start all over again tomorrow.

Still sick. Feeling a little better, but I woke up this morning SO sore from coughing I could barely move, and it hasn't really gotten any better. Frakkin' stupid virus.

Tomorrow, tomorrow will be more productive.

And I think I'm pretty much out of SVU to watch on the DVR, so that'll probably help. Which means I'll probably also stop having an SVU quote of the day, soon, too...

Tutuola: Of all the detectives to have had this case before us, why'd it have to be Fiorella?
Stabler: Marty's a good guy, what's your problem with him?
Tutuola: I can't understand his handwriting.
That guy*: It's like a serial killer.
Tutuola: Worse, it's like a doctor.


*Tutola's random fill-in partner who's name I don't actually know. Nor do I know what happened to Munch.

Spring is sprung

It's officially spring in North Carolina. You know how I know this? Well, the trees are starting to bloom. The temperature is warming up. The grass needs mowing. And the tinny sound of "The Wheels on the Bus" came wafting through my apartment complex today.

The ice cream truck is back.

I know today was supposed to be my "free day" from blogging. But dude, it's not like it was a day of silence observed for some cause or remembrance or whatever. It's because there happen to 366 days this year. And it's not called Blog 366. But I've been home doing nothing all day, so, I figure I can take a different day off, right?

Anyhow.

I'm feeling a little better. I have less of a fever, I'm not quite as sore, I have a little more energy. But I don't think I've been this snotty since I was a teenager (ha). I wandered out to the Target this morning around 8 to get further supplies. Like a humidifier. And Sudafed, which I couldn't get because the damn pharmacy wasn't open that early, so I had to settle for the completely useless phenylephrine version. Has this pseuoephedrine lock-up made any sort of a dent in the crystal meth problem? Not that I can tell. From where I sit, there's still an abundance of meth addicts and the only access that's been reduced is to good decongestants.

I really went because I ran out of tissues last night. Oh, it was tragic. And then I couldn't find the tissues at the Target, which almost brought me to tears. Which is when I decided it was probably okay that I didn't go to work today.

I walk in, though, and right up front, at the One Spot (the little dollar section. Which, really, that store is wonderful. And then now they have a grocery store, and a dollar store, and a Starbucks, all right inside the Target! I swear, if they start selling yarn, I might not need to shop anywhere else), they have this display of fold-up reusable bags. It's all, be eco friendly! Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! And I thought, oh, these are nice. They fold up, they're cheap, this is good. So I bought two. And when I checked out, I made sure I pointed them out to the cashier, like, I know you can't fit a humidifier in one of these, but the rest of my stuff should fit in there. She picks them up, says, "Oh, yeah, these are nice bags"....and promptly puts them in into a plastic bag.

So I gave up and came home and took a nap.

::sigh:: There are so many important things I've been meaning to talk about here this week. Maybe I should've taken today off after all...

Hot blooded (check it and see)

(Miss the reference? First of all, shame on you. But, if so, click here.)

Technically, my temp's only 102. And, I told you it wasn't the flu.


Which is fortunate. What's unforunate is that they had to suck stuff out of my nose to find out. That was a little uncomfortable. I also don't have strep, in case you were wondering. But they sent me home from work today regardless.

I really felt like shit this morning when I went in, and then I started having shaking chills during rounds. Which is when I decided I probably shouldn't take call tomorrow night. And I was talking to my cohort and we got to discussing the fact that there've been several lab-diagnosed cases of flu on our unit. And I said, hmm, maybe I should go get a flu swab. And then if I do have the flu, I'll just do my work with a mask on tomorrow, and...my co-intern was like, dude, they're not going to let you work if you've got the flu.

So what did I say?

"Oh. Then I'd better not go get swabbed."

So what did she say?

"Don't be an idiot."

She was right, of course. So I go down to Employee Health, and ask for a flu swab. The nurse was like, hmm, yeah, we don't typically do that. I said, we've got all these patients upstairs with flu upstairs. She said, welllll, I'd have to talk to the epidemiologist. I said, okay. She sighs, says, fine, come in, we'll at least take your temperature and whatnot. And, lo and behold, it was 102.

She goes out of the room. She comes back in wearing a mask. Umm....

So they did a nasal aspirate for flu and a rapid strep test and they sent me home. And I spent a good 45 minutes fussing and working and trying to rearrange the call schedule so my call was covered and figuring out the work for tomorrow and finally my chief resident threw me out and as I turned to leave I saw him reaching for a bottle of Purell. And it cracked me up a little. Which of course sent me into a coughing fit.

Employee Health paged me about a half hour later and said, everything was negative. So if it's flu, it's not Flu A. Which means it could be Flu not-A, of course. Or just some random upper respiratory virus. But I'm banished from the hospital until I've managed to not run a fever for 24 hours. Which means I'm missing work again.

I really don't know what else I can take this month.

The final irony of it? The call switches they worked out put me on call on Roman Good Friday. Which, um, not a very big deal to me, because Orthodox Easter is like a month and a half later than Roman Easter this year. But it's a holiday. And being on call on a holiday earns me a comp day. Which is an extra day off, scheduled at my discretion.

I....really though....

