closing time

Hey everyone, thanks for all the input on the new video feature! Two things I have concluded after reading over comments and watching it again myself a couple of times. Next time, things have to be tighter. Better transitions, shorter stories, less meandering. As my editor can surely attest, my narrative tendency veers towards the oversaturated, so next time I'm just going to have to be more ruthless about cutting in the post-production process.

The second thing I concluded is that I should start speaking in the voice of Morgan Freeman.

Anyway, I'll keep working at it, thank you for indulging me while I work out the details. Hey, you liked seeing my toilet though, right? Did you notice how there were boxes of soap all over the water tank? That's so the rats wouldn't get them. I know rats can climb on toilets too, but they really, really liked gorging themselves in the cozy darkness of the bathroom drawers, so those are bare now.

Lord, I can't wait to move.

The closing date on our new house was Friday, and it went very smoothly. Everyone talks about how their closing date was the most stressful day of their lives, but those people obviously haven't taken a medical Board exam, or, you know, five of them. Our closing day was actually pretty fun. First we did a walk-through of the house to make sure that it hadn't burned down to the ground since the last time we saw it, or somehow been decimated in the move-out effort. Of course it wasn't. The former owners are such nice people that the husband was actually still doing yardwork in the back a mere two hours before he gave up possession of the place to us. Yardwork! Are these people real? And it's now because the backyard looked bad, by the way--you just got the sense that they had taken a lot of pride in the house and it was only natural that they'd want to send it off looking as pristine as possible. Lord, I hope we don't trash the place just by living there with our kids and dog and terrible furniture.

Anyway, after the walk-through we had lunch and went to this lawyer's office, and there we signed approximately eleventy billion pieces of paper. They were all pretty routine and matched all the numbers we'd already seen--the only that gave me pause was this one small box that gave the total amount of money that we'd be expecting to pay over the course of the 30-year mortgage, counting the interest and everything.

I pointed. "Wait, how much are we going to be paying by the year 2041?"

The lawyer just smiled sympathetically and shook her head. "Just don't look at that part."

So anyway, we signed all the papers and everyone hugged (I don't know if hugging is normal during a house closing, but what can I say, WE WERE IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER) and then Joe and I drove back to our NEW! HOUSE! and looked at everything in wonderment. We looked at our kitchen. We looked at our fireplace. We looked at our yard. We looked at our door. Our first house! Such a cool thing.

We're not moving for a few weeks yet (the house is in really good condition but we're trying to get a few things done that are best done before there's furniture and toys everywhere--replacing some older carpeting, painting a few walls, dealing with miscellaneous maintenance issues) but I can't wait to move in.  Cal can't wait to get the bunk bed we promised him and to start planting raspberries in the backyard.  And Mack can't wait to brush his teeth in the little tiny sink that's just his size.

Hope your week is starting off right.

enter the multimedia

I know a lot of people these days are making "trailers" for their books (kind of like a movie trailer but...for a book) but my experience in watching these trailers is that unless you have some professional help and some reasonably high production value, these trailers look...not so good. I have no innate skill at video editing, and all my friends are the wrong kind of nerd, so no help there.

I did want to have some kind of video content leading up to the book release though, so what I came up with is this. We're going to do a web video series. It's going to be interviews (or soliloquies, depending on how adept the subject is at yammering on and on about this that and the other thing) about the medical training process. My goal is to keep these videos light and in the somewhat more humorous vein. I know everyone has their story of that first time a patient that they were taking care of died in some horrible way, but look, the last thing I want to do is post a bunch of depressing videos of heart-rending medical stories that will make everyone suicidal. I want this to be more of a feel-good collection of stories from medical school and residency, more in the funny-slash-humiliating vein. (And we all know that most humiliating stories become funny stories with enough time and distance. MOST.) I'm trying to find people to interview for this video series, but I think to start we'll just go with the easy "gets," meaning me and Joe. Here is my submission:





(Ah, yes, the freeze-frame that You Tube randomly chose is truly unfortunate. "Pull my finger!")

I was trying to find a really good story of humiliation to tell, but all that came to mind was this one, which is somewhat more in the uplifting, we're gonna make it after all vein. But let me keep thinking. I may dredge up a really good embarrassing story yet. Like the time I fell asleep in the front row of Grand Rounds and woke myself up by farting. Yes, that happened.

