On Monday as I was driving to a meeting I was listening to the Diane Rehms show on NPR (if you aren't a member, join now - I'll wait) and she was interviewing a guy named Dr. Abraham Verghese who has written a book called Cutting For Stone.
The title is a play on the Hippocratic oath. Because, back in the day, vagrants of various types would show up in a town and cut kidney stones out, and leave before their patients died of sepsis, part of the oath is that a physician will not cut for stone (i.e. kill their patient with bad practices). Of course, now they just use a laser or whatever to remove kidney stones, or sometimes people manage to pee them out. I've heard a few stories of people who have passed a kidney stone. Makes my medical experiences seem downright civilized. If you've passed a kidney stone, and want to share, leave me a comment and I'll post it. Do not mail me any kidney stones.
Dr. Verghese teaches at the Stanford school of medicine. He was an orderly before he became a doctor. Diane asked him if he learned anything as an orderly that put him ahead of the class when he was in medical school. He made one of the most profound points I've ever heard a doctor make.
In essence what he said is that, as a doctor, he actually unlearned stuff he had learned as an orderly. When Diane questioned him about this he said that most doctors focus on curing problems. As an orderly he focused on healing his patient. Western medicine is all about curing people and misses a big aspect of illness, which is healing.
The example he gave was of someone coming in with a broken...something...oh, let's just say hand since I have first hand (ha ha) experience with that. A doctor cures the broken hand, the bones mend, you get a smack on the ass, a warning to be more careful next time, and you're out the door. However, you may still have trauma from whatever caused the broken hand. Even though you are cured, you may not be healed.
Anyone who has suffered from a traumatic injury (knee surgery, cancer, car accident) can probably relate to that. I know that I still had after effects from my knee surgery long after the brace came off my leg. Pain does weird things to the psyche and doctors usually don't discuss that with their patients.
I vividly remember my first panic attack, which occurred about a month after my second knee surgery. I was sitting at my desk at work when I suddenly felt as though I couldn't breathe. I also was sure I was going to die. The attacks continued and even though the average person would look at me and not see anything was wrong I was sure there was something wrong with me.
I started researching panic attacks and discovered that when the body undergoes a major trauma it doesn't always know when to switch off that thing that causes the body to react to pain. It's a primitive response that is meant to alert the body to shut down all but necessary functions in an attempt to save itself. Because I can't take pain medication, and was suffering from acute pain for weeks, my brain kept relapsing into that state even though I was in reality getting better.
When I went in for a check up with my doctor I asked him about the attacks and he was like "oh, yeah, that's very common". Yet he failed to tell me that they might occur, causing me to think for a few weeks that I was having a nervous breakdown or something.
I don't know what physicians in particular can do to improve the "healing" aspect of medicine. In contrast to my knee, when I went through chemo, my doctor forced me to go to various group meetings, swims (after I decided that group meetings weren't for me), and yoga classes (after I quit swimming because of a chlorine allergy). At the time I thought it was stupid, but after hearing the show on Monday I realized that those things helped address the healing part of my illness.
Anyway, I haven't read the book, and it's fiction, so I probably won't read it, but I'm going to check out some of Dr. Verghese's non fiction work.
Well, you just whiled away another 5 minutes of your life that you'll never get back reading my blog. But maybe this time you learned something useful.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
just like a woman
My mom and I just had a discussion about women with technical degrees and how it doesn't usually make a difference what your academic pedigree is, people still treat you like a dumb blonde (my mom is here at my sister's also, and she was trying to console me about fucking up Nat's homework).
Back in the early 2000s I was being considered to work as an engineer on a major project for the gov. It was before I got sick so I looked really, really young for my age. Anyway, I had to interview with this bloviating asshole who was the head of engineering to figure out where in the group I was going to be placed.
This stupid cunt of a manager (typical, woman managing an engineering organization without an engineering degree, making incompetent decisions and making us all with the XY look bad), who was invited to the meeting because she was having an affair with the head of engineering (I got to work at 530 one morning and saw her giving him a blow job in his car, I guess it's good to be the "head" of engineering), said I could be "her assistant". I was like um, no. But then my boss was like "oh, that's a wonderful idea!" because he really wanted me to work on the project. Fucker.
So I went to a meeting with her and the head, thinking they would be requiring some technical expertise. Instead, these two assholes asked me to take notes. Seriously. I was so pissed I sat through the entire meeting and didn't listen to anything that was said. I drew sharks in my engineering notebook.
Finally the head of engineering looked over at me and said "Did you get that?"
I was like "What?"
He said "Haven't you been taking meeting minutes?"
I said "No."
He was like "Why not?"
I said "As soon as you say something important I'll write it down."
