I went to bed at 8 last night. It’s been an exhausting week. Lots of seriously ill “on the precipice” patients, who have so far limped through all of their medical issues, but have caused me great anxiety while doing so (and still could tip at any moment. Ugh). One family where I hit a firmer wall than I had expected in a care conference (I’m good with families. I have not been good with this family). Being told by my old boss (who thankfully is no longer my boss, just a colleague now) that I “take things too personally,” when making the comment that while our relationship is slowing improving, my perception of the new neurosurgeon is that he thinks I’m inexperienced and it’s hard to overcome that.

So I am off to bed now. 3 days down. 4 to go.

Mindful

By Mary Oliver

I am working tomorrow (a week of days, which means being at the hospital by 7, ugh, and because of all of the travel, I never did get out of the “go to bed at 2 am, wake up at 9” schedule, so tonight will be extra fun.

I have a few things that I want to ruminate on, mostly about making friendships as an adult, and my perpetual feelings of being left out and forgotten, which are the same feelings that I’ve been dealing with since I was 14 years old, but those will take longer than the 10 minutes I’ve got before I have to go to bed.

So, instead, let me introduce you to the pake, as I was tonight (well, it was served at a progressive Mormon gathering, so we called it “a marvelous cake and a cobbler” but that pun means nothing to the majority of my blog readers).

Pake = pie cake = cake baked around pie. I had the apple pie surrounded by a french vanilla cake, which was phenomenal. There was also pumpkin pie in a spice cake, and cherry pie in a chocolate cake. I managed to track down the recipe for the last (my friend confirmed that it is best to stick the pie upside down on the cake batter). So very, very good.

I also learned how to properly eat candlestick salad (which is a recipe that was published in my church’s magazine for children about 6 years back). Delicious!

Doing: I was supposed to go up to Seattle today for Sunstone Northwest, but I was too exhausted to drive up yesterday and I ended up meeting with a friend for a very quick dinner. Instead, today, I went to a Thanksgiving potluck, sponsored by Affirmation, which is a group for the LDS (past and present) LGBT (and friends and allies) community. There was a pretty good turnout, with close to 40 people that showed up, mostly people that I didn’t know, although there were a few friendly acquaintances. The stories told made me cry – there was a 14 year old, who came out a couple of years ago, and his family completely supported him. There was a man who attended one of the inner city congregations whose husband joined the church a year ago. Many couples who have been together for years. I had a vision of what our churches could look like if they were all embraced and welcomed to our congregations. I could only tell them, that as an ally, I am trying to make a place for them because I want them there, that our visions of Zion won’t be realized until after we have welcomed the marginalized. There are hints of progress – today, it’s enough to latch onto, an anchor of hope.
Thinking: Polygamy and how much I hate it and how much I hate that it’s been on every major news source so it’s all that my Facebook groups have talked about for the last 3 weeks. Make it stop. I haven’t quite got my feelings sorted it out into words, but this sort of sums up some of it.
Reading: I finished Rose Under Fire this week. It made me cry. Highly recommended and as good as Code Name Verity. This one is going to linger for a long time.
I’m still reading Fic. Her romantization of the Sherlock fandom amuses me greatly, especially this paragraph:

“Maybe the Merlin, Supernatural, Avengers, and other fandoms offer the same riches, but I’d be surprised. This fandom’s hunger, its wide age range, and the gifts and passions of its creators have helped fan creativity absolutely flourish.”

Oh, honey, I can tell you that that is the truth for many, many fandoms.
Watching: My friend Liz’s mom had surgery and was recuperating when I visited this week, so I sat on the couch beside her and watched Gilmore Girls episodes. It has been a really, really long time since I was consumed by that show and fandom; it was almost like seeing it new again. I had forgotten that Dean was sweet in those first couple of episodes. It sucked me in all over again – I really need to look into that Netflix subscription.
Making: I pulled out my knitting this week. Since I’m teaching myself, I haven’t done anything fancier than just attempt to make a scarf. But I got off on my counting, I dropped a stitch (which I don’t know how to fix) and I can’t remember how to finish off a row and start another one, so it looks ratty on the ends. I pretty much unravelled all that I had attempted to do and now my yarn is a mess. But I did browse a yarn store and bought a cable needle and caps for the end.
Writing: Besides the daily updates to this blog, not much. I have hardly written more than 1 sentence for my book chapter. Not good.

