fried liver

Yesterday was my first day back from vacation, so of course I was on overnight call, because that's the way that residency works to remind you that it OWNS YOUR SOUL. However, it was a good call, becauase I finally got to do a liver. My first liver! Thank god. I was feeling left behind.

Getting a liver transplant while on call is pretty hit or miss, so there are some people in my class that have done a few already, and others like me (up until last night) that still haven't done any. Everytime you're on call you're playing those odds, like lotto. Well, I guess it happens a little more frequently than having your numbers come up in lotto. I guess it's more like getting one of those fortune cookies with two fortunes in it. It's a little more than you bargained for, but you'll eat it anyway. Anyway, woo! Two fortunes!

This was a good "starter liver," as I like to call it. Sure, the patient needed a liver transplant, but she wasn't really really really sick, like some of these patients can be. So I got to go through a whole liver start to finish and just concentrate on learning the routine and the lines and the meds, getting a feel for the physiology without all the stress that that patient's going to DIE. Dying is not good for morale.

As an added bonus, I was in bed by 2am, and now I'm home and waiting for Cal to wake up so we can go to music class. Not bad.

Currently reading: "Big Blue." Anesthesia board review. I split it up into three little binders so I can carry it around more easily, but it's still, you know, big.

oh "tannenbaum"

So is it lame to have a fake Christmas tree? I like having a real tree, because, you know, the smell, and also there's something sad about building a tree out of a set of metal piping, but it seems like it might be the safer way to go this year. For you see:

1.) A fake tree is less likely to catch on fire.

2.) A fake tree is less likely to crush Someone if Someone decides to pull on it in order to learn important lessons about gravity, or Other Someone decides to knock it over while tearing through the house sniffing and barking maniacally as Other Someone is occasionally wont to do

3.) A fake tree will not leave a sad trail of dessicated needles all through the house, and a fake tree will not need to be sawed apart on January 1st to facilitate exit from our apartment.

4.) One time cost, which means more money for DRUGS.

But I'm still on the fence about it. I know many people have fake trees, especially in the city, but as I've always had a real tree, there seems something sad and wrong about it.

Here's one I was looking at:

OK, so first let me save you the effort of pointing out that this tree is WRONG because it has fake pinecones on it, which is just one step away from having a tree with tinsel already stitched into its branches, but this tree seemed like it might be a good option because it is SKINNY, which means that it will fit in our living room.


Here's one without the pinecones. But it is not skinny, so it may not fit. I mean, it looks reasonable enough in the picture, but who's to say that in real life, it doesn't look like a giant wad of shiny plastic pipe cleaners? Do you have a fake tree? What do they look like? Are they all bald? Can you see the giant metal pipe in the middle?


Now, this tree might seem tacky, but this white tree is what I would get if I were SUPER MOD and I had a MOD apartment like the one Hugh Grant has in "About A Boy," and I were having a really glitzy Christmas party where I'd invite all of my ARTIST and MODEL friends over to look GLAMOROUS and hang DISCO BALL ornaments all over my MOD white tree.

However, this is also the same Christmas tree that Winona Ryder's family has in "Edward Scissorhands," which means that it is probably tacky.


That blue tree is like the kind of tree the Grinch would have in his cave. (Before he turned good, I mean.)

Wow, a pink Christmas tree. There is no better way to make sure your son grows up to be a lead dancer in the revival of "Cats."


I take it back. A black and red feather Christmas tree is a better way.

So OK, ignore all of the non-green trees. I'm still on the fence with respect to bio-tree versus the flame-retardant plastic tree. Opinions? Will Santa skip our house if we have a fake tree? Or will he give us extra presents because we didn't pay for another innocent conifer to DIE?

