Never a dull day...

So, this morning, I'm in the resident workroom, and Scott (who's night float this week) points out this chief complaint of a patient in the ER that neither of us can quite decipher. It says, "AMS: MSC OD." Okay...altered mental status. An overdose on something. We throw out a couple of guesses, and we finally give in and look at the chart. The triage note reads something like this:

"19 year old female found by EMS on [major street near the hospital]. Initially reported to be unconscious, but was alert by the time EMS arrived. Patient was found outside Marble Slab Creamery. She states that she works there, and broke in to the store around 2am. Patient was found covered in chocolate ice cream..." Later in the notes, it says, "in ER, patient noted to have chocolate all over face and bilateral hands."

I love my job.

Dawn

This makes me want to vomit....

Read this.

OH.....my freakin' GOD....

Sometimes? The cruelty of people completely astounds me.

Fortunately, though, the kindness of people frequently does, as well. It's a shame that it rarely makes the news.

Warnings

I should be writing notes. And yet I'm not. Because I'm tired. I went to the off-site clinic this afternoon, saw a nice patient, and left afterwards at like 4:30. So I went to the Starbucks for a while and finished my inpatient notes, but there weren't any seats inside so I was sitting at a table outside and it was a wee bit chilly. So then I got back in the car...and then drove home...and ate some dinner...and read some Facebook...and now I want to go to bed, even though it's only 7:30...

So, I'm posting this. It was a warning sign by the beach in Maui, and it cracked me up...

Remember, folks, the beach is a dangerous place. Apparently, if you swim there...

1. You might not be able to walk on water and could fall down the stairs.

2. You might not be able to swim upside down.

3. You might break into synchronized swim routines.

4. You might get eaten by a Giant Sea Claw.

5. You might spontaneously levitate. (Seriously, I have no clue what this is trying to depict.)

6. You might get eaten by giant sperm.

7. You might not be able to surf without a board.

Some things never change...

Yeah, so, I was planning on being in bed an hour ago... For some reason, I had no problem going to bed at a reasonable time when I was on vacation, and woke up bright and early. And yet, coming home...

My 7am cancelled tomorrow. I was going to get up and go to the gym like a good girl, but, we'll see when I wake up...

I have a lot of things I want to change over the next few months. One of these is, I really want to work harder on my yoga practice. Which means I have to actually start doing yoga more than just sporadically. Plus, I have like a million other things I want to do. Which means I have to extend my day to at least 26 hours...maybe 30...

One thing I am doing - for the next two weeks, I'm going gluten-free. It's something I've been thinking about for years. Look, I clearly have a dietary intolerance to something, which is probably actually an allergy (rather than a strict intolerance, like lactose intolerance; there's no immune response, just a failure to break down lactose. Which, still is hell for uncomfortable), given how I can't quite get my asthma or my allergies under control. It's an experiment; we'll see how it goes.

Okay, okay, I'm going to bed...

Aaaand, we're back...

I'm home!

I'm still a little sad not to be in Hawaii anymore (and a little jealous of my parents, who are there until Monday), but I'm quite glad to be back, flopped on my own bed, watching the shows that have accumulated on my DVR in my absence. With my dog, whom I missed so (she was SO EXCITED that I was home. But apparently her means of showing me she missed me was to pee on the floor of my bedroom. Ah well....).

