Pilgrims at Oak Ridge

I just bought some fabric to use in our baby's room. It doesn't really sound like that big of a deal. But this is the first purchase I've made for our baby. We're nearly 5 months in, and until tonight I hadn't bought anything specifically for our baby. I'm not sure if that's what happens when you are pregnant after you miscarry, or when you are pregnant and also a doctor who does OB care, or maybe just pregnant and have an overactive imagination. But I've just been too afraid to buy anything. Even though we've made it this far, I know I'm not guaranteed to bring home a healthy baby, and it's like I don't want to jinx it. I've been afraid that if I get some things and then something happens, then what will I do with it? It is, of course, a ridiculous way to live. I cannot live in fear. And even though I'm a bit of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl, I need to prepare and plan. I need to let myself be more excited. And I nee...

And now it's on to the really, really bad ideas. 1. One way they plan on increasing primary care doctors is to give a 10% medicaid bonus for 5 years. As in, for 5 years after the bill passes. As if a bonus for only 5 years will really sway medical students, who have many, many thousands of dollars of debt, to choose primary care over a sub-specialty which might mean earning 2-3 times the salary of a primary care doc for their entire career . Medical students are pretty good at math, and this is not going to change anyone's mind. For more people to choose primary care, there must be a BIG change in how doctors are paid. 2. The other brilliant idea (and this is in all the drafts) to increase primary care docs is to take unfilled residency spots from subspecialties and redistribute them to primary care. This is idiotic for numerous reasons. The main reason is that there really aren't any unfilled sub-specialty spots. Dermatology, Radiology, Ophthalmology, ENT surgery - these...

If yesterday was "The Good," now it's on to "The Bad..." 1. A big issue I have is that most of the bills do not exactly address how this will all be paid for. One major idea is to cut future medicare/medicaid payments to doctors. Patients who only have medicare and medicaid already have a difficult time finding a doctor, and cutting the payments will only cause more and more doctors to not accept medicare and medicaid patients. Furthermore, this will hurt primary care doctors even more than sub-specialists, worsening the already fairly severe shortage of primary care doctors. 2. One of the BEST ways to save money would be to pass some sort of tort reform. Only ONE of the several bills says ANYTHING about tort reform, and the bill that does say something basically says it will "consider" implementing some sort of "pilot program" to test the idea out. (Meaning: a snowball's chance in hell this will ever come to pass) The CBO recently estima...

One of my classmates did an excellent lecture on the different health care reform bills currently in congress. Mostly, I left the lecture depressed. But because I have lots of thoughts, I'd thought I'd put a several posts up about specific ideas the bills contain. One thing I did learn is that there are 3-4 different versions going through congress right now, several senate bills and a house bill. So all the bills contain things that are slightly different. Today's post will be about the things that I liked. This will likely be a rather shorter post than further thoughts to come, but I don't have tons of time tonight for the more lengthy posts about things that I didn't like. So in no particular order: 1. Setting standards for what insurance has to cover - a big part of what is in the bills is going to change laws so that lots of basic stuff has to be covered by health insurance. Things like pap smears, colonoscopies, mammograms, maternity care now will have to be a...

Being pregnant after you're struggled to get that way is an interesting experience. You'd think that once I finally was pregnant, all those old feelings and frustrations would go away. Nope. The truth is that even though I'm pregnant, I still think like someone who is infertile. Especially right at the beginning, I'd still have this twinge of annoyance on hearing someone announce their second or third pregnancy. It still bothered me when I'd hear of someone announce they were "trying" then get pregnant 2 months later. As the months have gone on, I find that happening less and less, but still it's a struggle not to be jealous of those who had it so easily. Part of me still has a hard time believing that I'm actually pregnant. That the treatment we did worked. It just won't entirely sink in that we went through one cycle of treatment and immediately got pregnant, when others I know continue to struggle. I almost feel bad that even though in the...

