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Posts Tagged ‘doctors’

Mama Day

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on May 9, 2022| 2 Comments »

For Mother’s Day, I went to the local garden store and bought nine small pots of French lavender. I’m planning to plant a purple hedge along the house side of our dilapidated garage, so whenever I look out the family room window, I’ll feel like I’m in the South of France.

I don’t have to plant lilacs for my foster mother Nell, I already have two glorious plants outside my snug’s window; and just like my maternal history, they are two different species of shrub. They sit side by side and both bloom at the same time, but one is a pale purpley/pink lilac and the other is a deeper violet.

“Lilac bushes set buds on old wood, so prune and shape them right after they finish blooming. Otherwise, said Tyler, you risk cutting off next year’s flowers.”

https://flowermag.com/lilac-bushes/

The lilacs have finished blooming, thank goodness I have a new pruning shear! Lately, my opulent magenta peonies have been exploding. If you asked me to dream up a perfect Mother’s Day, yesterday would have been it – we were only missing the Rocker and Aunt Kiki. I spent most of the day digging in the dirt. Then we set up a badminton net in the backyard for the Grands. The Bride had to work in the ER, but the Groom surprised her with dinner and dessert for us all! They made a pineapple upside down cake.

It was 73 and sunny, no bugs and no humidity, almost like California!

Ah, California, the state that is proposing an amendment to their constitution that would enshrine the Right to Choice! Thank you Senator Toni Atkins and Speaker Anthony Rendon.

Still, the leaked SCOTUS draft decision taking us back to the 1950s put a damper on my Mom Day. The juxtaposition of Naomi Judd’s suicide next to a possible Roe v Wade ban brought up old feelings of dread. Judd was part of my generation of women who went to hospitals with belly pain and were told we were pregnant. Before Roe became the Law of the Land, nurses and doctors looked at us with pity, and tried to explain why they couldn’t help us.

At least she wasn’t sent away in disgrace, to give up her baby in a different state, like so many teenage moms. At least she didn’t go to a back alley abortionist and become septic, and die. Or maybe worse, become infertile. Her family didn’t have the means to send her to Mexico or Cuba for a legal abortion. Judd had to grow up fast. Here is a part of her daughter Ashley’s tribute:

“But motherhood happened to her without her consent. She experienced an unintended pregnancy at age 17, and that led her down a road familiar to so many adolescent mothers, including poverty and gender-based violence.“

“Forgive me if my grief isn’t tidy. When I think about my mother, I am awash in the painful specifics. It’s a little easier, this Mother’s Day, to think about mothers in the collective, to wonder whether we value them. Every day, more than 800 women die in pregnancy and childbirth from causes for which solutions are affordable and achievable,” she wrote before sharing her 2018 experience with women in South Sudan “whose bodies were mangled from childbirth.”

https://americansongwriter.com/ashley-judd-writes-heartfelt-letter-about-mom-naomi-judd-ahead-of-mothers-day-forgive-me-if-my-grief-isnt-tidy/

If our country really valued mothers in the collective, we would send nurses to the homes of new moms. We’d supply free diapers and formula. We would give new moms a year of paid leave, and we’d provide affordable child care in every single state. Every child would be wanted. European countries have managed to do this, to value women. But we, we Americans just pretend to value women and babies.

I’m glad that the Flapper, who was born in 1908, came around to a Pro Choice stand. It wasn’t easy for her, she had six children herself, and our Irish ancestors had double and sometimes triple that number. But she was smart and slightly Buddhist in her old age. She had her first child at 17, and became pregnant at the age of 40 with me, her last child, to give my dying father a reason to live. Her doctor had no idea he would die of a brain tumor when I was seven months old.

I brought the Bride to march for Choice many times over the years. I never thought this day would actually come, silly me. I didn’t think she would ever have to look a young woman in the eyes and tell her there is nothing more she can do to help her. I didn’t think she’d possibly end up seeing septic young women bleed out in her ER. I thought we were better than this.

