the underwear drawer

the good and the bad

Just got back from dinner with Andy down in Greenwich Village. I took the crosstown to 8th Avenue and as I was walking through Chelsea to meet him at Art Bar, I looked at all the trendy restaurants and pretty people and could not figure out for the life of me how he could want to move to Chapel Hill. All my med school friends are moving to these crazy God-forsaken places. Brendan and Narges to Phoenix, Andy to el sud, Jamal to New Haven (even though that happened quite a while ago and he's technically a high school friend, I just wanted to lump him in there to show how everyone's leaving me), not to mention the legion of the insane that made the pilgrammage to Boston for whatever reason. Anyway, we had Indian food and Andy told me that I was wrong about the whole Passover thing, that he thinks that fries actually aren't allowed during Passover after all, because they're fried, and I guess frying isn't allowed during the holidays. So if I was wrong, I retract that whole thing about the Passover vs. low carbs diet. Just goes to show you: ask a Jew.

One thing I didn't mention about work this week is that one of my patients who has been sitting on our service waiting for a heart transplant finally got her heart on Friday. Everyone was thrilled, as you would be too, especially if you saw her. Not that cute kids get the monopoly on our good will and affections, because, you know, ugly kids get sick too, but oh, if only you could see this child. She looks like a teeny tiny version of the girl in that Norman Rockwell painting, "The Problem We All Live With." She's so small her shoes look like little muffins.

I know I've discussed this before in a prior entry about heart transplantation, but at the same time we were celebrating and getting ready to bring our patient to the OR, there is another set of parents somewhere else in the country getting ready to bury their child, and probably another Pediatrics resident who took care of that child until he or she died. Maybe that resident even brought up the topic of organ transplantation to these parents. Who knows what the situation was? Who knows how that other patient died? We were lucky enough to be on the happy ending side of things (not that it's the end, because transplantation brings up a whole host of new medical issues to deal with), but somewhere out there, wherever this heart came from, there's another half to this story.

At any rate, I hope the surgery went OK. I guess I'll find out when I return to work on Monday.

Currently reading: The New Yorker, Spring Humor Issue.