One of my goals for 2012 has been to learn a prayer (just one)
here's one I'm considering:
(I found it taped to the wall at a friends house)
September 30, 2012
September 28, 2012
Awake My Soul: Fall Playlist 1
Little Lion Man - Mumford and Sons
One Short Night - Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Chasing Pirates - Norah Jones
Nine Million Bicycles - Katie Melua
Morning Song - The Lumineers
Dancing Daze - Avett Brothers
Keep Your Head Up - Ben Howard
Amie - Counting Crows
Man on Fire - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Treat Me Right - Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Only the Ocean - Jack Johnson
Awake My Soul - Mumford and Sons
October Road - James Taylor
Wind and Walls - Tallest Man on Earth
My Poor Heart - Allison Krauss
Stuck - Norah Jones
September 26, 2012
soul mates
I just love this quote from Elizabeth Gilbert - and have found myself referencing it to a few friends lately, so I thought I'd bring it here too:
"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mate's purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little big, show you your obstacles and additctions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life..."
-Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love
current p
September 22, 2012
Olallaberries
It's not as seasonally appropriate anymore, but as I prepare to head back to the West Coast, I found a ton of pictures from this summer - including these of visiting with part of my tribe and ollallaberry picking! Enjoy!
here's the manfriend in the orchard
after we took this photo, the manfriend goes:
I think I want to see how many I can fit in my mouth at once.
We look down at our harvest of olallies and nod,
let's do it!
we were very successful, as you can see. What an awesome taste of berry goodness
And here is what we made with them:
(plus a few amazing pies and just putting them on salads, yogurts, anything really!)
"and above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it"
- Roald Dahl
September 18, 2012
Broken Hearted
I know, I'm late! I promised blog posts on Mondays and yet here we are, Tuesday evening. Well this one took a while because it's a work in progress about a situation that still has me reeling a bit. But I decided that I wanted to get it down somewhere so that I could reflect on it more.
~~~~~
The first week of my cardiology rotation we admitted an older woman who we will call Betty, who presented with heart failure. These symptoms tend to include (or at least the ones we ask about are) trouble breathing, lower extremity swelling, more trouble breathing when you lay down, and swelling in the liver. As I was just explaining to the second year medical students I am tutoring, heart failure is really a spectrum of heart dysfunction; the signs and symptoms depend on the location of the problem and the severity depends on how much the rest of the heart can compensate (and for how long).
When she arrived at the hospital, Betty was a widow of many years who never had children but had an extensive family in the area. She lived independently, even mowing her own lawn up until a year ago when she started feeling really awful, went to the doctor and found out that she had atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation is when the top chamber(s) of the heart, the atria are beating too fast and too unorganized to send productive signals to the bottom chamber(s) of the heart, the ventricles, which pump blood through your lungs and into the rest of your body. It also has a spectrum, but atrial fibrillation makes it difficult for your heart to fill with blood completely because it's always beating.
At first, with Betty, we did everything we could to try to get her heart functioning again. Afterall, cardiology is a field where we have a lot of options for interventions and medications. We can control the electrical system of the heart with a pacemaker, we can control the pumping system of your heart with medications and other interventions. But we can't quite do it perfectly, especially if the heart has plans of its own.
Because she was in the hospital for so long, and had so many people working on her care, I designated myself her point person and tried to stay on top of everything. This wasn't always easy as lots of things happen without anyone thinking to tell the medical student, however important I might finally feel to this patient. But when she asked me to be in the operating room with her when she had her pacemaker placed, I said yes. When she asked if I would hold her hand while she had her dialysis catheter placed, I said yes. When she asked if I would examine her "down there" because no one had in a while, I did - and found she was bleeding and had stool leaking out of her vagina as well. When she asked if I would come see her in dialysis, even though she did not have enough energy to open her eyes, I did.
