So I had this patient. Nice guy, Spanish speaking only, didn't laugh at my Spanish like the Puerto Rican patients I have. I learned my Spanish from Mexicans so the accent I have may be a little bit not what the Puerto Ricans are used to. Anyways, that's not really the point of this story. The point of my story is that, when I'm trying to be a good person and a caring doctor, that seems to be the time that I often get shit for going out of my way to help another human being as a fellow human being.
So this patient had a stroke, left side paralyzed. He had a bedside commode but a nurse across the hall stole it for one of her patients. And my patient really had to drop #2. So the nurse in the stroke unit is trying to tell me to let it slide, that she'll clean it up. And I don't get this, but for some reason, only myself and the patient seem to grasp that it's not a good thing to poo yourself if you can at all avoid it. I ask the nurse to try and help me get the patient to the bathroom but she won't have it saying that I never put in an order for that level of activity.
So what else could I do, I picked up the patient myself and carried him to the shitter. The nurse of course gets pissed off at me about liability issues or some such crap. The patient is really thankful, except that I have to hang out with him while he drops off the kids at the pool. I mean, I really do want to the guy to be safe, but still I have to take all this flak from the nurse about how I could hurt myself and the patient doing what I did and how inappropriate it is to carry a guy to the john.
I don't know. Maybe it was wrong. But it's what I would want if I was a patient. Just a little bit of compassion. Anyways, in the end I got the patient back to bed and later on I brought the nurse some pie to cool everything out. Nurses love pie.
And I didn't tell anyone but the nurse was right, my back hurt like hell for the next couple of days because I did that. The guy was not a small guy. Whatever. Like I'm going to hold someone liable for my own idiocy.
I'm just trying to do a good job. And in the end I get so little respect.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Idol of the Day: Birdman
So Chris Andersen. They call him Birdman. Mother gave up custody of him when he was a kid. Father was an artist who left him to tour with his art. Spent part of his childhood in an orphanage. Played some junior college ball after high school, then left to go pro... in China. Then bounced around every development league known to man before he made the NBA. Then his girl left him, a hurricaine took out his house and the NBA suspended him for 2 years for being high (it's been said it was tweak but who knows). Served his time and just came back stronger. Birdman.
:There used to be an ESPN Birdman video here that's since been taken down. Oh well.:
:There used to be an ESPN Birdman video here that's since been taken down. Oh well.:
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Train Story
So another one of my very good friends and for a while my housemate during medical school was someone I'll call VM for Vikey McStoner. VM and I first really got to know each other going snowboarding. We quickly founded a friendship that started on a common ground of big mountain snowboarding, painkillers and a lot of weed.
The train story starts with a girl. This girl we'll call FG because well, she's a girl from France. I like FG, nice lady, nice looking, used to wear these boots with flowers painted on them that I really enjoyed. Now she's working as a doctor in an Emergency Room somewhere, but whatever. So DT went out with FG on a couple of, sort of, dates. I still give him shit because his experience with her sort of belies his complete lack of game. I remember he came back once after going out with FG and told this story about going back to her place, not making his move in the proper manner and somehow ending up hiding in her bushes from some combination of shame and regret.
Maybe I should start telling nicer stories about DT though. Because regardless of what I've written on this blog about him, I swear he's a good guy. It's just that I happen to know a lot of his secrets.
Anyways, that's a brief synopsis of DT's story with FG. Some time later, it was VM's turn to try and plow FG. They just finished a nice dinner and were taking a moonlit stroll when VM attempted to turn on his charm, full blast. At what should have been an otherwise lovely moment, the train rolled by blaring it's horn. VM couldn't quite hear what FG was trying to say, and so she had to repeat herself. In trying to raise her voice about the din of the train, the horn stopped blaring and FG could be heard by the entire city to yell, "I DON'T DATE!"
