WOW...

...I am the worst blog-updater ever. In my next life I'll be better at it, I swear.

A picture, just to make this post a little longer:

Wow, that's an oldie. I promise to update more often. Well, I guess all I can promise is that I'll try to anyway...

I AM ACTUALLY ALIVE: Life updates, Musings, etc

So, I haven't lost the URL of this blog, nor forgotten it exists, I've just...I dunno...been lazy. There, I said it. No feeble excuses about being "busy," cause I've found time since the last post to watch 3 seasons of Alias and 30 rock. I have been doing real rotations for the last 4 months, like M-F 9-5 (or 8-6) ones, except this month, which is more hours and days per week than I care to count up. I wrote some posts in the last couple months but never actually edited them and posted them, so maybe I'll do that eventually. Now, though, many exciting things are happening! It is, of course, the vernal equinox, which would be easier to understand if it weren't 40 degrees out and 30 in my apartment. And yesterday was Match Day! NECN was at our school, and you can watch the clip here if you weren't lucky enough to be there. :) People have matched to all sorts of exciting places, and my classmates will soon be (gasp!) residents. And as if welcoming all the fourth-year-med-students-and-soon-to-be-interns back to the hospital today (we had yesterday off...it's kind of a national holiday in the world of medical education), my resident greeted me looking like this:
It's like she was saying, "Congratulations on the Match! Soon you will look like this. Make sure your scrub pants are tied real tight." (In case you're wondering, L-R: personal [hospital] pager, stroke pager [stroke intern off today], code pager, pre-pre call [i.e. back-up admission] pager, PDA.) Oy. I'm glad I'm putting of graduation and internship for another year. :)

When in Rome?....

Don't get me wrong, I'm a pretty firm believer in "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," but I'm also a firm believer in, and there's no quote for this, not apologizing for who you are (or the country that raised you) when you are elsewhere. For example, I spend quite a bit of time down here with a man who always attempts to take my hand as I get out of his car. Granted, it's a small two-door, and it would be difficult for anyone to get out of the back gracefully, but I have never actually needed help. Honestly, if I did need to grab something/someone, the open door would be a more stable choice. For a while, I said gracias and took his hand, but after a while that got really annoying (if either of us should be helping the other one get up, it should be me helping him), so I just said thanksbutnothanks and didn't take his hand. Apparently he found this quite rude, and thought I was being unappreciative and uncourtious. When the subject came up last night, we had an hour-long argument about it (I'm not normally so pugnacious...especially in another language...must have been the rum talking...). I (ever-practical), tried to tell him that I just didn't need help, but this argument totally didn't fly. (For better or worse, I am of the school of thought that if you want or need something, accept it, if you don't want or need something, don't accept it. If I'm not thirsty, is it really being rude to the host to turn down a glass of water? Maybe I'm just not very good at picking up on how people expect me to behave in certain situations. Whatever.) Anyway, he insisted that taking his hand was the courtious thing to do, and not taking it was rude. Now, if he offered his hand to everyone squeezing themselves out of the backseat of his two-door, that would be another issue. But it only gets offered to girls. Even girls who clearly don't need help, and, in fact, could probably break him in two with one swift roundhouse kick. Then, as the argument continued, the hand-offering was framed in the setting of "Latin culture," along with door-holding, etc. Hence, I was advised to do as the Romans do (ok, they don't reference the Romans in the expression in Spanish, but the message is the same). However, being the practical, independent, American female that I am, I took offense at the idea that because (and only because) I was female, I was a fragile flower (literally, those words were used). I mean, I'm not trying to be rude, and I appreciate gestures of hospitality and help, but where is the line drawn between adapting to local culture and compromising your beliefs and values to silently accept something you find offensive? Granted, it wouldn't kill me to take his hand, but having this argument with him (and kind of with another man, who piped in from time to time) really irked me. Am I being unreasonable? Should I just defer to the whole women-are-fragile-flowers-and-need-men's-help position? Am I being a rude gringa by sticking to my American guns? (and decidedly un-girly guns, at that.) Argh.

Happy Columbus Day!

Or, as my dad put it, have a "very happy Columbus Day, with all the joys, responsibilities, fun and solemnities thereto appertaining." I'm celebrating by watching 'La ley y el orden: UVE' (not dubbed, thank goodness) and wasting time online. Not that I had the day off (they don't exactly celebrate Columbus down here). I hope everyone had a good day off! (If you were lucky enough to).