He tried to get me removed from the project, but I was instead given a position as a deputy director for the design groups (that due to a tantrum I threw in the war room, which led to the projector room incident, a story for another day). The head of engineering was removed 4 months later for being incompetent. The twat stayed and started fucking someone else. But he was in hardware so I didn't care.
In that position, for the record, I had my own "graphic artist" to make sure my power point presentations didn't suck. When I left that job he drew a cartoon picture of me swimming next to a great white, which I still have on the wall in my home office.
Back in the early 2000s I was being considered to work as an engineer on a major project for the gov. It was before I got sick so I looked really, really young for my age. Anyway, I had to interview with this bloviating asshole who was the head of engineering to figure out where in the group I was going to be placed.
This stupid cunt of a manager (typical, woman managing an engineering organization without an engineering degree, making incompetent decisions and making us all with the XY look bad), who was invited to the meeting because she was having an affair with the head of engineering (I got to work at 530 one morning and saw her giving him a blow job in his car, I guess it's good to be the "head" of engineering), said I could be "her assistant". I was like um, no. But then my boss was like "oh, that's a wonderful idea!" because he really wanted me to work on the project. Fucker.
So I went to a meeting with her and the head, thinking they would be requiring some technical expertise. Instead, these two assholes asked me to take notes. Seriously. I was so pissed I sat through the entire meeting and didn't listen to anything that was said. I drew sharks in my engineering notebook.
Finally the head of engineering looked over at me and said "Did you get that?"
I was like "What?"
He said "Haven't you been taking meeting minutes?"
I said "No."
He was like "Why not?"
I said "As soon as you say something important I'll write it down."
He tried to get me removed from the project, but I was instead given a position as a deputy director for the design groups (that due to a tantrum I threw in the war room, which led to the projector room incident, a story for another day). The head of engineering was removed 4 months later for being incompetent. The twat stayed and started fucking someone else. But he was in hardware so I didn't care.
In that position, for the record, I had my own "graphic artist" to make sure my power point presentations didn't suck. When I left that job he drew a cartoon picture of me swimming next to a great white, which I still have on the wall in my home office.
horses (by Natalie)
Once upon a time there was a horse that lived with other horses. And that little horse was going to be in a sale. She got sold to a very great owner. That owner was a little girl named Sara. Every day Sara fed her horse and took care of her and groomed her and rode her once a day. That made the horse very happy.
But one day there was a big problem. The horse was very sick because one day she accidentally ate raw hay. Raw hay makes horses throw up. The girl had to go to school but when she got to school everyone screamed "surprise"! And the little girl was so surprised that she joined the party too. They were having a party to honor her horse being sick to make her more cheerful.
When the little girl got home there her horse was running in the fields. While the little girl was at school the horse was at the vet's. The vet fixed the horse by giving it special hay and the little girl was so happy that she rode on the horse all day.
The end.
But one day there was a big problem. The horse was very sick because one day she accidentally ate raw hay. Raw hay makes horses throw up. The girl had to go to school but when she got to school everyone screamed "surprise"! And the little girl was so surprised that she joined the party too. They were having a party to honor her horse being sick to make her more cheerful.
When the little girl got home there her horse was running in the fields. While the little girl was at school the horse was at the vet's. The vet fixed the horse by giving it special hay and the little girl was so happy that she rode on the horse all day.
The end.
the homework helper
My sister is in the WORST mood right now and is currently only speaking to me by yelling.
I got to her house yesterday to hang out for a few days before heading to WVA for work. Today she asked me to help my niece, who is 8, put together a display board for the state of Hawaii. This is a project that my niece got over Thanksgiving that is due on Tuesday (she, of course, hadn't started it yet). My task was to ensure that, by the time my sister got home from work, the board was done.
I should mention that there is a guy at work my sister really dislikes, and she was at her office today because she took a new job and has to move to a different floor of her building. So she left a box of tampons in the guy's desk. Hee.
Anyway, I was given NO CONTEXT for the project. My niece provided NO insight other than one page of directions given to her by her teacher. So, I did the best I could.
When I think of Hawaii, I think of sharks, then climbing, then diving, then surfing, then lava, then pineapples. I thought it would be best to proceed in that order to design the board. So, in between the cut out map of the islands that my niece made, I pasted pictures of tiger sharks, hammerheads and a whale shark. We picked out some pictures of lava spewing onto a highway on the main land and people rock climbing and surfing. I should have paused for consideration when my niece commented "Wow, the poster they did last year was just an island with products glued on it. But we have cool pictures!"
