Bullet blast!

I'm shamelessly stealing this idea from Dave over at blogography.com. Bullets bullet points everywhere and all of them for YOU!

• Bond. I love the latest 007. Dark, brooding, more than a little bleak, desperately holding out hope for a happy James until almost the very end... so luscious. And then there's Daniel Craig, eye-candy extraordinaire. I was good - really, I was! I didn't pre-order the DVD as I desperately wanted to do at $18 from DeepDiscountDVD. I waited. This was the correct move - after the release the price dipped down to $13. Now, of course, it's back up to over $18. So see? I was good.
• Haircut heaven will happen today. I haven't had a 'spa' haircut in many, many moons. Today is the day. I'm seeing some chick at The Upper Hand who is apparently an expert in wavy hair. Have a mentioned the wave in my hair? The older I get, the more curl-like objects appear in my coiffure. What's up with that?
• Work - I'm doing a lot of it. Somehow, some weeks I work incessantly, and some weeks I'm relatively idle. Last week? Idle. But not, since I was cleaning the abode for our annual blow-out party. This week? The first, of I hope many, weeks somewhere in the middle. Next week? Incessant work. The number of shifts this week and next week are the same, but next week I work way more night shifts do much more flopping from days to nights. I've decided that for the next batch of schedule requests (which won't happen until June!) I'll ask to bunch all of my night shifts. That way I'll only have to flop once.
• The party. We did a theme party... and it actually worked. Probably because this was the third annual edition of the party and the second edition in our current homestead. I think people actually "got it" this year. Which was great. We have 50+ guests, tons of booze and more food than I had space to accommodate.
• My husband's cat. He recently started be intermittently stinky. I mean really stinky. The Oh-My-God what the f#ck is that kind of stinky. He's more than ten years old, and he's never done this before. Hubby is just giving him baths, but I'm worried that something else is going on. Why the sudden change? He's always been a bit of a dirty/greasy cat... but never really a stinky one. I'm worried.
• Out of towners. We're drowning in them this week. Our good friend flew in from Virginia for the party, tomorrow I'll see our friends living in Washington State, and this weekend my hubby's best friend is driving in from Austin. Why can't all of this bounty be spread over time? Argh.

Okay, that's the end of the bullet points. Hope you found that as entertaining as I did!

Tile Saw

When tiling a bathroom with porcelain tile, for the love of Jeebus, don't try to cut the stuff with a classic score and snap rig. It won't go well.

How do I know this? 'Cause I've tried. When creating perfectly halved tiles, the scoring method works okay. If okay actually means poorly. The score and snap rig is about as dependable as a 1981 Chevette's build quality. Which is to say nearly non-existent. When trying to create narrow cuts? It's as good as Britney's ability to keep her legs together.

Yeah, not so much.

The solution? A tile saw. Now, even here, you have to be careful. Why? The cheap tile saws are only rated for ceramic tiles. Try them on porcelain tiles and I'm not sure what would happen. Grievous bodily harm would likely be involved. But fear not, young grasshopper! I have found the answer. And lo, here it is:


The QEP 60088. The cheapest thing we could find rated for porcelain. For once, cheap does not equal flimsy. This little baby has been cutting through the 1/4 inch think hard ass tile (approx 8 Mohs!) like buttah.

Buttah!

Don't be fooled by the similar appearing 60087, seen here:

60087 = grievous bodily harm.

Grievous bodily harm = bad.

Now, back to the land of home improvement... body intact.

Damn it!

So I'd written up a clever, funny new post.

And then blogger.com ate it.

Stoopid blogger.

The problem is - I'm not feeling funny anymore. How can I be funny when the funny is gone? Should I make fun of my patients? ("docta, my child has right breast swelling... yes, docta, she's 11 years old... yes docta, she's had a recent growth spurt... yes docta, I remember how my breasts developed back in the day, and I remember my breasts (or soon to be breasts) were tender... but no docta, there's no way my child could have a similar experience... she's not old enough! Yes docta, I was the same age when it happened to me... ") Should I make fun of my husband? Eh no. Bad for marriage, bad for me. Make fun of friends? 'Cause I'm working so much (yay!), I haven't seen enough of them to make fun.

Well, I guess I'll just settle with being not funny. Lord knows, life is funny enough.

