Yeah I suck

     So I kind of suck at this whole blog thing. Not that I don't have thoughts throughout the day that might be potentially interesting to other people; not that I don't spend a good chunk of my home time in the evening with a laptop on my lap. I suppose Facebook has taken the brunt of the keeping in touch purpose of the blog, though doesn't quite have a medium for expounding on thoughts really, without annoying the 400 people on your friend list with update after update. Maybe one day this will be a high priority or enough feedback from angry (former) readers will surface.

     Funny thing is that I read daily like ten different blogs, from ER docs to geologists in Antarctica to rock climber / outdoor tales to newsmaker to the White House's official blog, etcetera. I have a whole Bookmark folder on my Firefox toolbar called "Daily Bloggy Blogs." And I totally get annoyed if any one of them is not updated like three times a day, because when I am stuck with nothing to do but wander to internet, I want something new to read. Like now, bored off my ass (though happy to not be slammed) on call overnight in the surgical/trauma ICU, I pretty much have me, some books, some journals, a lame TV, and my laptop for entertainment. With the short attention span that comes from being exhausted constantly, that pretty much leaves perusing the internet or flipping through the channels the hospital provides.

     I have always been at a loss when it comes to the internet. Some people can find things to do for hours and hours. I basically run the rounds of checking all of my bazillion emails, reading the NY Times online, then checking my email again just in case, checking Facebook as if it were email, then I am done. This whole process takes like ten minutes, tops. Less now because I read the news updates and such on my phone as I wait for elevators to come pick me up. I need something concrete to do on line with my time.

     On my fifth or sixth 20-hour night shift in the ICU (every other night now), I expect to have some downtime. Most the time is busy, fielding pages and phone calls and doing admissions and writing orders and such, but there are some gaps of spare time that I have been trying to use well. Last call I was so productive and ensconced in my rewriting of my CV (fancy science / medicine resume) that I kind of forgot to actually lie down and get some shut eye until like 3am. It is easy to lose track of time being caged in a windowless room, windowless unit at times that are not normal to the human experience. All of a sudden a couple hours are gone and never coming back and you don't know where they went. Can't complain when the worktime zooms by though.

     What does all this lead to? It leads to this, the writing on the blog, because I have nothing else to do at what time... shit... almost midnight. Guess I should probably just try to sleep here before some drunk leaves the bar and crashes his car into a pole and makes me get up.

A sign of badness

This is a sign of badness in a hospital - the lock from a code cart strewn on the ground in the middle of the hallway. The second code cart lock was on the floor ten feet down the hallway, meaning the code cart was probably moving in a hurry. For the uninitiated, the code cart is what we open when a patient is, in television ER terms, "crashing." Whether the patient's heart has stopped or going too fast, they aren't breathing, CPR is going on, etcetera, this cart rarely gets opened for nothing (mostly because some peon has to go through and itemize it afterwards, which is a pain).

The room in front of which this little lock lay was empty, which is not usually a problem in itself, but combined with this picture, it confirms badness happened there. This usually means that the patient got shipped to the ICU or CT scan or (sometimes) the morgue.

Most of what goes on in the hospital around you is white noise, but there a a few sounds, smells, sights, and 6th sense sensations that portend unmistakable badness, and the code cart lock on the floor is one of them.

Arizona makes me home sick

I have lived in Pennsylvania for going on 9 months now, and I have yet to really feel home sick at any point. Sure, I miss the faces and places and activities, but I have not had any saddening or crippling longings. This is also confounded by a little entity called Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.), also known as the "winter blues."I, along with many of my cohorts, probably have this on some level. You can click on the above link to learn more, but basically it is feeling down and tired and grumpy throughout the winter, related to significant lack of sunlight (especially in someone who is used to regular sun). Despite this, all in all, I have done pretty well, until recently.

I went to Arizona (Tempe/Phoenix) last week for an Emergency Medicine conference. It wasn't until I was sitting on the tarmac at PHX, feeling the warm glow of the sun through the thick airplane window that I began to realize what I had been missing. It was 90 degrees in March, sunny... and made me miss home.