I'm going to post the videos here and also on the book website so that people can find them easily. My goal, though admittedly a stretch--the video itself was easy enough to film (I just did it with my iPhone) but the editing took a lot of time--is to interview a handful of people so we can get a few different perspectives. I'm just the guinea pig for this project, see--I don't just want a bunch of videos of myself. Maybe down the line we will even set up some way to take submissions, though they will have to be very carefully selected stories for patient privacy issues and of course to keep your clinical reputation relatively pristine. You know, like tell me a story about how you peed in a jar because you didn't have time to go to the bathroom on rounds. Don't tell me how you transected some guy's aorta while you were trying to take out his gallbladder.

Oh, and while you're at it, pre-order the book, will you? It would make my parents super happy.

full paper jacket

So...you guys want to see the book jacket? Sure you do.




(Click on the image for bigness, I know you can't really see anything when it's so small. Except for the little perforated fold marks. Helpful!)

Do you love it? I LOVE IT. It looks like a real book. And I love, love, love that the book is in hardcover. I usually take the book jacket off when I'm reading a hardcover (though--pro tip--the side folds make excellent bookmarks) I love how a book jacket looks and feels, and how, even when the jacket is off, a hardcover book looks so weighty and academic. Could be my crazy book, could be Dickens, who can say? Except to say that it looks hot! Literarily speaking! (Here's the part where I lick my finger and touch it to my own ass while I make a sizzling noise.)

Yes, anyway.

I would update more at this point except that since we got home from New York yesterday afternoon, Mack has been welded to my body. He's like one of those symbiotes in "Deep Space Nine," and yes, I watched "Deep Space Nine," more than one season, even if there wasn't a single really likable character in the whole show, what of it?

transitory

Every visit to New York seems too short, which I guess is the name of the game when you visit a place where you kind of still wished you lived. We're still missing Mack and Joe like crazy, of course. However, Joe very kindly e-mailed me this little home movie last night that mitigated our homesickness somewhat.





Yesterday, as those who follow my Twitter are aware, we went to the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn Heights, where I exercised my penchant for making Cal pose alternately as an abandoned child or a talentless stripper on a variety of vintage subway trains. We had a good time.





Cal, hanging tough with some TNT. 'Sup, fool.




Also, this comparison from the last time we took Cal to the same museum about three years ago. Sunrise, sunset.





I did not dress him in the same colors on purpose, but I guess I just have a penchant for orange jackets and turquoise neckwear. (Actually, the orange jackets is kind of on purpose--I like to make sure my kids are easy to spot in crowded places. And putting a road cone on their heads seems excessive.)

(View full photo set here.)


* * *


Thank you to all that people who LIKED my book page and who friended me on Facebook. I had my Twitter and my Facebook linked for a little while (hence all the links to TwitPic a few days ago) but then it kind of stopped linking, which was perhaps a blessing in disguise as it's possible that could have been annoying for some people. MODERN DAY PROBLEMS, am I right, people? And what's the deal with answering machines, anyway? All those little cassette tapes!

Anyway, I have some ideas for some new content coming up in advance for the book release (it's all just sweet dreams in my head right now, but early hints: it involves video) so I appreciate having the maximum number of ways to reach everyone, even if I'm still working out the kinks in straddling accessibility and annoying ubiquity. Needless to say, watch this space.

having fun, wish they were here

You don't know what an achievement this is, updating my blog from my parents house. Guys...they don't have wireless internet here! It's, like, dial-up modem, with the beeps and boops! Not quite, but still kinda bad. They use AOL to get their e-mail! Like in the 1990s! All this I could have worked around, except that my laptop is a MacBook Air, which does not even have an Ethernet jack, as I guess that would have been like putting pockets on a cocktail dress. Also, because it is the year 2011. There used to be people in surrounding apartments from whom we used to steal internet, but they either moved away or realized that they needed to password protect their networks, so...yeah. Luckily, I am borrowing some weak-ish coverage from some nice guy named WLAN, so I'm going to do this quick while I'm still getting a signal.

(Yes, I know WLAN is not a guy. GOD, guys, it was a JOKE. Nerds.)

So we got into New York yesterday afternoon. On the way in from Laguardia, we stopped by my grandmother's house in Flushing (Flushing: Official Home of the Chinese Grandmother!) and then I had to hustle to my parents' house for a quick shower and change of clothes to say hi to some people at my publisher.