Some days it doesn't take much to get me flustered. Take today, for instance. I was under the mistaken impression that I didn't have clinic this afternoon. So sitting at my desk after lunch working on some paperwork I got a page to remind me to come to clinic. It was 1:50. Clinic starts at 1:30. Oops. I frantically gather my things, realizing my stethoscope is in the car, along with what I like to call my second brain, my PDA. I especially feel flustered when I don't have my own stethoscope, and without my PDA I can't look up drug dosages very easily. But since I'm 20 minutes late already, I don't feel like I have time to walk to my car which is in the absolute farthest away corner of the parking lot. I get to clinic to find that everyone else is flustered too. One of my regular nurses was on vacation. Our nurse manager was gone. And everyone's schedule is really busy. Even though I'm 20 minutes late, there is only 1 patient in a room, and I'm immedi...

1. Pastor , by William Willimon. Aubrey got me this one for my birthday a month or so ago, and it is excellent. The writing style alone made this book a joy to read, as Willimon is known for his delightful, well thought out, prose style. But he is not short on content either. This book is over 380 pages of Willimon's thoughts and reflections on Pastoral ministry. He clearly has a very pastoral heart, and has thought long and hard about the joys, difficulties, duties, and complications of a biblically grounded, word focused, church centered, pastoral ministry. I am already enjoying rereading parts of it, as I feel like I am sitting at the feet of a master. (pastor friends: you should read this!) On a separate note, I enjoyed this book in part because Willimon is a Methodist, and I don't often read books from outside the reformed tradition. It was sort of refreshing to hear a voice from a different strand of Christendom. 2. Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Instituti...

We're definitely enjoying our time in Charleston. The Farmer's Market, Folly Beach, the Battery - we've seen them all today. We're hoping to make it to our favorite restaurant, The Mustard Seed, for dinner tonight, and meet up with some of our friends. We took Lucy to the beach for the first time today. Predictably, she was afraid of the waves and ran away from them. I think the scary, scary foam on the edge was just too much for her. She also tried to drink the water. It didn't go so well; she took one sip and then tried to spit it out. Hysterical. I love weekends off.

A few random thoughts: 1. I now have two sore arms. The first is from a seasonal flu shot I got two days ago. The second is from the H1N1 vaccine I just got today. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there gasping that I would get vaccines during pregnancy, and gasping even more that I got two shots within the same week, but I'm relieved that I'll hopefully be more protected from getting something from my patients. 2. I have never looked so forward to a friday coming than I did this week, since I've been working every day since last Monday. And we're going to be in Charleston this weekend!! Hooray! 3. I don't really feel like I look all that different as far as the pregnancy goes, but I must look more pregnant that I realize. I've had several patients ask me if I am pregnant, and the nurse I saw today in employee health basically just made a declarative statement that I was pregnant without me telling her. So hopefully I'm past the I-just-look-like-I...

1. Discharge 5 patients, and this on a day after you discharged 7 on the day before, leaving you with a very nice looking (read: short) list. 2. Enjoy a nice walk to the nursing home in the rain. (I'm not sure why I've never walked to the Nursing home before - it's not that far. I'm also uncertain as to why the first time I did it was raining. All I know is that when I looked outside at the gray, drizzly day, I wanted nothing more than to enjoy some quality time outside.) 3. Have your husband come and visit you for lunch, and be able to play foosball and pingpong afterwards with him. Get to laugh and talk with him like you haven't done since you've been on medicine, when pretty much all you've done is work and sleep. 4. Have a relatively quiet day call (so far). 5. Look forward to your weekend off, when you might actually get out of town, and maybe even get to visit some old friends and family in Charleston!

When we need to admit a patient, the ER doctor will call us and give us a brief run down of who it is, and why they need to be admitted. Sometimes, they have their own very distinctive way of describing patients... What I heard earlier today: [imagine this in a fairly thick southern accent] I've got Ms. P. down here and she lives off the two-carbon fragment. Well, she's withdrawing now and they found her on her porch this mornin', shakin' and bakin'. She also has a seizure disorder. She's also so shaky right now she could thread a sewing machine with the needle running. [Translation: Ms. P drinks a lot of alcohol (the chemical structure of alcohol has two carbon atoms in it) and had a withdrawal seizure. She is still very tremulous from her withdrawal.] Alrighty then...

