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Hey everyone, hope your Mother's Day was swell.  And thanks again for all the great photos you've been sending me--I have them all saved, but I'm going to preempt them for this series, which I received from Bea, Eve, Jess and Tony, some of my old friends from med school.  They got quite into the spirit of things, as you can see.  AND I LOVE IT.

Here is my book getting a mammogram.  Or rather, my book as a boob.

And here Natalie, a patient care assistant, demonstrates that reading my book can make getting a mammogram a slightly less unpleasant experience.

Tony, my old med school classmate, poses in the CT scanner with his copy.

And Bea, who's actually in the book (she's the one who compares med school to being in the army) gets a brain MRI while reading.  Now if only it was a functional MRI, so we could see which areas of the brain light up.  (My guess: the hippocampus, and the amygdala.  Neuroanatomy humor, hey-ooooo!)

This one I thought was super-cool: my book in the MRI coil.  See how the suture needles are attracted to the MRI field, and are getting dragged into the coil?  I get really paranoid about that every time I have to administer anesthesia in the MRI scanner--I keep having this vision that my pen or something is going to shoot out of my pocket into the coil and stab someone.

Hello, other authors.  Have you had your books examined under fluoroscopy?  Pity.  IT IS AWESOME.

Luckily, the scan came out clean.  Radiolucent as the driven snow, baby.

Bea was right, by the way.  Med school is like the army.  I mean, there's no actual warfare (for the most part), but you're working hard and going through some physically and psychological hardships with the same group of people for four years, all while charged with a greater sense of purpose.  And it really affects the quality of the relationships you form with people during those four years.  I met my best friend in med school--later, I married him.  There are friends I have from med school that I know I'll keep in touch with my entire life.  Because we've been through the fire together and emerged intact.  We did it together.  And most importantly, we had fun.  

Anyway, that's something I want to convey to people who are pre-med right now, or in med school, or going through residency.  It's hard, but you have people around you, and you're doing it together.  Don't forget to have fun.  Because that sense of fun is what's going to carry you through, and it's what's going to meet you on the other side.

Thanks, Bea, Jess, Eve and Tony!  I admit, getting that photo montage from you guys made me tear up a little bit, and I am not a person who habitually tears up at stuff, with the exception of "Toy Story 3," because good lord, I'm human after all.

*          *          *

Hey, do you have a radio?  Do you live in the Southeast?  Well then, listen to me on the radio tomorrow!  I will try not to embarrass anyone!  First at 8:20am on KFRU-AM out of Columbia, MO on the David Lile Show, and then at 9:35am on WRVC-AM out of Huntington, West VA.  (The website for WRVC-AM does not seem to be displaying correctly on my browser, but maybe it's just me?)  It's live radio for both shows, so watch it in the same spirit that you watched that live episode of "30 Rock," 50% out of actual interest for the topic, and 50% for the bread and circus and the excitement of me slipping up and saying something irrevocably dumb.  I LIVE TO ENTERTAIN YOU.

Also, let me point out that I added a meet-up for after the NYC event this Wednesday at the Columbia University bookstore.  So after the reading, let's say around 8:00pm, we'll meet at The Heights, which is about a five minute walk away.  It's a nice place and they have a nice rooftop bar, and yes, yes, I know, it's a Wednesday and you have to get home to study (or whatever)...but have have to eat anyway, and it's not like we're going to keep you out all night and get you wasted or anything, just stop by and relax with some harmless pleasant nerds.  It'll be pleasant and I guarantee that taking a few hours off on one night will do more for good for your brain than studying all the rest of the entire week.

I'm shipping out bookmarks in the middle of next week.  Even though the book is widely available at this point, I did say originally that the bookmark giveaway was for all orders prior to May 11th (which is the "official" publication date), so that offer still stands as is.  You still have a couple of days to get your free bookmarks and a personal note from me, so if you were waiting for some reason, go ahead an order the book and then e-mail me  to let me know you did!  I will mail you one bookmark for each book you order prior to Wednesday, so yes, if you order ten books, I will mail you ten bookmarks.  Need I also point out that it makes a wonderful graduation gift?  Much better than a polyester stuffed bear wearing a mortarboard, I can tell you that right now.

vintage mau's moments: the curse of the 5 o'clock dinner

Yeah, the water damage is pretty bad on this one, especially up at the top left.  Also see how charming it was that I was writing for the school paper so I couldn't write any curse words?  Not like now, with my blog empire, where I live like a king!  A damn hell ass king!

I remember very little about the food in the dining hall at college, only that there was this one entree, some kind of grilled chicken filet called "Chix Breast."  And I always thought that was weird, especially since we were at a women's college.

As the author of the book, I get a few free copies of course (though not unlimited free copies, as some people think--it's not like printing your own currency), but I did order a copy off of my go-to electronic retailer just to see how fast and when the book would arrive when it finally came out.  The official publication date is May 11th, so you can imagine I was a little surprised when I came home and found this at my front door yesterday.

Behold, the power of free two-day shipping!  Still, that was really quick.  Probably some of you guys who pre-ordered got your copies yesterday too, or maybe you will today.  Gleep!  We've gone live!