So it's Thursday. Let me start with some things I don't love. Don't love the not-A Flu or whatever this is. Don't love Afrin (it really makes my throat burn and I'm not sure it's worth the decongesting). Don't love missing work AGAIN. But here are five things that I do love today:

5. Kleenex.
4. Getting comp days for being sick (okay, not that I don't have to actually work the holiday, too, but still)
3. Nurse Maggie
2. Hot liquids
1. My DVR, which I've been lying on the couch watching all afternoon. So here's today's quotable SVU.

Tutuola: What's all this?
Stabler: Asbestos testing.
Benson: It's in every building constructed before 1970.
Tutuola: I'm not stayin' in here with all those tiny cancer-causing particles flying around!
Munch: Stop worrying. As an African-American you're statistically far more likely to die of diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease.
Tutuola (defensively): Or a bullet!

It's possible I'm a little delirious, but that made me giggle.

Oh, and PS - tomorrow is the Blog 365 "Day of Rest", so I'm not compelled to blog tomorrow under the rules of the...um...game, arrangement, whatever it is. We'll see if I have anything to say tomorrow. I might just hide from the end of February (before something ELSE tries to follow up the pox/court/high fever trifecta....).

Snot

I had a whole post planned for tonight. But, um, I'm going to bed.

Oh, and hey, did you know there's a flu epidemic in the Triangle? Glad I got my flu shot.

I think I just have a cold, though. I thought I had flu, but, it's snot.

Yet another perspective

So I'm watching some Law and Order:SVU rerun tonight, right? Because I've got a couple dozen of them DVR'd and waiting for me at this point. And in this one, which probably has an episode title but I don't know it, Mary Stuart Masterson guest stars as a cop-turned-psychiatrist. And Olivia is yelling at her because their victim, a very disorganized and psychotic schizophrenic, has just checked herself out of Bellevue after her 24 h hold expired.

First off, yeah, right. Like that patient wouldn't have been petitioned so fast she'd have had paper cuts. Second of all, maybe it is different in New York, but most states have a 48 or 72 hour hold.

But nonetheless. So Olivia says to her,

That's the problem with the mental health profession. You medicate them, just enough so you can cut 'em loose, and then nobody monitors them. They go off their meds and the next thing you know, they either become the victim of a crime or they commit one. Either way, we have to clean up your mess.

Some days, you know, I feel kind of the same way.

I got into a thing with our social worker today when I refused to discharge a patient because he lied to me about having a place to stay. It's possible his family lied to him. I think everyone was lying in this scenario, frankly. And so I made the decision that he was going to stay another day so we can make sure that the new place he's told us he can go is valid. And the social worker was like, why are we so concerned about where this guy is going? We toss people out on the street all the time. You know, homeless people, we just send them out to be homeless again.

And she's right. Last week I discharged a guy to the TTA bus. He was going to take it to Durham and "figure something out." I kept arguing with him that he needed to identify someplace safer that "figuring something out", but he said he was sick of stability. He gave me no reason I could commit him. He was voluntary, and he wanted to leave. My 72 hour hold expired. I had no choice but to discharge him to the streets.

At least with this guy, I had a choice.

Most of the time, if we send them to a shelter, is that really any better? Is it really any different? Some of them are only open at night. They're all overcrowded. There's just no good answer.

Which is part of why it sucks to be really crazy.

Sometimes this job is really hard (you know, like math, right PS?).

I spent the better part of an hour telling my one patient's parents they need to back the hell off and let him be a grown up. He's 18, wickedly neurotic, and very enmeshed with his family. And when I got in this morning and found that his mother had camped out in the waiting room all night and was planning to more or less be there until we discharged him so she could come in at every visiting period, I gained a much better understanding of why. So I went out, gave some really basic advice. A little bit of logic. A few reminders about how hard it is to establish your own individuality. He's a good kid. He has a lot of potential. They want to know every detail but at the same time they validate nothing (his four years of being chronically suicidal was "teenage moodiness"). His mother told him that because she never felt suicidal when she was depressed that he wasn't really depressed. Oy.

I have another woman who was supposed to be discharged today. She was doing fine, and then last night started seeing little brown monsters jumping on her bed. So, I kept her today, too. She, incidentally, was the patient of Dr. Ming's of yesterday's post. I think she legitimately has multiple personality disorder. Like my cousin. Like my good friend down south. Like my ex. And there is a lot of division in the profession about whether or not this diagnosis even exists, right? I think it does. I think it's the end of a spectrum of something that happens to all trauma victims, particularly those who are traumatized at an early stage of development. However...not everyone thinks the way I do. And now I'm starting to understand why my friend in Florida never wants to go into the hospital when she needs to. When she's unsafe, it feels safer for her to sit home in mortal peril than to go to a "safe place" where people can help her.

Some days, this job also makes my head hurt. Or it could be that I'm getting a cold.

Whatever. It's time for bed. And so with that thought, I leave you with another SVU line, from a subsequent episode. Everyone's favorite Cop Killa turned TV detective, Fin Tutuola (Ice-T), busts in and goes all undercover narco on this shifty lawyer, and the lawyer looks at Fin's partner , who's sitting in the back of the office, asks, "Who the hell is that guy?" Fin says,

Him? That's my Jew.

That one made me giggle.