It's here! It's finally here!

What we've all been waiting for for the past 364 days...International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Before you think I'm totally crazy, this day is bona fide: it was in the New York Times crossword puzzle today (8 down: "Well I'll be" as might be said on Sept 19. Answer: Shiver me timbers). And no holiday can be solely in the counterculture if it makes it into the crossword puzzle. So why have TLAP day? Why not! According to the website, the whole point of TLAP day is that there is no point. So have a great day! And remember, today's the one day of the year you can't make too many harrrrrible pirate jokes. :)

p.s. whoops, somehow I neglected to actually post this one. okay, it's now a week after TLAP day. well...close enough. :)

Freakin' social conservatives

What is wrong with you people?? Sorry to have a random post about politics and bat-shit-insane Republicans, but I need to get this out of my system. How is it possible that gay couples, some of whom have been partners for 40 years, are ruining the "sanctity of marriage" by getting married, and yet when 17-year-olds get pregnant, the right moral thing to do is to get married? How are shotgun weddings preserving the institution of marriage, yet marriages of long-term couples eroding it?? Argh! Crazy Evangelicals and their moral high ground. Thanks for letting me vent, I feel a little better.
p.s. Dear Conservative America,
Please teach your children about birth control. When they decide abstinence-only isn't cool anymore, they will need it. Thank you.
Fondly,
Liz

An Ode to Inpatient Medicine

This morning, I decided to channel my energy away from thoughts of strangling my attending (or at least re-doing her hair) and into more creative places. Hence, a poem for you:

O inpatient medicine, please listen to me
I can't take too much more of ACS and PE
Of blows to my ego, of sickness, of death
Of five-to-five admits, and of course M.Ed.'s

O inpatient medicine, send me a sign
You take over my life, and up all my free time
I used to have friends, and hobbies, and fun
Now my guitar gathers dust, and I can't hold my wine

O inpatient medicine, what can I do?
Your lights are fluorescent, your halls smell like poo
I'm ensnared by your monster, caught in its grasp
It will haunt me forever, till I'm old and sick too

O inpatient medicine, do you see those blue skies?
While I'm locked in this labyrinth, a part of me dies
I'm dreaming of summer, of drinks with umbrellas
But you're immune to my pain, and deaf to my cries

O inpatient medicine, I'm doing my best
Help me through these last days, through third year's last tests
Give me strength to come in, and motivation to learn
And - oh, fuck it, I've got just two weeks left

Happy Saturday!!

I hope everyone is having a fantastic day. If you're even up. So...it's 8am. I've been at the hospital for almost an hour. I'm just thankful there are no windows anywhere around this fluorescent labyrinth so I can't see the blazing beauty of the sunlight dancing off the lake. I'd like to say I'm saving lives, but in reality I'm nursing a giant coffee, reading the nytimes online, and half-heartedly looking for my senior resident. Occasionally I'm working on a discharge summary for my patient who was admitted a whopping 6 days ago, and I'm utterly unable to remember what he presented with when he came in or what his problems were before yesterday. I could go get his chart, but that would require more energy than I can muster at this particular moment. Anyway, I hope you all have a v. good day! Go to the beach. Or sit inside in the air conditioning, if that's more your style. To friends whose emails/calls I've been ignoring: it's not you, it's inpatient medicine. I'll resurface soon. I really do love and miss you all. :)

Whither must I wander

My dad spoke at his high school's candlelight ceremony yesterday (kind of like graduation, but more introspective and less celebratory), and his speech (which was awesome, in my unbiased opinion) focused on a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, which I really liked. I think I've been drawn to literature/songs/themes of wandering lately, as I have recently become nomadic (seriously, it takes a minute in the morning to figure out where I'm waking up). So anyway, here it is (the poem, not the speech):

Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver, I go where I must
Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather
Thick drives the rain and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree
The true word of welcome was spoken in the door
Dear days of old with the faces in the firelight
Kind folks of old, you come again no more.

Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces
Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.
Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland
Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.
Now when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,
Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed
The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.

Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl
Spring shall bring the sun and the rain, bring the bees and flowers
Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley
Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours.
Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood
Fair shine the day on the house with open door
Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney
But I go forever and come again no more.

Spring has Sprung

The grass has riz. I wonder where the birdies is?

