Blog for Choice Day 2008

This is me and Ms PM getting ready to go to a pro-choice rally before "the hardest day," when Bush was re(retch)-elected.

"On the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we asked pro-choice bloggers to join us for Blog for Choice Day!
Blog for Choice Day provided us with an opportunity to raise the profile of reproductive rights in the blogosphere and the media, while celebrating Roe's 35th anniversary. Plus, it was a great way to let your readers and the mainstream media know that a woman's right to choose is a core progressive value that must be protected.
This year's topic: tell us, and your readers, why it's important to vote pro-choice".

Blog for choice day is past but I'm assured it is acceptable to post this late. This has always been an important topic to me. Being pro-choice is something that has always felt normal and natural to me. I consider myself pro-choice in the whole realm of women's reproductive health. This includes whether or not to continue a pregnancy, how to continue a pregnancy and plan for birth, having a full range of accessible birth control options and support around infertility treatment. I don't have a lot of stories to tell that would convince anyone to vote pro-choice. I just know in my heart that it is the right and moral thing to do.
My experience with access to abortion services has always been positive. I don't have a personal memory that extends far back enough to pre-RvW. Since college I have always lived in towns or regions where abortion services were available, safe and supported. A few years ago I did a half-day preceptorship with an older doctor at Family Planning. He told me about his first years in residency and how he remembered coming in to the hospital on Monday mornings and seeing the ward filled with women who had sought out "back-alley" abortions over the weekend and had come into the hospital with infection or hemorrhaging. This is something we do not want to go back to. Voting pro-choice is crucial because any limitations to access can put women in situations where they may try to seek out dangerous options. Forcing someone to raise an unwanted child can lead to a whole other batch of misery and suffering. And I cannot imagine the unmeasurable pain of being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term and giving the baby up for adoption. Nobody deserves that kind of torture. We should not have to keep fighting so hard for the right to choose. But we will.

Weekend Creations

Soon to be "Closing Ale."




Can you guess what this is? For details look up the January/February 2008 issue of National Geographic Little Kids. That issue also has some pix of adorable Inuit kids and some great white animals I want to see before I die or they become extinct.




The Astronaut



The Sun Ice Block

I also made a chicken soup but thought I would spare my vegetarian friends.

The Closing

The house in the picture above no longer belongs to us. Yesterday we closed the sale. When the noon bell rang at the end of being on call I drove down to our state's metropolitan center, met Sugar Daddy, Ms Perpetual Motion and father-n-law and we all met with the title co lawyer, real estate agents and buyers. We signed our name a thousand times, listened to a bunch of mumbo-jumbo mortgage/state law/fed law/realty stuff (remember I was post call and still had EKG criteria for left ventricular hypertrophy, atrial flutter and supraventricular tachycardia pin-balling around the inside of my head; another rotation done) and got our check which we put promptly into father-n-law's hands so he could get to the bank and be able to sleep that night. It is a relief to have the house sold in this depressing housing market, however, I will always miss that house which was built, every stick, by Sugar Daddy. Ms Perpetual Motion was born in that house and to my heart's delight she proudly let everybody know that during the closing yesterday. We only lived there for a few years but those years hold some of the best memories of my life. When my grandmother died she left me the money which we used to buy the lot. My dad and my father-n-law helped Sugar Daddy build the house. Our cousin did the electrical work. Ms PM was born there. We had her first Christmas there with all of my family. Sugar Daddy got two deer the first year we lived there and I completed the first two years of medical school while there. We also made about 20 gallons of maple syrup while living there. I guess carpenters and builders always build houses and live in them for a while and then move out. I've lived in a lot of houses during my life and that one was the most beautiful, the warmest and the sunniest.

Goodbye Star Hill House

Salad

I know something like salad should not influence my life course but there is just no way I can do residency/three years of my life (at least) in a place where I cannot stand the food. There has to at least be a tolerable salad bar.
Problems with the salad bar where I am currently rotating:
1)Can't stand the salad dressings...especially the one that is supposed to be an italian dressing but is a strange gel-like consistency instead of good old olive oil and vinegar consistency.
2)No reliable daily source of beans. I like to have kidney beans or garbanzo beans in my salad. You know when the salad is the meal it is nice to have some protein. This bar sometimes has a sort of three bean salad and I have nothing against vinegary green beans but I prefer the kidneys or chicks.
3)Lacking sunflower seeds. I see sunflower seeds as a huge asset to a salad and this place never has them. Huge oversight by caf administration.
4)Unrelated directly to salad bar but a factor none-the-less: not enough veggie options overall. I am not a vegetarian but I just cannot bring myself to eat the meat served in the cafeteria. And so I look for seafood (rare) options or veggie and they seem to be difficult to come by. Green bean casserole, stuffing and deep fried varieties of potatoes are regulars but nice steamed broccoli or green beans are only occasional and the dark leafy greens are even less frequent. I thought...oh never mind...I was going to say I thought hospitals were supposed to have something to do with promoting health. Silly me.