Pumpkin Whore

So I'm on call tonight, right? And at Big Hospital, one of the things this involves is everybody meeting a 4:30 so the person covering walk-in clinic and the ER during the day can sign out all the patients still in a holding pattern to the overnight call person (not me. Ha!) and the short call person (me. And not just because I'm 5'5" on a good day. Because I get to leave at 10pm when I'm short call, and sign out to the night float person. No, not a complicated system at all. But still way the hell better than having to stay all night. I heart short call. At least until I have to get up at 6 tomorrow and still put in a full day's work. But anyhow, I digress...). So there's one patient in the ER, and this other one who's floating in the "going to come in later" ether.

This is the signout I got on the ether patient: he's a chronic schizophrenic in his early 20s, on meds, but has had an increase in the voices lately. They're not commanding him to do anything, but they are calling him names, like "pumpkin whore."

I......um........really?

So like two hours later the ER calls me and says, hey, this guy is down here. He's a chronic schizophrenic in his early 20s, generally well controlled on meds but he's been hearing more voices lately. They aren't command hallucinations; they're just calling him names, like "punk" and "whore."

At which point I just started cracking up. And then I had to explain to the poor ER resident why I was laughing so hard. Who, to her credit, also thought it was hysterical.

Another random thought from today: we have this family in town who is, like, the local psychiatry dynasty. We'll call them the doctors Ming. So, many, many years ago, the eldest Dr. Ming decided to become a psychiatrist. And he was a good one. He was even the head (the Emperor, if you will) of State Hospital at one point. And so then he had three sons, and all three of his sons became psychiatrists, and then all three of the newly minted Ming psychiatrists decided to practice in the Raleigh-Durham area. And then one of them had a son, or maybe they all had a nephew, I'm really not certain (was there a fourth Ming brother who went another direction with his life? I actually don't know), but anyway, there was a third generation Ming who also decided to become a psychiatrist and is a year ahead of me in my program. Which is very cool. But also makes it hell for difficult when a patient comes in and tells you, "I see Dr. Ming." Uh, thanks, that narrows it down to what, half the psychiatrists in the Triangle area?

Anyway, I called one of the many Mings today to tell him I was sending his patient home tomorrow. And we had this conversation about her, and he says something to the effect of, you know, some people really shouldn't be in therapy. For some people, the goal is just to maintain, not to search and explore and conquer. Some people can't handle that.

This flies in the face of my entire practice philosophy. My whole idea of mental health is confronting and fixing mismatches, and getting in touch with what lies beneath. So my first instinct was to be all, what?! And then I started thinking, what if there's some merit to that?

Thoughts from the peanut gallery?

::sigh:: Incidentally, no phrase has ever gotten me (and possibly all of mankind) in more conundrums than, "what if".

Certainly no phrase like "pumpkin whore."

I still think that's hilarious. I should've told that to the voices. Maybe they'd start calling him that for real. I think that would've been less demoralizing.

Well, anyhow, given my obvious mental state, Mags and I are going to go to bed. In my very own bed. At home. Even if I am only there for 6 hours or so and don't get to leave early tomorrow. So diggin' this short call thing.

Home sweet mess

I'm back in NC. And it appears that someone broke in and messed up my house while I was gone. I swear, when I left here, it was clean...

My flight was relatively uneventful. I had two little kids sitting with me in my row - a nine year old and his three year old sister. The nine year old was actually very articulate. We had a great conversation about the presidential election. They were very cute.

So, tomorrow, back to Crisis. I have one patient left that I had before, which means that all my patients pretty much will be new. And I'm on call. At least I still have a shadow.

Oy, I think it's time to go to bed....

Not as cute as my nephew, but...

...I can finally show you pictures of my latest FO. This is my mom's Christmas present (you know, because it's only February).


It's a very simple, basic felted bag that I kind of made up as I went. We finished it off today with a thin black drapery cord handle (much like the one on my sheep tote, for those who know it. I have a tendency to prefer drapery cord to I-cord, mostly because I HATE knitting I-cord. I let my mom pick out the cord, for length and design and whatnot). I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

The Greek key design is more or less pilfered from a little booklet I got free with some knitting magazine containing a few teaser patterns from one of Vogue Knitting's little tiny knitting books (possibly Felted Bags Two. Or maybe just Bags Two. Something with a "two"). This pattern was part of an overall motif on the Weekender.

The yarn is Mauch Chunky, out of my stash, nearly three balls' worth. The bottom was black, worked doubled for strength and/or durability, and then after I picked up the stitches around the base I just kind of kept going until I ran out. I had a little bit of each of the blue colors left over. So, you know, it took about that much yardage (great pattern notes, huh?).


And then here's the picture of the bag with my awesome new felting majig. Love that thing, even if (especially because?) Maggie never found it at all interesting.

My mom really liked it. She even made sure she took it to dinner with us tonight to show off to my (actual) aunt and uncle and my younger cousin. My dad wore his socks, too. My uncle was very impressed. Dinner was nice - we went to the Rock Bottom Brewery, which is a chain, but the food was decent and the beer was awesome. I had the Lumpy Dog Brown. Ha!

My older cousin couldn't join us for dinner because his band - the coolest indie rock band ever - is playing in the city tonight. I'm a little bummed that it wasn't a) closer, or b) that they weren't headlining, because I've been dying to go to one of their shows. And they have a new album coming out in a couple of weeks, on which my cousin wrote FOUR of the songs. Wicked.



Dimitri plays bass, and in the pic in the banner he's the one on the right. The handsome one. It runs in the family, obviously.

They so need to come play in NC.