In our daily check-ins, Betty told me about her life, which mostly consisted of her living in her own mobile home and keeping track of everything she needed (up until a year ago when "it all fell apart"), spending time with her nieces and nephews and her grand-nieces and grand-nephews, and mostly getting along just fine. But she was always tired and while I tried to get her to eat, she would sort of humor me while I was standing with her, then I would come back later to see that she hadn't really eaten much at all.
Fast forward 20 days later - Betty is in complete renal failure with a catheter in her neck vein for dialysis, has had a pacemaker placed in her heart, is on several medications trying to get her heart to pump harder but slower, and other medications to get blood flow to her kidneys and help get the fluid out of her extremities and lungs so that she can breath. She starts bleeding from her vagina, made worse by the anti-coagulation (blood thinning) medications she is on to prevent her dysfunctional heart from forming clots that could pass to her brain and cause a stroke.
That's when she really started refusing things. Instead of just refusing her medications occasionally and not really eating much food, soon she was refusing exams, refusing to talk with certain members of the staff, refusing blood draws for labs, and x-rays to see if there was fluid building up in her lungs - along with refusing all her medications and all the food we gave her.
Some of the staff and our team were annoyed by her behavior, thinking - with reason - that if she was refusing our tests and treatments, what was she doing in the hospital at all? I agree - and ultimately, when she moved to a rehab center, it seemed like the the right move to our staff and Betty and her family. But I think she stayed in the hospital because she felt safe there. She thanked me again and again for taking care of her. She told me how great the staff were and how helpful everyone was in getting her better. It's amazing to me that she felt that way. Because I just can't help but think she may have been better off if she had just stayed as far away from us as possible. She is definitely a person that I'll think about when weighing the risks and benefits of treatments - and maybe make different decisions than the ones that were made in her case.
~~~~~
The first week of my cardiology rotation we admitted an older woman who we will call Betty, who presented with heart failure. These symptoms tend to include (or at least the ones we ask about are) trouble breathing, lower extremity swelling, more trouble breathing when you lay down, and swelling in the liver. As I was just explaining to the second year medical students I am tutoring, heart failure is really a spectrum of heart dysfunction; the signs and symptoms depend on the location of the problem and the severity depends on how much the rest of the heart can compensate (and for how long).
When she arrived at the hospital, Betty was a widow of many years who never had children but had an extensive family in the area. She lived independently, even mowing her own lawn up until a year ago when she started feeling really awful, went to the doctor and found out that she had atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation is when the top chamber(s) of the heart, the atria are beating too fast and too unorganized to send productive signals to the bottom chamber(s) of the heart, the ventricles, which pump blood through your lungs and into the rest of your body. It also has a spectrum, but atrial fibrillation makes it difficult for your heart to fill with blood completely because it's always beating.
At first, with Betty, we did everything we could to try to get her heart functioning again. Afterall, cardiology is a field where we have a lot of options for interventions and medications. We can control the electrical system of the heart with a pacemaker, we can control the pumping system of your heart with medications and other interventions. But we can't quite do it perfectly, especially if the heart has plans of its own.
Because she was in the hospital for so long, and had so many people working on her care, I designated myself her point person and tried to stay on top of everything. This wasn't always easy as lots of things happen without anyone thinking to tell the medical student, however important I might finally feel to this patient. But when she asked me to be in the operating room with her when she had her pacemaker placed, I said yes. When she asked if I would hold her hand while she had her dialysis catheter placed, I said yes. When she asked if I would examine her "down there" because no one had in a while, I did - and found she was bleeding and had stool leaking out of her vagina as well. When she asked if I would come see her in dialysis, even though she did not have enough energy to open her eyes, I did.
In our daily check-ins, Betty told me about her life, which mostly consisted of her living in her own mobile home and keeping track of everything she needed (up until a year ago when "it all fell apart"), spending time with her nieces and nephews and her grand-nieces and grand-nephews, and mostly getting along just fine. But she was always tired and while I tried to get her to eat, she would sort of humor me while I was standing with her, then I would come back later to see that she hadn't really eaten much at all.