On the whole, my trip back was pretty uneventful. Maui to Honolulu...a three hour layover in Honolulu (I went to Starbucks)...then to LA, where I had about enough time to pee and then board the flight to Chicago. I slept pretty restlessly on the red eye - I felt kind of bad for my seatmate, as much as I was tossing and turning, but she didn't seem to mind. I actually did manage to get a little bit of sleep, though. I had another three hour layover in Chicago, but I have to say, O'Hare is a much more interesting airport than Honolulu (although....I went to Starbucks again). And finally I made it back to NC, where Sparrow graciously scooped me up at the airport. We had lunch and visited a while (between her travel and my travel I haven't seen her in over 3 weeks), then I came home and hung out with my dog (SOEXCITED). We watched House, and Bones, and CSI, and SVU, and Dollhouse, which had accumulated on the DVR, until I finally gave in to the nap that overtook me around 5 or so. Then we went out and got some dinner (I was a little worried the car wouldn't be too thrilled about moving after sitting in my spot for two weeks, but it started right up). And now a little more TV, and my plan is to go back to sleep around 11... Generally, the trip back was good, I suppose. It was freakin' long, but I got some knitting done, I finished the book I'd been reading (Hawaiian ghost stories) and started and finished a new one by an author I'd not read before, but plan to read more of (Paulo Coelho; weirdly, I randomly found him in the Mythology and Supernatural section of the Borders, although I see nothing particularly mythologic or supernatural about the story I read...). I wasn't feeling so hot for most of the trip, but I did okay. And my suitcase even made all the connections and got back to NC with me! I was really convinced that I wouldn't be seeing that thing for a couple more days. And, because I left it with the curbside porter in Maui, they apparently didn't weigh it and thus didn't charge me more for it (I'm pretty sure it was over 50 lbs). So, on the whole? A win.

And, time for bed....

Bloggage claim

Check out this nonsense - I'm in the Honolulu airport, in the middle of a three hour layover from Maui. And I'm blogging by phone. Well, via the web browser on my phone. It's not the most pleasant way to enter text, given my annoying Blackberry touchscreen and the fact that the text just keeps going in one long line, but hey, what else have I got to do right now?

I'm fairly sad to be leaving Hawaii, as one might guess. I can't believe it's been two weeks already. Spending that much time contained with my parents (or anyone, for that matter) always has its moments, but overall it's always good to spend real time with them. I'm starting Monday as the ECT consult resident, which means I have only three patients on the unit, but also that I have off-site clinic responsibilities and have to do any ECT consults, plus there's the expectation that I actually go do ECT a couple of times a week. Which, is all fine, of course, but is just more responsibility to deal with, ultimately. Plus, have I mentioned recently how I find Hawaiian culture fascinating? I'd love to have a little more time out here to investigate that more.

All lovely, valid reasons to not want to leave. Plus, I seem to have contracted some random, smoldering stomach bug over the last couple of days. Believe me, my immune system and I are going to have words about coming down with that when I'm doing this super awesome, 20-hour, five-flight extravaganza.

But, I have to go home sometime. I still have work and notes and whatnot to do tomorrow (er, Sunday) that I couldn't get done on the trip because of limited wifi. I really miss my dog, who probably thinks I'm never coming back. And, you know, as much as I've enjoyed the time away, there's a reason I have the job I do. It'll be nice to get back into the routine.

Well, the Blackberry typing has sufficiently annoyed me enough that I'm going to shut up now and go knit a while. See y'all on the flip side.

Sorry, y'all. Blogger's acting up tonight here in Paradise. Will try to post something useful tomorrow from one of the many airports in which I'll be....

Hawaiian training wheels

Obake

So my folks and I went to dinner at this cute little Italian place tonight, and afterwards wandered over to the Long's Drugs next door, which is apparently something of a Hawaiian institution. I got a bunch of stuff for people back home who did nice things to make this trip possible for me (nothing says, "Thanks for doing extra work so I could go sit on a beach in paradise!" like chocolate covered macadamia nuts). And I picked up a book of Hawaiian ghost stories.

Dude.

I think I shouldn't be reading that shit before bedtime.

The Hawaiians are a very superstitious culture. There are lots of mystic, supernatural kinds of things that are alleged to go on around here. And for some totally non-rational reason, I completely believe this is the case. There is a distinctly preternatural vibe about the islands. I think there are places where mystical energies tend to coalesce; I find this to be true of several places I've been: Savannah, Georgia...Charleston, SC...NOLA...to name a few. I think if you are still and quiet, often you can feel the undercurrents of these places being a little differently charged than, say, Winnetka.