So a few small things:

1.) I'm told that since they're out in circulation now, copies of the book may actually start to appear in physical bookstores around the country any day now.  Atlanta is terrible with bookstores (really it seems like there are hardly any, except for a handful of scattered Borders, many of which are closing down) so I haven't had a chance to check this out for myself, but if you happen to be at a bookstore and see a copy of my book sitting there, could you please take a picture and e-mail it to me?  Get in the picture too, if you like!  Do something dorky, like give a thumbs up and point to the book.  Also, maybe do some winking!  I LOVE DORKY STUFF.  (Obviously.)

2.) Take a picture of you with the book in an interesting place and e-mail it to me.  Summer's coming up, and summer means travel.  Might you bring a copy of the book with you to read on the plane, and then pose with it at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower, or at the lip of the Grand Canyon?  You just might!  E-mail your picture to me!  (You can pose with your e-reader too, I know many many people got the e-reader version as well.)  Or take it to work, and take a picture of my book in various and amusing hospital settings.  Like, I don't know, sitting in a bedpan.  (Wait--not that.)

3.) If you read the book and liked it, why not write a review?  The book is on goodreads.com, and of course you can review it on the site of your friendly neighborhood online book retailer.  As someone who has been writing on the internet since caveman days, I realize that open and anonymous reviews of this type can sometimes be an open invitation to Random Angries to just write one star reviews which read, in their entirety, "THIS IS BULLSHIT," but it's a free country, I guess.  However, do please consider writing a review if you enjoyed the book.

4.) EVENTS!  I am getting all mixed up with the time and the dates of the events, so I'm just going to put a quick crib sheet here, so that people in those cities can get their schedules straight and come hang out.  If there's enough interest, I will plan after-events (the after-event at Iowa City was surprisingly well-attended and delightful besides) and then we can hang out some more.  Full details of the events are listed here and here, but here's the quick and dirty guide.

Wednesday, May 11th, 6:00pm: NYC (Note the time!  I think I've been saying that it's at 7:00pm, but really the event is starting at 6:00pm. So we have time to eat dinner after!)

Friday, May 13th, 6:00pm: Philly 

Monday, May 16th, 7:00pm: Boston (well, Cambridge, really) 

Thurdsay, May 19th, 7:00pm: Atlanta

I really hope you guys in the area can make it.  It's been many, many years of keeping this blog, and it would be lovely to finally put some faces to the names in the comments section, or to see old friends.

Happy reading!

from here to eternity

Hi all! Sorry no posts for a few days (though I have been posting to my Tumblr mini-blog, if you haven't checked that out yet). The conference at the University of Iowa went really well. As an ISTJ I am an introvert by nature, which is not to say that I'm not friendly (I am!) or not a nice person (I am, I am!) or that I don't like to meet new people (I can say without reservation that finally meeting some of my blog readers at the conference was the highlight of the trip), only that all that plus the travel tends to makes me a little tired. So! Now it is Monday! And I woke up extra-super early to try and get some work done before going to actual work at the hospital. So let's get to it, shall we?

IOWA! I WAS INSIDE OF YOU!

Let me say first that I have never been as unprepared for a trip as I was for this one.  It went literally like this.  I packed half an hour before the cab came to pick me up.  I got into the cab, which took me to a train, which took me to another train, which took me to a plane, which took me to another plane.  Which I almost missed because after we landed in O'Hare (early, mind you) we were parked on the runway, unable to taxi into the gate for, like, half an hour.  Once we finally pulled in, I had nine minutes to get to my connecting flight, which was at the opposite end of another terminal, across the length of the entire airport.  Feets, don't fail me now!

Luckily there was a series of moving walkway connecting the two terminals, all lit up with crazy '80s roller derby neon, which you could probably see better above if I wasn't running all crazy holding two bags.  Action!

The good thing is I made it to the gate with exactly 30 seconds to spare.  The bad thing is the flight was then delayed for another hour and a half.  So...yay?

Anyway, I made it to Iowa City, took an $80 cab from the airport (YES, I KNOW, I should have called ahead for a cab with a flat fare instead of just letting the meter run, but at that point I was just like GET ME TO WHERE THE BED IS) and checked into the Hotel Vetro, which was recommended to me by blog reader Susan and which I now also highly recommend.  Because of its bed and its bed-affiliated paraphernalia, mainly.  Also: BED.  (I was tired.)

The next day I attended a book fair, gave a talk about work-life balance in medicine, did a short reading of my book at Prairie Lights, and then attended a meet-up at the very excellent Sanctuary Pub and Restaurant in downtown Iowa City.  It was a very busy day, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

See how I have lollipops set up at my book fair stall, like some kind of cartoon witch, to lure children into my shiny book trap?  Also, see to the left: BOOKMARKS.  (Aside to everyone who pre-ordered and gave me their addresses for the bookmarks: thank you!  There are, like, hundreds of you, so sorry that I can't e-mail you all back individually, but rest assured that I will be putting your bookmarks in the mail on Wednesday, May 11th.  The bookmark promotion is a limited-time offer just for pre-orders, of course, else I would bankrupt myself with postage, so if you want one, and you should, please pre-order and then e-mail me!  I don't need a receipt or anything, just don't be a lie-face.  Also, yes, if you pre-order more than one, I will send you multiples.  SO GET ON THAT.)