My family of doctors

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Pecha Kucha

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Memoir, science, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 10, 2020| 4 Comments »

We have some very good news for you today. The Groom has returned from his two week exile in the Tower of Nashville garage apartment! He is virus and fever-free and our family couldn’t be happier. Next week, he and the Bride will be sharing home-schooling so he better rest up while he can. We’ve all learned that a surgical mask may not protect you if you’re around patients all the time, or colleagues who test positive.

But what about the rest of us? What have we learned in our (fill in the blank) weeks of quarantine? I’m on week 22 and I’ve learned that Bernie was pretty much right about everything, that police budgets are off the charts, that misogyny still lives in our political language, and that you get 50 points for using all your letters on one word in Scrabble!

Bob may never play with me again.

I’ve also discovered new family members on my biological Father’s side thanks to the Rocker and “23andMe.” Which resulted in my becoming addicted to “Ancestry” – the keeper of my personal DNA thread. You know the one, where I’m 99.9% Irish. I have a vague memory of traveling to a lake in PA, in a town named after a long dead relative, for my First Holy Communion in about 1953. I even have a black and white picture of an ancestral Victorian farmhouse there, with a huge wraparound porch.

I couldn’t wait to share this second cousin news with my brother, Dr Jim, and my sister Kay on our weekly Zoom call yesterday. Kay is the family archivist, after all she is the oldest sibling with the longest memory. She told me that two of my paternal aunts never had children, and another, Aunt Elinor (the grandmother of my newly discovered relatives), adored my Father. A fourth aunt died at the age of 15.

A chill ran down my spine when I later found her death certificate from 1914 on Ancestry; her cause of death was listed as “chronic endocarditis.” My Father was only 13 when she died, this may be why he decided to study pharmacology instead of taking over the family business. Druggists, in the 30s and 40s, were the de facto doctors in poor, working class communities. Many people were afraid of hospitals, they thought you could catch polio there.

Dr Jim, still a working psychologist, told his sisters that we should try doing a Pecha Kucha presentation about our lives! I think he’s afraid dementia may set in before our stories are told! It’s a power point presentation, where you show 20 slides for 20 seconds each. That gives you exactly six minutes and 40 seconds to talk about transformative events in your life. I’m not so sure Great Grandma Ada could condense 96 years to 20 pictures, but I’m willing to give it a try.

Pecha Kucha was invented by two architects four years ago, Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, to fill up a gallery space they owned in Japan and increase business. Many big cities, before the pandemic hit, used to host pecha-nights, including Nashville. Why? “…the rules have a liberating effect. Suddenly, there’s no preciousness in people’s presentations. Just poetry.” https://www.wired.com/2007/08/st-pechakucha/

What would your first picture be? How would you begin the story of your life? My future adult Grands might start out with this picture of their Dad, released from his Covid quarantine.IMG_8085

 

 

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An Inflection Point

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, science, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 7, 2020| 2 Comments »

Did anyone else watch that horrific footage of the Beirut explosion this past week and think of a nuclear bomb? Or has the world forgotten that we still have over 13 thousand atomic weapons waiting peacefully around the world to be deployed. https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/

There are nine men in control of the bombs we know about, nine with their fingers on the button of a blast that could level the entire earth.

Yesterday marked 75 years since America dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima in 1945. Three days later, we did it again in Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were incinerated or badly burned. The survivors are now well into their 80s. And yet, today the news is all about economic numbers and coronavirus graphs – nuclear disarmament isn’t on the radar of nationalist/strong/men leaders around the world.

Coincidentally, I’m right in the middle of July’s first edition book, “Inheritors” from Parnassus. It’s almost like reading a separate story every night; each chapter builds on the other with differing points of view from the same Japanese family two years after WWII ended. Right before sleep, before entering my COVID nightmares, I escape into a tragedy of the the war’s aftermath. How does one survive under American occupation? How will we survive this inflection point while trying to “reopen” our country? Here is what NPR has to say about Asako Serizawa’s masterpiece:

In the before times — e.g., pre-pandemic — the big thinking on social issues by institutional media, philanthropy and academia had reached a point of commodification — curated conversations about the nature and causes of oppression, public health, and public policy were (and still are) sold as revenue generating events. Fixing social problems meant having money and therefore access to policymakers. I’ve curated enough of these events to understand the impact monetized access has on the balance sheet of high profile think tanks and social justice organizations.

