dispatches from night float

So I was looking around on kidsurplus.com trying to get some ideas on stuff to get Cal for Christmas (that's the excuse, anyway) when I happened upon these "Friends With Diverse Abilities" action figures.




Teaching kids about diversity, I can get behind that! Oh, that's nice, look, there's the kid in a wheelchair who plays basketball! And the really happy guy with crutches who looks like Barack Obama! Hello Senator! And the deaf girl signing "Hi!" Why, that's the same way I say hi! We're not so different, she and I! There's the zippy old guy with the walker! Out of his way, he's not slowing down for anyone! And the saucy independent blind lady! No light perception? No problem! And the...girl with strabismus?

A lazy eye? Does that count?


* * *


I figured out, by the way, why so many people have kids about two years apart. When your kid turns one, you start to realize that he's not a baby anymore. He's still very small, obviously, and still needs you for every little thing, but his days of sitting quietly on your lap cooing and staring at dust motes are over. And then you think, "Wait, since when did you become a kid? I thought you were a baby! I was just getting warmed up to the baby stuff and now it's over! Unfair! Bring back the baby!" But your kid isn't interested in being a baby anymore, he's more interested in stuffing papers down the radiator and poking the dog. (I mean, for example.) So then you do what seems logical. You have another baby.

I wouldn't mind having another baby. I'm planning on it, in fact, if things go as planned, which I understand they don't always. I just need to wait for residency to be over first. Mostly because if I still had to work these hours and split my time at home between two kids and a husband and a dog, the guilt would eat me alive. Also, Cal's at a really fun age right now, and I kind of just want to enjoy it. Just enjoy what I have right now instead of seeing what more I can add on top of it. All this, right now, is more than enough.

But it doesn't stop me from sitting around during idle moments thinking about what I want to name our next kid.


* * *


Speaking of names, what's with kids names now? Like just the other day, there was a kid at the playground named "Didion." Named after Joan Didion, perhaps? Except the kid was a BOY. Also, at Cal's music class this week, there was a boy named "Walker," which made me think of "Walker, Texas Ranger," though I'm pretty sure that was not what these trendy Manhattan parents were trying to convey when naming their kid. This is the thing now, apparently, the last-name-as-first-name trend. Other names overhead in the playground or at Gymboree: Brinkley (a girl), Ellison (a boy), and Ziggy. (OK, Ziggy was a dog.)

I know I'm be inviting this, so I'll just say that that some people think Cal is a weird name too, because it caused such a furor in ye olde comments section when I announced that that was what we were going to name our kid. People were all, "You're going to name him what? That's child abuse! Also, you suck and your kid will hate you!" But hopefully, everyone's gotten used to the idea by now. Yes? Not to mention that "Cal" was the name of Billy Zane's character in "Titanic."

(For the record, we didn't name Cal after Billy Zane's character in "Titanic". We actually named him after Seth Rogan's character in "The 40 Year-Old Virgin.")

(Just kidding. We saw that movie a month after Cal was born. But would that have made me more or less cool if I had named my kid after a character in "The 40 Year-Old Virgin?" Maybe more cool to teenage boys, but much less cool to Joe's parents.)

Currently eating: Caramello. Very messy.

long-awaited picture update

Let's get that sad stuff off the top, shall we? Yes, I agree. With myself.





So Cal is getting very big. And also very cute. And very hairy. Well, on his head, anyway. See how it is long on top and everything? I had to trim it again just last weekend. He hates the snipping but then I just make Joe show him footage of Sesame Beginnings or various porn sites on the computer and he stays reasonably still. It is the only way to cut his hair without the use of volatile anesthetics. Also, please note his cool shoes. Validate my online shopping. They are different than his other cool shoes, but still very comfy and Euro, like oh la la, cherchez la femme. Or possibly like bowling shoes. Anyway, I wish they made them in my size.




So anyway, Joe's parents were in town this weekend, and we all went to the Children's Zoo. This is different from the Regular Zoo in that there are some animals that you can pet, as well as highly expensive pellets that you can purchase in order to lure the animals towards you. Cal found a way around this by feeding the animals leaves that he found on the ground, but we had to stop after one of the zoo staff told us that ingested leaves could make the animals sick and DIE. Which I sort of doubt, since the killer leaves were all over the floor in the fenced enclosure as well, where all the llamas and goats and things were munching on them freely, but whatever. My malpractice insurance does not extend to cover the zoo.



OK, this is just a question for people who know about goats. Yeah, you, goatherd. What are those hanging dealies on their neck? I thought from the cartoons that goats had little goatees, but this was like a two pronged flesh cord dangling from his throat, covered in fur. What is that thing?




At lunch, eating grapes. This requires a great deal of concentration, apparently. (Don't worry, the grapes are cut into quarters.)

After lunch we went to FAO Schwarz. "What do you think are the chances that we go into this toy store and leave without buying something?" I asked Joe.

"Oh, probably zero."

Sure enough, within two minutes of walking in the door...



You know how you're not supposed to go food shopping when you're hungry? Well, the same holds for going to a toy store with your kid after working on the pediatric oncology service for a week. YOU WILL BUY HIM ANYTHING. Especially if that anything is a giant gorilla, because man, I'm not made of stone.




Ten minutes later...



Half an hour after that...




Oh, like you could have resisted that.


Currently reading: "Big Blue." Anesthesia board prep stuff. It would be about half as long if not for all the war quotes and battle analogies.

palliation

As much as it was a good experience for me to rotate through the Peds Pain service and as much as I learned, I'm really, really glad that this week is over.