Never Think Never

Something I never thought I would do is purchase a piece of exercise equipment for my personal home use...until this winter. I could have used this machinery last winter but I was way too overwhelmed with third year rotations that I didn't even think about it. I like to think that I would just get outside and go for walks and hikes and x-country ski but the reality is now that I am not an early riser and so it is enough to just get up in time to do what I have to do: get dressed, get coffee, take Ms Perpetual Motion to preschool or at least help get her dressed, brushed and braided. Despite her name, Ms PM is a slow-mover in the mornings, just like her mama. Lately I have not even been able to help with any of that because I have rise at 4:30 and be on the road by 5 to get to the rotation on time. (And when that is the case it is really annoying when people can't get to sign-out on time, morning or PM. Rag for another post.) And since I don't get home till well after dark, an evening walk is out of the question unless it is a nighttime urban sledding night. And that usually just occurs on pristine snowy nights. So when father-n-law called and told me about the elliptical trainer available at reduced cost at local moderate-sized-box-store and said it would be a holiday gift I went forth and acquired. It is nice to have an opportunity to sweat other than when presenting a case to my attending or senior resident. The key to home exercise equipment is a good stash of music. I'd like to put a call out to Country Mouse and Weasel, my most musical friends, for a get-movin mix if you have time or inclination. And I'll treat you to a couple pints at our local establishment where Sugar Daddy wishes he got to spend more time; and a bowl of organic mush of some sort or another for Newtie.

The Better Part of Valor

I have not been terribly inspired to write much lately. Mighten' be because of the heavy work schedule lately. But I am trying to get back into the groove because writing helps me think and I have a lot of things to think about. I'm in the middle of a super learning rotation now. I'm seeing a heavy volume of really sick people in the hospital. And I am realizing that I am not always very astute at recognizing sickness. I am much better at recognizing health. Fortunately I have been surrounded by many, many healthy people in my life. I've lived in communities where people challenged themselves artistically, musically and academically. I know a lot of people who are very physically active and folks who have traveled to many different countries and enriched their lives with acquaintances from all over the planet. But recently I missed a guy who turned out to be quite sick. I went through the night wondering a little why this guy was admitted only to find out the next morning that he was septic. He just did not look very ill to me. Presentation clinically and his labs could have represented a viral bronchitis. CXR was unremarkable. The guy was joking and smiling. But he was sweating and that should have made more of an impression on me. I've dealt with fever more in kids than with adults and I think fever is often over treated in kids but I'm learning that fever can mean different things in adults. My nature to be non-interventionist probably contributes to my difficulty in recognizing real sickness. Fortunately there were a lot of other people besides me who looked at this guy and their suspicions were higher and riding along the better part of valor.

The Match??

This is very magical to me, it is not just meaningful, not just medicinal.

The Match?

New Hampshire is nothing.

Arts and Crafts and Sleep Deprivation

I don't mind living in a house where there are no carpets. So when water spills from the child's tea set or the geriatric cat pukes or the geriatric dog has an accident in the middle of the night leaving generous sized "hershey's kisses" on the floor for us to find in the morning at 4:30 am when I have to get up to get to the current rotation by 6am, clean-up is easier than it would be with carpet. Everyone is entitled to and proud of their creations.
I don't mind drips of fingerpaint on the floor because I only buy washable, water soluble paint so we have had very few tragedies despite the amount of painting we do around here.
I don't mind little hands covered in Elmer's glue covered in short grain white rice (even though the original idea was that the rice be glued to paper) because ultimately it washes off and probably provides a satisfactory sensory experience.
And then I don't mind that the rice project turns into a "cooking" project and one certain corner of the "kitchen" is scattered with dry rice and little puddles of water.
I actually like the mess. I like that things are being tried and tested. I enjoy a certain amount of chaos and clutter. Milk crates and cardboard boxes have always been a part of our home furnishings. Makeshift pantry shelves in a corner, closet or half-bath fill a purpose. Piles of laundry get a little tiresome but they always seem to shrink eventually like a bug bite.
The rainbow-speckled, multi-colored characters in Ms Perpetual Motion's new coloring book make the mess a perfect gallery in which to display all of our creative endeavours. I just wish I could get a little more sleep so I wasn't so tired during the daily art shows.