But the pandemic and upheavals in our civic culture forced a pivot. Now, we’re reckoning on fundamentals — on happiness, on good and evil. Now, ordinary citizens drive the conversations about solutions for the common good, in social media, through street activism, citizen journalism and grass roots litigation. This emerging civic culture is demanding access to solve tough questions: shall we re-boot the American idea? What are national boundaries for? Does American society need something else besides consensus government? What might that something else look like?  

“The Inheritors provides a stark scenario as one answer. These stories follow the impact of exclusion, of cultural and biological manipulation, of men turning away from humanity…” https://www.npr.org/2020/07/14/890571662/inheritors-maps-a-complicated-family-tree-through-the-centuries

A young photo journalist uploaded a picture of her high school’s crowded hallway in Georgia, no masks with students shoulder to shoulder, and she was suspended by her principal. She tweeted that she didn’t mind, this was “Good Trouble.”

The Groom uploaded a video urging Gov Lee to mandate masks in TN. Yesterday he spoke again from isolation, his voice not quite as strong, but his message was even stronger. https://fox17.com/news/local/tennessee-who-urged-gov-lee-to-take-more-precautions-tests-positive-for-covid-19

He is a critical care doctor battling this virus with courage. When I asked him if he’s losing weight, he said something that warmed my heart,

“No, your daughter’s love language is food.”

In our after times – post- pandemic – which way will the curve of equality and humanity go, what will keep us up at night? I have to believe our arc is trending toward Good Trouble.

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“I’m NOT a Doctor”

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 6, 2020| 7 Comments »

But Mr T plays one on TV.

He says we should probably wear masks, but he won’t. Why? Because hey, kings and dictators don’t wear masks behind a “resolute desk.” This guy with the bad spray tan is too vain to model the best defense we’ve got for this “invisible enemy,” besides social distancing. I get why he thinks he’s a king, but how could an inanimate object be resolute? So of course I had to look up the definition of “Resolute,” an adjective:

firmly resolved or determined; set in purpose or opinion:

characterized by firmness and determination, as the temper, spirit, actions, etc.

I think we can all agree a desk cannot feel resolute, but Mr T is resolutely set in his opinions. He is vengeful, narcissistic, and mendacious. Maliciously mendacious in fact. I’ve been trying to look for the silver lining in this global pandemic. Bob and I have stopped watching Mr T’s coronavirus pressers, which are just stand-ins for his campaign rallies. I’ll occasionally listen to Governor Cuomo who is the voice of reason these days, along with a real doctor, Anthony Fauci.

Another real doctor is the Groom, who is currently researching that anti-malarial drug that Mr T is so fond of mentioning. His research on this drug started last week, LAST WEEK, along with 40 other institutions across the United States. Until we have any evidence, any evidence at all, it is political and medical malpractice for Mr T to continue to push the idea that we “may” have a possible “cure” for coronavirus.

The Groom is set to be back “On Call” in his ICU in about 2 weeks, right when our curve should hit its peak. This is not a reality show Mr T, and you are not a doctor.

Dr Sanjay Gupta on CNN is another doctor I believe; he’s been saying the same thing my husband, another real doctor keeps saying – the antibody test is going to be critically important. Not just to bring those who’ve recovered back into the workforce, but also to give everyone a certain sense of comfort. After all, my little “cold” right after the tornado may have immunized me already.

Dr Gupta and Bob have also been criticizing our lack of testing in the beginning; seeing how South Korea confronted the pandemic with lots of testing and tracing and isolating is illuminating.

“At the peak, medical workers identified 909 new cases in a single day, Feb. 29, and the country of 50 million people appeared on the verge of being overwhelmed. But less than a week later, the number of new cases halved. Within four days, it halved again — and again the next day.