Hopefully I'll be able to pull some of that into my blog soon.

Extra Peace and chicken grease,
doctawife

The ceiling cat is watching...

Go here. Trust me. Especially you, Clee.

Randomness

So a friend took a poll, and I decided I needed to be a lemming and took the poll too. But hey, at least my song is cooler than hers...

Your Theme Song is Beautiful Day by U2

"Sky falls, you feel like It's a beautiful day Don't let it get away" You see the beauty in life, especially in ordinary everyday moments. And if you're feeling down, even that seems a little beautiful too.

What's Your Theme Song?

Meetings

I never thought that I would be a fan of meetings. But there is one meeting I rather like - as a matter of fact, I HATE missing this meeting.

And I'll be missing it tomorrow.

The Section meeting is where rumors get started and eliminated. Policy is discussed and clarified. Nursing issues put to rest. The horse's mouth speaks. Life is much easier when I've been to the week's Section meeting.

But I miss it tomorrow. So I'll be a whole week saying, "Well, last week, nursing was supposed to do BLAH, but I missed the meeting so I don't know what the policy is..." And I hate that. If I'm told "We can't do that because it's policy" then I want to know if the nurse is blowing smoke out of his or her ass.

On another note, I love Battlestar Galactica. I've gotten through to season three. The two hour season opener is nummy. I highly recommend.

Aww yeah

Something odd happened today. Something that hasn't happened for a damn long time. I looked at somethin' on a website that I've seen a million times before - somethin' that, until now, had been sad and lonely. Before today, what I'd been looking at had been small, like an unsatisfying New Cuisine meal. Ya know - a leaf of baby spinach, a sliver of Ahi tuna, a drop of wasabi.

But today, oh Glory, my leaf turned into a salad, the sliver into a steak and the drop into a chunk.

By Goodness, that somethin' was my (MY - not my husband's) bank account. I have MONEY. For the first time in a long ass time, I actually have some cha-cha-cha-change. Okay, it's not Jay-Z pimp money. But it's a damn sight better than the big fat zero I had before today.

'bout damn time. Thank the fates.

The Meme

Yes, yes, yes... memes are evil, easy ways to fill up blog space. But I like them anyway.

So in that spirit - Six weird things about the doctawife!

1) Almost all of my favorite movies are based on comic books or heavily influenced by them. Examples: Sin City, Batman Begins, Kill Bill Vols 1 & 2, X-Men 2, The Shawsank Redemption, Resident Evil #1 (well, actually the commentary track, but that counts, damn it!) The exceptions: Children of Men.

2) Chipotle restaurant tried to kill me. For real. Dead. I'm not kidding.

3) I wear rude t-shirts underneath my scrubs when I work. Why? It makes me laugh. And yes, I work in a pediatric hospital.

4) I don't like chocolate, and by and large, I don't like sweets. I know this makes me a freak of nature, especially for a female, but there ya go. Give me a nice savory mushroom tart and I'll be much happier than if you gave me a gallon of fine chocolate mousse. Deal.

5) My cat is like an encopretic 5 year old. Look up encopresis to understand just how weird that is.

6) I have read 5+ books per week since I was 12. Unfortunately, the books have always been of the trashy romance or flimsy sci-fi/fantasy kind.

Now I'm supposed to tag 6 other bloggers. I'm not going to, mostly because I'm not sure that six people read this blog, and because of my six favorite blogs, at least two have already done this meme.

So I'm off tomorrow - the first day after three straight shifts. Which is great. I'm gonna sleeeeeeeeeep and then figure out something else to do, hopefully something with the husband. If any of my readers are bored tomorrow, try the Six Weird Things meme.

I miss baseball!

One of my favorite things that I ever wrote was my "Rules of Baseball Viewing." I reference those rules nearly every day - well mostly I reference rule #1. Rule #1 was "Sit the fuck down."

Rule #1 was created after a rather unique Fenway baseball experience. Sometime early in the 2003 season, Hubbie and I sprung for some wicked awesome seats at Fenway. (The section just behind home plate, but not where the really really rich people sit - just barely behind that.) We got there early, and a huge number of Fenway Faithful were seated around and behind us. No one really in front of us - those were the rich people seats.