Like I said, meeting my blog readers was definitely the highlight of the trip.  Since I don't run this site like a business, I don't have a great sense of who is reading or how many people read, but meeting so many readers, in Iowa City no less (not to say that Iowa is, like, the North Pole, but it's a little far-flung for lots of people) was amazing.  Please especially note above my new Super-Friend Amy, who drove four hours just to hang out with us at Sanctuary.  Such nice people in the Midwest!

The reading at Prairie Lights was also a blast.  My first reading!  It would have been a bad time for me to reveal at this moment that I NEVER LEARNED TO READ, like Jordan Catalano, or Marlon Brando in "Viva Zapata!" but luckily, I can read a little bit.  This is also the first time I ever done anything remotely artsy like this, so I wasn't sure what to expect (perhaps an audience full of berets, macrame-ed vests and bongo drums incanting, "How now, brown bureaucrat."  Yes, a truly arcane Simpsons reference, how typical of me.)  But it went really well, I thought, and I think people were amused and piqued and all that.  Plus, now at least I have a crowd-tried excerpt to read for future events, speaking of which:

BOSTONIANS AND PERI-BOSTONIANS! You guys helped me make this book event happen!  Join me at the Harvard Coop on Monday, May 16th at 7:00pm.  I know it's not at Wellesley itself, but I do happen to know a certain shuttle bus that runs straight into Cambridge and will drop you off in front of the Coop basically the second that finals period ends.  What could be finer or more convenient?  NOTHING. As always, check the EVENTS page for more information and updates about after-event meet-ups.  Will there be more vaguely booze-laced events to make me feel slightly queasy the following morning?  ONLY TIME WILL TELL.  (But come on--it's Boston.  What else are we going to do?  Walk the Freedom Trail?)

Despite the revels the night before, we had a nice turnout for our panel talk early Saturday morning, which was about blogging and medicine.  Above is Rob, aka Dr. Rob, holding the crowd in the palm of his hand, and the crowd not looking the least bit hung over.  (Full disclosure: I was a tiny bit hung over, but that's probably because I wasn't sure that the Iowa City tap water was potable.  Turns out it is!  Good to know for next time!)

And then it was time to go home.

Mainly, I needed to get home so I could hide sixteen frillion plastic eggs with Snickers in them in our yard the following morning, in order that my kids could find them and demand that I hide them again.  So we did that for a while, which was OK, because I missed them like stink when I was gone. Which begs the question: what is stink? And do we say in the OR that something "bleeds like stink"? I don't know, but such are the enduring mysteries of language, and at any rate, I missed my kids a lot.

Cal looks like he belongs in a "Twilight" movie in this next one, because for some reason the light that morning made our back yard look like the Pacific Northwest, and him vampiric:





As a wonderful capper to our weekend we had guests over for dinner, which brings me to my first brush with Internet Super Fame.



Holy shit, guys, KEVIN MD was at my house!  And he is the nicest!  And I, apparently, am very short!  The best part, though, is that Kevin brought his lovely wife and kids, who are the exact same age as Cal and Mack, and they all had so much fun together that when they had to go back to their hotel, Cal cried.  And then he pretended not to be crying, which is extra-adorable.  In fact, I'd say nothing is cuter than that, except maybe two bunnies sitting in a teacup together.  And also the bunnies are hugging.

Then everyone slept for many hours and now it's Monday.  Again.  Which is somewhat less cute.

Anyway, hope you had a good weekend too. and thanks again to everyone in Iowa for making me feel so welcome. You guys were the best, and I hope to see you again soon.

I'm not above giveaways

Look, I know that doing too much book promotion is going to make certain people want to punch me in the nuts, but look, that's just what's going on in my life right now.  I wish I had other bigger things to do or to think about but I don't.  Right now, IT'S JUST THIS.  It's a culmination of three and a half years of work and I am starting to see why being a publicist is a full-time job because oh my lord, all this stuff is time-consuming.

One small thing.  This is a good thing.  IT'S A PRESENT FOR YOU.  You know how I printed out these little bookmarks?  Seriously, they are adorable.  I want to shuffle them and smell them and build a little card house with them.  They are mini, but they are super cute, guys.  And I want to give them to you.  So how about this.  If you pre-order the book before May 11th, e-mail me, and give me your address.  On the publication date, I will mail you a personal note and a mini bookmark.  Tell me if you want a monkey one or a retro design one.  They are both super cute, I can't decide.  Include in your e-mail if you pre-ordered a print copy or an e-book copy.  I don't care, I just am curious what the breakdown is.  This is only for pre-orders, so if you're planning on buying the book but were waiting around for some reason until after it came out: don't.  Pre-order it, then e-mail me, I will send you a bookmark and a note.  Also, LOVE.

Why do I care about pre-ordering versus regular ordering?  It's all the same, right?  Someone's buying the book either way?  Well, I'm told that pre-orders figure into first week sales, and sometimes it's not so much the total number of sales as much as the velocity of sales (PHYSICS) that gains attention, creates momentum, and is the measure of whether or not the book is a success.  The first week is critically important.  So please, please, please, if you're going to buy the book anyway, do pre-order it.  Don't make me grovel, people, it's unseemly.