On Sunday, South Korea reported only 64 new cases, the fewest in nearly a month, even as infections in other countries continue to soar by the thousands daily, devastating health care systems and economies. Italy records several hundred deaths daily; South Korea has not had more than eight in a day.”   https://www.n20/03/23/world/asia/coronavirus-ytimes.com/20south-korea-flatten-curve.html

Of course it’s extremely hard to catch up when your president spends 2 months blaming this pandemic hysteria on the mainstream “Fake” news, like a toddler. Nothing is ever his fault! He is, after all, the greatest living con man with a “…disordered mind, a darkened attic of fluttering bats.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html?searchResultPosition=1

My daughter is another doctor on the front lines of this outbreak. She gets out of her car after a shift in the ER, takes all her clothes off and dumps them in their red zone (garage apartment), then takes a shower. Only after that, will she walk across her lawn and enter her home. She has had to reuse her PPE and still worries about possibly infecting her family. I believe every single thing she says.

Our family will be Zooming in for a Passover Seder this week with another doctor in the family, a retired orthopedic surgeon on Long Island. It’s Holy Week for the 2 big religions in our country and I wish you all a peaceful and safe Seder and Easter. And I wish Mr T would let his real doctors do the talking.

Here they were as baby doctors in Virginia!

MedSch Classmates May08

 

 

 

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The Bug Boat

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Coronavirus is the bug; and the boat, harbored in the Japanese port of Yokohoma, is the Diamond Princess. This would be my idea of a living hell.

I’ve already suffered from a mosquito bite that infected me with West Nile, another dainty little virus that blossomed into a severe case of encephalitis. It was the worst headache I’d ever had, for a week, and it left me with a significant visual loss. Having to endure something similar, on a cruise ship, in a foreign country…

Also, Bob and I have never really wanted to set sail with thousands of strangers on one of those multi-level behemoths. Maybe it was that first outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease? I must admit I’ve become a bit hypochondriacal in my later years – if someone sneezes I will immediately turn and walk away, I’ll take the next elevator, I may even start wearing a mask!

Bob’s more about action and adventure, he told me that all you do on a cruise is “Eat,” but that was purely anecdotal. Maybe he’s afraid of gaining a pound or two? He’s certainly not afraid of a little virus, he loves to tell me how many teensy tiny organisms live on our bodies all the time! “It’s a cesspool!”

Yesterday, 99 new people have tested positive for the Coronavirus on the Diamond Princess, with nearly 400 Americans onboard. So far, only 46 Yanks have tested positive and they were promptly sent to a Tokyo hospital. I guess we should feel good that at least our government has started to evacuate its citizens back to the US, where they will have to be quarantined for another two weeks.

But what if your spouse tests positive? Would you return home without them?

There are now 542 sick patients on the boat because somehow or another their attempt at a quarantine failed miserably. Some blame it on the crew who ate together with their masks off. But really, no one knows. The Diamond Princess has the largest number of infected people outside of China.

Last week a pilot-friend of Bob’s called him from Colorado. He’d been at an IT conference in California with many Pan-Asian participants. After he returned home, he received a letter from the conference organizers saying an attendee traveling on his airline (though, luckily, not his flight) had tested positive, and if he exhibited any symptoms he should promptly go to the nearest ER. Since he didn’t want to be quarantined and wrapped up in a bubble, he thought he’d call my husband.

“Have you had any fever?” Bob said. Luckily the answer was no.

We are considering another river cruise. We really enjoyed our trip down the Danube on a Viking ship with slightly less than 200 passengers. The only bad thing that happened was a woman falling, she broke her leg on a slippery hill in a small town. Sadly, we had to leave her behind in an Austrian hospital.

Travel is risky. But now is the time to do it according to AARP, while we can still hike and change currency with the best of them. We need to keep expanding our minds, learning new things before the inevitable losses of old age. So we’re putting together another trip this year with our Italian chefs, Marco and Claudio for the Fall. This is my idea of heaven, laughing, trekking and cooking, absorbing a different culture, with a group of friends.

Next stop, Corsica!