The game started, and we were happy. We were at Fenway, the BoSox looked good, it was too early in the season for any of the players to be really hurt, Legal Seafood was selling chowda, and we had beer. Yay for us.

Until, midway through the inning, two women wandered in front of us. Since we were in the middle of the section, this was a feat. I mean, who goes to the center of a section and THEN decides to stop? Oh yeah... these two ladies! And not only did they wander in front of us and stop, they stopped to have a little conference - right there, blocking the view of home plate.

Needless to say, Hubbie and I were annoyed. 30 seconds passed. We hollered a relatively polite "down in front!" Not too loud, just enough to startle someone into action. It didn't work. Next came a more strident cry from the two of us. After all, they were blocking home plate. We couldn't see the pitches! And we'd paid $45 per seat, damn it! But alas, no response.

And then, the crowd behind us clearly gave up on the idea that these two women would buy a clue at Kmart. From behind us (with my own enthusiastic contribution) came a resounding, deafening, "DOWN IN FRONT!"

Next was the amazing part. The women turned around, seemed totally bewildered, and said, "But we're the cousins of the first baseman!" The instant thought of EVERYONE else in the crowd was, "If your cousin is the first baseman for the Boston Red Sox, you all should freaking know better than block the view from the good seats behind home plate, biznatches!"

And in the next instant, we all yelled, in unison, "DOWN IN FRONT!"

But at least for that season, we all loved Kevin Millar anyway. Despite his 'cousins.'

Two hours

Well, last night was my first overnight shift since resuming work.

Whoo. Dude, I'm tired.

But as usual, it is taking me about two hours to wind down. The two hour wind down used to kind of piss me off - 'cause damn I'd be tired and WHY COULDN'T I SLEEP and why was my mind still running at 8 million RPM and oh geeze was that last kid going to do okay... But recently I started talking to the other ER docs - both those that specialized in pedi EM (aka the 'sub-boards'- remember the term kids 'cause I ain't gonna bother explaining that for much longer!) and other generalists, like me - and most of them need two hours after a shift to cool off. I figure if docs who've working in the ER for 20+ years still need wind down time, I should just get used to my own need to sit and process for a while.

I liked the shift, until 2am rolled around and I lost the company of other attendings. Yeah, yeah, yeah I got help in 'moving the meat' in the form of a fellow (who ruled!) and then a resident, but especially with the resident, it just wasn't the same. I lost that sense of, well, fellowship present between equals slogging through the trenches of the late night ER. The resident just wanted the shift to be over and the nurses all wanted something from me. When there are other attendings there, we throw around ideas and treatment options and personality management strategies and joke... but with nurses, I'm one of 'them' and therefore am not included in the banter. With the residents, well, they pretty much have to do what I tell them to do, which seriously cuts down on the room for small talk. So I kinda got lonely from 2am to 8am.

And six hours is a long time to slog along on my own. Unfortunately, I have a LOT of overnights next month. Then again, I can't much complain because for Pete's sake, at least I'm working! So maybe I'll be able to make the night nurses my buds, and life will get better.

Yup, that's the plan, Stan!

Funny, the things ya remember

I remember there was a blog... and sometimes it was funny. But sometimes it gave too much away.

And now it's gone.

So please excuse the broken link. I'm waiting on the why and the wherefore... and the where if.

If the 'where if' ends up someplace public, I'll fix the link. If not - well, ya'll will never know that it was there. MUAWHAHAHAHA!

First solo shift

Well, this morning I had my first solo shift. Let me explain - a solo shift is some fraction of an eight hour period in the ER without another doc to help out. Today I had four hours, half of my shift, flying solo. Luckily for me, I had an awesome family practice (aka FP) resident helping me out. Now the educated among you might ask, "Doctawife - you said you were solo. But you had a resident helping - that's another doc!" Well, residents only sorta count. They can see patients, so I can see another patient or write in the chart or call a specialist or whatever... but in the end, I'm ultimately responsible for the patient the resident sees. The buck stops with me, and sometimes, it's a pretty sick buck. And residents are not just in the ER to 'move the meat.' They are there to learn. Which means I have to take the time to teach. And that doesn't help move the meat. That actually slows the meat down.