Under the required "fun facts" section I put the highest point of the island (Mauna Kea, 13,796 feet), that there are 40 species of sharks, that the state fish used to be the humuhumunukunukuapuaa, but was dethroned in 1984. The humu was originally picked because it's cute, it squeals like a pig, and no one eats it. But, it's not unique to Hawaii and lawmakers questioned the polling done to anoint the humu Hawaii's official fish. Also, one of the state legislators pointed out the humu is used to make fires, not dinner (it must taste really bad, like something I would cook). It's been replaced by the oopu, which is a brownish gobie unique to Hawaii that people like to eat ("Welcome to our kitchen. May I interest you in a piece of oopu?").
To Canadian readers, sorry for the confusion. I know you think gobies are injuries you get on your hands from climbing.
I also included the fact that Del Monte is no longer producing pineapples in Hawaii because it's cheaper to produce them elsewhere. 700 pineapple workers lost their job. And that there is no official insect for the state.
And the words to the official state song:
"Hawaii's own true sons, be loyal to your chief
your country's liege and lord, the Alii
father above us all, Kamehameha,
who guarded in the war with his ihe" (ihe is a sword)
We put some other pictures on the board. I thought it looking good, except for where we had to rip off all the islands that Nat pasted in the wrong place, and the part where she drew hearts in the ocean. She's reading this over my shoulder, and wanted me to mention that she drew the hearts "with a blue marker!" so theoretically "no one can see them!" (you can make out the hearts at the bottom of the display board between the two big shark pictures).
We did everything that was required for the assignment according to the one page description provided by the teacher, including pasting little pictures of all the products made on each island (pineapples, sugar, petroleum, etc.). I thought the finished product was great, especially given my age and the age the assignment was geared towards. I was thinking Nat would get an A for sure.
So when my sister got home my niece and I showed her the board. She, in a word, freaked.
"What the fuck ARE ALL THESE SHARK PICTURES FOR???? Why are there THREE FUCKING PICTURES OF LAVA???" "Why are there FUCKING BLUE HEARTS where the Pacific Ocean is supposed to be???" Etc., ending with her storming upstairs while yelling "GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!"
The purpose, it turns out, of the assignment, is to create these boards to use in some international fair thing my niece's school is doing. The products, which I made really small so that they could fit on the islands, so they wouldn't take up the room that we were leaving for shark pictures, are supposed to be visible by people without a microscope because the whole purpose of the assignment was to learn about the products your assigned state produces. And my sister claims that no one will be able to even see where the islands are because of all the sharks and stuff we put around them.
To make matters worse, most of the students use the whole display board for the map of their state (we, and by we I mean Nat and I, decided to make the island map kind of small so we could put cool things on the board instead of just doing a map showing the products of each state like everyone else, again, because I DID NOT KNOW that was the purpose of the assignment).
My niece will probably get a bad grade. My sister is pissed. My feelings are, to be honest, a little bit hurt that my sister said my project, I mean, my niece's project "looks like fucking shit".
I knew I should have just stuck to helping her with her math homework.
I got to her house yesterday to hang out for a few days before heading to WVA for work. Today she asked me to help my niece, who is 8, put together a display board for the state of Hawaii. This is a project that my niece got over Thanksgiving that is due on Tuesday (she, of course, hadn't started it yet). My task was to ensure that, by the time my sister got home from work, the board was done.
I should mention that there is a guy at work my sister really dislikes, and she was at her office today because she took a new job and has to move to a different floor of her building. So she left a box of tampons in the guy's desk. Hee.
Anyway, I was given NO CONTEXT for the project. My niece provided NO insight other than one page of directions given to her by her teacher. So, I did the best I could.
When I think of Hawaii, I think of sharks, then climbing, then diving, then surfing, then lava, then pineapples. I thought it would be best to proceed in that order to design the board. So, in between the cut out map of the islands that my niece made, I pasted pictures of tiger sharks, hammerheads and a whale shark. We picked out some pictures of lava spewing onto a highway on the main land and people rock climbing and surfing. I should have paused for consideration when my niece commented "Wow, the poster they did last year was just an island with products glued on it. But we have cool pictures!"
Under the required "fun facts" section I put the highest point of the island (Mauna Kea, 13,796 feet), that there are 40 species of sharks, that the state fish used to be the humuhumunukunukuapuaa, but was dethroned in 1984. The humu was originally picked because it's cute, it squeals like a pig, and no one eats it. But, it's not unique to Hawaii and lawmakers questioned the polling done to anoint the humu Hawaii's official fish. Also, one of the state legislators pointed out the humu is used to make fires, not dinner (it must taste really bad, like something I would cook). It's been replaced by the oopu, which is a brownish gobie unique to Hawaii that people like to eat ("Welcome to our kitchen. May I interest you in a piece of oopu?").
To Canadian readers, sorry for the confusion. I know you think gobies are injuries you get on your hands from climbing.
I also included the fact that Del Monte is no longer producing pineapples in Hawaii because it's cheaper to produce them elsewhere. 700 pineapple workers lost their job. And that there is no official insect for the state.