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Floating World

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 17, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Ukiyo-e is Japanese for “pictures of the floating world.” It usually refers to scenes from everyday life, and was an art movement that inspired the early Impressionists. Imagine those prints of ocean waves, islands and cranes you once saw hanging in your grandmother’s home. Not this nana though; I’m more of an early 20th Century French advertising print sort of girl.

Still, with this torrent of spring rain, I’m beginning to feel as if I’ll be floating down to the Cumberland River any day now. Last night, during a rain-free respite, Bob and I visited our local Art Crawl – less a walk-about town and more an old factory brimming with live music, food trucks and artists of all media! We were especially taken with the paintings by Shane Miller. I asked if he works from a photograph or does he haul his easel outside? He said the photographs are all in his mind. https://www.shaneartistry.com/

He layers oils onto canvas in order to evoke a dreamscape. I could envision an expansiveness, a floating vista that spoke to a primordial self. I know, it sounds weird. But think about your happy place – the beach? The mountains? A long landscape of wheat grass at dawn bordered by a forest? Now stand back and squint your eyes to blur that image down into its essence. There, if you are lucky, you may find his work.

Our cousin, Stevela, is visiting his Aunt Ada (and us) from NY. He is an orthopedic surgeon who is grappling with retirement and recently started painting. What does a doctor do when he or she is no longer doctoring? Some like to pick up garbage in the neighborhood, while others might pick up a paint brush.

This is our second year in Nashville, and it was our very first Art Crawl. We told Steve that a visit to the Frist Museum is well worth it since their Mellon Collection of French Art (Van Gogh, Monet and Degas) just opened. We’ve seen it already with the Grands, where a docent told us that Van Gogh tried out being a missionary for a few years but failed. He was disabused of the notion that everyone has good intentions.

So he went back to France. “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” 

Did you know that Diego Velazquez liked to paint himself into his Baroque paintings of royal families?  In Las Meninas you will find him painting in a corner, like a play within a play.

“…Manet went to Madrid to look at Velazquez’s work and later wrote to his fellow painter, Henri Fantin-Latour: This is the most astonishing piece of painting that has ever been made. The background disappears. It is air that surrounds the fellow.”  https://www.theartstory.org/artist-velazquez-diego.htm

I was lucky enough to hear Edward Friedman, the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of the Humanities, speak about analyzing literature to a group of Great Grandma Ada’s friends this week. He compared writers to painters.

He was using Las Meninas and “The Story of the Bad Little Boy,” by Mark Twain, to illustrate his point – the narrator can be reliable or unreliable. Twain is omniscient, his opinions float in the background of his narrative like the Mississippi River, brown and brooding.

I knew that my stories were all different colors swirling around, flowing fiercely sometimes and meandering at others. I knew that my palette was my laptop’s keyboard. But I had never heard the intersection of writing and painting so beautifully expressed before I met Prof Friedman.

Am I dreaming, or did the rain stop?

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Health Virtually

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »

You’ve all seen them while running through an airport. The giant ads – no, not the picture of the Parlor Mob at JFK – pictures of doctors in white coats, smiling in front of computers. Why wait for hours at your local Emergency Department? Can’t get an appointment with your actual doctor for months? Maybe you’re too sick to drive, and just too busy to take an Uber to an Urgent Care?

Well, the Virtual Doctor is in!

The first time I saw my very own Dr McDreamy at UVA I was slightly disappointed. Like many women, I had never had a primary internal medicine doctor before…ObGyns sure, and specialists to repair meniscus tears etc. Whenever something was seriously wrong, I always had Bob to remind me this was just a virus and it would get better with time. But a real doctor, this was something new to me.

Let’s go over the best parts first: the waiting room was almost empty; he was on time; his nurse was efficient, I was blessed with some very good genes so my medication list is mostly vitamins; his resident asked all the right questions; and finally, when I saw the doctor, he sat and talked with me for a very long time. I was in love!

And now for the not so good parts: I had to drive 40 minutes to park in a gigantic cement parking garage I would later get lost in; the walk to his office was well over a mile; and the worst part of all, he never actually touched me. I never got undressed and jumped onto an exam table clinging to a paper robe. No physical exam…I left his office with appointments for tests like blood work and a mammogram.