So tomorrow morning I get back on the big blue avion and head back to Carolina. And then pick Mags up, and then I'm on call Monday night. Ahhh, back to reality, and so soon....

What a big boy!

I am way too tired and had far too long a day to actually write a substantive post tonight. Suffice it to say not-court went well enough, I'm considering a vendetta against my former realtor (who fucking perjured himself in arbitration today, the corrupt, lying rat that he is), and then on the way out of not-court I fell down again. I think it's the Danskos, I really do. But the evening was so much better. And so I leave you with a gratuitous cute picture of the world's cutest little boy, my 17 month old nephew, Basil.


This is actually my favorite shot we took tonight...


Shortly after I met Bianca, his mom, my freshman year of high school, her mom - who also worked at our high school - offered me a ride home. And as we walked to their car, I commented on the peculiar combination of numbers and letters that was their license plate. "My father's a HAM," she said, and was then quick to explain, "You know, like, a HAM radio operator."

"Right," I told her. "I didn't think your dad was a pork product."

Hey, Bei? I hate to tell you this (okay, no I don't), but I think there's another little ham in the family....

Oh! And!!!

I missed Barb's birthday. Primarily because I didn't know it was coming, but now it's been, I mean, I think it was TWO WHOLE DAYS AGO. So, everybody, say it with me,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BARB!!

So glad the Random Fairy got us together!!! Also glad you're moving like 12 hours closer to me. Incredibly glad you can hear and understand me the way you do, even though I'm quite sorry about the reasons that's sometimes true. Mostly I'm just really glad we're friends.

Northern Rain

I'm in Chicago, of course. My father picked me up from the airport, we had lunch, we killed time, I went into the yarn store by my lawyer's office (Malabrigo makes laceweight now! In Velvet Grapes! And many other fine colors that do not happen to be my favorite color of Malabrigo. I almost squealed out loud right there in the shop. I'm sure they would've understood. Alas, though, I left empty-handed. Because they did not have the bag handles for which I sought, nor did I have an actual need for laceweight Malabrigo. Because truth be told, I don't have a lot of patience for knitting lace these days). I lost my cellphone, and also found it (it was at the Starbucks. Where else? It's possible that I didn't actually lose it there, I think, it just instinctively found the nearest Starbucks and waited for me). And in the midst of all this it started snowing. And I (very sarcastically) said to my father, "What's with all this falling white stuff? What is that, again?" And he said, "That's Northern rain."

He he.

So begins, as my best friend has suggested calling it, the whirlwind of Kate's Litigation Tour, 2008. I flew in today. I have court (which is not actually court, but mandatory arbitration, which is in the "arbitration center" and not actually a court. Darn it, because I like courts) tomorrow. Then I'm meeting said best friend (the lawyer, although not my lawyer, at least not for this. I do have her on retainer, though, in case I ever need her services. I gave her a dollar right after she passed the bar) and we're then going to drop my parents off at the train station and high-tail it (read: sit in Chicago traffic for a couple hours) to the western 'burbs, where I get to see my nephew Basil and the now-very-pregnant Original Robin and the rest of my high school crew. Then I have family plans on Saturday, and fly back Sunday to go home, pick up the dog, and straighten out the paperwork that Medical Records is about to suspend me over, despite the fact that the "delinquent" notes all seem to have been signed and done with weeks ago.

I'm also getting a manicure and a haircut before not-court tomorrow. Because I may not have to wear a suit (and in point of fact, I'm going to show up in my day-to-day work clothes - the stuff I wear on the wards, not in scrubs - right down to my Danskos), but I still don't want to look like a schmuck.

Alright, I'm going to bed, because I was up late last night (one of these days, I will tell y'all about my call) and it's been a long day. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Oh, and in the spirit of Love Thursday, here's five things I love today:

5. Undercrowded flights. Although I have to say I think Southwest's new number system is way more complicated than it needs to be. But I definitely enjoyed having the whole back of the plane to myself.
4. The smell when I got off the plane at Midway. It was some combination of deep dish pizza and hot pretzels and Kosher dogs. But mostly Chicago style (read: real) pizza.
3. My dad for picking me up from the airport and then putting up with me for several hours (he gets bonus points for taking me to the yarn store, even if he didn't go in) before ferrying me to the lawyer's office. And then my mom for being home from work when we got back and feeding me really good home cooked food and also chocolate.
2. My aunt in NC for letting me call her at 10:30 pm last night when I got out of the hospital to tell her that I needed to leave for the airport at 8am, and then she brought me cookies and a muffin for the trip.
1. That THE BLOGGER SPELLCHECK LIVES!!!!!!!!

It's late! It's late! It's late!

Call went okay. Kinda stressful, but not bad. Adolescent didn't traumatize me and was actually kind of fun. But I really need to go pack and maybe get a little bit of sleep before I have to get up and take Maggie to the border and pack all the last minute stuff and get on the big silver bird tomorrow. Ooh! Maybe I can post from the airport....

Follow the bouncing Kate

Well, I survived day two on Crisis. I felt a little more like I knew what I was doing. I spent two days in a row doing the same thing and now it feels a tiny bit more familiar. Huzzah.

So guess where I'm reporting for work tomorrow? The adolescent unit.

(Ignore that sound. It's just the panicked, perseverent, screaming I do while rocking back and forth when faced with the prospect of adolescents, particularly those that are mentally ill.)