So, it's officially spring. I think it took a little longer to arrive in the Berkshires than other places near here (like Tarrytown, NY, where that pic of flowers was taken a couple weeks ago). The trees here have pretty much blossomed, and although the temperature has taken a nose-dive over the past week, the flora have still managed to explode. We (Berkshire friends and I) are spending the day in Lenox, and it's so beautiful here. Some of the houses are crazy huge mansions. And we saw the "house" where Cider House Rules was filmed (well, the outside of it). I am trying to pack in non-medical stuff before I start inpatient medicine tomorrow. When I think about it starting I picture a large black sheet being lowered over my life. I may be fatalistic and pessimistic, but maybe this way there's no way I can be disappointed by the experience. If you expect to stay til 9 every night, when you get home by 7 you're happy, right? Well, I hope everyone is enjoying spring. Go outside and smell the flowers, like this crazy kid. :)

Awesome names

There was a post the other day in TierneyLab, a blog of the nytimes, about the "Boy named Sue" theory: the idea that people with bad names turn out just fine, or even better off because of their bad name. [The winner of TierneyLab's bad names contest was a woman named Iona Knipl ("really? I have two!"), but this is besides the point.] In the comments section, someone posted about an OB/GYN in Fairfax, VA whose name is (and I'm not making this up, I did some googling): Harry Beaver. I mean, if that's your name, is there any profession other than obstetrics and gynecology that you could really go into?? And it made me remember reading something a while back about how people really do tend to go into professions suggested by their names, and it's actually been studied as something more than anecdotal evidence. There is a dentist in Salem named Dr. Fang, and dentists in Needham (they're in practice together) named Drs. Needleman and Yelland. Though a friend reminds me of the OB/GYN at UMass named Harrison Ball (he doesn't go by Harrison...and yet why not??) who maybe reacted against his name in choosing a specialty. In an awesome-sounding book called Bertha Venation: And Hundreds of Other Funny Names of Real People, Larry Ashmead talks about people like the environmental engineer Hugh Fish, and what happens when Ms. Gay marries Mr. Beech. (I heard about this book on NPR.) And there's some debate as to what comes first: is your name your destiny? According to the New York Times (really, where I get most of my information), people who study names (called onomastics), call it "nominitive determinism" when Dr. Fang grows up to be a dentist or Dr. Fish becomes an ichthyologist. Ashmead also wrote a chapter on funny names that arise when people marry each other, like Ms. Coffee marrying Mr. Bean, or Ms. Gay marrying Mr. Beech (she hyphenated it to Gay-Beech, according to the book, and didn't actually find it all that amusing). Luckily, Dr. Beaver's children say that they got many laughs out of their father's name (according to their posts on Dave Barry's blog, and he never makes stuff up). :)

Let it snow

Well, Mother Nature has decided in her infinite wisdom to welcome March with a snowstorm. Actually I was ok with this one, since I didn't have to go anywhere during the 12 hours that it was snowing (heavily). And I went for a walk this morning and took some pictures when it was really pretty. There weren't that many people out, and everything felt very calm. I came thisclose to making a snow angel on the lawn in the center of town, but thought plopping down on my back near a busy intersection might cause someone to wonder if I'd keeled over (since I'm not, you know, 8 years old). Yesterday we had a class on adolescent medicine, and the professor said it's hard to teach people how to recognize when adolescence is over. I think I recognized the end of my own adolescence the first time I saw snow and felt annoyed. I caught myself and was then annoyed that I felt annoyed, when I used to love snowstorms, and how the snow lining all the tiniest tree branches made everything look so magical. God, adulthood is awful sometimes. So I was especially happy that I got to enjoy last night's storm, and not let my grown-up curmudgeoniness (word?) get to me. Nevertheless, I won't protest when spring decides to grace us with her presence. :)

This is the church in the center of my town.

My lovely house in the snow.

Pic

At the request of Ms. Dennen: a photo to brighten up the blog. (Taken by her, of course.) Let's see if I'm computer-savvy enough to successfully post a photo....

Welcome!

Well, I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while, but, as so often happens, it remained a pipe dream until Natalie inspired me to do it. Even if this blog has only one reader (hi, dad!), I still think it'll be a fun thing to keep up for a while, especially if I'm traveling next year. While this is not intended to be a medically-themed blog, its creation was partially inspired by near-daily phone calls and emails I get from friends and family asking various random medical questions, most of which I don't know the answers to. So I thought it would be fun to 1. find the answers, and 2. post them up here, because maybe other people will be wondering what ringworm looks like, too.
Enjoy! And thanks for visiting. :)