Let’s skip ahead to that week between my fall off the steps in Nashville, and our trip to the South of France. I called my Primary Care doctor and he was away and they couldn’t fit me in. I called my Orthopedist and his office said since I didn’t break any bones, he doesn’t do muscles! I didn’t bother trying to see my Dermatologist. I wondered aloud, is this what it’s like for everybody? When you finally really really need to see a doctor, like you can barely walk and you’re about to get on a plane, they are nowhere to be found?

Well folks, I think Bob may have found his retirement second act. Emergency docs have to know a little bit about every disease and a whole lot about the ones that will kill you. And isn’t that what we all want to hear? You don’t have a terminal illness. It’s just a cold, get over it! Well, maybe they will say it with a bit more finesse, into their monitor.

Dr Ali Parsa, founder and chief executive of digital healthcare app Babylon, sees the (remote physical and mental) health trend as an undoubted force for good.
“It’s time to do with healthcare what Google did with information – using the power of technology to democratise access for all, and put a personal (digital) doctor in everyone’s pocket regardless of geography or income,” he says. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40629742

Bob’s been doing this for years already with our relatives and friends. People send him pictures of rashes, x-rays of broken bones, brain CAT scans. He’s functioned as our collective consultant at seders and dinner parties. “My foot’s just not getting better.” Or, “Will you just take a look at all the drugs I’m taking?”

I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want an App or a Bot to speak to about my medical condition, but having a real, live physician on FaceTime or Skype? Sure! And the doctor or the patient could be in Katmandu, so long as the WiFi is working – this takes boutique medicine to the next level.

Lots of hospitals do this already. Did you know in most rural parts of the country, smaller community hospitals have critical care ICU docs checking in via monitors from their big city university hospital? At night, radiologists in other countries read X-Rays that are sent  digitally from the US. This has been going on for years.

I’m feeling hopeful today after the Senate saw fit to drop their misguided bill to “fix” the ACA and throw millions off Medicaid. The sheer irony of Sen McCain delaying the vote because he was busy having a surgical procedure his insurance covers illustrated their sinister deliberations. http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/18/politics/how-the-republican-health-care-bill-fell-apart/index.html

I hate that we politicize health care in this country. Until we see fit to have Medicare for all, maybe technology will help restore access and autonomy to the doctor/patient relationship. And at the very least, we would know if we need to go sit in an ER because our neck is tender and we must rule out meningitis. The doctor is on deck!IMG_0846

 

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Ch-Ch-Changes

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2016| 2 Comments »

“Do we have any plans?”

A simple question yes, but I’ve been hearing it alot lately. At the end of this month my husband Bob will retire. You heard me correctly, he will hang up his stethoscope for maybe the last time. And like most American housewives of the newly retired, I am beginning to wonder what the rest of my life will be like.

Our cousin Anita tells me that men who golf do much better in retirement. Her friends are not complaining so much. They don’t require lunch, they make dates with their friends and get their manly fix swinging sword-like putters on the golf course, returning home from their natural habitat conquering (or quivering) heroes.

Bob doesn’t golf. But he does fly.

Unfortunately, someone is flying up from Florida this weekend (we shall see how Hurricane Matthew affects this plan) to buy his little Arrow four-seater. It’s been on the market since his surgery last year; so hanging in the hangar so to speak will be off the table.

Our friend MJ tells me that when her husband retired, at about the same time her daughter’s family moved out of her second floor and into their new newly built home, she was trepidatious. After all, her husband was a businessman who travelled the world frequently. But men in the business world can remain as consultants, and that is exactly what her husband has done. Plus, he can drop in on his grand daughter anytime he wants.

Bob’s always been the leader of his pack, the director, the owner.

Bob’s grandkids are in Nashville with my grandkids and doctors rarely consult after retirement. When we visited his UVA doctor this past year for a check-up – a man about the same age who is cutting back on patients and teaching more – he swiveled away from his computer and looked Bob right in the eye, saying bluntly.

“What are you going to do? You’re not the kind of guy who goes to Lowe’s every day.”