Flew back into Portland today. This was view outside of my window. I love this place. 🙂

(Just typing that made my inner grammar police freak – and as you have experienced, my inner grammar police is pretty quiet in these parts.)

All of my friends in SLC had lives to live today (huff), so I found myself with an afternoon free and I drove up to the University of Utah to wander around and take pictures of my old stomping grounds. College was, without a doubt, the best 4 years of my life and I just soaked up all of the memories. So much muscle memory – it’s been over a decade since I sat in the Henry Eyring building and listened to Dr. Ragsdale teach Chem 101, but I knew what the classroom looked like, and the staircase in the back. The smell of the chalk hasn’t faded (even though it’s all digital now). I wandered down by the JTB and thought fondly of my molecular and developmental biology classes. I drifted by OSH (always called OshKosh) and remembered the writing classes I took where my teacher waxed on and on about the different toilets in the world and what they told us about priorities and passions. I thought I saw myself coming down the sidewalk from Ballif Road – but the dorms are all torn down now (“they paved paradise and put up a parking lot…”). A thousand memories of sitting on the grass and having lunch with Susan, “breaking into” the Aline Skaggs building and watching movies on a Saturday night, swing dancing at the Naval Science building, plays at Kingsbury Hall and Pioneer Theater, ball games at the Huntsman…

So many changes. I barely recognized the library – it had undergone some major revisions during college, and more during med school, but they’ve added a cafe and the computer lab where we ACCESS girls wrote papers on statistics is now a “Faculty Development” space.

I loved college. I loved learning – the way that my brain would suddenly click when it grasped a concept. I miss that. Residency and fellowship was more of an apprenticeship; on the job training, rather than formal lectures. Oh, I did get some lectures, but a once a week experience is different than the immersion of college.

College also represented a time when I discovered myself. I made friends for the first time, friends who got me and valued similar things. I would never, ever go back and relive high school – but if offered the chance to do college again, I’d sign in an instant.

(Photo set can be found here)

Grandma and I went for a drive down Cub River Canyon today. There’s a waterfall in one of the canyons, where she remembers my grandpa proposing, so we went exploring (we did not find the waterfall). As much as I love autumn when the leaves are at peak color and vibrancy, I may love the late stage right at the cusp of winter more – when the leaves are struggling to stay on and the contrast between the pale, white branches and the fallen leaves is stark. It was especially gorgeous today, because it is starting to get cold, and there was just a touch of snow that had fallen.

There was a fork in the road about halfway down the canyon – with a road that lead to Mink Creek, about 12 miles north. I had the brainy idea to take that fork on the way back. The nicely grated 2 lane road dwindled very quickly to a rocky, bumpy lane – with no place to turn around. There was a little more snow on the road, and about a 500-1000 foot drop on the edge of that lane. Grandma worried the whole way down, while I prayed for no flat tires because I wasn’t sure if we’d ever be found. The little Kia Soul that I rented did beautifully though (I think it had big dreams of being an SUV and just wanted to show off).

I got some absolutely gorgeous pictures, so it was definitely worth it.

My beautiful grandmother. We talked about her writing and the three books that she is writing, and she told me about my great grandfather and his “Danish gates” that he made, the home that she grew up in, her little dog Annie and what a comfort she is. She read me her stories and her poetry. It’s conversation that we have had hundreds of times and it’s always new to her.

I am on the plane to visit Utah and my grandma for a couple of days. She has dementia and lives with my aunt and it is always a very mixed bag of emotions seeing her. Her house is a disaster of shifted papers and belongings from one corner to another, with rotting food in the fridge. She tells the same dozen stories over and over and she is so paranoid – terrified that my uncle is stealing her money, my aunt is taking over her house, my uncle is messing with her medications, and she’s going to be placed in a nursing home. She doesn’t remember the conversations where everything is explained to her and her nightmares bleed into her reality.

She’s also profoundly lonely and her loneliness feeds her paranoia. My grandfather died 2 years ago; they were married nearly 60 years. My aunt lives with her, but works and socializing with my grandma is exhausting to even the most patient. While members of her community and church come by and visit occasional, the visits have faded off. So I go and see her every few months for a couple of days – she has latched on to me as her favorite granddaughter AND the doctor, so I can usually ease her into things that nobody else can convince her to do.  I visit, I hug her and listen to her stories (over and over and over), I take her on drives in the country to visualize all of her memories, I nod encouragingly and supportively when she is angry at all of the other family members. I wish, always, that I could do more.