Fast forward 20 days later - Betty is in complete renal failure with a catheter in her neck vein for dialysis, has had a pacemaker placed in her heart, is on several medications trying to get her heart to pump harder but slower, and other medications to get blood flow to her kidneys and help get the fluid out of her extremities and lungs so that she can breath. She starts bleeding from her vagina, made worse by the anti-coagulation (blood thinning) medications she is on to prevent her dysfunctional heart from forming clots that could pass to her brain and cause a stroke.
That's when she really started refusing things. Instead of just refusing her medications occasionally and not really eating much food, soon she was refusing exams, refusing to talk with certain members of the staff, refusing blood draws for labs, and x-rays to see if there was fluid building up in her lungs - along with refusing all her medications and all the food we gave her.
Some of the staff and our team were annoyed by her behavior, thinking - with reason - that if she was refusing our tests and treatments, what was she doing in the hospital at all? I agree - and ultimately, when she moved to a rehab center, it seemed like the the right move to our staff and Betty and her family. But I think she stayed in the hospital because she felt safe there. She thanked me again and again for taking care of her. She told me how great the staff were and how helpful everyone was in getting her better. It's amazing to me that she felt that way. Because I just can't help but think she may have been better off if she had just stayed as far away from us as possible. She is definitely a person that I'll think about when weighing the risks and benefits of treatments - and maybe make different decisions than the ones that were made in her case.
September 10, 2012
September 9, 2012
nemo and pasta con le sarde
Recently, my family gathered all together at a big house with a pond. While we were there, I also made this incredible (both in its deliciousness and its easiness) sicilian pasta recipe that I found over here and slightly (very slightly) adapted - and due to popular demand, have re-posted below!
As soon as we arrived, we jumped in the pond.
I think Nemo is trying to save me.
I need to come up with a caption for this one :)
and without further ado,
Pasta Con Le Sarde
Ingredients:
1 bulb fennel,
EVOO
2 tins 3.75oz each, of sardines in olive oil (wild is best according to Seafood Watch)
1 small can tomato paste
handful of pine nuts
handful of raisins
4 cloves of garlic
box of spaghetti
salt and freshly ground pepper
olives, breadcrumbs (for garnish)
one large pasta pot, 1 frying pan or wok
Instructions:
1. put water in a pot big enough for your pasta on stove, bring to boil
2. cut off green top part of fennel bulb and put the whole bulb (the white part) in the boiling water for 10 minutes or until soft enough that you can stick a knife into it
3. while that boils: chop up garlic and fry in EVOO, using frying pan or wok
4. add sardines to pan with garlic
5. crush them with the back of a wooden spoon so that they no longer look like sardines
6. add tomato paste, stir in
7. thin sauce to preference, using water from boiling fennel bulb (I used at least 4 cups)
8. take out fennel bulb, put pasta in boiling water
9. cook sardine/garlic/tomato paste/water on med-low for 15 min while pasta boils
10. chop up fennel bulb into 1/2 inch pieces (whole thing)
11. add fennel, raisins, pine nuts, and some of the whispy greens from the top of the fennel to the sardine mixture about 2-5 minutes before the pasta's done
12. drain the pasta, serve with heaping spoonful of sauce.
Buon Appetito!
And two italian phrases that will be sure to get you thinking:
"This is a sweet expression. Il bel far niente. [It] means 'the beauty of doing nothing'...
There's another wonderful Italian expression: l'arte d'arrangiarsi - the art of making something out of nothing."
- Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love
September 4, 2012
choices
oh hey there. yup, I know I've been away from my blog a while. (It's been a pretty busy summer!) But while studying at the beach, hiking around Yosemite, and spending 15 hour days at the hospital on my cardiology rotation (more on those soon) - I've been thinking about the goals of my blog. It has and will always be a space where I record down the most interesting thoughts that have come up in the conversations all around me. However, clearly (hopefully!) there are just way too many fascinating questions and thoughts to record them all down - I'd be sitting at my computer typing all day, instead of having interesting discussions! So I'm going to try to commit to a goal of putting up at least one blogpost a week, and if that feels good, I may expand to 2. Then I can at least keep track of some of the interesting thoughts that have come up in the past week. I'd like to do this in a way that lets you know when to expect a new post and also keeps me honest - so I'm planning on a "by Monday evening" weekly posting. Except for this week ofcourse, because Monday was really second Sunday :)
Maybe because I'm creating my residency application list (due in less than a month!) but I've been thinking a lot about CHOICES lately, as in - how do we make them? Are we even good at making them? What makes a good choice? What are the hardest choices we have to make? What should be the easiest? So while I construct a post or two about my crazy fascinating month of Cardiology, hopefully these thoughts will get you thinking too:
*An Amazing Book About Choice (called Choice: True Stories) recommended by a dear friend. It's a collection of essays by women about their choices surrounding reproduction. Everything from adoption to what it meant to finally be a mother to abortion to miscarriage to raising a daughter. The authors are lots of famous writers too, so it's beautifully written, and most of all, a great reminder of the impact of these choices, and that how they are made can change the experience entirely.
*I also read a fascinating article (called "The Two-Minus One Pregnancy") about twin reduction (if you're intrigued and/or confused, you should read the article) in the NYT sent to me by another friend. This friend is going to do a presentation on this to our journal club and I'm really intrigued. It's definitely a topic that makes me really uncomfortable, as it challenges where the edge of my morals lies.
*I also watched a TedTalk by Sheena Iyengar, who is a researcher at Columbia whose interest is in Choices, how we make them, if we are good at them, etc. One my favorite examples is when she talks about some of her experiments - including one where she interviews people from post-communist Eastern European countries and offers them an option of seven different sodas. They all say, this is only really two options: soda or no soda. Despite the fact that in the US, some of us get angry if we are given a Coke instead of a Pepsi or vice versa. I'm excited to read more about her.
That's all for now! But I'm back and more is coming (check back on Monday evening or Tuesday mornings)!
e
Maybe because I'm creating my residency application list (due in less than a month!) but I've been thinking a lot about CHOICES lately, as in - how do we make them? Are we even good at making them? What makes a good choice? What are the hardest choices we have to make? What should be the easiest? So while I construct a post or two about my crazy fascinating month of Cardiology, hopefully these thoughts will get you thinking too:
*An Amazing Book About Choice (called Choice: True Stories) recommended by a dear friend. It's a collection of essays by women about their choices surrounding reproduction. Everything from adoption to what it meant to finally be a mother to abortion to miscarriage to raising a daughter. The authors are lots of famous writers too, so it's beautifully written, and most of all, a great reminder of the impact of these choices, and that how they are made can change the experience entirely.
*I also read a fascinating article (called "The Two-Minus One Pregnancy") about twin reduction (if you're intrigued and/or confused, you should read the article) in the NYT sent to me by another friend. This friend is going to do a presentation on this to our journal club and I'm really intrigued. It's definitely a topic that makes me really uncomfortable, as it challenges where the edge of my morals lies.
*I also watched a TedTalk by Sheena Iyengar, who is a researcher at Columbia whose interest is in Choices, how we make them, if we are good at them, etc. One my favorite examples is when she talks about some of her experiments - including one where she interviews people from post-communist Eastern European countries and offers them an option of seven different sodas. They all say, this is only really two options: soda or no soda. Despite the fact that in the US, some of us get angry if we are given a Coke instead of a Pepsi or vice versa. I'm excited to read more about her.
That's all for now! But I'm back and more is coming (check back on Monday evening or Tuesday mornings)!
e
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"It is our choices that show who we really are...far more than our abilities"
- Dumbledore
(in JK Rowlings Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)
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