Now mind, only other well trained pediatricians will understand how remarkable the sentence about "awesome family practice resident" is. Pediatricians generally don't like FPs. Why? As a group, pediatricians think that FPs don't get enough training in pediatrics. Which means they make mistakes. Most of them aren't bad, and don't hurt kiddos. But sometimes, oh sometimes, the mistakes are bad. And for whatever reason, many of the FPs that come through the ER are really terrible. In terms of pediatric knowledge, they're worse than med students, even.

Not this one. She rocked. I taught her about basic pedi stuff, and when the kiddo with the kidney stones came in, she reminded me about those. ('Cause usually 11 year olds don't get kidney stones. I hadn't seen one since med school. The FP resident had seen one the month before in adult-land. It ruled.) And even with the basic pedi stuff, I was more reminding her of common pitfalls than teaching her new material.

Oh, and I told her of common FP mistakes, and why I would beat her with a stick if she ever did any of them. Why the beating? 'Cause she's smart and has no business making any of them.

But yeah, solo was challenging. At one point I was taking care of ten patients. That's a lot.

It felt good.

Work! WORK. WORK work WORK workie WORK!

So yeah, I'm excited about being back at work.

I know, I know, too many exclamation points in one post, but I don't care.

I've worked two 8pm - 12 am shifts and I loved them both. Each shift inspired a different kind of love. The first one (Monday) was slower and a little more laid back. My coworker was the dude (and he is a dude - he's six years older than I am and he still wears his ultra preppy coral necklace) who had clearly established himself as one of my bosses earlier this month; but he was so laid back that, DUDE, what was I worried about? Like, that patient, he could TOTALLY be admitted to the hospital and that would be, like, fine. And I COMPLETELY didn't need to worry about relearning the administrative stuff because I TOTALLY knew who to ask... the nurses, right? 'Cause they TOTALLY have time to educate me... But a medically sketchy idea never made it any further than a TOTALLY casual conversation, 'cause he would just drop the LEARNIN' on me and the patient just got better. Word. Everything flowed, but everything was good for the PEEPS. Pretty dope, huh?

Except when it's totally crazy and the whole ER is on divert and I'm transferring my sickest patient and my other sick patient needs tons of attention from both me and my nurse and holy sh*t the current average wait is six hours and we have 140 patients in the ER and it was only designed for 80 and my senior doc is losing it but it isn't without cause because WHY THE F*CK don't we have suture trays and LP kits on hand and isn't that patient trying just a little too hard to die and WHY did she let her daughter have daily fevers to 104 Fahrenheit for two weeks and why is she AMAZED that her kid is super sick when I'm startled that the kiddo isn't SICKER than she is...

Last night was paragraph number one and tonight was paragraph number two. Day #1 was all about learning and day #2 was all about doing. Both days were fun. I had sicker patients day #2, but that was okay. I'd had some help the day before, so I knew what to do. I'm glad my first day wasn't the day the ER exploded and went on divert. But I'm glad that when things went nuts, I had an awesome, experienced staffer with me to help out.

But it was kinda crazy. And that's why is 3am and I'm not in bed yet. I'm still winding down, and I don't have to work tomorrow. Tonight (this morning? My body really isn't sure.) I'll go to bed and sleep like a baby. It will just take me some time to get to bed.

And then I'll be fine. 'Cause I love my job.

Theft is good

This act of thievery is being perpetrated against the Ween. Enjoy.

Me:

Not me:Me:
Not me:

Me:Not me:

Me:Not me:

Me:
Not me:

Down with the negative!

The license... IT IS HERE! Here in my sweaty little hands, quivering with its own suppressed fury, beautiful in its supreme unimpressiveness lies the panacea to all my ills. Or at least that's the theory.

So, starting today, I get to throw myself back in the mix. I spent most of today filling out so many forms that I swear I thought my eyes were going to bleed. Frankly, dear reader, I didn't give a flying pootenany. I was at work! And by and large, people were happy to see me.

Meanwhile, the Texas State Medical Board has been attracting negative attention from the press and the healthcare bigwigs about the delays in licensure. Go journalism! Go activitism! Go greedy capitalism! 'Cause really, that's why people are getting so pissed off. The docs can't get paid 'cause they can't practice, the hospitals and clinics are losing money because the docs aren't seeing patients but can't hire someone else because the doc either has 1) a binding contract with the employer or 2) a specific skill set not already available. Texas has one of the lowest per capita densities of doctors, yet we have this HUGE backlog of docs waiting to work in Texas.