Apparently one of the third years has to be out for a few days for a family emergency. So they're bumping me over there tomorrow. Oh. We'll see how it goes...

"It's the recipes you create yourself that are the best"

It's what Catherine Zeta-Jones' therapist says to her in the movie I watched last night, No Resevations. She's a chef - a chef in therapy - and she's just said to him that it's a shame there are no recipies for life.

It's a really good point. It's a really good metaphor. And it's one of the sweetest movies I've seen in a long time.

Seriously. Rent this movie. Or Netflix it. Or it's OnDemand right now. Whatever. Really, it's just so good. It's not complicated, it's not overly technical nor does it lose itself in the "accuracy" of its setting (you know how that happens sometimes - dance movies throw a lot of lingo at you make sure you see the dancers working so hard and cooking movies try to show the real grit of the restaurant life, etc). The leads have amazing ensemble chemistry. And CZJ does a wonderful job of letting you see her character bloom. It's a little predicatable, but it's got a genuineness about it.

And, it's got a smart therapist.

Anyway, my first day on Crisis was...um...a little overwhelming. I still just kinda don't...get it. Like, what I'm supposed to be doing there. As in, what my role is. My patients are...well, three of them are really complex. Well, okay, two of them are. One of them is just difficult (and not in the good way), and one of them I think is just a dumbass. Or he could be really dangerous. I'm not really sure what to do with him, honestly. Which is why there are people in charge of me, still.

What's also nice about that is that if this kid goes all Cho Seung Hui in six months, it won't be me everyone starts hounding. I don't think he will. I think he's just a dumbass. But, still.

Some days this job really makes my head hurt.

Innocence

My dog can't help it that she's the cutest thing ever.

(You can't see it in this picture, but she's watching these two little girls from our complex who were out in the backyard playing. They were running around getting their Sunday dressess very muddy, and at this point the one was twirling around so that her skirt was floating out around her and, oh, it was just heartbreakingly cute.)

It's very lucky for her that she is, though.

Someone, and I'm not pointing any fingers, here, took herself for a walk around the apatment complex this morning.

She thinks this is a fun thing to do. Although, it's apparently only fun if I chase her. And my dog is part greyhound and has four wheel drive, whereas I'm fat and have a tendency to spontaneously fall down. So guess who usually wins.

She hadn't done this so far in North Carolina, though. I mean, I've given her very rare opportunities to do so anyway, but the few times I've let her go off leash, say, from the back of the car to the waiting front door, she's been very good. Today, though, I was sitting on the back porch, having just clipped her out there while I took the trash out, and I took her off the tie-out line, thinking, we'll sit here for a moment, I'll rub her head, we'll go inside. She had other ideas and bolted down the hill.

Some day, I'm going to learn my lesson, and just go back inside the house. Because if I don't chase her, it isn't fun. And she always comes home, usually pretty quickly. But, I get worried, 'cause, she's my dog. And I love my dawwwg (Penguinshrink, that was for you).

(For those of you who aren't Penguinshrink, remember the kid I treated on the medical unit at State Hospital with the broken jaw? PS and I used to call him "Timmy," which you have to say like the kid from South Park. He left the two of us with a number of catch phrases. Not the least of which was that he used to call his dad like fourteen times a day and he'd always say - to his dad - "I love my daaaad". Another Timmy-ism? "I'm-a go pee in the toilet now." Yeah, he was like my age.)

I do love my pup, big, goofy mutt that she is. Long story short, I did finally catch her. Because she let me. And then I picked her up and slung her up onto my shoulder and carried her home, because of course I didn't grab the leash on my way out. We got a couple of really amused looks, me, hauling this 45 pound dog around like some big furry todder.

In other news, I finally get to go back to work tomorrow. I start on the Crisis unit (adult acute stabilization. So, like, when someone you know has to go spend a couple of days on the psych ward) instead of the psychotic disorders unit, where I was supposed to be this month (I'll do crisis this month and then two months of psychotic instead of two months of psychotic and then a month of crisis). It's busy and hectic, from what I hear. But I'm really excited to go back to work, honestly And then of course, I'll be gone Thursday and Friday because I have to be back in Chicago in court. But then, then, I get two solid weeks of work and normalcy before I switch services again. Oy...

Chili Dog

Mags and I made chili today.


Well, okay, she didn't actually help much, except for the cleanup of anything I dropped in the process of making said chili. And she isn't actually going to get to eat the chili. So really, the only involvement she really has in this process is....well....being very hopeful....

I rarely pull out my crock pot, because honestly, it's hard to make anything for one person in a crock pot. And the "turn it on in the morning, it's done when I get home from work!" idea doesn't go as well when you work ten hours a day or more. But it seemed like a good idea when I got home from the Fresh Market today....

This all started because I bought a piece of cornbread (a piece, as in, one serving) at the Whole Foods yesterday morning. And they didn't have any chili. And they didn't have any of my favorite Bear Creek Chili Soup Mix. So I thought, oh, I haven't made chili in a while, I have tomatoes and beans at home, cool. But then I didn't soak the beans. So I picked up canned beans today. And chili seasoning. And hot sauce. And I looked at the chili seasoning packet, and it said "For one batch - serves 12 - use..." and thought, oh, okay, so if I use one can of tomatoes and one can of beans, I can make like two, maybe three servings of chili...