Currently watching: "Borat." We're a little late on this one, but we haven't had babysitting up until tonight. We may even be able to enjoy the movie if we aren't deafened by Cal shrieking five blocks away, because WHO IS THIS STRANGE MAN YOU'RE LEAVING ME WITH? (Um, it's your grandfather.)

thankful

Well, never even made it to the restaurant. Not that we didn't try. We kept Cal up late the night before so that he would wake up late on Thanksgiving, in an attempt to push back his naptime as far as possible. We got him dressed in his little oxford shirt and khakis. We filled little baggies of snacks, tupperwares with chicken tenders and grapes, and stuffed a messenger bag full of amusements. But by the time we got to my parent's house, he was tired and cranky, by the time we were ready to leave for the restaurant, he was screeching. There was no way he would have made it even beyond the bread selection, so we decided to take Cal home and put him down for his nap.

We hopped in a cab, and on the way home, a red truck tried to cut off our vehicle at a busy intersection in the middle of the pouring rain. Our cab glanced off the truck, skidded, veered to the left, and then ran up onto the curb, narrowing missing a lamp post. We were all fine, including Cal--he actually grinned and clapped when our car stopped, probably excited about both of his parents suddenly throwing themselves on top of him--but there are so many ways that scenario could have played out where things could have turned out very differently.

So I guess it was a good Thanksgiving after all.


* * *


Today was a better day in that we had no further BRUSHES WITH DEATH--Joe and I took Cal up to the Museum of Natural History to meet up with our friend Andy and his family. It looked like the entire native as well as tourist population of New York had the same idea (to go to the museum, that is, not to meet up with Andy, though he is a popular guy) which meant long lines at the ticked booth and witness to such high decibel family psychodramatic monologues as, "FUN? WE'RE WAITING IN LINE, IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FUN, WHAT, AM I SUPPOSED TO ENTERTAIN YOU 24 HOURS A DAY?" Ah, building those sweet childhood holiday memories already.

So anyway, we took a few pictures that turned out badly because of the poor lighting conditions, but as I was downloading them, I realized hey, there are a lot of other old pictures on this camera too. So here are a few of them.



These are pictures from Central Park from more than a month ago. Man, I am not good with keeping our picture files up to date.




Clambering all over the Alice in Wonderland statue next to the little boat pond. It is fun for climbing and also very trippy.



Ah, yes, the Halloween pictures. I was on call that day, so Joe took these. Apparently Cal was not too excited about his costume.




But eventually he allowed himself to be photographed. This is before he got too hot and had to take off the top half of the costume, however, thereby downgrading his costume from "monkey" to "monkey legs." Also, for any of you wondering how small a New York City apartment kitchen is, see the first picture above: that small.



Some guy was selling these skull and crossbones hats on the street. I guess you can see what happened next. I also got Joe one (a black one with white skulls), so that he and Cal can team up and terrorize old women.



At the museum today. Here Cal looks a little freaked that his gorilla escaped from our playpen at home and followed us out. The thing I always think about when I go to the museum now is that whole Holden Caulfield thing about how he loves the museum because nothing there has changed from when he was a kid. The thing about that is--the museum has changed a lot since I was a kid. There used to be all these great old creepy exhibits, like that whole room about parasites and how people used to have beds with holes in them when they had CHOLERA. And that really dark tank with the whale fighting the squid, where you had to lean in reeeeeeeally close in order to make out what was inside, and once your eyes adjusted, you jumped back, because HOLY SHIT, THERE'S A SQUID FIGHTING A WHALE IN THERE! And that whole old school section from the 50's about migratory birds or some such, and how the dinosaur exhibit was all clunky and inaccurate, with T-Rex standing erect and all. Now the parasitology room is this schmancy HALL OF BIODIVERSITY. The whale fighting the squid is still there, but there's a cafe in the middle of the room, and they brightened up the lighting in there so much that it's not really creepy anymore. I think they either eliminated or moved the migratory birds exhibit (maybe it turned into a gift shop--the ultimate insult!) and the dinosaur exhibit is fully revamped. Don't get me wrong, I think the museum is overall much nicer now, but still, sometimes I miss the way it used to be. Actually, pretty much the only things that haven't really changed are the anthropology exhibits, because no one really cares about those anyway (except for the ones depicting various aboriginal peoples with NAKED BOSOMS).