We still don't know what that story means. But between VM and myself, we've told it a lot. And at occasional embarassing moments in our lives, that's why we are prone to yell those words. To honor that horribly, horribly soul-crushing moment in VM's life.
The train story starts with a girl. This girl we'll call FG because well, she's a girl from France. I like FG, nice lady, nice looking, used to wear these boots with flowers painted on them that I really enjoyed. Now she's working as a doctor in an Emergency Room somewhere, but whatever. So DT went out with FG on a couple of, sort of, dates. I still give him shit because his experience with her sort of belies his complete lack of game. I remember he came back once after going out with FG and told this story about going back to her place, not making his move in the proper manner and somehow ending up hiding in her bushes from some combination of shame and regret.
Maybe I should start telling nicer stories about DT though. Because regardless of what I've written on this blog about him, I swear he's a good guy. It's just that I happen to know a lot of his secrets.
Anyways, that's a brief synopsis of DT's story with FG. Some time later, it was VM's turn to try and plow FG. They just finished a nice dinner and were taking a moonlit stroll when VM attempted to turn on his charm, full blast. At what should have been an otherwise lovely moment, the train rolled by blaring it's horn. VM couldn't quite hear what FG was trying to say, and so she had to repeat herself. In trying to raise her voice about the din of the train, the horn stopped blaring and FG could be heard by the entire city to yell, "I DON'T DATE!"
We still don't know what that story means. But between VM and myself, we've told it a lot. And at occasional embarassing moments in our lives, that's why we are prone to yell those words. To honor that horribly, horribly soul-crushing moment in VM's life.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
The Laziest People on the Planet
So like I've said, I don't really have a good grasp on how the general public views physicians. Since my parents are doctors, I've always known that doctors are just as full of shit as everyone else.
Recently though, I've been thinking a lot about why it is that my colleagues represent some of the laziest fucking bastards I've ever met in my entire life. I mean, even for me, when I think about doctors and people who go to medical school, I think about hard-working, driven, motivated type people. But for some reason, I'm surrounded by people who, in the style of George Costanza, would do end-over-end contortions of unreasonable proportions just to get out of doing work.
Anyways, unlike a lot of questions I've had in my life, this question has very real answers.
I suppose the first answer is that this laziness is something I see in my fellow resident physicians. Resident physicians are held to a pretty ridiculously high standard in terms of what needs to be accomplished in the course of a day, and what may be seen as lazy by medical residency standards, may be a pretty standard work day for the average guy on the street. So maybe I can't judge my coworkers too harshly.
Also, there's that whole thing by which communism fails at work in the residency culture. "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need." as Karl Marx would say. Which is basically another way of saying that you get punished for doing a good job and rewarded for doing shitty work. So I try to do a good job, day in and day out. And as people have realized that I'm capable of carrying more than my fair share, I keep getting harder and harder assignments with teams consisting of weaker and weaker people. Which is the whole thing where laziness seems to get rewarded. The work needs to get done and dumb-shits like me are caught running around picking up the slack.
Alrighty, I think I'm starting to get a little too much into rant mode. So maybe I'll cut this one short. Or maybe I'll come back to write some more on the subject.
Recently though, I've been thinking a lot about why it is that my colleagues represent some of the laziest fucking bastards I've ever met in my entire life. I mean, even for me, when I think about doctors and people who go to medical school, I think about hard-working, driven, motivated type people. But for some reason, I'm surrounded by people who, in the style of George Costanza, would do end-over-end contortions of unreasonable proportions just to get out of doing work.
Anyways, unlike a lot of questions I've had in my life, this question has very real answers.
I suppose the first answer is that this laziness is something I see in my fellow resident physicians. Resident physicians are held to a pretty ridiculously high standard in terms of what needs to be accomplished in the course of a day, and what may be seen as lazy by medical residency standards, may be a pretty standard work day for the average guy on the street. So maybe I can't judge my coworkers too harshly.