::sigh:: How many times am I going to need to do this to remember that it NEVER works like that??

In case you're curious, here's how to make Veggie Chili con Kate:

1. Buy cornbread.

2. Decide to call your aunt to get her chili recipie, since you make yours up every time you make it.

3. Remember that your aunt is out of town.

4. Eat leftovers. Think about chili. Totally forget that you have to soak dry beans overnight, and that's all you have in your cupboard.

5. Go to store. Buy chili soup mix. Decide that's no fun, buy canned beans.

6. Pull everything out of the cabinets to get to liberate rarely-used crock pot. Wipe off the layer of dust. Wonder if you've washed it since you moved it from New Hampshire.

7. Dump in a can of beef broth (yep, that's the secret to my veggie chili. I never said it was vegetarian). Add can of crushed tomatoes. Add a can of pinto beans (rinsed, because, gross) and a can of kidney beans (ditto).

8. Open freezer. Assess contents. Consider how edamame would taste in chili.

9. Decide against edamame. Pull out bags of frozen corn, "stoplight pepper strips" (red, yellow, green). Dump, you know, "enough" of the contents into crock-pot.

10. Add a heaping tablespoon (the recommended amount) of Lysander's Chili Seasoning to crock pot. Then add some more.

11. Remember that you like rice in your chili. Consider fancy rice blends you've been eating lately, dig out plain brown rice. Add what will turn out to be WAY too much rice to crock-pot. Throw in some pearl barley as well for good effect.


12. Add what seems like a really lot of chili powder. Feel slightly giddy at the prospect of good spicy chili.

13. Decide that there's not nearly enough water in the crock pot. Add a tomato can-full of water to the mix.

14. Turn crock pot on to low. Shred new favorite cheese that you can't seem to bring yourself to eat straight (it's called Seaside Cheddar, and it's from Whole Foods. It's got little crystals of sea salt in it. Which makes it very tasty, but also weirdly gritty if you just hack off a chunk and eat it), by hand. Feel very fancy. Walk away. Talk on phone. Try to knit. Screw around on internet. Talk on phone some more. Read email. Come back to stir occasionally.

15. Decide there's now far too much water in crock-pot. Turn on to high for an hour. Then decide you aren't hungry enough, stir, turn back to low for another hour or so.

16. Realize there's, like, NO liquid in the chili anymore. And that there's enough chili for, like, a church social.

17. Swear a little. Console yourself that at least you didn't burn it this time.

18. Nuke the cornbread. Break apart and add butter. Get a little dizzy from huffing the cornbread fumes.

19. Try the chili. Realize it's pretty good, but about as spicy as ketchup. Decide the dog can lick the bowl after all. Make sure there aren't any beans left in the bowl when you give it to her, because you're not going to make THAT mistake again.

20. Blog about the chili. Obviously.

You know, I kind of knew that.

Well, since all the other kids are doing it, I took the "What US City Are You?" quiz. This is the answer I got.

You Are Miami

Sexy and beautiful, you turn heads wherever you go. A little spicy and a little exotic, you're fully aware of your unique appeal. Totally high energy, you keep the party going early into the morning. Famous Miami residents: Anna Kournikova, OJ Simpson, Enrique Iglesias

What American City Are You?

Although I'm not typically one who likes to associate myself with OJ Simpson (Since when is he from Miami?), I will admit I kind of agree with them. Or at least, I must, since the non-Chicago places I was looking to relocate to in the match were here, Charleston SC, or Miami. Miami's a great town - totally unlike anywhere else I've been in the world, really. The people are generally friendly, it's open and exotic and totally flavorful. And fosters a particular kind of crazy people that I find interesting to work with. And it would've forced me to learn Spanish, which you know I'm rather desperate to do. The women are a little too consistently gorgeous, but I think the high proportion of Hispanic men would've counterbalanced that (they like a little something to hold on to, I'm told).

My other favorite non-Chicago American cities? Seattle, WA and Savannah, GA. I also really liked Ketchican, AK. But there were no psych programs in Savannah or the entire state of Alaska (no, really, I seriously considered it! I think the seasonal affective disorder would probably get me in the end, but I've been to Alaska once, and that is a magical land), and UW seemed to think I should go to the University of Washington program in Idaho (which let me tell you, I like a good potato, but come on now). And in the end, Big Hospital's program beat the pants off Jackson Memorial and U of Miami. And, I don't have a crazy ex here yet, so, bonus. And I like the Triangle, a lot, really.

Oh, and then there was this reason I didn't move to Miami:



This was an AP photo of my crazy ex's neighborhood during hurricaine Wilma. Yeah...

Oh-and!!

WTF is this? Why do nurses get their own cheesy-ass theme song? Where's the crappy "doctors make the world go 'round" song?



Dude. Stupid Johnson and Johnson....

Friday

Ah, so it's my last day of being home sick. Maggie's insistence that I pet her must, indeed, have cured me. And I celebrated this morning by...running errands. You know, in public. I even encountered a small child.

I still tried not to cough on her. I mean, I try to employ that as a general rule.

So I'm officially crusty. And thus in theory not contagous anymore. And I also have a giant bruise on my lateral left knee that I can't explain. I don't think that's related.

