What's Up in the World of Health/I am SoTired and Lame

so i've been trying hard lately to prove that i'm still young (nope) and hip (not even close) by partying a bunch last weekend and then going to concerts 2 nights in a row this week on school nights. needless to say, if the hipster kids at the show giving me withering looks like i was somebody's buzz-kill mom wasn't enough to tell me i need to slow down and get back to my knitting circle , my paralyzing fatigue today is. i am drop-over-dead tired. and i'm running a 10k tomorrow morning and then going to a bachelorette party (for which i have to bake the dirty cake! don't ask). so tonight's my night to rest and relax.

so i'll be brief, if you don't mind. (good start, huh?). there have been a few allopathic medicine versus homeopathic medicine issues in the news lately. and i find them interesting and thought-provoking.

first- the boy with Hodgkin lymphoma and his mom trying to escape to mexico instead of finishing his chemo treatments. did you follow any of this? basically, this 13 y/o was diagnosed with hodgkin lymphoma and started on treatment, which include chemo (and, typically, low dose radiation). and his prognosis was good (in fact, according to the NCI, 90-95% of children w/ hodgkin lymphoma who receive this treatment modality are cured of the otherwise lethal disease) and the boy received initial doses of chemo. then he and his parents decided to stop doing chemo and instead use the Nemenhah native american naturopathic healing method, siting the miserable side effects of chemo as the reason. so they did that for a while and then a court got involved and while reviewing new xrays, physical exam, and labs, found that the cancer was spreading, so they mandated he get back on his treatment course, and mom and son ran away. they're back now...but it raises topics of parental rights and alternative treatments and all that good stuff. any thoughts on this?

-second- we know that there are new outbreaks of old diseases since people aren't vaccinating like they used to. here's some updates on the current situation with pertussis (whooping cough)- the gist is that it's a bacterial infection that can be harmful/deadly (10 in about 10,000 cases in 2007 died from it) and that the known cases are occurring in one in twenty unvaccinated kids and one in five-hundred vaccinated kids. so there's issues of not only leaving the unvaccinated kids vulnerable, but also then leaving susceptible children (immunocomprimised, too young to receive pertussis vaccine, etc) at risk.

-there are more....but i'll say more later when i'm more awake. but do please post any thoughts you have on this stuff.

Who Mopes Around on a 3 Day Weekend? I do! I do!

i know it's been a while since i've blogged. (thank you, lindsay, for reading and for the friendly reminder!). i haven't had too many exciting things happen to me at work recently (thank you, GOD) and...well, the world seems like a very depressing place right now, so i'm struggling to come up with fun, happy material. there are a lot of things that make me sad right now.

i'll elaborate on the reasons for my angst....not necessarily in order of importance:

-the crappy economy. sweet baby (8 lb 6 oz) Jesus. all everyone is talking about is how desperate things are. if you believe the media, we'll all be homeless sleeping in cardboard boxes by the end of the summer and driving our pogo sticks to work every morning because they aren't manufactured by unions. but wait! we won't have jobs to go to because everyone is going out of business. starbucks will be forced to take the crack out of their coffee because the overhead is too high, strippers will have to use second hand pasties and find a way to accept small coins instead of dollar bills (maybe a fanny pack?), and hospitals will be forced to sell their MRI machines to the few remaining rich people who have been dying to see what the inside of their rich butts look like. and we'll only have our cardboard boxes if we can continue mining paper from the middle east. and we'll only have a place to put them if the stimulus package doesn't use all the good squatting street corners and overpasses for subsidized lemonade stands for kids.

-swine flu.

-news this week is full of stories about parents killing their children. sad, desperate, awful stories. kids found buried in fields and sandboxes...just ick. . and then there's the mom who took off w/ her kid with cancer mid treatment (more on this later). yikes.

-Tasmanian devils are now endangered because they're dying out from a contagious facial cancer. (i am not making this up).

-i just went to cnn.com (my favorite source for news that makes me want to jump off a bridge) and one of the headlines is "man sucker-punches blind woman on bus." seriously. is the world ending? is this the sign of the apocolypse?

-bea arthur is dead.

