an ideal day, age 30

600A wake up without alarm, well-rested

615A 30min jog with dog through quiet city streets 

645A cook delicious breakfast from local eggs and produce, drink coffee, read novel

745A go to work early, start the day with an empty box and previsit planning complete

12P go home for lunch, eat delicious leftovers, hang out with my dog

5P finish clinic with all notes complete, spend 30 min calling pts and catching up on box

530P walk dog then go to yoga 

7P cook delicious dinner, have enough leftover for lunch tomorrow. Drink a beer on the porch and talk to roomate, have enough mental energy to read medical stuff 

930P go to bed, rinse and repeat

usernames of men that have looked at my okcupid profile over the past 7 days

- rumismycopilot

- bringinitbach

- allnamestakenok

- pumpking85

- funkymonkey83

- imsomebodysdad

post call

If you're looking for me post-call, odds are I'm searching for my car in the parking lot

Overheard on NPR

"The Taliban's official spokesman has a Twitter feed"

untitled

I am not an earth nor adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just  as immortal
and fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

respire
inspire
then retire the burden of breath

slow the sanguine flow
nourishing pipes that have known the frozen winds of milwaukee,
and the sandy storms or iran


still the weary myofilaments
that stretched and squeezed
propelling iron and wine

lay to rest weathered joints, rust in their carbon hinges
footprints of so many that came before

calm a frenzied mind
that bid us a premature fairwell

take away bones and sinew, send them to the grass and dirt

leave only carbon footprints of light and love

some days are better than others. some aren't.

Rough final week in the ICU. We have very ill patient with a list of failing organ systems that grows daily. Victories are counted in ccs of urine and minutes on pressure support, while an ever-growing blast count remains an almost unspoken reality.  I haven't taken care of many patients so critically ill in our tiny community hospital, let alone one this young.

It makes me angry. I don't want to participate this patient's suffering, or the suffering of his family. I don't want to walk in that room every day and see the terrified look frozen on his wife's face, or look at the pictures of his neices on his father's iPhone.  I don't want to be a part of this awful tragedy.

And then I feel guilty, because this is not about me and what I don't want to do or to see. It's about a son and husband and a brother, and a wife and father and mother and a family and a community.  And my heart hurts. And I feel sad. But I also feel proud to have the privilege to participate in the care of this patient, and this family.

And it has been a reminder to wake up and show gratitude for the world around me.  As one of the ICU nurses pointed out, "if you have your health, you have everything." Even surrounded by illness, I think I still take my health for granted every day.

So today I choose to be grateful for my job and for my health. It may seem shallow, but I think of all the parts of my body that I don't always appreciate: wide hips, chubby arms, small breasts, crooked smile. And I wonder how can I not be grateful everyday for an able body in any shape or form. So today I give thanks for loyal bone marrow pumping out disease fighting leukocytes and oxygen-bearing erythrocytes, for kidneys that faithfully filter blood, removing the toxins of daily life.  I am thankful for the automaticity of my diaphragm, such that dutiful lungs will inspire and expire and inspire again effortlessly oxygenating hemoglobin. For short limbs that bear weight, that carry me to bear witness to rocky summits and snowy trails. Arms that reach and hold.  A robust heart.

call me sentimental but it's true, at least for today.

#nerd alert #noshameinthisgame

Just spent part of my one day off from the ICU this week brushing up on the Kreb's Cycle....because apparently that's just how I roll these days. (Seriously though, it's a pretty sweet video if you've got 17 minutes to spare, and there's one on the Electron Transport Chain too)

#springis(almost)here

#100happydays #MCHjournalclub

Witchita State's mascot is the Shocker....That's all I got.

#100happydays

Today I happened up this website, a challenge to have 100 "happy" days in a row, photo-documented via your social network of choice. The cynic in me wishes that they had chosen a better adjective than "happy" and was hesitant to embrace such a sappy idea. However, gratitude and embracing the present are qualities I find myself working on a lot recently. I'm trying to recognize and be grateful for what (and who) I have in my life. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want or think I need or worrying about the future, and getting older, and blahditty blah. Rather than dwell on that, I want to slow down and take note of what is in front of me. #100happydays seems like a purposeful way to do that and this blog seems to be as fine a medium as any to do so.

So here you have it, happy day #1: i love an empty bracket

If you know me, you may know that I'm not really into organized sports, which makes me a black sheep in my family of crazed sports fans. As far as sporting events go, I'm mostly in it for the socialization and the snacks, except for March Madness and the delight of filling out an NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket. I used to feed my bracket fix with the (now defunct) Dylan Pool, but these days March Madness is all I got. So today my happy moment was filling out the 2014 March Madness Bracket, made even more happy by the fact that UVA is one of the #1 seeds. Wa-hoo-effing-wa.

the what and the why

the what
Oh, you know all my personal private thoughts documented for eternity on the internet (it's forever, folks) in weblog, rather than twitter or facebook.com. You can expect my (for the most part) unfiltered thoughts, feelings, iPhone photos, documenting my life as a 30 year old single lady family medicine resident. Expections on the quality of writing should be low, as the majority of my writing in the past 6 years has been medical documentation. We'll see how long it takes until it devolves into the plot of a Cathy cartoon.

the why
Turning 30 seems like a good excuse impetus to more formally document my life on the internets. But really a growing ambivalence to facebook and twitter has pushed me to narrow my interweb audience to those who are actually interested in a conversation or at least more honest insight into my little corner of the world. Not sure why this format feels less voyeuristic than facebook or twitter, but somehow it does.

the who
daughter. sister. friend. nerd. family physician. cynic. optimist. champion of the grapefruit and artichoke (but not together).