Now, does this mean I believe any ghost story I hear, or buy into every superstition anyone presents? Of course not. But, let's face it - the Greeks are a pretty superstitious people themselves. So it's kind of in my blood. And I think there is so much that happens on this plane of existence and others that we can't even comprehend...I'd quote the line from Hamlet, here, but that seems a little trite. Still, Horatio...

Honestly, even the most conservative organized religions have quite a bit of mysticism and supernaturalism about them. Transubstantiation, the choirs of Angels, stigmata, pretty much anything from the Old Testament, even the belief in a higher power itself is a kind of mythos and superstition. So why do we so easily dismiss that which we can't immediately explain? When my father was born and, let's face it, he's not that old - the suggestion that DNA was the heritable material of life, the code for every single aspect of who we are biologically - that would've been sneered at as preposterous. The entire vocabulary of existence reduced to four letters? Please. And yet, now I can send a Q-tip and $60 off to Utah and get a full profile of Maggie's lineage. We can cure some diseases with gene therapy. Every woman who gets prenatal care is offered testing to determine the likelihood of certain heritable illnesses. Heck, when *I* was born, ultrasound screening in pregnancy was mythical. Now, three decades later, you can get 4-D images of your unborn child at a shopping mall that are almost as good as having a window in one's uterus.

So why is it that we so easily discount some of the oldest lore? It's kind of weird, when you think about it...

Oh! Also weird? Some woman in her 60s was attacked by a shark right down the beach from us yesterday (we're staying in Kihei). Thanks, Jenn, for alerting me to that! Fortunately, the most dangerous thing I've seen around here (aside from the sailors) are the jellyfish I encountered on my beach walk this evening.

More pictures up tomorrow. But right now, it's 11:20pm local, and y'all, ghost stories or not, it's time for bed...

Maui no ka 'oi.

So we're on Maui.

It was one long-ass and arduous day. Somehow the inter-island flight was more hassle than the trans-Pacific one. And, the TSA stole my mustard.

But my day started out very lovely. I got up before dawn (because I do this) and hoofed it down to Waikiki Beach, which is a mere 6 blocks or so from our condo in Honolulu, and yet, I hadn't made it down there through the whole week. So I wandered over there this morning, and spent like two hours taking 700 or so pictures of surfers, and sunrise, and water, and then after while I just started shooting people (in a snap, snap kind of way, otherwise you'd be hearing about this on the news instead of on my blog). I tend mostly to take environmentals; I'm all about depth of field and perspective shots and still life, I think because this is what translates best from my brain to my lens. Which at this point is mostly a matter of skill, which is of course a matter of experience. So I've decided I need to spend more time shooting action and people and life life.

I sat for a while at the beach and then on a street corner and just watched people. I tried to stop thinking technically and start thinking with my grander sense of life, my more ineffable, artistic sense. And I got some pretty darn good shots. And had a very good time feeling more connected to humanity in general.

The rest of the day was a series of fiascoes. Did I mention that the TSA STOLE MY DAMN MUSTARD?

So, I'm giving up and going to bed. Fortunately for me, my parents were very kind and let me have the bedroom with a window, which happens to be the "master" bedroom (there's some feeling that I may have earned the upgrade, but that's another story for another day). So I'm going to go take advantage of that...

Guess where I am.

Go on, guess.

Yep, I'm at Starbucks. How I wish we had wifi at the condo. This twice a day habit could be hard to break once I get home.

So today is our last real day on Oahu. There's a tiny plane in my future tomorrow, which will take me to Maui, until Friday, when a tiny plane will bring me back to a series of big ones. A long series of big ones. This makes me sad.