More fun in the Hall of African Mammals. At least I hope it was fun, because we shelled out TWENTY-EIGHT BIG ONES for admission. I know that it was just a "suggested admission fee," but I didn't want the museum people to think I was being chintzy or anything.

So anyway, we're having a nice Thanksgiving weekend. Hope you all are too. Be cool, stay in school.

Currently reading: "The Floating Light Bulb," an old Woody Allen play. Nothing spectacular, but according to the casting notes, Bea Arthur was in the original Broadway (well, Lincoln Center, I guess) cast. I always thought she was a man in drag.

blue skidoo, we can too

So as I'm sure I've mentioned before, my family usually goes out to a restaurant for Thanksgiving. Because we're lazy. Last year was an exception, because my dad was out of the country and he's usually the one who orchestrates the reservations, but this year we are resuming the tradition and have a table at Jean Georges. The prospect of this meal has been a minor source of stress at our house. The last time Cal went to a fancy restaurant was almost a year ago, for Chinese New Year, and he was infinitely smaller and more portable at that time. Now it's a little hard to contain him even at a place like Pizzeria Unos, with its high chairs and crayons and children's menu. The prospect of keeping him docile between the amuse bouche and the cheese platter while sitting between Donald Trump and some Japanese cell phone magnate is a little daunting. In fact, I anticipate spending most of the meal sitting with Cal in the hotel lobby, reading Bon Appetit. I know, I know, it doesn't seem like a terribly practical plan to me, to bring a 16 month-old to a four star eaterie and expect anything but catastrophic results, but it seems to mean a lot to my parents (see: tradition and all), so we'll give it the old college try. If anything, it'll make a good case for having next Thanksgiving at Chuck E. Cheese or the like.

In the meantime, in the spirit of "hope for the best, prepare for the worst," I've been assembling a giant kit of toddler amusements to bring with us to the meal. Knowing that books and toys might not just be enough, I also downloaded a few episodes of "Blue's Clues" off iTunes onto my iPod, thinking it might buy us another precious 20 minutes of sitting still before the inevitable finale of screeching and running around and grabbing for the sommelier's tastevin. Having never watched "Blue's Clues," I needed to pre-screen it to make sure that it was suitable and not affiliated with Satan, like some other children's programming that I've seen. I ended up liking it so much that I bought the whole first season. It's a little advanced for Cal right now (the whole figuring out the clues and all that) but it seems like a nice sensible interactive show, as opposed to a half-hour toy commercial. Also, it kind of reminds me of Pee Wee's Playhouse, which is always a plus. Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney ho.

Since we downloaded the episodes, Joe and I have developed something of an affinity for "Blue's Clues." We may even like it more than Cal does. There's just something so likeable about that show, especially the host, Steve. He just seems like such a nice guy is all. As far as Cal is concerned, we could well have just downloaded one episode and played it over and over again, but Joe and I want to watch all 20 episodes.




Last week, I was working with an attending who, it occurred to me, looked a bit like Steve. He's a youngish attending who has a baby at home too, so after weighing in my mind whether or not I should mention anything, I decided that he might be game for the topic and decided to bring it up.

"Does your son watch 'Blue's Clues'?" I started off, as a way to broach the subject.

He gave me a haughty look. "We don't let our son watch TV," he said. Oh, I'm sorry, your halo is shining so bright that IT JUST BLINDED ME. So I didn't get to tell him that he looked like Steve from "Blue's Clues." Anyway, I think Steve looks more like my friend Andy, to the point that it's kind of distracting to watch the show, because woah, there's Andy.

By the way, I find it very slightly disturbing that Steve has become an indie rocker after leaving his gig at Nick Jr.


Not that he doesn't have a right to break out of his "Steve" role, it's just that the idea of him being anything less than fully wholesome leaves me with an icky feeling. Hookers and blow, Steve, hookers and blow. Luckily, it seems that he's actually a genuinely nice guy and even has a pretty good sense of humor about the whole thing, so I'll allow it.