My maternal grandmother died 2 years ago (tomorrow is the anniversary of her death) from severe Alzheimer’s – she was unable to communicate, although she recognized all of us until the end,  and I truly missed her long before she died. In similar ways, I miss my alive-right-now grandma. While she can still communicate, she has such limited short term memory and can’t process more complex conversations. So I can’t discuss politics or religion with her any more. I would love to have some of her advice that she provided me as a teenager (which I didn’t appreciate then).

My plane is about to land. The sun over the Great Salt Lake is breathtaking this afternoon.

(Posted late due to no internet).I’ve been following the fall of the Berlin Wall anniversary on twitter and tumblr today during the (slight) lull in patients. I was just over 10 when it happened and I have such a foggy memory of what occurred that it’s been breathtaking to see the photos of the event. These pictures were particularly powerful to me. I consider myself a fairly educated person – I mean, I was one of the good kids who listened to my teachers and read extra curricular books and the National Geographic and listened to NPR. And yet, I’ve had the misconception for years that the Berlin Wall was built sometime during World War II (before the war ended and the Allies liberated everybody and Hitler committed suicide). I really had little understanding of the complexities of post-war Germany and the rise of the Soviet Union. When your history is taught from an American perspective, well, it can lack some subtleties. I’m grateful for the commentary and reflection that tumblr and livejournal friends (like ) who experienced it first hand have provided.

What really made it all hit home today was seeing this image, of the wall between Israel and Palestine – we still have barriers to overcome.

I really do live and work in one of the purdiest places ever. (I did not make it to the Japanese Gardens. But I am home from work earlier than last night and am going to bed now. Hopefully it’ll be a beautiful tomorrow as it was today.)

I really have liked wendelah1‘s weekly update posts, so I’m using it as inspiration today.

Doing: Lazy morning today. I stayed up way too late to help me adjust to my weekend of nights and now I feel a little groggy. I am hoping to get enough sleep tonight that I can go to the Japanese Gardens to catch some of the last autumn color.
Thinking Politics. I’ve been reading and musing about what the elections results will mean for the next couple of years. Honestly, now I’m getting angry at how the democrats screwed themselves again. Somebody posted a rant about the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee emails that were sent, where they stated over and over again about how we were losing the election and we were terrible people for not sending them money – and you know what, the rant was completely right. The DCCC started sending those emails back in December. I got so fed up with their constant negative gloom and doom barrage that I spent an hour to get myself completely and totally removed from their mailing list. And I’m a supporter! We didn’t need to lose this election. I still firmly believe that the Republican party as it is, is in such division between the traditionalists and tea party extremists that there won’t be much damage done overall, but ugh.
Reading: I’m still making my way through my books. I’ve been reading Rose Under Fire when I’m working out at the gym, which has been very engaging. I really adore Ms. Wein’s descriptions of deep friendships and she has so many female characters. Code Name Verity was one of my favorite books that I read last year and this sequel is almost as good.
Watching: I watch so little tv anymore. There are quite a few shows that I think I would be interested in (Orphan Black, In the Flesh are on the top of my mind), but not enough to actually seek them out.
Making: … I need to work on this. I learned how to knit a couple of years ago and then this summer croqueted blocks for a quilt and loved it.
Writing: I committed to write a book chapter for a medical publication (about the use of osmotic therapy for the treatment of cerebral edema. I’m sure you’re all super excited to pick up a copy), partially because I need to show that I am “scholarly productive” for my upcoming (in a year) performance review. Guys. I am not a writer any more. I worked on a review paper for months, that was only 2000 words long, and I still ended up short. This is supposed to be 10,000 words. I am screwed.

Naptime and then work.

I went to Hawaii last spring, one of the first real vacations I’ve had in years (most of my vacations have been traveling home or to Arizona to see family). I was so lucky to get to go with my dear Susan and her husband, not only because it was a chance to spend time together, but because they also understood and completely supported my need to get my fangirl on.