Got up and shot the sunrise this morning at the Somethingwithalotofvowels Blowhole. It was less spectacular than some I've seen, but still quite beautiful. Then came back and napped. Went to Starbucks, wandered a little, ate lunch, napped again. Then the folks and I drove out to Pearl Harbor, although we've been to the memorial before (and it was kind of late to go to the museum), but there was a shopping mall we needed to find. Not that we went into it (well, I did run into the Borders), but mostly my parents wanted to prove that they weren't misremembering it (and the one we went to Thursday, which we thought was it, really, really was not).

So now we're in a different Starbucks. My parents are reading the Sunday Honolulu newspaper. And I've just been informed that my father is a sleepy head, so I guess we'd better get going...

Clearly, he should've followed my lead and napped more today.

Hawaii By Night

(...is actually the name of the strip club across the street from where I'm sitting. But it also seemed like a fitting title...)

I'm sitting outside the Starbucks at Kuhio and Seaside on a lovely, breezy, Honolulu evening. There's a couple of street performers down the way, and the low rhythmic drumming pulses like a heartbeat as the nightlife flows by. This really is a very pleasant city. Beautiful scenery, lovely weather, wonderful people. Hawaii has such a unique and adaptive culture. I'd love to know more about what goes on when the tourists aren't looking.

I get the sense, though, that I wouldn't actually want to live here. I'm not really sure why I think that.

When we were in medical school, one of my colleagues was in the military, and discovered that if you didn't match into any of the military programs, you could go through the general match process and get into a civilian one. He thought, no problem, and just didn't interview at any of the military programs, so that he could match into a civilian program closer to his family. Great idea, right?

Except...

He was one wicked smart guy. In the top ranks of our class, good CV, excellent board scores. He looked so good on paper, in fact, that at least one of the military programs ranked him without even meeting him. And he matched in Hawaii.

I always have felt kind of bad for him in that Hawaii and Iowa are a long way apart. And that was the same year I matched into a program I wasn't expecting (although, I ranked them third, it was kind of my fault. Or, at least I had a hand in it). And I can imagine being stuck on an island in the middle of the Pacific can be daunting for a Midwesterner. And certainly one person's paradise can be another one's hell.

But still.

I have distinct memories of a weekend sometime about January. I was in the middle of a q2 weekend, which meant I hadn't slept all night, and was due for another sleepless night of call the next day. I already hated my life and my program and felt for all the world like the worst resident ever. And I dig my damn car out of where it's been plowed in, and I drive home, and there's four fucking feet of snow in my driveway.

I thought of my friend from medical school at that moment. I thought of the night we'd spent out drinking with a bunch of our other friends during Senior Disorientation Week, and we talked about how we were both trying very hard to accept where we'd been sent, were trying to be optimistic, but when the veil of denial was lifted by a large bucket of something rum-containing and fruity with eight straws and half a bottle of maraschino cherries in it, neither of us was really very happy with the way things turned out.

I felt like FedExing him four feet of snow.

In the end, I lost touch with him, because I lost touch with almost everyone during that year, and he's not on Facebook (which is how I've managed to reconnect with a lot of my classmates). I still think about him once in a while. He was a good guy, and a good friend, and I hope that in the end, his misstep worked out as well as mine ultimately did. I thought about asking if anyone knew if he was still on the island, but his residency should be over, and I expect that he isn't.

Besides, how would I explain that big soggy box he got intern year?

Breathtaking (= Wordless Friday)

Wordless...or, you know, not...

My folks and I drove up the coast today, circled back and hit the Pali lookout, then doubled back towards Pearl City. I kept stopping and shooting like 100 pictures at a time. I shot a total of 600 or so (well, since we got here, but mostly today).

But do you think I remembered to put the SD card back in my netbook before I came to Starbucks to check email? ::sigh::

Tomorrow. Pictures. Really.