Oh man, now I'm doing the "mommy-blog" thing, writing an entire entry about "Blue's Clues." Tomorrow, an entry all about poop and the relative merits of Goldfish crackers over Cheerios!

(Not really.)

(You hope.)

Currently reading: An article in the Times about dress codes for medical students and residents while at work. I've certainly seen some less than well-advised work attire in my day, but interesting how the article mainly addresses inappropriate dress in women. Hmmm.

more than words

So the thing with Cal is that he still isn't talking yet. No words at all, not even "Mama" or "Dada," which don't even count as first words, according to the Denver. Now, I know that by posting about this, I am opening myself up to a huge influx of well-intentioned but alarmist e-mails from people telling me YOUR SON IS AUTISTIC, but let me try to head this off at the pass by reminding everyone that I was a Pediatrics resident for two years before this current gig, and have done many, many developmental assessments in my day. So: not autistic. Not.

(YOUR SON IS AUTISTIC!)

Cal's just not a big words man. His preferred mode of communication seems so far to be pointing at stuff and grunting. Other gems of his communicative repertoire include reaching out and opening and closing his hands to indicate that he wants something, clapping after he does something particularly satisfying (flushing the toilet, for instance), and occasionally waving hello or goodbye.

I'm pretty satisfied that he hears fairly well. He hears me opening the front door when I get home, even when he's in the other room, and he can obey most commands pretty readily, and I've been trying not to gesture too much when talking to him to make sure that he really understands the words, not just my eloquent hand-waving. (DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?) Also, he babbles quite a bit, and in the babbling, he makes all the phonemes that would be necessary to form pretty much any word that he would ever need to use at this point. He just doesn't put the sounds in the right order, or to mean anything in specific. Including Mama or Dada. I mean, he'll say "Mama" and "Dada," but it's just random.

(This one's for the working-mom-guilties out there: Yes, our nanny talks to him. I mean, I can't prove that they're parsing sentences and reading the dictionary when I'm not there, but I've been in the background quite a bit when they're together, and she is very good and unselfconscious about prattling on to him pretty much all day. This is in response to my own mom, who "helpfully" "reminded" me that you actually have to TALK to children in order for them to LEARN how to talk. Thanks there, Benjamin Spock.)

He's meeting all his milestones otherwise, so I'd be satisfied with waiting another two months (he's turning 16 months on Wednesday) before freaking out and getting him evaluated. After all, he's probably just in more a physical development stage right now (Exhibit A: climbing up on the couch to turn on the stereo, Exhibit B: climbing up on the windowsill to give me a stroke). The problem is that I think that this inability to communicate very precisely is making him very frustrated. He'll point at something and I have to go through every item in that general direction to see what he wants. ("You want...your sippy cup? This pretzel? You want to go outside? You want this toy car? You want to play with this water bottle?") This has been leading to more unintelligible screeching and dramatic displays of despondency--his new thing when I take something potentially messy and/or dangerous away from him is lowering himself onto the floor, pressing his face into the woodwork and weeping, like, "Oh cruel fate! My mother has taken away my ice pick and now I am left with NOTHING." So I think he will maybe be less frustrated if he can actually communicate with us a little better. Or maybe not. But either way, at least he'll be talking.

He's not a big repeater, by the way. He just doesn't want to repeat what you say is all. Like he'll come up to me, arms outstretched and hands opening and closing, indicating that he wants to be picked up.


MICHELLE
You want to come up?

CAL
(Hands grabbing)
Mmmmmm!

MICHELLE
Yeah, I'm going to pick you up! Say "up!"

CAL
(Hands opening and closing faster)
Nnnngh!

MICHELLE
Say "up" so mommy knows to pick you up!

CAL
(Getting mad)
Nnnngh!

MICHELLE
Say "up!"

CAL
(Very mad)
Aaaaaah!

MICHELLE
(Picking Cal up)
OK, you're coming up. See, I picked you up! Uuuuu-pppp!