It’s been 10 years since it first debuted and four years since it left the air, but there were still many, many remnants of old filming locations of LOST. We were staying on the northern side of Oahu, in a town where many of the flashbacks/forwards/sideways were filmed and I found myself a google map and tracked down as many as I could during our stay. There were a few big ones that I missed, like hiking to the lighthouse and going to the bamboo forest. Luckily I have a friend who lives in Hawaii, also a Lost fan, who has promised to take me anywhere when I come to visit again. I just started rewatching Lost in honor of its 10th year anniversary (wut), and it’s been even more incredible because I have now actually been there.

(You can see pictures of my Lost escapades here, although I need to label the locations).

I’m afraid that this activated my travel bug. Now I’m itching to go all over. I have a friend who just moved to Japan – and she’s wanting to go to Italy this summer; another friend is making plans to go to Japan in the spring. Greece is on the list. As is England, and Cape Town in South Africa. And. And. And.

Not to mention my fandom must-sees. New Zealand for LOTR, which needs to be soon since they are finished up with the Hobbit. And I just stumbled upon this, and oh my word, I absolutely have to go on a location tour for Anne of Green Gables. Have to.

I better get that passport renewed, eh?

I had lunch with Chris yesterday. I think I mentioned in my sum-up post from January that he had gotten into the surgical critical care fellowship here. We don’t work together at all, although both of our ICUs are right next to each other due to ongoing hospital construction, so there is some hall passing on occasion. I was kinda looking forward to bossing him around. 😉

Things have changed in the 12 years since we’ve became friends. He got married (an event that still hurts to think about how much I was excluded). He has a 1 year old son. We went from seeing each other every single day for nearly 3 years to barely talking on the phone once a year (part of that was definitely me avoiding and licking wounds). So I was understandably nervous about having him in the same state again. Overall, it’s been nice.  I’ve been over to their house for dinner a couple of times and had lunch with Gretchen and Oliver once (a very brief meeting in the cafeteria, mostly spent in preventing a runaway). Chris and I meet for lunch a couple times a month, depending on our schedules. And there’s no denying that I have missed my friend. There are very few people who just understand me and unexpected hallway hugs after a tough family conference are just soul-saving and precious.

Anyway, he is currently interviewing for attending positions across the country. He interviewed at Utah and the interviews went well and they seemed to like each other. He’s got a potential interview here at OHSU. Both would really be a great start to his career with support for research.

His wife wants him to go back to Wisconsin and take a private practice job.

I wanted to laugh at him. Because I could have told him that he was going to get into this 5 years ago when they were in the middle of dating. She was saying then that she loved the idea of raising her family in Wisconsin, because that’s where her folks and her sisters lived, and that she was trying to convince him to not pursue public health because she didn’t want to raise her kids in a foreign country. She went to Boston because it was a short term gig. She came out here because it was only a year. He didn’t ask me then; I didn’t offer because  I like Gretchen quite a lot; she’s a heck of a lot more patient about some of his personality ticks than I am.

His marriage. He gets to have this fight. They’ll figure it out. I didn’t offer any advice, just listened. I don’t know what our friendship is going to look like in the future, but I’m glad for these few moments to connect again.

I love politics. Even in frustrating and disappointing midyear elections like now (although given that they’ve been predicting losses since the election two years ago, was it really surprising to anyone (except maybe the Colorado Udall race? Because that surprised me)). I’m probably more interested in the judicial branch of government right now (and thanks to all of the high profile cases these last few years, I certainly feel like a amateur constitutional scholar :),) but I really love thinking about why people make the decisions that they do. Or at least, the decisions they would make if they were inundated with political ads.

Random thoughts:

1. Even though I don’t think it will really happen, I hope that the few Republican women and minorities who won seats will help shape some more moderate politics from the conservatives. I loved that NPR article from a few years ago that talked about how the women in the Senate, from both sides of the aisle, were fundamental in stopping the government shut down because they knew how to communicate and compromise with each other. I hope it continues.

2. Seriously, did nobody remember that the Republicans SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT last year????

3. I don’t think the legalization of marijuana should be a state thing, making me a minority in this state. I am alllllll for the decriminalization of the possession and sell of marijuana. I also support all the research on medical cannabis and allow the FDA to regulate and sell it. But since there are already “herbatoriums” all over this state from the medical marijuana use, it’s not as if anything is really going to change. It’ll just mean avoiding Mount Tabor on certain weekends.