And the words to the official state song:"Hawaii's own true sons, be loyal to your chief
your country's liege and lord, the Alii
father above us all, Kamehameha,
who guarded in the war with his ihe" (ihe is a sword)
We put some other pictures on the board. I thought it looking good, except for where we had to rip off all the islands that Nat pasted in the wrong place, and the part where she drew hearts in the ocean. She's reading this over my shoulder, and wanted me to mention that she drew the hearts "with a blue marker!" so theoretically "no one can see them!" (you can make out the hearts at the bottom of the display board between the two big shark pictures).
We did everything that was required for the assignment according to the one page description provided by the teacher, including pasting little pictures of all the products made on each island (pineapples, sugar, petroleum, etc.). I thought the finished product was great, especially given my age and the age the assignment was geared towards. I was thinking Nat would get an A for sure.
So when my sister got home my niece and I showed her the board. She, in a word, freaked.
"What the fuck ARE ALL THESE SHARK PICTURES FOR???? Why are there THREE FUCKING PICTURES OF LAVA???" "Why are there FUCKING BLUE HEARTS where the Pacific Ocean is supposed to be???" Etc., ending with her storming upstairs while yelling "GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!"
The purpose, it turns out, of the assignment, is to create these boards to use in some international fair thing my niece's school is doing. The products, which I made really small so that they could fit on the islands, so they wouldn't take up the room that we were leaving for shark pictures, are supposed to be visible by people without a microscope because the whole purpose of the assignment was to learn about the products your assigned state produces. And my sister claims that no one will be able to even see where the islands are because of all the sharks and stuff we put around them.
To make matters worse, most of the students use the whole display board for the map of their state (we, and by we I mean Nat and I, decided to make the island map kind of small so we could put cool things on the board instead of just doing a map showing the products of each state like everyone else, again, because I DID NOT KNOW that was the purpose of the assignment).
My niece will probably get a bad grade. My sister is pissed. My feelings are, to be honest, a little bit hurt that my sister said my project, I mean, my niece's project "looks like fucking shit".
I knew I should have just stuck to helping her with her math homework.
strange cisco summits
Last night I had a dream that Jeffy and I were climbing Kilimanjaro, except that it was really warm and the mountain had fake snow made out of cotton on it with little glittery stars. Jeffy was wearing a toga, and I don't know what I was wearing because I couldn't see myself. The whole point of climbing Kilimanjaro was so he could introduce me to the new president of Cisco.
We started walking through clouds, but they weren't scary clouds. Then we were in the bright sunshine and Jeffy said "we must be at the top". I looked up and saw my friend James (Just James, Justifiably James) sitting cross legged on this point that was the top of the mountain! He was wearing a white and gold robe, glowing and sort of levitating over the top of the mountain.
I was like "James! I didn't know you were president!" and he said "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you that I became president of Cisco. They wanted me to keep it secret until they release the news in the press." I was like "why are you sitting up here?" and he said "Now that I'm president I have to be able to see all the servers all over the world." Then he waved his hand and these clouds that were obscuring our view of the ground disappeared and I could see little glowing server lights in Manhattan. And then James was like "Uh oh, someone turned that one off" and he stretched his finger all the way to the ground and turned the server back on.
He asked how my career was going and I told him I was embarrassed to talk about my work now that he was president. Meanwhile, James and Jeffy were having a glass of wine. I was going to ask for one too, but then James said "well, I have to congratulate you on making it to the top of Kilimanjaro". Then I woke up.
And the weird thing is, when I woke up I was like "wow! I just climbed Kilimanjaro!" But then I realized it was just a dream.
We started walking through clouds, but they weren't scary clouds. Then we were in the bright sunshine and Jeffy said "we must be at the top". I looked up and saw my friend James (Just James, Justifiably James) sitting cross legged on this point that was the top of the mountain! He was wearing a white and gold robe, glowing and sort of levitating over the top of the mountain.
I was like "James! I didn't know you were president!" and he said "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you that I became president of Cisco. They wanted me to keep it secret until they release the news in the press." I was like "why are you sitting up here?" and he said "Now that I'm president I have to be able to see all the servers all over the world." Then he waved his hand and these clouds that were obscuring our view of the ground disappeared and I could see little glowing server lights in Manhattan. And then James was like "Uh oh, someone turned that one off" and he stretched his finger all the way to the ground and turned the server back on.
He asked how my career was going and I told him I was embarrassed to talk about my work now that he was president. Meanwhile, James and Jeffy were having a glass of wine. I was going to ask for one too, but then James said "well, I have to congratulate you on making it to the top of Kilimanjaro". Then I woke up.
And the weird thing is, when I woke up I was like "wow! I just climbed Kilimanjaro!" But then I realized it was just a dream.
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