This morning started out kind of poorly. I got an email from my dog sitter saying that my electricity had been turned off. So, apparently, when we thought we'd fixed the billing problem last month, we were mistaken. Fine, fine, so I tried again to pay it online, and couldn't get my bank card to work, which I discovered was because my apartment complex cashed both the check they said they lost as well as the check I wrote them because I lost the first one. And apparently, also, Gomer's former employer (he got a new job when the gym closed) has started billing me for my training contract again, despite the fact that I was told it was nullified in May.

Do you know how hard it is to handle that sort of shit from like 5000 miles away?

But we got it taken care of. Or, at least the power is turned back on. And apparently Bank of America will credit back the check amount (although not the resultant overdraft fee, bastards). I'll deal with the gym tomorrow.

(PS - Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" is playing here in the Starbucks, which is of course the song that gave my dog her middle name (although we spell it Mae). I miss my dog.)

And the day got better. We piled in the Subaru and wandered around, as I said, stopping like every ten feet so I could shoot the equivalent of a couple of rolls of film. I so totally heart digital. And especially my Rebel. I'm still working out the finer points of dSLR photography ("Wait, the f stop means what, again?"), but I'm rather pleased with the results.

And in typical fashion for my family, there was much getting lost and trying to read maps and - Claudia, you'll appreciate this - many, many, many U-turns. Then we came home for naps. I wandered around the main street for a little while, looking for whatever caught my eye, and found a really very neat little pendant that I bargained down to $10. Now I just need to find a chain, but then, I did need a goal for tomorrow...

I fly back a week from tomorrow. I'm a little sad about that, frankly.

Oh, and I need someone to pick me up from the airport. I guess I should start asking people about that....

Patchy

So, I have pretty patchy wi-fi here. Not at all sure how the timeshare DOESN'T have wi-fi access, but now I know where the Starbucks is. So I might be doing a little more blogging by text in the coming few days, or I might be coming here a little more...we'll see.

So far, so good, though. It's lovely. I shot a few pictures. We spent most of today getting settled...and my mom and I spent a good deal of time in the car being lost...but, lost in Hawaii is still awesome!

We've got to go eat dinner now. Will try to say more tomorrow...or, you know, Friday or something....

It's only 9pm here, but that means it's 3am back home. Y'all, I'm freakin' exhausted. And blogging by text bc I don't have reliable wifi. Oh, and I'm also 31.

"In 20 years, there will be a pork roast in your luggage."

So here's a funny story.

I've been to Hawaii a couple of times before. My parents are big fans (understandably), and so whenever they have enough frequent flier miles accrued and can finagle the timeshare, we go. This has worked out to I think four times in my life (they went once without me. I think this is my fourth trip, although I'm not entirely sure...). And having done this a couple of times, they've learned a few tricks. Not the least of which is that everything on the island is expensive, so we tend to pad our suitcases with some staple items that we can buy cheaper here. The timeshare always has a kitchenette, so we eat what we take and then have room in the suitcases to bring stuff back that we acquire there. Makes sense, right? For this trip (which is really the first time I've gone as an adult), I have spaghetti, sauce, peanut butter and strawberry preserves, etc.

About 13 years ago (holy shit...), we went after I graduated from high school, and we took Claudia along (because what 17 year old wants to be stuck on an island with her parents for two weeks when she could be exploring the city of Honolulu with her best friend, boarding surreal buses full of people who don't speak English and having sketchy guys offer them weed on street corners?). Which, great, we fly in, we get there, and we're at the condo unpacking, and my mother produces from their suitcase...a pork roast.

Claud and I were like, what??

They'd frozen it here, packed it in a cooler, and dragged the frozen hunk of meat like 6000 miles. Which had more or less thawed by the time we got there. Which was, apparently, the plan.

Claudia was fairly baffled by this. I kind of rolled my eyes - after all, they were *my* parents (I was a little more used to them. Suffice it to say, neurotic apples do not fall far from their trees). Although...in retrospect...I'm not sure I actually ate the pork roast. I don't think they ever did convince me that no food safety rules were breached by letting the thing ride in the cargo hold...