(Don't get me wrong, I will grovel, though.)

And now I will stop!  Because it's at this point (and I've seen it on other blogs too when the bloggers have books or projects coming out) that people start to groan that the blog has just turned into a self-promotion platform.  But seriously guys, think about it: could you really expect me not to talk about it?  If I didn't talk about it, it would actually be super-weird.  If I didn't want something I worked on so hard to do well, IT WOULD BE SUPER SUPER WEIRD.  Thank you.  Don't be mad.

Oh shit, I have to pack, my cab is picking me up in half an hour.  See you tonight, Iowa City!

on doctoring, mothering, and writing about both

Bookreporter.com asked me to write a brief piece as part of their lead-up to Mother's Day (yes, it's a long lead-up, I know) about doctoring, mothering, and my inspiration to write.  I would have preferred to use the term "parenting" in the article, since my belief is that after the kid is actually born and weaned, ideally the the effort and act of fathering and mothering a child should be roughly equivalent.  However, it was for Mother's Day, so I was somewhat limited in my word choice.  But anyway, go read it over here.  I wrote it post-call at 2:00am, which, as you know, is when all the magic creativity fairies come out.  Or at least that explains why I start hallucinating them around that point.

I am flying out to Iowa City tomorrow evening, so make sure you're following my Tumblr mini mobile blog either from this page (check sidebar to the left) or at michelleau.tumblr.com to get all the breathless and thrilling details of my travels, like How I Crammed That Luggage Into The Overhead All By Myself (file under "Tiny Triumphs") or How I Missed My Family So Much For The Two Days I Was Gone That I Cried In The Airport Bathroom.  Oh, and also join me in the cliffhanger excitement of my 50 minute layover at O'Hare.  Will I make my connection to Cedar Rapids Municipal?  Will there be Corn Nuts at the newsstand?  ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

See you in Iowa!  And don't forget, meetup Friday night at Sanctuary!  It's OK if you can't make it to the reading at Prairie Lights beforehand, just drop by afterwards, say hi, hang out.  Just don't trick me to getting into your murder van like Jame Gumb and we'll get along just fine.

gleep!

I've been thinking about this book so much for the past three and a half years it seems almost inconceivable that I haven't actually had a real copy in my hands yet, but...you guys.  YOU GUYS.

I had to get a few advance copies to bring with me to Iowa. Aside from the reading, did I mention that I'm participating in a book fair there?  Oh, yeah, guess I forgot about that.  Uh... I'll be at a book fair!  Just like a real fair, but most likely no funnel cake or pony rides!  So really kind of a crappy fair overall!  (Just kidding.  It will be fun.  Go to the fair.  I will give out lollipops--totally serious.  Also I'm giving out these bookmarks, so hello, swag city, please stop by.)





The book looks good.  It feels good.  It looks good with the dust jacket, and it looks handsome without the dust jacket.  (This is important.  I don't like to read books with jackets on them, they are too slippery.)  It's all at once completely familiar and totally amazing.

And the inside looks good too.  I mean, I'm assuming.  I can't really read it through like a normal person--I put a moratorium on that a while ago because even after it went to the printer I kept picking through it and micro-editing it in my mind.  I'm a noodler and a perfectionist by nature, so probably I'll always feel like that.  But I do think there's one part I got just right.

Don't forget, people near Iowa City--meet up Friday night at Sanctuary Restaurant and Pub!  They are supposed to have really excellent beer, and I have already ordered the steamed cilantro mussels off the menu because I want to eat the messiest, most odiferous thing off the menu straight off.  That way, if you stick around, I know we'll be friends.  Come hang out after the reading at Prairie Lights, 8:30pm until whenever.

first we work, then we play

There was a point when I was taking call this weekend when I realized it had probably been about three years or so since I had been up doing cases straight through the entire night. I distinctly remember those nights on call as the "team captain," (my role was exactly what you'd imagine it to be--in a medical context, that is), and I was convinced that the page operator had some sort of bug on me, because literally the second I would either sit down or go to the bathroom (perhaps that was redundant) one of my many pagers would go off. Which reminds me of a story that one of my parters at work told me about one of his senior residents during training who nipped across the street to get something to eat while on call, and some little kid at the restaurant looking up at him in awe, informing him that he had on "more pagers than Master P." Kids!  Kids and their rap music!

Anyway, I will post something more substantial later, but for now, this: do you like beer? Do you like Iowa City? Do you like drinking beer in Iowa City?  Then join me, won't you, for a little meet-up at the Sanctuary Restaurant and Pub at 8:30pm this Friday night!  I will be heading there after my reading at the Prairie Lights Bookstore, which will take place somewhere between 6:00 and 8:00pm.  Come and hang out with me afterwards, or it will be very embarrassing, just me sitting alone in a pub.  Also, beer gives me hiccups, like some kind of cartoon wino.  So sit with me and witness the magic!

writ large, small talk

Many of you have noted that I talk about medicine much less than I used to on this blog, and you're all absolutely right. I still talk about medicine generally, of course--ideas and themes and problems in medicine, but except for the book, I would wager that it's probably been a couple of years since I wrote anything appreciable and specific about any particular case or patient experience.