Look, I know that to some degree it must be a job, just like any other job, but can I just tell you that it looks incredibly fun to work in book publishing? Because there are books everywhere! Like, books falling out of the sky! And you can just pick up and read any of them! Also, they had a lot of high-end office supplies; obviously this is the world of the gigantic professional printer in the kingdom of the extra-large padded mailing envelope, and I don't know why I love that so much but I DO. So anyway, I stopped by, we chatted a bit, and then I walked through Midtown to the West Side to meet up with everyone else for dinner.




I won't say too much about the meal because I basically live-Tweeted the thing last night, and probably some of you are going to kill me over that, because some people get very persnickety about their feeds. Sincere apologies for those who don't like me clogging up their tweet stream, but my reasons for live-tweeting were two-fold. First is that one of my partners at work (hi Kim!) told me to take pictures of the meal, SO I DID. Secondly, I had some scheme that I was going to Twitter Guilt executive chef Eric Ripert to come out into the dining room to say hi to us. (Unfortunately, he did not, because he is important. Also, it's possible he wasn't there last night, because from his Twitter feed, it sounded like he went skiing. Either way.)




Today dawned sunny but cold, so we scrapped our plans for riding bikes in the park and just went straight off to the Natural History Museum, where we looked at some dead stuff. Cal was suitably impressed. I always like to seek out the older, unrenovated wings because they look exactly the same as they did when I was a kid and therefore exercise upon me some kind of memory vortex, but mostly we just looked at the whale and the dinosaurs and they were pretty neat.






Cal was still pretty creeped out by the whale and the squid, by the way. He didn't want to go near it at first, though he warmed to it eventually. I tried to get a picture of that exhibit, but it really was still pretty dark and the picture didn't turn out. So instead, just picture some kind of deep-sea horror tableau that will haunt your dreams. There you go.

If I were making this trip with Joe, without the kids, undoubtedly we'd be spending all our time downtown, eating every two hours, window-shopping and people-watching until we passed out from sheer exhaustion. Well, except for maybe one day, which we'd spend all the way up up uptown in Washington Heights, where we could revisit old haunts and eat at Malecon, home of the garlic dipping sauce and on-call 2:00am regret. Being here with a kid sort of pulls the center of gravity towards Central Park, which is fine, but maybe we'll find some time over the next day or two to go below 14th Street. (I know, I know, there's tons of kids stuff down there too, but it's different when you live here versus when you're only in town for two or three days. We have to cluster our activities a little more is all.)




We're having fun, but we really miss Mack and Joe. That's the problem with everyone in our lives being so spread out--wherever you are, you always end up missing someone. When we get home, I'm going to grab Mack and just squeeze the snot out of him.

let's bee friends

First off, let me point you in this direction: my publisher has made a Facebook page for the book, so...go look at it! And LIKE it! You know, click the little thumbs up thinger. I still have no idea what it means to click that you "LIKE" something (do you get points? Is there some ratings system where the most LIKED thing on the internet gets a ham? In which case I am way, way behind that You Tube clip of those kittens hiding in a latex glove box. Go LIKE the book! I NEEDS ME THAT HAM!) Also, while we're on the topic, this is my personal Facebook page--you should FRIEND me because I am FRIENDLY and then we can be FRIENDS and I can read your thoughts about the weather or That Thing You Saw on TV.

So, to sum: There is a website called FACEBOOK. I am FRIENDLY. And you should LIKE my book even if you haven't read it yet, because you should read it, and you will like it. Tiny thumbs up!

(Thank you. Sorry if I was bossy.)

Anyway, I'm on call tonight. Tomorrow I'm post-call, going to a parent-teacher conference at 8:00am, and then heading straight for the airport with Cal for a 10:30 flight to New York. That afternoon, I'm going into say hi to a few people at my publisher, and then my family is having dinner at La Bernardin. If you are not following me on Twitter yet (and if that is the case, why not?) now might be a good time, because I'm going to be tweeting a lot on this trip--primarily for Joe, who can't come because of work, and in whom I want to incite a raging jealousy--so why not come along for the ride? We'll go look at the squid and the whale together!

OK, gotta go to work. If you live in Atlanta, don't get sick tonight.

the squid and the whale

When I was a kid, I thought this was just about the scariest thing I'd ever seen.