True. And do doctors ever really retire? I’ve known some to work right up into their 80s, but these are usually Internists, GPs who sit and swivel mostly. Not ER docs who run around the clock moving all sorts of serious and semi-serious emergencies in and out the doors like a Roadrunner…24/7 every day of the year…

It’s hard to imagine my husband doing nothing, literally. And to be honest, there are a few new things he can dabble with in medicine. After all, he’s been doing telemedicine his whole life with our family and friends. Rashes are sent via text, foreign objects in the eye are discussed. But the cord to a hospital will be cut for good.

He doesn’t do laundry, even though he likes folding. He is an excellent sous chef in the kitchen, when asked. And strangely enough, I didn’t think this whole retirement phase would bother me. After all, he never worked a 9 to 5 job and often works weekends and holidays; I am used to him puttering around the house, mowing the lawn on good ole John Deere, editing medical journals in his office and catching up with charts. Once upon a time he would cut down trees for firewood and tend a garden…

Long ago I put my foot down – I don’t do lunch. So when Bob’s home during the day, we often go out to lunch, or just “pick.” That’s one of those generational things, like Ada makes lunch for the world should they stop by. That greatest generation would leave a cooked dinner covered in the fridge for the hubby if they happened to be out one night. Millennials order food online and cook it together.

My generation was stuck in the middle, fledgling feminists feeling the need to hunt and supply a “home-cooked” meal every night. Last night I made bangers and mash. WHY? Because sausages were on sale at Whole Foods, and I was thinking about those beer gardens in Eastern Europe since a friend is posting her travel pix on Facebook! Thank God I didn’t Instagram it.

Last night I politely asked Bob to stop asking me about plans. He said he thinks maybe he should get another job! Will we travel more? Take long walks on the beach? Talk? Make more vegetable soup? To quote Disney’s Chef Gusteau:   793759230-f6b3178ce351ee8f3901fe91febe95fb

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The Joints

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on July 31, 2014| Leave a Comment »

After our sudden trip North to Sue’s funeral, followed by our planned trip North for Ada’s birthday party, followed by a week of the Bride and Bug visiting, Bob and I were supposed to have a few days mid-summer to ourselves. He might get to mow the lawn, I might actually get to finish doing laundry. Maybe we’d go out to dinner? But no, the Joints have arrived!

The Joint Commission http://www.jointcommission.org/accreditation/hospitals.aspx is the national agency that wanders into your hospital without warning for a few days of fun and relaxing oversight. I remember when I was teaching and was told the Principal would have to evaluate my performance, but I’d get a few days notice and would I mind sending him my plans for the week? Brand new to the profession, I thought well that’s kinda like cheating. If someone really wants to evaluate you, why not just walk in one day? Well, the teacher’s union would have none of that.

And a few years ago, the Joints felt the same way – unannounced visits are now de rigeur.

You never know when they might arrive to evaluate your system. If standards are not met, a hospital might lose its accreditation, ie funding, ie money. A residency may have to shut down, which happened recently at Berkshire Medical Center, where I delivered my children. Surgical residents in the Berkshires are now scrambling for another hospital to accept them. So as you can see, it’s a very BIG deal when they show up, and poor Bob is one of three hospital board members not on vacation.

People have always assumed that because we have so many doctors in our family, that I would know about such things. In fact, I don’t. I cannot tell if a baby is dehydrated, or if a cut needs sutures.  I can’t tell heartburn from a heart attack. And I certainly can’t distinguish between a bug bite and shingles…or psoriasis. I knew very little about the Joints until Bob told me about them this week.

But if you live in VA and want to know what it feels like to go to medical school, you can sign up for UVA’s Mini-Med School in the Fall! http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/community-service/more/minimed/about-mini-med.html

During the 7 week program enthusiastic UVa faculty members, with assistance from current medical students, will lead the group in exploration of a wide range of topics in medical education. Participants will experience such integral parts of medical school as match day, research labs, patient interviews, and more. Mini-Med will provide a behind the scenes look at the training of those we entrust with our health, a greater sense of health literacy, and forge new connections between the health system and our community. Mini-Med will also feature entertainment provided by our talented medical students. There is no cost to participate and while participants will not leave Mini-Med School with a medical degree they will leave with knowledge, resources, and a certificate of attendance.”