Part of it is because, with the kids and everything else, medicine constitutes a much smaller percentage of my waking thoughts than it did during medical school and early residency. But the other part of it--maybe the main part of it--is now that I'm The Attending Of Record, I am much, much, much more conscious about patient privacy and HIPAA. The last thing I ever want, now that the buck stops with me, is for a patient to Google my name (I always joke that if I'm doing my job right, my patients unfortunately never remember meeting me--but of course some of them do remember, I get nice thank-you cards from some, and there's that unusual and memorable last name that I have) and turn up a story of my blog that, disguised though it may be, is clearly recognizable as them. So I just sort of avoid it altogether. Not that there aren't times I wish I could tell those stories, of course--stories about individual patient interactions are the most moving of all. But in my field and in my scope of interaction it's just not the kind of relationship where I feel like I can ask patients about sharing stories, nor do I feel that those stories are always appropriate to share. I know that it's hard to understand, but there's something extremely intimate about the practice of anesthesia, and bearing witness to a patient's medical care and diagnoses while they're unaware. I just tend to keep more work stuff to myself nowadays is all, and I think that's probably the right way to go.

However, it's not that I don't have things to say about medicine. I think a lot of thinks, you know. Most of them are largely frivolous (see my Twitter feed for the truest evidence--I guess that's true of society in general, where everyone's internal monologue becomes externalized) but some thoughts, if not intelligent, at least bear some insight that comes with time and perspective. And maybe some people are interested in hearing about them.

Anyway, I've been asked to give an additional talk at the Iowa Writer's Conference--thank you to the medical students that suggested this to the conference administrators, I am flattered and I am pleased as punch to fly in a day early to hang out with you all. The title of the talk is, "Humanism: The Radical Notion that Doctors are People, Too" and it touches on some of the more general topics in medicine that I've talked about recently. Anyway, it's going to be a fun talk and I'm going to show some of my comics and we're all going to chat and commiserate and hopefully feel a little better about this crazy life that we somehow signed up for. And if you happen to be in Iowa City Friday April 22nd, I'd sure love it if you'd join us. Conference information is here. And if anyone is still interested in an informal meet-up, I'm thinking that Friday night--check back here for more information and I'll figure out a nice spot that I can walk to and that serves food and perhaps some kind of non-obnoxious booze.

mirror, mirror, off the wall

"So, is this house a money pit?" the handyman asked us this morning.

Joe and I looked at each other. "Money pit?"

"You know," said the handyman. "Keep throwing money into it, it disappears, requiring you to throw in more money."

"Well...no." said Joe, starting in on his explanation of how the house was actually in pretty good shape, but that we just wanted a couple of big, mostly cosmetic things done before we moved all the furniture in, etcetera etcetera.

I cut in. "It's not a money pit," I told him ominously.  "Yet."

We're getting some stuff done on the new house in advance of our move day. We're moving in about a week and a half, and let's be clear, nothing needs to be done. The house is move-in ready. But there are a few things that we'd like to get done, and these things are much easier to do when the house is still empty. Mainly, we wanted to re-carpet the upstairs bedrooms and paint a few walls. But before we could paint, we'd have to take off approximately a mile's worth of full wall mirrors.

The famed homework room, of course.  Now, I hesitated to post this up, because inevitably, some subset of you guys are going to start protesting, why did you take off the mirrors, the mirrors looked good, they reflected the light, made the room look bigger, you could turn your living room into a Jazzercise studio, and so on.  So let me just say a few things to start.

1.) The mirrors were everywhere.  In every room.  Full wall mirrors.  We're not even taking them all off, just the ones in the more heavily trafficked rooms.  Because...

2.) We have two kids.  Two young kids.  The kids are boys.  They like to touch things.  I don't want to spend the rest of my life following them around the house with a bottle of Windex.  I think it's because I wear glasses that I am particular about this.  I'm not an especially finicky housekeeper in general (as anyone who has ever been to our house can clearly attest) but there's something about smudgy glass that I just cannot abide.

3.) It did reflect the light, and probably made the rooms look bigger, because, you know, OPTICS, but the way the mirrors looked (there were beveled frames and whatnot) made the rooms appear incredibly dated.  They were put up in the 1980s and they look every year of it.

4.) THEY'RE ALREADY OFF.  Nothing I can do about that now!  And if I start second guessing this decision now I will probably start getting depressed and no one wants that, right?  RIGHT?  (Right.)

The thing is, there comes a point in every project where you get a sinking feeling in your gut that, oh shit, I just made things worse.  The handyman himself said that there are certain projects that people should not see the middle of, and oh man, this was one of these projects.  Because we took a fairly pristine house and turned it into this:

A paradise of gouged drywall, tar-like glue globs, and exposed wiring.  Just to get rid of some mirrors.  Did I mention that we were trying to make this a more kid-friendly house?  How many times did I think to myself today, well, hell, maybe we should have just kept the mirrors?  One billion times.  Well, one billion and one, now.