CAL
(Satisfied)
Mmmmm.


Oh, and one more thing that I know I'm going to get asked: We are not a bilingual household. (You know how kids who are exposed to two different languages from birth start talking a little bit later? Well, while I would love for him to be bilingual, Cal's mostly been spoken to in English. I mean, my parents speak to him in Chinese mostly, but he sees them only once or twice a month, and for a few hours at a time, so I doubt that has made some tremendous impact.) He's just not into talking at this moment. I know that if he gets to 18 months and still doesn't have any words, we should get him formally evaluated, but until then, I'm going to try not to sweat it. Though I will mention it to our Pediatrician the next time I see him.

Funny thing about our next Peds appointment, by the way. I couldn't get in with our regular Pediatrician for one of my days off, so instead, the receptionist asked if I would be OK seeing one of the other doctors in the office. I said that would be fine. So I got an appointment with Dr. H., one of the "new attendings," who as it turns out was one of my former co-residents from the Pediatrics department. Cool, I have an inside edge! Maybe she'll throw in a couple of extra vaccines for free or something.


* * *


Oh, and I know I owe you the monkey suit pictures, but believe me when I tell you that even I haven't seen them yet. I was going to download them just now, but they're on the little camera (as opposed to the big camera) and Joe has the transfer cable for the SD card hidden away in some secret corner of his desk. So I'll have to wait for him to get home before the pictures can be liberated. I know how to do it myself, of course, I just need his help to find the cable. I know computers. I use The Google.

Currently playing at: "Aha! Learning Center." It's like Gymboree but BETTER, because more toys including MOON BOUNCE and MANY TRUCKS and a PRETEND KITCHEN and you can drop by ANYTIME for open play and stay as long as you like, not just for a crappy 45-minute period in the middle of the day that inevitably falls during naptime. The one bad thing is that it's kind of far away, but Cal likes taking the subway, and my puny girl arms have gotten stronger lugging him and his stroller up and down the steps, so it's win-win.

coming off bypass

Wow, I haven't written an entry in so long that Blogger didn't remember me. Short memory, blogger dot com. What about all the good times we shared?

I've been rotating through cardiothoracic anesthesia for the past month, if that's any kind of an excuse. The first three weeks were kind of fun, but by the last week, I was longing for the sweet release of death. Workin' 5 to 9, what a way to make a livin'. My last day of the rotation, I was on call, and stumbling back from the ICU to the ORs at 2am after dropping what I hoped was my last patient of the night, I saw a guy delivering two small coolers off at the OR desk. Always an ominous sign.

"What...um...are there organs in those coolers?" I asked the nurse signing for the dropoff.

"Yup. Transplant." She confirmed.

"Which...organs?"

"Kidney."

"Really? Two kidneys? There's not a heart or a lung hiding in one of those coolers, is there?"

"Nope. Just kidneys."

"Nice."

"You're on call for cardiac?"

"Yes. So unless they're planning on sticking those kidneys into the guy's chest, I'm hoping that I'm done for the night. They can freaking transplant a baboon heart if they want, as long as they decide to do it after 7am. I am officially done with this."

"Long month?"

"You could say that."


* * *


The good thing is that I have a week of vacation now. Everyone always asks me if I'm going anywhere for my vacation, but I just really want to spend some time in my home, where, theoretically, I live. You know how everyone's house has a certain smell? Not a bad smell, but just a smell that's a combination of the food that they eat, the products that they use, the furniture and pets that they have, that kind of thing. But normally no one can notice the smell of their own house, because you live there--you only notice the smell of other people's houses. Like this one friend I had in elementary school had a house that smelled like Christmas trees and old books. Or my cousins' house, which always smelled like laundry and wood. The only time you can really smell your own house is after you come home after being out of town for a while or something like that. Well, this past week, when I've been getting home from the hospital, I realized that I could actually smell my own house. Which officially means that I've been working too much. It also means that we need to buy some more Febreeze and give Cooper a bath.