I had a really nice day in Chicago today. I bought a new 75-300 zoom lens for the Rebel. Claudia and I drove out to our favorite restaurant from my college days, just over the Indiana border, and then we drove around my college campus for a while (wow, have they made some interesting architectural choices...). And then we met up with the whole crew for dinner, including my two completely adorable nephews, who are now one and three (again, holy crap). We ate, we laughed, we talked, we had a good, good, good time. And they made fun of me for packing food in my suitcase, which led to the comment that became the title of this post.

Gosh, I miss y'all up here.

And then, in like 7 hours, my uncle (the actual, genetic one) is coming to take us to the airport, so we can all spend a really long time on a plane. And then be in Hawaii.

I don't think there are any pork products stowing away in our luggage this time, though....

Brr

Okay, it's not that cold. I'm still running around without a coat, here...

I get off the plane this morning in Chicago and walked outside into 41-degree weather. Thanks, guys. I'm guessing you ordered that up special, what with me coming into town and all. Fortunately for me and my lack of real cold-weather anything in my luggage, this is more or less an extended layover.

Currently? 84 degrees in Honolulu.

As is typical when I'm here on a Sunday, I met up with my old knitting crew today. I am consistently struck by how familiar that group is, including the people that have joined since I left. I can plop down in that Panera, pull out my needles, and it's like I come every week. For all the irritating moments and bad credit that came out of working (for yarn - hence, bad credit. Funny, my loan company wouldn't accept that in payment...) at the yarn shop, there were some seriously awesome things that came of it.

Clearly, the best thing I gained were the awesome people who might not otherwise have made it into my life. We were a motley little group, there. Sarah (of Theories of String fame, see the blogroll) and I used to joke that our shop had a weird concentration of the most over-educated knitting teachers, ever (she's a PhD candidate, I of course had my MD by then, and the other woman who taught a lot had I think two masters degrees). Add in the group of regulars that hung around, the quirky shop owners and their even quirkier families, the hired help that actually worked for money rather than store credit (mostly in the dye shop; I'm not sure they actually "paid" any of us that worked up front), the Man in Brown, my lovable and goofy mutt, and the dyer's ridiculous five pound Italian Greyhound puppy who used to escape and run up to the front of the store and pee on things...

That place was really something. Usually in a good way.

It was also nice for me, because as the yarn-dyeing enterprise gathered steam, they more or less let me run the day to day stuff in the store. Which was really eye-opening, and I gained a lot of insight and interesting skills that I think could be really helpful if I ever run my own practice. And convinced me that if I plan on running anything bigger than a two or three person practice (say, a residential treatment center for trauma related disorders. On the beach, maybe), there's probably some merit in getting an MBA...

...and in having a facility dog. The tiny one was...well, kind of evil. But Mags, man, she had a blast there. She did so well. And I think she sold more yarn than any of the rest of us, to be honest. I should've had them put her on commission...seriously, though, I so miss being able to take her to work. Having that energy around, that soft peace and unadulterated enthusiasm, was so wonderful. She misses the opportunity to be that social, too, I think. And she also knows good people when she meets them, so she was a huge, huge fan of the Knit Night group. Plus, you know, people would feed her things....

I miss very few "things" from my old life. But I greatly, deeply, often miss the people.

Wagons ho...

I think I'm packed. I mean, mostly. You know, except for the stuff I actually have to use in the morning.

Maggie's all depressed. She gets really anxious when I start pulling out suitcases. Currently, she's asleep on my pillow. I don't have the heart to make her move yet.

So, it's 11:25. I have to get up at 5am tomorrow, because my aunt is picking me up at 6. I think I've finally got everything together. I have two carry ons and one bag to check. And a freakin' lot of yarn. And two clinic notes and seven discharge summaries left to write, despite the amount of stuff I actually did get accomplished today.

Maybe the plane to Hawaii will have wi-fi....