But no matter.  As of today, the mirrors in the dining room, the stairs, and the homework room are all gone.  Onward and upward.  Drywall may need to be replaced in the homework room and on the stairs (some damage underneath, and the installers got a little overzealous with the black glue globs--particularly a problem when you need a smooth surface on which to apply chalkboard paint), but we took the plunge, and now for steps 2 through 10.  And unlike in the other two areas, the mirror wall in the dining room actually looked pretty decent underneath, and should probably be ready to be painted sooner rather than later, once the drywall is patched and sanded.

Money pit indeed.

<--- Designanted pimp space --->

Hi! Again!  Still here?  OK, good. So, there's a new event I put on the calendar. I've been invited to take part in a lecture series this May sponsored by the Literary Center at Margaret Mitchell House. (Margaret Mitchell is, of course, the author of "Gone With The Wind," and if you lived in Atlanta YOU'D DEFINITELY KNOW THAT.) The event is going to be held at the Atlanta History Center, which looks like pretty swank digs, so you should come and we'll talk and eat some finger sandwiches and it will be super-fun. Nothing is more fun than finger sandwiches. Made with HUMAN FINGERS.

I will be adding to my events calendar both on this blog and on my book webpage, so check there again if you can't be with us in the ATL May 19th, hopefully I'll have some other events in other cities to add later.

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I sincerely apologize for not updating this past week. If it makes you feel better, I have four half-finished drafts on entries saved on my computer. It's just that everything I want to talk about or show you I can't talk about or show you yet, and all this includes:

1.) The new cover of my book! I saw a sneak preview, and guys, it looks so good. It's actually much closer to what I had originally wanted to to be than the other cover, and I can't wait to show you, hopefully by the end of the week.

2.) We bought a house! I mean, I think. We are getting it inspected on Sunday, so I guess we may still back out when we find ye olde burial mound in the backyard or what have you. But still...HOUSE. I am really excited to put up pictures, not so much for the HOUSE aspect of it all but because the inside does need some updating and...look, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO AND I'LL DO IT. Anyway: we are under contract. See, what with all the real estate terms that I now know. Closing costs! Earnest money held in escrow! Glengarry Glen Ross! I am a fountain of vaguely understood terms.

3.) I started looking for a preschool for Mack. This is one of life's more painful experiences, because first: oh my god, it's so expensive, and secondly: clearly you don't understand that my baby is a sensitive handsome genius and what school could possibly be good enough for him? Well, no, I guess I don't really think that anymore (if I've learned anything in the past, oh, say ten years, it's that kids are both endlessly adaptable as well as virtually indestructible) but we are looking at preschools and it is somewhat excruciating, though not without humor. This, for example, is a picture off the glossy pamphlet of one such school, a picture that I'll caption, "Rosie O'Donell circa 1992 loves the children of all races!"




Anyway, apologies again, and I will update you on any and all of these things once it is prudent or allowable to do so. But until then--hey, look the program for the Iowa Writer's Workshop Writing in Medicine workshop is out! And there we are, Saturday at 9:00! So far it looks like you have to register for the conference in order to attend the panel, but if we can work it out, maybe we could tape part of the panel and put at least some of it online after the fact. As a panel about the relatively untapped potential of blogging in medicine, I feel like there would at least be a little interest out there in the general population, don't you?

now, later, and much later

Hey all! It is I, the blog posting person! Just one quick word about the last: I thought that people would understand that I was kidding about "forgetting" Mack's birthday (obviously I can remember his birthday, I went to med school, at bare minimum I can remember many many numbers and facts, whether they are important or not). I just meant I didn't realize that it was THE DAY until I actually wrote the date down on my chart, which, it also must be pointed out, was at 7:00 in the morning, before the much-fêted birthday boy was even awake. But I'm already boring myself to death talking about it, and anyway, I'm not one to take things personally in what I view as a forum which is, by construct, largely impersonal and speculative, so let's just move on. Right? Right. Amigos? Para siempre! Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone!




(Mack says thanks too.)



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A couple of you have been asking how the blurb solicitation for the book was going, and I think (at least, in my perspective) it's going pretty well. Here's a list of the people who have submitted some advance word-of-mouth for the book so far (I had to call it "Advance Praise" on the website because that's commercial don't you know, but that sounds so self-congratulatory it makes me cringe). I am really floored and honored that so many of these authors took the time out from their very busy lives to read my book in its typo-filled galley stage and even more humbled that they had nice things to say about it. I view this whole book process as nothing much more than a dalliance into a different field, an interesting side hobby, but I have to say that I'm really looking forward to next Spring. It's going to be fun.

On the topic, we're set to present at the conference at the Iowa Writer's Workshop (I'm told) the morning of Saturday, April 23rd. I'm relieved that we secured a weekend date for the panel--aside from ease of travel, I really wanted to make sure that wouldn't have to miss any work to travel to Iowa (that is to say, that I would not have to arrange some elaborate series of trades for coverage) and now I'm trying to figure out some way to tack on some kind of meet-up after the conference. I realize that I can't exactly expect too many non-locals to travel out for an event in Iowa (even with the enticement of CME credits--come on y'all, gotta keep that licensure up to date!) and even if you were going to the conference, that you might have other plans and other cooler people to hang out with.