Action shot: Posed Shot: Artsy Shot:

One of the more bizarre tasks we have responsibility for in our hospital is to pronounce people dead. Apparently, nurses used to be able to do this, but now it can only be done by a doctor. So at night, whenever someone dies in the hospital, we have to go do an exam and actually pronounce them dead. It is strange for lots of reasons. By the time we are called, there is no question as to whether or not they are dead. They have usually been dead for a while. Dead bodies are so, so still. Putting my stethoscope to their chest and hearing this void of sound is unlike anything else I do. That said, just like anything else, you get used to it. I can go into a room and quickly do the necessary exam, write my brief note, and continue on with the rest of my responsibilities, without thinking too much about it. Last night, though, I was called to do a pronouncement in the ICU. On my way to the nurses station to figure out where I was supposed to do, I passed a room with the door slightly ajar, a...

Some of my favorite phone calls from patients (either that I or a classmate received): 1. My baby has an ear infection, and I know I'm supposed to put pee in his ear. But is it my pee or his pee? 2. I was working on the washing machine when it was plugged in, and it blew up in my face. What should I do? 3. My wife is pregnant, and she has this brown goo in her mouth. What is it? I don't know. Did she eat something brown? Well, yeah. Have her brush her teeth and see if it goes away. (30 minutes later) I'm pregnant and have this brown goo in my mouth. What is it? Did your husband call a little while ago? Yes. Did you brush your teeth? No. I was afraid it would go away and I wouldn't find out what it was. 4. (this one was by a really lonely woman who called very, very often, always with something equally ridiculous) If I sit to close to the TV, will I damage my eyes? 5. Can your brain freeze from the inside out?

One of the biggest challenges of medicine is knowing when to quit. We take care of lots of sick patients and sometimes we push and push and push. Sometimes we don't. I don't know if I'll ever learn enough to know how to decide what to do. We were taking care of a patient yesterday who was very, very sick. We basically were doing the absolute maximum medical therapy. Chances of recover seemed miniscule. Part of me was ready to keep pushing. You never can tell how people will respond and she had made a very, very slight improvement. Most often in this situation, I am the one who is ready to stop. I am the one who has to tell the family, over and over, that there is no hope. That continuing is pointless. To try to get them to understand. Her family, though, hated seeing her intubated, with essentially no neurologic activity, being kept alive by machines. She had discussed with her family her wishes, and had said numerous times she didn't want to be in this situation. The...

Our dog Lucy is not allowed on the couch. This has been a firm rule in our house since we got her. But lately Lucy has been mounting a campaign to have this rule changed. Apparently, at some point Lucy learned that the couch is an awfully comfy place to sit, much more so than the hard wood floor. And so lately, there have been numerous incidents of Aubrey or I walking into the living room only to find Lucy lounging away. On the one hand, I admire her perseverance and tenacity. She's no dummy. When we first got her a little over two years ago, it was also a firm rule that while she was allowed in the house during the day, she slept in the garage. However, she immediately mounted a Sleep In The House campaign, filled with incessant door scratching and hiding from me at bedtime. And it wasn't long before her bed was relocated to the corner of our bedroom. Or again, two years ago we had a rule that dogs weren't allowed on our bed. But Lucy mounted campaign Allow The D...

Last night we had our fifth and final night of our Community Revival in the park. Here are a few of the highlights from the last few nights. - The last night was a great finish with one of the black choirs singing their hearts out, and one of the energetic black preachers bringin' it like only a black pastor can. - The pastor of the Spanish church made several announcements in Spanish with his daughter translating for him. With my poor-to-mediocre Spanish skills I could tell that she was giving fairly loose translations. My favorite was her translating "hermanos" with "ya'll," she was going straight from Spanish to Southern. - Every night we had over 100 people turn out, always a good mix of races, backgrounds, ages, and every other demographical category. - It was good to get to experience some of the other traditions of other churches. Some of them made me grow in appreciation for the other traditions, and some of them made me grow in appreciation for...

I'm back on inpatient medicine. That means longer days, earlier mornings, and not much of anything else. I had forgotten how much I love seeing patients in the hospital every day. How much I enjoy eating a hot breakfast every morning. How much I love being there when my patients are sick, and thinking through how best to make them better. How fun it is to work with students and teach them a little bit about being a doctor. How much I love being there to comfort families as we know there is nothing else to do, and making a patient's death just a little less bad. It's been a good, long, tiring, learning-filled week.