It's the squid and the whale exhibit in the Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History. Of course, back then it was kind of scary in there, not the well-lit wedding reception-ready hall it is today. The lighting in the hall was dim. The exhibits had a creepy expectant feel to them. And the squid and the whale exhibit was positively predatory in its effect. From a distance, it looked like nothing--maybe a dark, empty display case that they'd forgot to fill, or perhaps were renovating. You'd lean in closer for a look. And then, out of the sepulchral gloom, you'd see a giant eye, a tentacle, a row of teeth, all barely lit in an eerie navy blue, just as you'd expect in the deepest deep dark of the ocean. Suddenly you'd forget there was glass. It would feel like you were falling into the exhibit. Into the ocean. And then you'd run away in delicious terror, back to find you parents, who were calmly reading something incredibly boring, the the captions under the mollusk exhibit or something like that.




It's not like that anymore. The museum has been significantly renovated since I was a kid, and I do have to admit that most of it it looks beautiful. But something was lost in the renovation of the Hall of Ocean Life. Everything's just so obvious now. It's so bright. You can see everything. There's a cafe in there, so you can sip lattes and eat egg salad sandwiches under the whale. It's nice, but it's just not creepy anymore.

Look, I'm not Holden Caulfield, I'm not a proponent of things that are crappy and old just for the fact that they are crappy and old. Renovation is necessary. Change is usually good. But I can't scare myself at the whale exhibit anymore, and that was always the most fun part. And more importantly, I can't scare Cal at the whale exhibit anymore, which takes the fun out of everything.

Cal and I are taking a trip to New York this weekend. It's just to be a special trip, just he and I spending a long weekend in the greatest city on earth. (Unfortunately, Joe and Mack will be staying in Atlanta, taking care of each other, and I will miss them like stink.) Cal and I are staying with my parents. We're going to ride bikes in Central Park. We're going to eat out. We're going to see some folks. And we're going to the museum.

I don't know why I have this determination to recreate the indelible memories of my childhood for my kids, or even if these experiences will be ultimately meaningful for them in the long run, versus lost in the jumble of Things I Kind of Recall From When I Was Five. But I so remember that cold creeping dread of peering into that whale diorama, the snaking tentacles of that giant squid which, under that dim light, you could almost convince yourself were moving--that even in this latter-day bright-lighted, sanitized version, I can't wait to show him.




(Above: Joe and Cal, waiting for the C train, March 2008.)

you are the best!!!!

As I've mentioned many times in the past, I'm not a big celebrator of Valentine's Day because I resent being coerced to feel emotions on some kind of Gregorian schedule (I'm like Ron Swanson in "Parks and Recreation" that way) but this almost turned me around.




Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. Have fun doing Those Things You Do.

domicile

Joe and I both got guilted into buying a couple of boxes of Girl Scout cookies (I for one am a sucker for stammered unpunctuated soliloquies delivered by kids at my doorstep. Just this week, I donated money to the American Heart Association because some little pudgy kid rang my doorbell and compelled me to--who knows what he really did with the money, but he was cute anyway) and my most embarrassing moment this week was bellowing at Cooper to shut up and stop acting like such a manic every time the doorbell rang...only to find a Girl Scout standing on my welcome mat bearing the Lemon Chalets and Samoas we ordered a few weeks ago. She was wearing a kilt and everything. Probably she's going to report me to Animal Cruelty now. Probably she'll get a badge for it.

So anyway, among other things, this weekend we've been eating some cookies.

We also had a walkthrough at the new house, wherein the current owners (who by the way are super-sweet people, I almost wish they were staying nearby, so that they could watch over us like benevolent godparents) sort of gave us the Owners Guide to the place, what switch turns on what and what kind of filters go where, that kind of thing. The inside of the house is very nice--not that it doesn't need a little updating here and there, but we're in no rush to fill it up with stuff right away, because when you don't have a ton of extra money, that's how The Ikea Room happens. And not that I don't love Ikea (it's a love-hate thing; I'm sure Darren Aronofsky's next film is going to involve being trapped in the underground showroom warehouse of an Ikea on a Saturday morning while mirrored reflections taunt you) but there comes a time in every adult's life when they want a piece of furniture that they don't have to assemble with that little L-shaped thing.