HOWEVER. For those people who have nothing else to do and who wish to relieve my crushing loneliness (remember, this will be the first trip I'm taking without my kids since...well, since I had kids) is there anywhere cool to meet up around the university? I notice that Prairie Lights seems to have a café (a café that serves booze), so that might be a nice place nearby, but I'm waiting to hear from them to see if I can schedule a reading there and that kind of thing. But in case that doesn't work out for one reason or another, is there anywhere else nearby with a laid-back, hangout, non-fratty vibe? E-mail me, I will try to see if I can try to set up something in advance.



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Joe, Cal and I moved to Atlanta in 2008. Since then, we have lived in three rental homes. Yes, we have moved three times in the past three years. It seems like in New York, when you rent, you just keep living there forever or until the building goes co-op or is condemned. But in Atlanta, housing rentals are by and large one-year leases, and I'm getting pretty sick of feeling so temporary.

We've been delaying one of the great milestones of adulthood for some time now, largely for financial reasons, but the lease at our current home is running out in July, and I think it's time to stop living out of boxes. (In answer to the flurry of questions of why we are continuing to live in Atlanta despite being New York partisans, the answer, quite pragmatically, is this: Atlanta is where our jobs are, and we really like our jobs. Hey, I want to live in Paris too, but I don't have a good job there either. Look, I'm not going to lie to you, as a place to live, I prefer New York. But choices in adulthood are more complex than which city has the best take-out options, so...yeah.)

Anyway, we're starting to look at real estate. We're looking to become homeowners. About which, hopefully, more later.

iowa!

(Apologies in advance for any obvious signs that this entry was written under duress--my browser crashed after some thoughtful noodling of this entry, and now I have to leave for work in twenty minutes because I'm on call tonight.)

So it's official, I'll be presenting on a panel about blogging in medicine along with these two very talented gentlemen (John from "Glass Hospital" and Rob from "Musings of a Distractible Mind") on a panel about blogging in medicine at the Iowa Writer's Workshop conference in April. We're all pretty excited, they more likely about the conference, me about the prospect of traveling somewhere--anywhere--without two kids and six carry-ons and a easy-one-hand-folding stroller that seems like anything but once you get up to the security checkpoint and everyone is yelling at you to take off your shoes. This will be the first time since Cal was born that I will be going anywhere without kids in tow. Even my Oral Boards, which usually involves some degree of travel for almost everyone, was fortuitously offered in Atlanta my year--which was awesome, because we all know there's no Oral Board prep that can quite equal the night before spent in your own bed.

Anyway, if I may ingratiate myself upon you, a few things:

1.) We need a good title for the panel. Our original panel was something like, "WebMD: a Panel of Doctors from the Blogosphere" which was serviceable. It was catchy at least, and even though I hate the word blogosphere (sounds like someone throwing up a beach ball) there really is no good equivalent that I'm aware of. In any event, we may have to change the title, at least the first part, as it has been pointed out to us by conference administrators that for one, "WebMD" is a copyrighted name, and for deuce, we don't really want to seem like we're affiliated with or endorsing "WebMD."

So what do you think? Since this is a conference that's going to be teeming with doctor/writer types, I think the panel name should make it clear somehow that we're talking specifically about writing on the internet (or "blogging" as it were--I am crusty and ancient and very Web 1.0, but I am aware that this is the vernacular now and will try to say that with a minimum of eye-rolling air-quotes). Ideally it would be something witty though not goofy--our panel will probably be more light-hearted than most, but as many of the other talks tend towards the more serious aspects of writing in medicine (the monitors beeped and I held her wrinkled hand at the moment of her death kind of thing), I don't want us to seem like three yuck-a-lucks piling out of a tiny clown car or anything.

Anyway, any thoughts on a good panel title? Thanks in advance!

2.) Are you in Iowa, or even if you're not, would you perhaps be interested in attending a conference about writing in medicine? You should! At the very least there are some CME credits to eke out of the experience, and you can be sure that I'm going to load myself up with what I can. If enough people are going and interested and very, very bored, maybe we can even have some kind of a meet-up one evening. That's not weird, right? Could be fun? We could meet each other and chat and drink ethanol (because, you know, IOWA). Just don't murder me. Maybe more on this as we get closer to April. Registration for the conference isn't open yet, but I think you can get on their mailing list and they will let you know when it is.

OK, I have to collect my frozen dinner and get ready to go to work now. Later I will tell you about how I got pulled over by the police for reckless driving, a story that sounds much more exciting than it actually was. Be cool, stay in school.

nonymous

Hey everyone, thanks for all the feedback on the last entry! Lots of good questions and issues, please keep contributing in the comments section if you're inclined. I might as well explain the background a little bit first, because I see no reason not to--at worst, nothing will come from it but it'll provide some interesting topics for future blog posts at least.