Also, there's that whole thing by which communism fails at work in the residency culture. "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need." as Karl Marx would say. Which is basically another way of saying that you get punished for doing a good job and rewarded for doing shitty work. So I try to do a good job, day in and day out. And as people have realized that I'm capable of carrying more than my fair share, I keep getting harder and harder assignments with teams consisting of weaker and weaker people. Which is the whole thing where laziness seems to get rewarded. The work needs to get done and dumb-shits like me are caught running around picking up the slack.
Alrighty, I think I'm starting to get a little too much into rant mode. So maybe I'll cut this one short. Or maybe I'll come back to write some more on the subject.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Yuppie Moms
"The reverse side also has a reverse side"
-Japanese Proverb
Yuppie Moms (YM) was one of the very first people I met in medical school. I was 21 years old when I started in medical school, straight out of graduating with an undergraduate degree in theatre, very much completely out of my element. My first memory of her was meeting her at the medical school retreat. I was off smoking cigarettes by myself somewhere, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into when she came up and asked to share a smoke.
Allow me to digress for a moment here. As this is the second character in my life I will adorn with the moniker of "Moms", I think I need to explain something about my formative years. It's no longer the case, but for a time in my youth I use to have a lot of female friends. Just friends, as they say. I had a conversation regarding this subject with YM a while back and it was then that I realized it might have been because I was searching for a mother figure to fill a certain void during that time in my life. So in medical school I had HM as I wrote about earlier. Just as important if not more so was YM. Probably more important was YM because she kept me from putting a hollow point into my chest; but that's a story for another time.
In any case, YM and I spent that whole night smoking cigarettes and bonding about... a lot of stuff actually. She had gone to a top film school as an undergrad and has plans to make her mark directing television commercials. I had gone to a top theatre school with dreams of being an actor or a playwright and yet somehow we both ending up careening towards careers in medicine. We are also both only children which gave us somewhat of a dynamic friendship at times because as YM's mother once informed her, "Only children don't know how to fight." An aphorism that I've thought about a lot over the years.
Just a quick story about my love for YM. We were out once for a nice dinner, something that we did from time to time. Decent Japanese Fusion place. To start we had ordered the spiciest sushi roll on the menu. The sauce was habanero based and rated at at least 500,000 scoville units. That's the level of Law Enforcement Grade Pepper Spray. 100 times more potent than Jalapeno Peppers. Because YM is not insane, she let me use all the sauce on my half. I was basically sweating like John DeLorean under federal indictment for the rest of the meal. By the time we left I had stomach pain worst than anything I've ever felt, easily 10 out of 10 in severity, YM pretty much had to carry me home. Then at her place she got me a couple glasses of milk and the pain was magically gone. We spent the rest of the night pretty much, sitting on her porch, smoking cigarettes and drinking wine. It was a beautiful night. From my perspective anyways. She said a lot of nice things to me that night. I am a sucker for flattery. So that's how I recall it. I think if you ask YM though, she probably has a little different interpretation of the night. But whatever. It's one of my favorite memories of her.
-Japanese Proverb
Yuppie Moms (YM) was one of the very first people I met in medical school. I was 21 years old when I started in medical school, straight out of graduating with an undergraduate degree in theatre, very much completely out of my element. My first memory of her was meeting her at the medical school retreat. I was off smoking cigarettes by myself somewhere, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into when she came up and asked to share a smoke.
Allow me to digress for a moment here. As this is the second character in my life I will adorn with the moniker of "Moms", I think I need to explain something about my formative years. It's no longer the case, but for a time in my youth I use to have a lot of female friends. Just friends, as they say. I had a conversation regarding this subject with YM a while back and it was then that I realized it might have been because I was searching for a mother figure to fill a certain void during that time in my life. So in medical school I had HM as I wrote about earlier. Just as important if not more so was YM. Probably more important was YM because she kept me from putting a hollow point into my chest; but that's a story for another time.