And as yet another bit of randomness, I'm watching the Psych season finale. Generally speaking, I don't entirely love this show. And right now I'm ten minutes in and a little annoyed. The mummy got up and walked out of the exhibit. Duh, because the actual mummy was replaced by a guy wrapped in bandages who probably was trying to steal something else. They did this already on CSI. It was a fake ancient Japanese suit of armor, but, nonetheless. And it was probably an inside job.

I went to the Walgreens and the Whole Foods this morning, and the yarn store in Raleigh, which didn't have the yarn I needed. I also stalled at the cute little bookstore where my aunt and I went to the book signing last week. And then I came home and napped and read and knitted until I ran out of the yarn I couldn't get any more of this morning (they had the right yarn - I mean, please, it's Lamb's Pride - just not the right color. And I was trying to explain to the saleswoman exactly the blue I was using, which just happened to not be any of the six shades of blue they had in bulky. It's Cubbie Blue. But, you know, that doesn't mean anything to anyone down here...) and then I watched a lot of Law and Order. It was a lovely day.

I did talk to Original Robin today (as opposed to Other Robin), and she told me, well, a, the baby's gestating well. But b, her mother-in-law's really, really sick. Which makes me sad, because you'll remember that Original Robin married another of our friends from high school. I've known her MIL a long time, and she's a great lady. Some of my best memories of high school involve Original Robin and her now-MIL and her now-SIL and me freezing our butts off in the stands at away football games senior year so we could cheer on Original Robin's now-husband (Number 64). So I dug through my stash and started a shawl/lap robe for her. It's a nice Cherry Tree Hill merino worsted in this marl color I don't know what else to do with, and it'll be a good color for her. I'm going to try and visit her next week when I'm Chicago for like ten minutes (literally between prep and court, over that stupid suit about my old house. Run, run, run). I'm going to be really sad when she dies.

A Happy Single People Awareness Day to you

Ah, Valentine's Day.

So I'd been meaning to swipe adopt this Love Thursday thing from Barb for a while, because I like the idea - what I got from her blog (Barb, correct me if I'm wrong here) was that somebody at some point declared that Thursdays were a day for accentuating the positive and discussing what all is good. What I got from a quick Google search trying to decipher the origins of this thing is this, that the original charter was from two women who don't seem to be blogging anymore who advocated the posting of pictures reminiscent (see, this is why I need the spell checker to start working again!) of hearts and love and loving things. Eh, whatever. I like my interpretation. And it seems (again from said Google search) that many other Bloggers out there share my take on the topic.

I thought about being all "different" and going with Love Tuesday or something like that, but since it happens to be Valentine's day, and I discovered I was writing a whole post full of things I love, it seemed like a good time to initiate Love Thursday on my own blog.

So, without further adieu, here's ten random things I love today:

1. My dog. You know that I could not possibly initiate something called Love Thursday without starting with my dog.

The rest are in no particular order or actual relevance to my life. Obviously.

2. Oprah. I have been an Oprah resister for a very long time. I roll my eyes when people say "I saw this or that on Oprah". Please, Oprah. I mean, I'm from Chicago, where Oprah is even more of an institution than she is in the rest of the world. But come on, she's just Oprah. She's so overdone and really, what-ever. And so then I'm quarantined and trapped in my apartment home sick all week, right, and my aunt, the one who isn't really my aunt but I grew up with them and they live down the street from me now and who is a HUGE Oprah fan, is like, oh! You have to watch Oprah! She's on every day at four! Alright! Okay! Bye! (That's how she ends every phone conversation. I also love having them so close, in case you missed that)

I'm hooked. ::sigh:: I'm so going to have way too many things piling up on the DVR that I'm never, ever going to have time to watch...

3. That Oprah did a whole big segment on shelter dogs as part of her Valentine's Day show. That, truly, is what did me in.

4. Sassy comebacks. Like this line, from the episode of CSI I'm watching right now. Kathryn and Warrick have just shown up at a scene thinking they were working a missing persons case, and discovered that the missing Paul Sorenson was in fact, a painting, not a person. And the homeowner looks at them and says, like they should've known, "Paul Sorenson was an artist." And Warrick says to Kathryn, "Yeah? What does he know about the forensic analysis of a friction ridge?"

5. This line, from this email I got today. Apparently NaBloPoMo rides again, on a month-by-month basis, encouraging members to blog daily for a month on the given theme of the month (i.e., March is "lists"). And in their email they say,

This is not the same as Blog365 (http://blog365.ning.com). Those nuts are blogging every day FOR A YEAR.

Please. I've been called a nut for lesser things than that.

6. Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens.

7. My new felting buddy. Look, there he is on the washer!


So you know I've been having trouble felting with the frontloader. And yesterday, I finally managed to finish a project I've been working on (that is several months overdue and no, I can't show you yet, 'cause it's a gift), and was like, crap, how am I going to felt this? And I haven't really liked the results I got with the complex's Speed Queen. And my afore mentioned Oprah-loving aunt has offered me her washer, but you know, if you're not a knitter, and you've not felted before, you don't really know what you're getting into, what with all the fuzz and wet wool and whatnot. So I started thinking. I used to toss my Downy Ball in for added agitation. And I thought, hmm. Maggie's not really the tennis ball type, but I bet we've got something...

It's an old toy. She doesn't really like it anyway. I? Love it. It felted, um, my felting project, SO WELL. Oh, my gosh, it was a beautiful thing. I can't wait to show you how this thing turned out.