Does this make sense?

Oh yeah, this is Texas. I forgot.

There is no point

Every time I try to get my life fixed, someone gets in the way. At least I'm not alone - go here to find out part of why I'm so screwed.

Another part of why I'm so screwed is my case manager, who seems to be not so good at her job. Given what the article says, that may not be her fault, but at this point I'm not sure I care.

I just saw something horrible.

I'm watching a show about the 9/11 ground zero clean up. And they just showed a pathology slide of a man who died after participating in the original clean up. It was a high resolution microscopic slide of a lung section. (Why do I call it a lung section? Well, when someone dies in a weird/suspicious way, pathology experts take every organ and make small slices from each of them. Those small slices are called sections.) The slides showed a lung section with almost no air/aveolar interaction, a huge proliferation of mesothelial cells, and pretty much nowhere for gas exchange to occur (yeah, I know, the sentace was redundant... but hey, sometimes redundancy helps get the point across.) To anyone who listened during his or hers pathology lectures, the slides shown are horrifying. How can anyone breathe without the natural mesothelial/endothelial interchange? Yeah, that was my answer too. So the slide clearly showed that something impacted lung structure and physiology in a hugely negative way. Which basically meant that the poor guy couldn't breathe. At all. And the problem was caused by a chemical or particle foreign body.

Reportedly this poor man never smoked. Reportedly he never inspected a building that contained high levels of asbestos. So the absence of normal lung structure is logically explained by... yeah, that's right, Ground Zero.

Why did this man die without any help for his family? That's shameful. These men were heroes. I hope we can somehow elect more responsible people who will spend taxpayer money to help these people. I know for certain that I'd pay that extra tax.

Wouldn't you?

Waah!

Our spiffy new plasma TV arrived today - CRACKED! The driver had just left the complex when we unboxed the big beautiful BROKEN beasty.

We're both ready to cry. Hopefully the return process won't be too painful. Although how you return something that weighs ~80 lbs. I don't know.

Waah!

Go Pats!

Oh my goodness, I never thought that game would end. My Boys played so sloppy that for a while there I was thinking, "Damn, we don't deserve to win!" Luckily, the team started to look like themselves in the fourth quarter and pulled through to save the day.

At the two minute warning, I asked Hubbie if he wanted a third beer for the end of the game... His answer was so emphatic that I was startled for a second. Then again, I was so nervous that the fabric underneath my butt was actually wet from sweat.

Eww. Yeah, I know, I'm a loser.

I'll admit that the Chargers looked pretty darn good. Even tho I'm a die-hard Pats fan, I thought we were screwed. I'm kinda sad for them, honestly. Especially Tomlinson. He looked upset when he walked off the field. Yikes. If the Chargers could have continued to play through the fourth quarter like they did during the previous three... Well, this post would be very different.

Begone, ye Evil Spirits

So I didn't have a great year in 2006. So I thought, in the name of making the new year start off to a good start, I thought I would list things that I really like. Here goes:

1) Netflix. This wonderful service allows me to watch the first season of MacGyver without annoying my husband or actually buying the discs. Which is just cool. I mean, I love my husband, therefore I won't force him to sit through the first season of MacGyver. What could be more loving that that?

2) My pressure cooker. It's a Fagor, which is one step down from the best brand. Kuhn-Rikon is the best, but hey, have you seen the price tags on these things? Good God! But 15 psi of pressure goes make a lot of difference in cook time for things like stock, bolognese sauce and soups. In the last twenty-four hours, I have made pasta sauce and two batches of chicken stock. Yay me! But more importantly, yay my pressure cooker.

3) Lego Star Wars II. So fun, so simple, so good.

Well, I guess it can't be that simple, since I haven't won it yet. Yargh.

4) My friend Mehul. He's gonna hook us up with a sweet amplifier for a discount. Hubbie figures that with an awesome TV, we should have an awesome amp. We don't have an awesome amp... hence, Mehul!

5) My hubbie. Aww.

Well, enough for now. I've got a birthday party to attend!