For me, well I think I’ll pass. Unless they have a really good jazz singer this year. I’m happy giving kisses to the Love Bug when she gets an “ouchy,” and for now, that and some well placed Disney band-aids always do the trick!

PopBob entertaining the troops in Dover

PopBob entertaining the troops in Dover

 

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Fanfare

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Trumpets please. The cast came off and a splint went on, my dominant right hand that is. It seems that despite being told there is nothing one can do about a fractured pinky finger, the UVA Hand Clinic has me doing some serious physical therapy. I’m sure that my three week wait to actually see a doctor after the bounce house fall, planting in my garden and mailing 90th birthday party invitations, didn’t help my hand heal. But that’s just me; delay, deny and avoid doctors at all costs since I have so many at home. That’s my problem.

You might think that a doctor’s family has it made in the shade. But I’m here to tell you that’s not the case. It’s pretty well known that anyone involved in health care will be treated differently in a hospital. It’s kind of the opposite of selection bias – once the person treating you finds out you’re in the same field – nurse, doc, therapist or spouse of same, whatever – they may subtly change their strategy. The person treating you may not even realize they are doing this, but by being nicer, kinder and making exceptions to their rules and treating you differently, they are shortchanging you.

Let me find an example. When I came down with West Nile before moving to VA, after a week of unendurable headaches and fever, I finally got to an Opthalmologist who knew what he was doing. I was sent pronto to the nearest hospital’s MRI machine and ended up waiting in the hallway until one became available. I was in such pain and going blind that I hardly registered what Bob was saying to all those people who knew him so well, all I remember is everybody apologizing for me being in a hallway.

I really didn’t care about the hallway at that moment, I wanted the pain to stop.

They didn’t do a lumbar puncture (LP) because well I didn’t see the ER doctor on duty, and they didn’t have an available room, and besides I didn’t want an LP and nobody wanted to question my husband and his wife as to what they wanted in this emergent situation. I hope you’re getting my drift…

If I hadn’t been with Bob, if I’d have been anybody else, the eye doctor probably would have called an ambulance and I would have been whisked away toute suite to a hospital with a bed and an available MRI machine and an ER doc who would have punctured my spine alright, and I would have been admitted to the hospital. Instead I was sent home on steroids.

In the worst of circumstances the very best people in health care will try and make our (meaning everyone else in the health care field) lives easier – thereby putting us at greater risk.

This is why when I went to another state while pregnant with the Rocker for my “older mother” test – the one where they stick a needle in your pregnant belly to get some amniotic fluid – I told the receptionist that my husband was a contractor! Yes sir, I lied because A) this amniocentesis test was fairly new, and 2) I didn’t want anyone to know my husband was a doctor because I was unconsciously already aware of this selection bias.

I know I’m complaining in a sort of ‘poor privileged me’ way – first world problems. And I know this anecdotal bias has probably never been studied, but I’m not the first to notice it. Ask anyone you know in the health care field. Oh, and when my wonderful NP asked me at the UVA Hand Clinic to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, I had to smile.

Because Bob has always said the day he hammered his thumb accidentally putting up a shelf was a BIG 10. He saw stars, he couldn’t speak, and finally when he could, all he could do was swear. When he walks into a room to see a patient and they are texting, he remembers his thumb and knows this is not a 10 on the pain scale. But pain is pretty subjective, your 7 may be my 3?

This is the first time in 2 weeks I’m using more fingers than two thumbs to write. And for that I am grateful. It’s good to start off your day listing two things you’re grateful for, soooo 1) Yay for 9 fingered typing

And B) I’m also happy my 6’3″ son and Ms Cait came to visit this past weekend. That baby who backed away in the womb from the needle in the ultrasound of my amniocentesis test, is going to turn 30 this summer! And his Grandmother Ada just turned 90! Bring on the fanfare!   IMG_0699

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