-people are being tortured in the name of peace.

-and lastly, they're remaking "footloose" and "drop dead fred." NEED I SAY MORE??!!!?? no, but i will. DDF won the Academy Award for the Best Movie Ever Made. there is NOTHING that can be improved upon from the original phoebe cates/rik mayall/carrie fisher version by adding russell brand (as fred). and &a^#@ ZAC EFRON DOES NOT MAKE KEVIN BACON!!! even with your little upturned bacon-y nose- you are nothing but an impostor! oh, my word. i'm going to go rock and cry under a table now.

good talk.


*giving credit where it's due- i slipped in a few "talledega nights" quotes into the text. will ferrell does not make me sad.

Call on Me, Brother, When You Need a Hand...

been taking a lot of call this week. a few night ago i was snoring and drooling on the couch at home at about 10:30pm when the BHE woke me up with "i think your beepie thing is going off." it had, in fact, gone off twice...so i made haste to get to the hospital. was there for a few hrs and got back home and to bed about 2am...only to wake up to my regular alarm to go to regular work at 5:30. then i was supposed to be on call all this weekend, but people in my department more driven then myself picked up about 2/3 of it. even so, it's 9pm on a friday and i'm just getting home from the hospital.

but i don't mind. this might change as the novelty of being on call wears off, but i so much love being in the hospital, that i sort of enjoy even these odd hours. being there in the middle of the night means getting out of my warm bed/off warm couch and having to drive and park and get dressed in scrubs and be functional at the OR table....but it also means i get to be part of the heartbeat of the hospital, which is infectious. (not literally, usually). in my past career in the hospital i had the same feeling. just walking through the door, smelling that comfortable blend of disinfectant, human stink, and cafeteria peas and carrots is simply....irresistable. :)

this might make me officially sick in the head, huh? forget it, i'm going to bed.

Pop Music In One Ear, City Pounding Under My Feet

well, i ran my first 5k run this weekend. and it didn't kill me. at all. i actually had a lot of fun. i've been training for about a month and the last 2 wks i've realized that it's all mind over matter and that i can, in fact, run 3 mls straight without stopping. so for the race day, i just relaxed and enjoyed it. got to run on highways and over bridges and on city streets...places you never get to see except through a car window, so it was cool. plus i was running along side my wonderful little sister. she and i shared an ipod, actually, w/ an ear bud apiece. so that was fun (and a little hazardous). we ran pretty slowly, but we finished. and we avoided the rain. not so much for my coworkers and the BHE- they ran through a downpour. but also survived.

things have been good and busy at work. struggling to overcome insecurities as always. i did find my surgical assistant skills helpful outside of the OR recently. the BHE was fixing the engine on his car (i know, right?) and when i went out to check on him at about 9pm, i found he was working with a flashlight in his mouth and struggling to uncoil tape with his bare hands. i know less-than-nothing about cars (don't tell my mechanics- i think i have them fooled!)but i DO know that you need proper lighting and instruments to perform surgery. so i brought him a giant floor lamp with extendable arms to light the garage and i found surgical scissors and a hemostat i'd ganked from when i was a student, to help him get the job done. i felt useful. i charge by the hour.

i also find that i'm a lot cleaner and more precise when cooking than i used to be before i worked in surgery. but i had to laugh at myself the other day as i was carefully peeling and cutting a pepper when i had a thought that i wanted to raise the counter top to my height so it was more comfortable on my back and eyes like you can when you're operating on a surgical bed. i wish i had a foot pedal for that in my kitchen. will work on that.

It's Been....a Week

and it's almost over, gracias a Dios. i do not think i could have survived another few days of this. and i might have sat on the toilet in the locker room in the middle of the day yesterday, weeping silently while texting the BHE that i'm going to pay off my loans and then quit and become a rodeo clown or bank robber. and i might have accidentally on purpose almost dropped my pager into the toilet so that it would stop going off and people would stop asking me questions and expecting me to KNOW stuff and give them CORRECT and reasonable answers.

and i was such a stressy anxious spaz yesterday after work that i went right home and ran over 3 miles. (i bet you thought i was going to say a puppy, right? ran over a puppy? you're sick). which is a personal best and i would be really proud that that was my healthy means to blow off steam, except that i took a few drags of whiskey straight from the bottle and ate half a bag of chocolate chips before i went. in retrospect, drinking and running is kind of maniacal and may be a sign of some deep neuroses.

perhaps there are some things that i should not confess and should instead keep to myself.

nah.

now if you'll excuse me, i'm off to make a cognac whey protein smoothie.