In any case, YM and I spent that whole night smoking cigarettes and bonding about... a lot of stuff actually. She had gone to a top film school as an undergrad and has plans to make her mark directing television commercials. I had gone to a top theatre school with dreams of being an actor or a playwright and yet somehow we both ending up careening towards careers in medicine. We are also both only children which gave us somewhat of a dynamic friendship at times because as YM's mother once informed her, "Only children don't know how to fight." An aphorism that I've thought about a lot over the years.
Just a quick story about my love for YM. We were out once for a nice dinner, something that we did from time to time. Decent Japanese Fusion place. To start we had ordered the spiciest sushi roll on the menu. The sauce was habanero based and rated at at least 500,000 scoville units. That's the level of Law Enforcement Grade Pepper Spray. 100 times more potent than Jalapeno Peppers. Because YM is not insane, she let me use all the sauce on my half. I was basically sweating like John DeLorean under federal indictment for the rest of the meal. By the time we left I had stomach pain worst than anything I've ever felt, easily 10 out of 10 in severity, YM pretty much had to carry me home. Then at her place she got me a couple glasses of milk and the pain was magically gone. We spent the rest of the night pretty much, sitting on her porch, smoking cigarettes and drinking wine. It was a beautiful night. From my perspective anyways. She said a lot of nice things to me that night. I am a sucker for flattery. So that's how I recall it. I think if you ask YM though, she probably has a little different interpretation of the night. But whatever. It's one of my favorite memories of her.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
We ain't gay!
So Hippie Moms didn't particularly care for men. Sort of hated men actually. Aside from being hippie, she's also staunchly feminist and formerly gay. DT and I are not in any strict sense of the word, at all gay. But we get that all the time. I sort of understand the logic. DT is a thin, blonde guy with certain peculiar mannerisms that seems to light up on gaydar all the time. Myself, I graduated with a bachelors in theatre and have an unnatural love for dancing and fashion. But we do not find any appeal in having sex with men. This seems to bother DT that people keep finding him gay. This probably has a lot to do with that fact that gay guys try to pick him up on the subway all the time. Fortunately this doesn't happen to me as I think it takes some time to find out a little bit about me and jump to the conclusion that I might be a friend of dorothy. As opposed to DT where it's more of a snap judgement.
Personally, I find it sort of amusing when my flirting crosses over a certain point and I see a girl's reaction trying to piece together why this gay guy might actually be trying to have sex with her. It also amuses me just that people are so sure that I must be homo that I sort of just have to play along so that I don't disappoint them. I've been trying to be more honest in my life, but sometimes it's just hard when people have these stereotypes about you that are so encompassing and so wrong.
I was in the hospital a while ago and we were discussing about plans for the evening and what we all might be doing. I mentioned a club where I often go to dance and one of the other doctors asked me if the club was gay or gay-friendly. I didn't have the heart to deconstruct her whole idea of me, so I just had to tell her that it was all the way gay, and breeders like herself and her boyfriend just weren't welcome.
Personally, I find it sort of amusing when my flirting crosses over a certain point and I see a girl's reaction trying to piece together why this gay guy might actually be trying to have sex with her. It also amuses me just that people are so sure that I must be homo that I sort of just have to play along so that I don't disappoint them. I've been trying to be more honest in my life, but sometimes it's just hard when people have these stereotypes about you that are so encompassing and so wrong.
I was in the hospital a while ago and we were discussing about plans for the evening and what we all might be doing. I mentioned a club where I often go to dance and one of the other doctors asked me if the club was gay or gay-friendly. I didn't have the heart to deconstruct her whole idea of me, so I just had to tell her that it was all the way gay, and breeders like herself and her boyfriend just weren't welcome.
Monday, May 4, 2009
1000 days...
If you go to certain job sites, they have a sign posted that claims a certain number of days without an on the job accident. Somehow we got the bright idea to chronicle DT's length of days without getting his socks blown. So while he lived with me, outside his bedroom door, there was a white board, and every so often, the days were added up and a new tally was made. Amazing everybody, he made it to 1000 days. He actually made it way past that, but I think the 1000 is impressive enough.
