Drugs...Bad

The ER is the wildcard of medicine. You never know what the day will bring. Some days are slow and you see a few of the regulars: shortness of breath, fever, cough, low back pain, dental pain. Some days are busy and full of the kinds of ailments that are served much more efficiently and holistically in the primary care provider's office. Some days brings horror.
I recently witnessed my first cocaine overdose. Hyperthermia, hypertension, tachycardia: the sympathomymetic toxidrome, the awful truth of what can happen to what is essentially a kid. It was difficult to watch a person who is in leathers with dilated pupils, appearing scared and basically unresponsive but it is even more difficult to see their parent when they come in the room and know that it was the coke and wonder why it had to happen to their kid.
There was not a whole lot we could do for this person but we did everything we could. People who were on call at home came in to the hospital. Other ER patients had to wait. Medicines, hopeful antidotes, lined the counter and waited for their turn to be injected into the veins of a person who is not really with us anymore, and likely will not return. The overdose was strong, it antagonized many of the interventions. Finally a call was made to move the patient to a bigger institution. Maybe they could help.
As financially inefficient as it is I would rather have a day full of ear infections, colds and low back pain than a coke overdose. That is something the world could do without.

Feverish Snowstorm

It is possible that the flu made it's way into our home this weekend. Yesterday Ms Perpetual Motion spent pretty much all day on the couch: napping, watching a movie and the most amazing part, just lying still. I am calling the sickness that gave her a fever a flu because I think it must have been to stop my girl in her tracks. The virus that set up shop was so powerful that it kept Ms PM from even wanting to participate in making cookies, with white chocolate chips. That is one superbug.
As the snow blew outside, Iris and I cuddled on the couch wrapped up in our fish print Mexican blanket that we purchased two Christmases ago when I had the flu on the beach in San Carlos, Mexico. A few sips of broth, orange juice and water was about all I could get into her. She didn't even want a whole white chocolate chip cookie that I had to make by myself. Her lungs sounded clear, her heart was beating fast and her little lips were cherry red and dry. She coughed off and on, said her throat hurt when she woke up and had a few sniffles.
I remember her very first fever. It was around Valentine's Day when she was 9 months old and we had just returned from a trip to visit friends (with sick kids) up the coast. Back then I had the medicinal power of breastmilk. I held her all night, alternating between the rocking chair and the couch. I watched her like a hawk because I didn't know what else to do. She slept most of the night, off and on. I slept a little of it off and on. She seems to have inherited her Daddy's knack for going to sleep when sick and waking up better.
This morning brought requests for water and giddy chatter. She hopped right up out of bed and sauntered downstairs ready to dive into the day. By mid-day she was hurling herself into the snow outside and crawling into her snowcave that she dug out of the gargantuan snowbank in our driveway.
The superbug had left, disgusted by a peacefully sleeping child. I just hope he or she or it does not decide to return and re-institute torture of a tired mama who sees "flu" like symptoms in the ER all day.

Rorschach...I see a heart

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.