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from John at Glass Hospital (and an internist at the University of Chicago) who was interested in submitting a proposal for a panel discussion about the role of blogging in medicine at the Iowa Writer's Workshop's annual conference on "Writing and the Art of Medicine." I thought that sounded fun. So we (along with a third medical blogger--I'll not put his name here yet because I'm not sure that he's officially signed on though I hope he will) are working on putting together an abstract to submit. All credit to John who has done most of the research and who has written the first draft of the abstract. I just wanted to see what people would want to hear us talk about if we were to be lucky enough to be invited to present. (Also, I love corn. Corn is Iowa, right? Potatoes? No, wait, that's Idaho, Iowa is corn, definitely corn--I remember that from watching "The West Wing." You know, ethanol, government subsidies, Josh Lyman and whatnot. Sorry, I know a lot about certain things, but social studies is not one of them.)

I'll save some of the topics for later, especially in the event that we actually get to do this panel, but I want to address one thing, and that is the fact that I blog under my real name.

I started blogging way, way before the internet was the pervasive a social media force as it is now. And I started blogging under my real name because it never occurred to me not to. I think I really thought that the majority of people who would be reading my blog would be people I knew in real life, along with a random sprinkling of perverts or weirdos, because who the hell would read the blog of an unknown medical student except for people who somehow felt coerced into it? Obviously this was naive, but this was ten years ago, remember. We didn't know any better.

It's hard for me to say if I would have started blogging un-anonymously (nonymously?) if I started my blog now, in the age of the so-called "blogosphere" and Facebook and YouTube--but the truth is that by the time I realized that people were actually reading this thing, it was kind of too late. Short of shutting down this blog and starting a new pseudonymous one, there was no way to make people un-know who I was. And let's be clear here, that sounds way overly dramatic--I'm not a big-name blogger by any means, nor have I ever really tried to be. (I figured the more people that read this blog the more likely I would be to get in trouble, so I never really did all the blog-promote-y things like networking with other bloggers or linking to this that or the other guy or being super-active in other online venues. I just wanted to share my experiences as a medical student and, later, as a resident. If people wanted to read, fine. If people didn't read--also fine.) But anyway, I started my blog under my own name, and that's how I stayed.

That said, even if I could go back in time and could make the choice again, I don't think that I would blog anonymously. Obviously now it's more convenient for book promotion, but even that aside, I prefer to be out in the open about my life and my blog. I think it keeps you honest. And I think it holds you accountable for what you write. I've seen way too much "anonymous" action out on the internet, and though it is occasionally for good reason (for blogging in medicine I particularly understand the concerns), I've seen way too much craven sniping bullshit to want to be a faceless figure myself. What I put on my blog I want to be able to say to anyone to their face. I don't want anonymity to be an excuse or an alibi for any bad behavior that in which I'd be inclined to indulge--and believe me, I have inclinations towards plenty.

But obviously, blogging "out in the open" produces more restrictions on what I feel comfortable writing about. All of these restrictions are self-imposed. I don't talk about the fact that I have a blog unless people ask me directly (it's not a secret, I just don't want to be the dork blaring to people to OMG READ MY BLOG YOU GUYS!!!!) but I am totally open about the fact that I have one. If patients Google my name, my blog is the first (and second, and third, and fourth) link that pops up. As such, I feel the need to be accountable to my content as well. Long-term readers might notice that for the past, oh, at least five years, I haven't really talked about very much specific in terms of clinical content. Not much about specific patients or specific cases, and certainly any individual stories have been either significantly veiled or at least temporally displaced enough that it would be very difficult to identify anyone in specific. That's just my responsibility, and that's not negotiable.

I have been recognized, but believe me, it's not as glamourous as it sounds, nor is it a common thing. I've been recognized at the hospital, recognized at the supermarket, recognized heaving Cal in his stroller up the subway steps. But it's not a big thing. Usually it boils down to someone asking me, "Don't you write a blog?" or "Didn't you do those comics?" and me acknowledging. And then we move on. Sometimes people e-mail me that they recognized me on the street (this was more common in New York, where people actually walked on the street) but were too embarrassed to come up to me and say hi. You should not be embarrassed. I should be embarrassed, because I have scrub hat-head and am yelling at Mack to stop eating rocks. But you should say hi. (Hi!)

The people in my residency and the people at my current job are well aware that I write online. This has never been a problem for anyone, but I like to think that I have made sure that I write in such a way that no one should be able to have a problem with what I present online. I am well aware that I am representing not just myself, but the practice of medicine, my institution, and my colleagues. As such I hold myself to the same standards that I do at work. Discretion, honesty, and restraint where called for. I hope I've succeeded. I guess you guys will tell me if I fail.

When it comes to blogging about my family, this is well-tread territory for in the "mommy blogger" realm, so I'm not going to rehash too much, but I do talk about my kids and I do post pictures of them, despite what some (in my opinion, the more hysterical amongst us) warn me that this means people are going to kidnap and sodomize my children. Partially this is because my blog is part public, and part personal documentation--I like looking back on old entries, especially about my own kids, look at the pictures, and see how much all of us have changed. And partially, it's all coming back to the honesty piece again. I know that a good portion of people who read this blog are in medicine, and I feel a responsibility to represent my perspective on what it's like to balance a career in medicine and a family. Sometimes it's cute and fun, and sometimes it's tiring and difficult, and I want people to know that, or at least know one perspective.

So anyway, blogging in medicine. It's a big topic, and I'm sure it's only going to get bigger. I would love to hear your thoughts.