Yesterday I watched an eight year-old die. She was a patient on our service, terminally ill in the ICU, and I stood there watching as her sobbing father cradled her in his arms, kissing her face gently and whispering in her ear as her heart slowed, then fibrillated, then stopped. If there's anything that we on the pain management team did to make the process easier, I'm glad, but I have to say watching an eight year-old child die puts a stain on your soul somehow.

Moments after that, I got summoned for a new pain consult, a six year-old with terminal cancer and intractable pain, writhing around in bed and screaming, "Mommy, Daddy, I love you, it hurts, make it stop."

I went home last night and hugged Cal for a very long time.

more borderline inappropriate art from the children's hospital

An illustrated panel from Jack London's "The Call of the Wild," hanging on the wall of the oncology ward:




The caption below reads, "Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time."

No, I'm not kidding.

working hard or hardly working?

I'm on call for the Pain Service today, which kind of sucks (see: trapped in the hospital on a Saturday), but which has its upside too, since the service is not too too busy, and therefore I have a chance to hole up in my call room and turn it into a veritable STUDY HQ. What a cheap luxury, to have the time and space to study. Normally, I just try to study as much as I can when I'm at work, because when I get home, Cal is stuck to me like one of those stuffed monkeys with the velcro hands, and I have to do mother things like feed him and bathe him and keep him alive. Also, I am TIRED when I get home, so even if I didn't have Cal to take care of, I cannot guarantee that I would not just be sacked out on the couch blowing spit bubbles and vapidly watching "The Fabulous Life of Celebrity Pets" on VH1. But as you can imagine, sometimes it is hard to study at work. Because of the actual "work" component of work. And sometimes when I try to study in the OR, in the middle of a long case where NOTHING is happening, the surgeons will peer over the drape at me, see me with a textbook, and give me a Look. A Look that says, "Why are you just sitting there? Isn't there some urine that you should be measuring?"

So even though I don't like spending my weekend where the sun don't shine (in the hospital that is, not up someone's ass, though there are certain rooms that smell that way), I welcome the opportunity to actually get some real studying done, as I used to in days of yore. Though I was by no means the head of the class in med school, I think I had some reasonably disciplined study habits back in those days. I look back on some of my notes from second year (the point in my life that I think my academic compulsiveness hit its zenith) and I can't believe I ever worked that hard. I also can't believe I ever owned that many colors of highlighters. It was madness, I say. But at least I was healthier than some. There were people I went to med school with who would camp out in the library or in various teaching labs for days at a time, making a little study nest of loose papers and binders and textbooks, leaving only to sleep (optional) or pee (hopefully not optional). Some people brought lamps from home to plug into the outlets on the lab bench. One guy had a change of clothes.

I never wanted to be that crazy about studying, though certainly my study skills have eroded over the past five years to the point that I could afford to step it up a notch. It's just that the logistics are much harder now. When I was a second year med student, all I was expected to do was study. That was my job. But now I have an actual job, wherein I have to do other things during the day. And I have a kid. Also, I am enfeebled by old age. So I don't really have time to do my little color-coded charts and flashcards and nerd things. And half the time even when I do try to read something for academic's sake, I can't really seem to retain it once I turn the page. This is problematic. I am turning stupid.

Curiously, though my study and concentration skills have atrophied to an alarming degree, as you can see, my ability to procrastinate has not.

Currently watching: The first episode of "Grey's Anatomy." I kind of got sick of everyone asking me if I watched "Grey's Anatomy" and finally just caved and downloaded an episode off iTunes. I watched maybe half an hour of it and then I had to turn it off. It's probably just me, but it just became too aggravating. I know a lot of people like this show, so I don't want to be the crotchety killjoy screeching about the inaccuracies, but it was just torture to sit and watch each scene, where every other moment I was thinking to myself "That's wrong. That would never happen. That's just--no. And why are they all sitting around? Don't they have any work to do?" That show needs to get a medical consultant. Or at least one that has actually practiced medicine in a real hospital, not just in HO-lly-wood, duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh HO-lly-wood. Do real police feel the same way when they watch cop shows on TV? Or lawyers when they watch those law shows where people are in court every second, shouting objections and breaking down on the witness stand?

can't sleep, clown will eat me

There's this painting in the lobby of the Children's Hospital that has freaked me out since I was a wee med student. I have already told you about my fear of The Clowns. But tell me, who wouldn't be scared of clowns if they had to see this image every day?

It's this dark oil painting, hanging next to the elevators in a dimly lit, shadowy corner of the old wing of the hospital. Sorry for the crappy lighting on the photo, but that's exactly how much light there was in this hallway. Sad little sick boy, creepy clown poking his head out of the shadows. NOW TELL ME THAT'S NOT SCARY. This clown isn't even pretending to be merry. Where is his little ukelele? Where is his flower that squirts water? WHERE IS HIS SMILE? He looks like an alcoholic Salvation Army Santa Claus on January 2nd.

OK, granted, the kid doesn't look scared, but he doesn't really look cheered up either. He's tolerating the scary clown. And the scary clown is moping around and glowering and reaching for his flask. "I'm sad that you have appendicitis, little Jimmy. Ain't life a bitch."

Currently drinking: Tea with milk and sugar. This is my morning beverage of choice. I don't love coffee and even if I did, I don't think I'd want coffee breath recirculating under my mask all day.