There's a phrase that I like; involuntary celibacy. Well I don't like that the concept exists and is real. But I do like that there's such a good term to describe it. I'm not going to lie and say it's never happened to me. Happens if I can't get my ashes hauled for more than a few days. And it feels bad. I'm not exactly sure why it feels bad, but I do plan to expand on the idea in the coming life of this blog.
There's a phrase that I like; involuntary celibacy. Well I don't like that the concept exists and is real. But I do like that there's such a good term to describe it. I'm not going to lie and say it's never happened to me. Happens if I can't get my ashes hauled for more than a few days. And it feels bad. I'm not exactly sure why it feels bad, but I do plan to expand on the idea in the coming life of this blog.
Hospital Jack
So I read the book Black Hawk Down a very long time ago. My favorite part of the book is where they chronicle the Army Ranger experience of accumulating different "jacks." For example, masturbating in the bathroom would be a bathroom-jack. In the hangar would be a hangar-jack. So on and so forth. This concept is revisited in the middle of a fire-fight in Mogadishu where a couple of Army Rangers are taking cover, being shot at my an untold force of very pissed of Somalis. They then take the time to wonder if anyone has yet to achieve a combat-jack.
This is the thought process of some of the very best of the best fighting forces in the United States military. I really hope you didn't think the best and brightest minds in medicine would think any differently.
This is the thought process of some of the very best of the best fighting forces in the United States military. I really hope you didn't think the best and brightest minds in medicine would think any differently.
Hippie Moms part 2
"The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."
-Victor Hugo
"For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all out tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."
-Rainer Maria Rilke
There are times where I start thinking about love. Interesting concept right? Bordering on irrational concept if you think about it too hard. But whatever it is, I know this; love is very, very good. And to me, Hippie Moms (we'll call her HM now) is love. Or maybe that's just what she represents to me. It doesn't matter. HM showed me what all good mothers should exude, and that is unconditional love. No matter how badly I fucked up, now matter what shape I was in, I felt I could go to HM and it would be okay. And since it was okay, it made me free to battle my lot in life rather than just climb into bed, pull the covers over my eyes and be bulldozed aside by the wrecking ball of fate. There are so very many times I would have just given up and quit if not for HM and the many ways she would remind me that she loved me and believed in me.
At this point, I just have to point out the differences between HM and myself. We were both well known medical students approaching legendary status. She was well known for being smart, working hard, and having a Mohandas Ghandi level of compassion for those around her. I was well known for being smart, being almost always completely drunk or stoned, and throwing temper tantrums like a child when upset.
You might sort of see where this mother-child relationship evolved and at the same time be kind of amazed that we would get along.
-Victor Hugo
"For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all out tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."
-Rainer Maria Rilke
There are times where I start thinking about love. Interesting concept right? Bordering on irrational concept if you think about it too hard. But whatever it is, I know this; love is very, very good. And to me, Hippie Moms (we'll call her HM now) is love. Or maybe that's just what she represents to me. It doesn't matter. HM showed me what all good mothers should exude, and that is unconditional love. No matter how badly I fucked up, now matter what shape I was in, I felt I could go to HM and it would be okay. And since it was okay, it made me free to battle my lot in life rather than just climb into bed, pull the covers over my eyes and be bulldozed aside by the wrecking ball of fate. There are so very many times I would have just given up and quit if not for HM and the many ways she would remind me that she loved me and believed in me.
At this point, I just have to point out the differences between HM and myself. We were both well known medical students approaching legendary status. She was well known for being smart, working hard, and having a Mohandas Ghandi level of compassion for those around her. I was well known for being smart, being almost always completely drunk or stoned, and throwing temper tantrums like a child when upset.
You might sort of see where this mother-child relationship evolved and at the same time be kind of amazed that we would get along.
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