Here are the things I came across (and fiended for) in Arizona that made me homesick: the sun... the girls in tank tops and bikinis... lying by the pool... beer and liquor in the grocery and convenience stores... Oregon and Alaskan beer on the shelf in said stores... Mexican restaurants everywhere... and good Mexican food... Hispanics that are actually Mexican... no dopey New Jersey accents (jerk-ohrfs)... hiking available out one's front door... barbecues daily... wearing shorts and flip flops constantly... sleeping without a down comforter... people that rock climb... Carl's Juniors instead of Hardees... Dreyer's ice cream not Eddy's... Best Foods mayo, not Hellman's... Safeways... coffee that is not Starbucks... a relatively normal time zone... radio station identifiers that begin with the letter K... a decent country music station... farmland that smells like buttered grits...

So even though it wasn't quite like being back home, it was a welcome and much-needed reprieve from the East. I tried to fill up on all of these things so that I may make it through the rest of the winter here with some sanity leftover. Oh, and the constant sun (and nice tan I got) more or less temporarily cured me of my S.A.D.

Stylish puppy accessories

I love my Chacos; they are the best sandals ever made. I use them for hiking and rafting and moving and everything else. This is not to mention my second pair, which are flip flops (which I also hike in). Who couldn't use a pair of flip flips with perfect arches on top of boot tread soles?

Anyhow, I discovered one day that Chaco makes dog accessories. Believe that I immediately added such things to my Christmas list. Come Christmas morning, my pups were outfitted with Chaco collars and new leashes. Both are made of the same webbing that we use for rock climbing anchors. Super strong stuff in cool colors. Virtually unbreakable (not sure if it is chewable). No one at the dog park has seen such cool collars before, which is not surprising, since Chaco is a Colorado company frequented by active outdoors-type people, and this isn't exactly the most outdoorsy place in America.









I find that the longer I am away from home, the more I retreat and take comfort in things that remind me of my previous life, like my outdoorsy clothing and music and books and flip flops. The Chaco dogwear are like little badges of West Coast outdoor coolness, and make me happy (and my dogs look good).

iPod in iPeril

My poor poor ipod is clinging to life after a brush with my puppy, Rio. I don't know exactly where it was when I went next door to visit with my neighbor for a half hour, but I certainly came back to find it lying on the floor next to mostly devoured ear phones. Oh, and the kicker is that the ipod was in a silicone protective case that has yet to be found. I am almost certain that Rio plain ate that thing whole.

This sounds grim, though the Little Ipod That Could continues to function. Luckily, the screen remains intact, unlike the case and wheel. Soooo, I can't really turn it on or off, use the play button, and it sort of just turns off on it's own whenever it feels like it. But, it works. Good thing too, because I was just getting used to integrating the device into my everyday life, as well as finally got all of my tunes uploaded just the night prior to the incident.

I went to the Apple store to look for a case repair. The internals and screen (the expensive parts) are mostly intact; the seemingly cheap aluminum case is what is truly damaged. Believe it or not, the Apple store wants to charge me a hundred bucks to replace the five dollars worth of aluminum. Or as I was counseled: "You can always buy another one." Yeah, no shit.

All I will say is Rio is lucky he is so cute.

Where does "treadmill" come from?

Don't ask me why, but the other day I was wondering where the heck the word "treadmill" came from, as in what is it's etymology (not entomology). I, in fact, despise treadmills at the gym. Really, what's the point. There is nothing worse than running for 20 minutes while watching TV and ending up in the same place you started. If my friend in Canada can go out and run when it is minus 27 degrees outside, we can all go out when it is drizzly or chilly. Seriously.

Anyhow, I digress (not like the whole blog is a giant digression or anything). I was curious about this seemingly odd word. It has no obvious Latin or Greek root as far as I can tell. And really the compound word makes no apparent sense. The "tread" part, I can see; but, what is the story with this "mill" business. So I went on a little hunt to quench my curiosity. If you have known me for more than two seconds, you know how much I love words - how they sound, where they come from, finding new ways to use them, making people's heads spin with polysyllabic (appropriate) verbiage etcetera. Here is what I found.

The basic word "tread" was first seen waaaaay back in the amazing 7th century epic poem, "Beowulf." At that time, it was used to mean, "to step or walk upon." The device called the "treadmill" was invented in 1817, at which time it was used in an English prison as a way to both punish prisoners, and grind grain. This machine, which is also referred to as a "treadwheel," involved a series of horizontal treads the prisoners would walk on, which would then rotate a large axle. The axle movement drove the grain mill. Similar mechanisms were used therafter to grind all sorts of stuff, and even to pump air into early submarines. You see, my assessment of this thing as a modern form of torture is not far from the truth! So the word itself come out of a description of a contraption, not from the classical roots. Very pragmatic indeed.