(i'm joking, but seriously- why do i have so much old man booze in my house? what are the kids drinking these days? are they still on pomegranate martinis? hypnotiq? zima?).

Geek Drama

so, being on the floor this week again means that i'm in a near constant state of panic, because i'm still so afraid to make decisions regarding the health and well-being of real live people. i mean, seriously, heart palpitations, head ache, and i think i'm developing a tick. (which i'm sure is really reassuring to the poor patients).

and, i guess, somehow in our little sterile OR world, i can separate myself from the reality of the pain and fear of the hospital. when i'm holding a tumor, i don't have to think about the terror the patient and family felt as they were told it was cancer or the upcoming chemo treatments they'll face that will take them to the brink of death to save them from going over. or even the complications and challenges in recovery- nausea, pain, confusion, weakness....every little thing is scary and hard. even just having to wear the flimsy hospital gown and losing all modicum of privacy and dignity.

on the floor, all this is apparent. patients are crying and throwing up and yelling. families are either repeating the one hopeful phrase someone tossed their way or they just look...lost.

i can understand why medical shows are so popular. there's no better stage than a hospital to demonstrate human tragedy. and comedy.

i walked past the surgical waiting area on my way out this afternoon. this is where families wait while their loved ones are in the OR. it's just a big area with chairs, a TV, and a reception desk in a hallway with a little room to the side where surgeons take the family when the surgery is over, to tell them how things went and what they can expect. the faces of those waiting vary in this room. there's everyone from the husband of the woman getting breast augmentation who's beaming in the corner in his own private triumph to the little old lady whose husband is in the middle of a coronary bypass graft sitting wondering if she could survive as a widow. occasionally you'll see families holding hands and praying. some do suduku or sleep. some pace clinging to a venti starbucks drink.

today as i passed, i saw a huge group of the waiters huddled around the one TV. i was certain another national bank had bit the dust or some other big news, but when i got closer, i saw that they were all watching a high speed car chase and that the police were just apprehending the crazy driver out from the driver's side of a truck.

i couldn't help but be amused. here i was, observing the drama unfolding in the waiting room while they were finding apparent distraction and possible comfort in watching the mess on the screen- the tiny self-destructive driver on the small screen being manhandled by the angry miniature police in their own tragi-drama. and i assume that the driver then, in turn, spotted a bully picking on a little nerd in a school yard from the back of the paddy wagon on his way to the big house...full circle. like a sad bastard Russian nesting doll.

Rain on My Home Improvements

definitely spring weather we're having, huh? pouring rain for days at a time and now the GREENEST grass ever! i love it. and it's been in the 80's....like when i went running with coworkers on friday. heat stroke + being kidnapped and forced to run= good times. but, begrudgingly, i do have to admit that running is getting easier every time i do it. maybe i will survive the 5k after all. (don't they have a 2k or maybe a 1/3k?).

anyway...the BHE and i are trying to figure out how to make our tiny house into a tiny house w/ some useful space. and it's already a bit frustrating and overwhelming before we even start it. the itty bitty kitchen has been the bane of my existence since we moved in (so little counter space that i once caught my sister rolling dough up the side of the microwave). but of course, with every project comes a lot of unknowns and unexpected costs, so we're weighing all our options.

and i feel a bit like i just woke from a long slumber. the cold, dark winter coupled with my obsessive reading of serial vampire books and watching countless hours of movies has made me a bit negligent on things like my house and finances and health and cleaning. so ENOUGH! i'm going to be a lean, mean, organized and productive machine. and i might even put away the chocolate chip bag that i've been dipping directly into while i type this. also, my new leaf includes NOT putting chocolaty finger prints on my keyboard. anymore.