To this end, we are doing a couple of things. One is that we are going to throw out a ton of crap before we move. We've been pretty successful in paring down the non-essentials given the past three moves we've made in the last three years (one a long-distance move, even), but this time, my goal is utter ruthlessness, divorced of sentimentality. Goodbye to you, weird wooden baby peg toy missing half its pegs! If we ever decide to have another baby, we can get him or her a new peg toy! Or better yet, no toys at all, as it will only make the baby weak and frivolous! I will be like Genghis Kahn, only for throwing stuff away, not, you know, conquest.

Secondly, I am employing the assistance of this nice internet lady. We haven't actually ever met, but I have been reading her blog forever, and in the past few years, she's started to branch out into interior design. So anyway, we've chatted, and she's going to help us out with some advice for one particularly troublesome room at the new place--troublesome in that not only is it highly trafficked (it's the family room) but also of all the rooms, it looks the most...tired. (That's a real estate euphemism for "excessively beige and from the 1980's." Also: "full of charm" really means "fascinating in its decrepitude.") Anyway, I'm really excited about this, both for the prospect of brightening up a family room which has so much unachieved potential, but also to work with someone whose design sense I've admired from afar for many, many years. There will be pictures of the house later, of course, before and after, that kind of thing, and it will be fun. But for now, just look at this picture of my fried eggs this morning, that I thought looked like a jellyfish.




Hope you had a good weekend.

Janus

We just found out yesterday that we got approved for our mortgage. So...yay! Hooray for debt!

No, but seriously, we are very happy. We've always been fiscally responsible and we haven't exactly been living in the fast lane, but still, when you have bank people going through your history with a fine-toothed comb, even the most conservative of spenders and savers tends to get a little damp-palmed. (I know that my personal financial history was just about as boring and by-the-rules as you could hope, but I kept getting paranoid that they were going to find out that someone had stolen my identity and had maxed out twenty credit cards that I didn't know I even had on jet ski equipment or something. SO MANY JET SKIS.) Anyway, we've been approved, so that's good.

Life has been very busy and exciting lately. Aside from this House Thing and the Book Thing various other Things, there's a lot going on and most of it's pretty good, but I'm going to hold onto some of these topics until they're a little more fleshed out. But for now, let me point you in two directions: forward and back.

FORWARD: Last week? Or maybe it was the week before, I can't even remember--I got an e-mail from the Hachette Speakers Bureau asking if I was interested in joining their roster of speakers. I said, huh? whuzza? snrf? which I'm sure was very impressive (my oratorical skills are unparalleled under any circumstances, certainly) because I don't know what a Speakers Bureau is and therefore didn't know what they were talking about. But after a very nice phone call from a guy named Blair, now I do.

The Hachette Speakers Bureau is an agency under the umbrella of the Hachette Book Group (of which Grand Central Publishing, my publisher, is one imprint) that basically manages certain authors for speaking events. After ascertaining that I was interested (I was) and after I filled out a survey about myself and topics that I can talk about at some length, and I now have a page on their speaker site and am available to come talk about stuff in your town. What kind of stuff? Well, you read this blog, right? You tell me. Want me to come to your med school/college/Rotary Club/quilting bee and talk about, oh, say, the changing role of social media in medicine? You should e-mail the Hachette Speakers Bureau and try to work something out! Or, you can e-mail me and I will forward the e-mail to them. Technology!

BACKWARD: You guys seem to enjoy the pictures from the Way Back Machine, so here's another one--actually a paired set, from December 31st, 2007.





Here's how I spent my New Year's Eve that year, setting up for a lap appy. Luckily I'm not much of a party person anyway so being in the OR was about as exciting as anything else I could have been doing.

use it if you don't want to stink

There's nothing that's more boring (and a more stereotypical "mommy blog" trope) than complaining about being sick and how your damn kids gave it to you, right? Yeah, that's what I thought. Behold, my restraint!

(Cough.)

I got this package in the mail at work the other day. Usually my mail at work consists of clear plastic-wrapped medical journals (which I unwrap...sometimes) and various hospital-robot generated admonitions to sign my charts. So to get an actual package was something of a curiosity. This was what was inside.




Soap. Like a gift? From a patient that I had taken care of?

"Maybe they're trying to tell you something," one of my anesthetists piped up, miming the miasma of my prodigious body odor.

"Shut up, KEN," I said to him. (His name is Ken. Hi Ken!) "Oh wait, there's a card in here."

