Bad dog

Bennet ate a spatula - my only spatula - today.

Viva la Mexico!

Spent a lovely weekend sunning myself in Mazatlan along with some new girlfriends. I don't have a picture of the five of us lying on the beach for four days, but we did look a bit like the lizards below. 

 

Tanlines despite the SPF30

Horoscope

No shit, this is my horoscope from the Onion this week:


You've never enjoyed taking advantage of emotionally vulnerable individuals, but unfortunately, as a health care professional, that's your job.

Editorial

 

Cute

Clinical this quarter is in pediatric oncology this quarter and on my first day I was overwhelmed by all of the cuteness. Nurses stood around and talked about the cute children and my instructor walked by and talked about the cute children and my classmates in seminar all couldn't stop talking about the cute children. The cute factor seemed to trump everything else: every bad psychosocial situation, every poor prognosis, every nasty drug and terrible side effect. Rather than address or discuss these, everything was just cute. Which rubbed me wrong that day. These were our patients we were discussing. I recall no cases of cute 94 year old ladies with broken hips or cute ostomy patients in previous clinicals. And these patients are critically ill with a lot of issues and complications. How could it all be condensed into cute?

By week two, I was ready to submit. By my count, the word cute was coming out of my own mouth an average of 8 times an hour, or once every 7 minutes. It was cute that the patient wanted a flowered bike helmet so people would know she's a girl and cute that the 15 year-old male patient who recently got out of jail sleeps with a teddy bear and cute that on one girl's medical chart, under patient preferences, the doctor stated that "the patient likes the color pink and likes kittens." It was cute that my classmate was given stickers by a patient and cute that one sister walked around the floor in circles eating peanut butter and cute that the little boy left his room with his mom so the dad could hide easter eggs in it. Goddammit, it was all cute.

Last weekend, week four, I realized that there are plenty of things that are not cute about pediatric oncology. It isn't cute that the 15 year old with the teddy bear isn't likely to make it. It isn't cute that I saw a patient who looked more like an alien - with purple lines making a reptilian pattern on his skin and a puffy, bloated face in stark contrast with his wasted limbs, and yellow eyes - than the ten year old boy he used to be. It isn't cute that that boy died a week later and that every week there's another note on the white board in the nurses lounge to the effect that "so and so passed away with their parents at the bedside." It isn't cute that moms are losing their jobs and spending the final months of a pregnancy in a hospital and leaving their other children at home in order to be with a sick child. It isn't cute that a mom said "this morning, I really thought she was going to die and for a moment I thought it might be better if she did." It isn't cute that my patient's hair was everywhere - the bed, the floor, clinging to my scrubs - everywhere but her head. It isn't cute to see boys and girls, sisters and brothers, moms and dads, friends and grandparents worried and concerned.