So given that we're not actually "going on vacation" (Joe doesn't have off this week, though he will be off for Thanksgiving), being on vacation basically just means that I'm putting my job at the hospital on hold so that I can do my nanny's job for a little while. Only twenty-four hours a day. And for free. However, on the plus side, I do get to work from home. Ah ha ha! Ha ha! I kill me! With my own hilarity! I am Doctor Hilarius! Except not a Nazi!

(Seriously though, I didn't really understand that book. I only made that joke so that you would think that I was High Class.)

We had some nice family time yesterday morning, but we were home by 2:30pm to give Joe enough time to mentally prepare for The Game, which seems a little general of a designation to me, but for much of the world seemed to be understood to mean the game between Ohio State and Michigan. Joe loves The Bug Eyes. A lot. I don't get the whole football thing (for example, when watching football alone, why yell things? Who are you talking to?) but as pastimes go, college football seems to be a fairly benign one, as opposed to, oh, say, heroin abuse, so I was pleased to man Cal for a few hours and allow Joe to carve out a little slice of couch with his ass.

So Ohio State won. Which would appear be the end of the story, but to Joe means watching more sports to see the post-game analysis and logging onto ESPN.com obsessively to check various stats and standings or some such. I understand liking to read a recap of something that you already saw--that's the genius of this site, after all--but I have to admit that I was a little surprised to wake up this morning to see Joe in front of the TV watching a replay of the exact same game that ended just twelve hours before.


MICHELLE
Is that Ohio State versus Michigan?

JOE
Yup.

MICHELLE
Is that the same game from yesterday?

JOE
Yup.

MICHELLE
I don't want to spoil the ending for you, but...Ohio State wins.

JOE
This was an awesome game.

MICHELLE
You just think it's awesome because your team won.

JOE
Yes. Because of their awesomeness.

MICHELLE
Don't you feel bad for the other team?

JOE
No.

MICHELLE
I feel kind of bad for them. Especially after their old coach died and all, Bud Shimbuckler.

JOE
Bo Schembechler.

MICHELLE
Yes. But aren't you proud that I was pretty close?

JOE
So proud.

MICHELLE
I feel sorry for Michigan. This is called "empathy."

JOE
I'm just going to watch this one last play, and then we can go to breakfast. It's coming up, wait, just watch this one part with me. Wait, look look look. It was second and inches and they broke from the huddle, feigning to go for a quick conversion, but then they faked a dive play, and then in a play-action pass the quarterback threw deep for the 38-yard score!

MICHELLE
I didn't understand a single word you just said right now.


I'm off this whole week, so I'll try to update a little more to make up for this past month. If Cal will let me. Lately he's been sort of a tough customer. But more on that later. Ooh, cliffhanger!

Currently reading: Nothing. I AM READING NOTHING. Well, OK, I actually am reading this comic book, but was too embarrassed to admit that this is the only non-medical book I've read in the past few weeks. Speaking of comic books, however, there's a great multimedia presentation on the visual language of graphic novels over at The New York Times Magazine. It's cool hearing all those cartoonists talk about their work. I only wish that Adrian Tomine was included, because I would love to hear what his voice sounds like. (Um, OK, stalker.)

open heart

I was on call on Halloween, but Joe tells me that he took some pictures of Cal in his costume, and as soon as I can free up the precious energy units to actually liberate said pictures from my camera's memory card, I'll post them up here. (He dressed up as monkey. Cal, I mean, not Joe.)

I started my Cardiothoracic rotation two weeks ago, which is why some of you theorized that I may be fakng my own death. It's been fun so far--exciting cases, lots of new toys--but it comes with some long hours. Last week I left home at 5am and didn't get home until 9:30pm, on a night that I wasn't even on call. What am I, an ortho resident?

Anyway, not much exciting to say at this point, but just wanted to check in. So...hi.


Currently eating: Mochi ice cream. Joe's of the opinion that they went and ruined a good thing (ice cream, that is), but he is a gringo. I like the mochi wrapping, personally.