Turns out the soap was not from a patient, rather from a woman who had been pointed in the direction of the blog by her daughter, a third-year medical student. The woman (meaning the mom, though I'm sure they both read it because IT IS DISGUSTING) had seen my recent blog entry about the rats who have been eating our soaps (plural--upon further investigation, they actually tore into four or five bars, going preferentially for the Dove Men's Deep Clean soap while eschewing the unscented bars) and decided to send along a few bars of her handmade herbal soaps. And I think that's very sweet, because we are definitely bulk price club soap buyers, we've never had soap this nice.

Of course, the very fact that they smell nice will probably make them irresistible to the rodentia, so I'm going to have to keep them somewhere safe, like in the fridge or something. Unless they can get into there too, opening the fridge with their little clammy paws, like Raptors. Blergh. I've mentioned we're hoping to move in a month and a half, right?

(Thanks for the soaps, Christine!)

and yet, it's only Monday

(Groan.)

the second time around

OK, so I'm finally done with updating the photo page for the book website. These old photos amuse me, I cannot credit the advent of cell phone cameras enough for helping me to record the minor and often hilarious minutiae of residency. (Cell phone cameras such as they were back then.) Even though Mack wasn't born until after the book was finished, I did have to add some pictures of him in there, or else he would think that I don't love him and would probably grow up with a deep sense of emptiness and disconnection. Hey, you baby, EARN MY LOVE.

(That was a joke.)

Some commenter a while back made a kind of disparaging remark that I didn't take too seriously (because come on, it's an anonymous blog comment, there's a limit to how much one can take that to heart) about how I talked about Cal ALL THE TIME and how I never talk about Mack and how tragic it is that Mack is so unloved. I just kind of laughed it off, because come on, obviously I love Mack one skrillion love units and it's not like love is some finite commodity that gets all used up on one child so that there's none left over from the other. But that commenter did have a point that I don't write about Mack as much on this blog and in not nearly as much detail, a fact that I had noticed as much myself when I started tagging my blog entries and got actual visual evidence of it.

It's actually worse than it looks, because I've only tagged the last three years of entries (what? IT'S SO TEDIOUS) so there are still two and a half years worth of Cal stories to go through that Mack can't possibly be in because he wasn't even born yet. So when I finish tagging everything, it's going to look like this blog is THE CAL SHOW and Mack is going to seem like the fine print in a pharmaceutical ad. (May cause seizure, stroke or death, callyourdoctorwithvisionchangesortongeswellinguseasdirected.)

Obviously I love Mack, because...well duh, you've seen him, right?




But it's just that when you have your second kid, you just don't make as big a deal about the same things. When your first kid starts to sit up and eat solid foods, you're like OH MY GOD THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ANYONE EVER, but when your second kid starts to do those same things, you're like, of course he's sitting up and eating solid foods, that's what he's supposed to do at this age, I remember this from the first time around. It doesn't make the child any less loved or the milestones any less important, it's just that the context is different.

Mack is an amazing brilliant baby, and very different from Cal in a million different ways. But I think it's accurate that you generally get less worked up about the things that your second kid does, because there's not as much novelty to the experience on the large scale of things. And I can see how that could be construed by some (probably more likely by people who don't have kids, or possibly for people who know me only through this blog) as disinterest in him generally. But doing things the second time around doesn't affect the quality or depth of your love for your second child, which, if anything, is enhanced by the fact of having had another child before. It's a situation in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and the experience of having Mack is so much better because we also have Cal, and raising each of them--raising them together--is undoubtedly the best thing that Joe and I will ever do.

take two

Also, the cover image has been updated on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Cue celebratory montage with me jumping in the air and dancing spastically, set to James Brown's "I Feel Good." OW! (Also, in the montage, I am wearing sunglasses.)

internal monologue of the not-quite-good samaritan

There are two left turn lanes off the exit of the highway that I take to work. Usually I get to work so early that traffic of any kind is not a problem, especially on the local roads, but this morning, there seemed to be an awful lot of brake lights and lane changing on this one short span. I was in the right lane, everyone ahead of me seemed to be changing into the left lane to bypass something that was apparently obstructing traffic up ahead. As I got closer, I saw that there was actually a stopped car up ahead. A car that was braked at the intersection, not moving despite the fact that the light was green.