Anyhow, the modern treadmill was not used for "recreation" until well into the 20th century. It is not clear when the gym-quality-infomercial style treadmill came into being. Though, in 1956 the first cardiac testing treadmill was described and used by cardiologists. I, in my sick humor, always kind of think it a little ironic when a Code Blue is called in the cardiac treadmill lab... that is what I call a positive test!

In my brief information hunt, I came upon an interesting modern use of the word "treadmill." Hedonic Treadmill: Instead of people getting happier and happier as they are more successful and making more money, they never are satisfied. As wealth increases, so do people's expectations and desires. One gets stuck on this "hedonic treadmill," chasing a happiness that is just out of reach, never quite being satisfied. There are actually several other similarly intriguing and exciting phrases involving the word "treadmill," but I am by no means trying to be an English teacher here. As all of my attendings in med school told me when I asked a question: "Look it up."

New Years Eves

This was the first New Year's Eve I was not at liberty to go out and celebrate. Though I was working, I certainly had an entertaining evening. At the stroke of midnight we got a call about our first trauma of 2009. About fifteen minutes after he squirted off to the CT scanner, yet a second one came our way, and he was sick sick. Add all of that goodness to the drunk guys hollering and singing in their rooms and the good cheer of the staff and the apple cider flowing like... champagne... and I think I had a pretty good NYE.

Then again, New Year's Eve has never been my holiday, so working wasn't really a big deal to me (even if it wasn't fun). For some reason the turning of the year just never did it for me. I do enjoy a good getting drunk and wearing funny hats and blowing on noise makers and kissing random strangers at midnight as much as the next guy, but there are other holidays which I prefer to make a deal of. This is not to say I have not had some interesting moments on the eve of the changing of the year.

I remember when I was young, I used to spend the Eve with my cousin and aunt. It was not that they did anything particularly exciting or interesting for the night; mostly it was that they actually stayed awake until midnight. If I was at home, on the other hand, the house would be quiet from 8pm on, which make a New Years Eve dull. We all ate food and watched TV and listened to Guns n' Roses and Bon Jovi and the like. I don't think we were drinking back then either... those were good times.

How many New Year's Eves did I spend in Monterey? It is hard to remember. They did a thing (as many towns do) called First Night. The city shut down the downtown to traffic and opened every possible meeting hall and entryway and building to various musicians, performers, vendors and the like. So we walked the streets for hours listening to tunes and checking out fun acts and enjoying good food until midnight. Near midnight, there was a large energetic stage performance in the old square at the Wharf which led the crowd up to fireworks at midnight. For a party with no alcohol allowed, it was a good one. Maybe it was made better by the complete lack of drunk jackasses causing a ruckus. Ah how I love the Monterey.

I think the most memorable is one I was (technically) working. I spent New Years' Eve and New Year's Eve Eve at back to back Grateful Dead Reunion shows in Oakland, of all places, on the medical team (Rock Med). And in two whole concerts, I saw maybe two minutes of the show. What was I doing instead? Oh, taking care of drunks, sitting on trippers, talking down those on acid that were freaking out, and generally being useful. It was great. The Rock Med folks really came together to take care of the masses and get them back to the show. The turn of midnight particularly sticks in my mind. I was physically sitting on a 16 year old kid who was tripping balls on acid, his dad standing over him saying: "He never had this reaction to acid before." As midnight draws near, the kid pisses all over himself, which is seeping on me as I sit there holding a paper cup of champagne. My girlfriend at the time is across the aisle (if I remember correctly helping the restrain another guy. The second midnight hits, she and I exchange air kisses and air cheers with our paper cup, and drink the ditsel of celebratory bubbly. Simultaneously, yet another guy who is being held face down to ride out his aggressive trip (who couldn't possibly have known what time it is) starts chanting: "PARTY TIME, PARTY TIME..." If there is a better way to spend New Year's, I will never know.

This one was memorable in it's own way too. In the midst of the pre-midnight patient craziness, Heather made it out to visit me. between patients, and before the deluge of trauma, we were able to watch the ball drop together, share a cup of apple cider, and a few smooches prior to me having to run off to work again. For having odd and often conflicting schedules, we do pretty good on sharing little moments when we can.

Happy 2009 to all.