8. Crusty pox. I have TWO pox now that are all crusted over. Hooray!!! Finally.

9. This quote, which I found on the Center for Mindful Eating website:

Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent.
- Epictetus, Greek philosopher

Sage advice. And further proof that way back at the beginnings of recorded history, the Greeks were still saying "just shut up and eat it."

10. Y'all. Sappy, I know, but I do.

"Safety is Always a Concern"

Oy. Read this.

On the homefront, still waiting for the crusties. Still itchy. Still feeling like crap. Still watching a lot of Law and Order (well, what did you expect, I've seen all the episodes of CSI by now!). Really hoping to go to work on Friday. Stupid pox.

And as an aside, are any of you other Blogger users finding that NONE of the little buttons at the tops work anymore? Not the spell check, the hyperlink, the image tool, none of it. Argh!!

Nurse Maggie

My dog has done a good job of taking care of me the past few days. So today when I scuttled off to the PetsMart (I thought we had enough food to get through the week, but, sadly, not so much) I picked her up a couple of little presents.

My aunt and I went to this book signing last week for Best Hikes With Dogs: NC. The author was at this cute little independant bookstore that's in the same strip mall as my secondary LYS, giving a talk with some reporter from the local paper who also wrote a book about hiking in NC. She was very sweet and has a very cute black lab named Shelby who apparently hiked all the trails in the book with her as research. Consequently, there are a lot of trails with lab-friendly things like water and ducks.

But regardless, Maggie's always been up for a good hike through the woods, whether we were on the paved forest preserve trails in Chicago or slogging through the mud in the woods behind our house in NH (once, we went for a "walk" and ended up exploring the woods and got so muddy that as we came into the house, I took my shoes off, threw them in the garbage can outside, rolled up the bottoms of my scrubs, and hefted Maggie onto my shoulder before we went in. I then walked straight upstairs and dumped her into the tub before she could get muddy paw prints on anything but the bathroom tile. I spent a lot of time working the caked mud out of her paw pads that day. She was NOT pleased). She's a little afraid of the beach, but, you know, whatever, she'll get used to it. Anyway, in said book she talks a lot about the proper gear for taking your dog hiking. She recommended two things for the dog in particular - a pack, and boots. Not for all the time (the boots), but if you get into rocky areas, or need something to hold a bandage on a hurt paw, or the weather turns suddenly, they're good to pull out.

Now, of course, you can't just whip these out on the trail and expect your pooch to be like, oh, okay then. So I was like, I really should get her a set soon and then acclimate her to them. Ditto with the pack, but that can wait a while. Anyway, wouldn't you know it, dog boots were 70% off at the Petsmart today. Can't go wrong with that, right? Even if she refuses to walk in them, it's less than a $5 loss.

Let me also say I've tried to put boots on Maggie several times in her life. She has not, um, historically done well with them. She did a little better today.

Of course, she readily struck a pose for the camera....

But this more accurately sums up how she really felt about them...

There was still a lot of goose-stepping and sad-puppy eyes, but at least she walked around in them for a while.

She also got a new toy that seemed particularly appropriate for the season....

Because you know that my dog is a democrat....

Now all we need is for me to stop being contagious, and we'l be trail ready.

I'm feeling a little better today, I guess. Really achy. Still really tired. Not crusty yet. My aunt brought over cookies and spaghetti pie, so that will definitely make me feel better.

The pox, day 3

I think I'm a little better today.

I'm still itching. A lot. And really tired. But I only took one or maybe two naps today. I even went to the grocery store (with my sweatshirt zipped up to the neck and covered to the wrists) and managed to load the dishwasher. And I washed the new sheets that I bought last week. I even knit a little bit. And I made dinner (which involved boiling. It was soup mix).

Honestly? All that wore me the hell out. Oy.

Maggie thinks this is the BEST THING EVER, though.

Tell you a secret

So I've spent most of my time awake today on the phone. I've talked to my chief resident, I've talked to my folks, I've talked to my aunt, I've talked to about half the intern class (we all change services tomorrow, so today is the day we all clamor to hand off patients and get tips and compare notes. Well, and Mike called about his patient who died Friday, and PenuinShrink called just to see how I was doing with the pox). And I've been trying so hard to be congenial and pleasant and upbeat and put up a good front.

But...I have a confession to make...

Holy cow, I'm miserable.

I'm itchy. I'm running a fever. I'm so tired I can't even tell you. I've been too tired to knit, too tired even to read. I'm all achy. And I think my spleen hurts. I finally have a pock on my face, but it's little, which is helpful, but it also hurts. Actually, most of them are pretty small, except the weird ones on my elbow. I'm a little woozy. And a lot cranky. And I can't seem to stop scratching, particularly while I'm asleep, and don't anyone dare say anything about putting socks on my hands. I can't even keep socks on my FEET at night.

The first few times I had the pox I was mostly just itchy. Seems like the older I get the more "ill" I actually feel.

And, I think my bottle of white wine turned.

Grumble, mumble, whimper, groan. Mmmmm, I'm so crabby. Stupid pox.

Why yes, I would like a little cheese with my whine, why do you ask?

Maggie's been pretty cute, though. Every so often she comes over to the couch and nudges me - to make sure I'm still alive, I think - and then licks whatever exposed skin is available and insists that I pet her. Because that cures everything. No really, just ask any dog.