Because of my position in the line, I pulled up right alongside the car. I figured it was probably some kind of breakdown or engine problems, thought I thought it was odd that the car would be stopped in traffic without any hazard light turned on. But there was a guy inside the car, alone, sitting in the driver's seat. He was sitting up, leaning up against the back of the seat with his eyes closed, and he wasn't moving.

Well, shit.

First thing I thought was, cardiac arrest. I craned my neck more. Was he breathing? Hard to say. He definitely wasn't moving in any way that I could make out through my car window. He didn't looked slumped over or anything obviously ominous, but who falls asleep at an intersection, for chrissake? So clearly, he was dead.

Shit.

I should get out and see if he's OK.

Well obviously he's not OK, just look at him.

He had an MI. No, wait, he had a stroke. A hemorrhagic stroke. No, wait, a ruptured aneurysm.

Could he be sleeping? Who falls asleep off the exit of a highway?

OK, I've got to get out there. Ew, I don't want to touch a dead person. I don't want to do CPR on a dead person. I don't even have any gloves.

Get a grip, woman, you're a doctor.

But...ew, dead people.

I have to go out there. Is that safe? Am I going to get hit by another car? What's going to happen to my car? Now both lanes of traffic will be blocked. People are going to be mad. There's going to be honking. I hate honking. Why do they honk so much here?

OK, I've got to go see if he's OK. Shit, I'm going to be late for work. What cases do I have this morning? I have to start that CABG, don't I? Oh, and I have that shoulder replacement too, now I'm not going to have time to block that patient before we go back. I have to call the OR front desk. I hate being late for work.

But who cares if you're a little late for work, there's a dead guy there! Anyway, we're right around the corner from the hospital. You'll just get in his car, drive him over to the ER...wait, what if I don't know how to drive his car? What if it's a stick shift? I should call 911. Yes, 911. That's what people do.

JUST GET OUT THERE AND CHECK ON HIM, ASSHOLE.

I put the car in park. Just as I was reaching for my door handle, the guy in the other car, apparently not dead, opened his eyes and drove off. So I would like to say that I was in the process of doing the right thing, but honestly, since he never gave me the chance, I'm not so sure.

the ketogenic diet of blogging

It's been a busy week, so shamelessly, I will continue to post old pictures, in essence living off my own fat stores.

After I decided to switch residencies from Pediatrics to Anesthesiology, I stayed on to complete one more extra year of Peds residency, which is exactly as excruciating as it sounds--a whole extra year of lame duck residency. I stopped doing clinic in the April of that year, however, and on my last day, I took my name plate off the door and retired it to its new and rightful home.




Yes, that's how small bathrooms are in New York. Also, this particular bathroom was located directly over the incinerator duct of the building, so the walls and tile floors were always warm. Which was pleasant in the winter, but less pleasant when you thought about where the heat was coming from.

In somewhat related book news, my editor sent me a .pdf of my book jacket today, and guys...it looks awesome. It looks like...I don't know, it just looks like a real book jacket, with the title on the spine and words on the back and my picture on the inside flap. Bananas! Hopefully I'll be able to show you next week.

another trip in the way back machine

I know it's kind of a cop-out to post a picture that I first posted in this very blog a few years ago, but holy shit, look how many pagers I was wearing back then. ("Back then" was October 2007, my third year of Anesthesia residency.)




Left to right (per your perspective, not radiologic left to radiologic right) I'm wearing my cell phone, the Peds Trauma pager, the Peds Arrest pager, the Peds Pain pager, and my own personal pager. Needless to say I was on the Peds Anesthesia service at the time.

Still going through old pictures to find stuff to flesh out the photo page of the book website. My goal, as I mentioned before, is to post pictures that flesh out the stories that I wrote about in the book, some of which I touched upon in this blog but most of which I have not. FRESH STORIES. It's going to be fun, I really am looking forward to having you read them.

Here's just one more picture that I found from when we first got Cooper (but which didn't make the cut for the book photo page) showing her shaved belly and spaying scar. Do you know how long two fourth-year medical students will spend looking at their new puppy's spaying incision, evaluating the quality of the sutures used and criticizing the technique of the ties? A LONG FUCKING TIME.




Anyway, I feel OK copping out because both Mack and Cal are sick, and no one wants to hear about that as nothing is more boring than other people's kids and their virions. Enjoy the photo page, I'm just going to keep updating it until we hit the Mack Era, at which point I'm sure everyone can fill in The Rest Of The Story.