4. The two Personhood amendments in North Dakota and Colorado did not pass. Woo!

5. I am daring the new Republican Senate and House to offer one bit of legislation that does not involve repealing Obamacare (especially since they never seem to have any suggestion with which to replace it with). And I’d take wagers for how long it takes them to introduce the appeal, but I don’t think there’s a clock that could be accurate to that degree of picoseconds come January.

6. I’m super, super glad not to be living in Wisconsin anymore.

7. Can we shut up about the panic over Ebola now?

My sister moved in with me a few months ago, which has overall gone well (I miss my privacy sometimes). In exchange for a roof over head, she does my dishes and cooks me dinner. And sometimes she makes things like chocolate pumpkin pie, which was as good as it sounds, especially when topped with whipped cream. This may become a Thanksgiving tradition.

(Recipe here)

Attempting another method of cross-posting. Will it work? We shall see!

If you are reading my blog via a RSS feed, would you please reply to this?

1) I love my job. I do. I love what I do. I love the connections I make with patients and families over very scary and life-threatening (and life taking) conditions. But my word, am I ever so glad when Sunday comes and I no longer have to deal with the inevitable clashes that occur because of strong personalities and differing perspectives. Oi.

2) There was an article on NPR a couple of weeks ago about a doctor who kept a diary with one sentence about every patient of his that died over the years. It has resonated with me, although I have joked that my list will be longer than his in just a few years. This week, I only had one death to add to my list.

3) I (semi) have this week off. With this rainy weather, I’m really excited to tackle a few more books on my reading list. I’ve been making my way through Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the Word by Anne Jamison, Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, and Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein (the sequel to Code Name Verity which was one of the best books I read last year). It’s been so long since I read actual books for fun, that I’ve almost forgotten how (I read lots and lots of fanfic, but that seems to be different somehow).

4) I am contemplating upgrading my camera. Unfortunately, I’ve gotten a speck or two of dirt in the body and can’t get them out. Cleaning a camera body costs almost as much as replacement and it would be nice to have a camera that could do video. Does anybody have any experience with the D7100 line? Or a Rolleiflex, I could go for a rolleiflex. *drool*

5) On a related note, I watched Finding Vivian Maier some months ago, and I am still constantly thinking about it and how I yearn to document my place and my relation to this world. The reaction against “selfies.” My family’s reactions to me taking pictures at the funerals of my grandparents (my dad’s family being accepting, as a way to connect the generations, my mom’s family deep chagrin and shame, to the point that they have barely talked to me in the two years since). I don’t exactly fear death anymore (I usher it in much too frequently), but I do fear not having some small, if impermanent and brief, tangible imprint. Photography is one of those methods of connections, I guess.

I have been feeling nostaglic for my blog. November is especially wistful because of all of the years that I did NaBloPoMo. Of course, nostalgia quickly passed when I discovered that it no longer cross-posts to my other blogs and I have to update it, which will break all of my plugins. 

But I’m here. And it’s now November.

1) I’m mostly on facebook these days. While there are many, many things that I find annoying about facebook, I do appreciate the dialogue that it fosters. I belong to something like 50 different groups (that vary in their activity and my activity; I’m probably active in less than 10), mostly Mormon and politics related. I’ve made many friends through facebook that has almost made up for the alienation from my extended family for my political beliefs. 

2) I went (mostly) sugar free for the month of October as a challenge to myself because I tend to have an addictive personality. I may have forgotten that October is the start of the heaven known as pumpkin everything. Getting to finally eat my pumpkin macaron and dark chocolate pumpkin spice caramel (curse you, Trader Joes!) was utter bliss tonight. Also pumpkin spice M&Ms are delightful, but caramel apple milky way bites are (shockingly) even better. 

3) I’m working with a new neurosurgeon at the hospital (he started 2 weeks ago). His micromanaging is beyond aggravating. Plus his decisions aren’t based on any kind of evidence based decision. The nurses are frustrated. I’m frustrated and trying to remember that transitions cause growing pains for all of us. One more day. 

4) I am still finding the transition to attending physician to be … disconcerting, even a year later. But there is something truly satisfying about evaluating the decisions you’ve made and realizing that they were good ones. 

5) I am so excited for the extra hour of sleep tonight, you all have no idea.