Into the Wild

One of the things that I have discovered that I like most about running is the ability to clear my head. After a certain point, it is just one foot in front of the other, with breaths rising and falling as part of the pattern. I think that I must be somewhat unbalanced, as after I get going, I inevitably develop an ache in one shin, which melts away as an ache in the opposite knee develops, which recedes in kind as a groin or butt muscle begins to whine. (How is it even possible for only one side of your butt to be sore?)

The other thing that I like is being outside. Now that Spring has finally arrived, there are all sorts of distractions... dandelion seedlings taking flight.

• The other day, my friend and I had to slow down to pass a group of geese and their downy goslings. As we approached, the mother started hissing, just like a cat, in our direction! Luckily, we were able to make a wide enough arc from her path that no sprints were necessary. I have a feeling I can't outrun an angered goose in flight!

• Earlier this week, as I rounded a corner, a beaver quickly scuttled into some reeds.

• Today, during my run, I was pretty much a blank slate, when suddenly a hawk swooped in for a quick attack on an unsuspecting small animal, soaring just feet from my face!

Currently, I am on an elective block, which lately has meant fluttering about from room to room in the ED looking for pathology on ultrasound. Basically, I pop in, introduce myself, and slop some cold gel on a stomach, leg or chest, and then disappear, leaving a slimy snail trail in my wake. It's been interesting to kind of be on observer status in our department. No dictations to do, only minimal paperwork. Sometimes there is an attending around to provide on-the-spot teaching, but often I am left to my own resources... which typically involves getting coffee and chatting with coworkers. Not bad at all.

Treadmill Woes

I generally try to not incorporate the word "hate" too much into everyday conversation, simply because I think that overuse diminishes meaning. For example, people tend to snap their heads around when they hear me drop an f-bomb at work rather than some of the residents who tend to incorporate f-this and f-that into every third sentence. But, I'm getting off topic here...

I hate my gym. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I belong to one of those big organizations with clubs all over the country. When I moved here, I signed up for another 3-year contract as I couldn't beat their renewal price anywhere, and there was a club only 3 miles from my house. Last year, I was using it regularly, when the roof collapsed after a very nasty storm (fortunately it was overnight when no one was in it). Immediately afterward, they put up a sign announcing that they would be re-opening soon. Months went by, and as the weather got better, I started running outside, rather than working out at their other location conveniently located in the city's largest shopping mall.

Now the weather is bad, so I am stuck hitting the treadmill again. I pretty much dropped running almost entirely since my vacation, particularly with my crazy ICU schedule and then the holiday season. Things were fine when I went on Thursday for a quick run. However, when I got there today, there was absolutely no parking. It took me a good 20 minutes to find a spot that left me having to walk through the entire mall, with bargain shoppers everywhere.

Today was probably an exceptionally bad time, but I don't want to deal with all of this on a regular basis. I said something about it to one of the employees there, and she said that she thought they were letting us go to one of the smaller, private clubs in my neighborhood. The "re-opening soon" sign at the old club has been taken down, and apparently they now don't plan on renovating it. Unfortunately, I'm paid through 2009, and I can't cancel the membership since there's technically a location within 30 minutes of my house. Hopefully, this independent club thing will work out, otherwise I suppose I will just be stuck with dealing with mall parking and gaggles of shoppers.

Everyday Miracle

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, then you already know that I get into more than my fair share of mishaps. I seem to attract odd characters, or sometimes things just happen to me (like an attack squirrel coming down a lit fireplace) that just don't seem to plight your average person.

This afternoon, I took my laptop back to the shop. During the summer, they re-soldered the jack which fixed my charging problem. However, now the internal battery is entirely shot. I can't even turn the darn thing on after leaving it plugged in for a week!

Anyhow...

I had been in the repair shop for only about 10 minutes at the very most. When I walked out of the store, I was a little confused because my car was not next to the maroon van that I remembered parking by. I walked around the van, thinking that maybe I was mistaken about which side of the van I had parked on. However, my little blue car was not there. Had someone stolen it? Who, in their right mind, would go through the trouble of disengaging a security system on a 6 year-old Saturn? My heart started to beat a little faster...

... and that's when I saw it:

My poor baby had not only rolled backwards out of the parking lot, but she had crossed FOUR lanes of traffic and come to rest in a small, grass-covered ditch! I couldn't believe it. There had been no sounds of horns or screeching of brakes while I was in the tiny window-paneled shop.

I guess it is a good thing that there was no median on that road, otherwise my car would have seriously blocked traffic. I also can't believe that my car rolled across all of those lanes on a fairly busy road at 5:30 pm without anyone getting hurt. It could have been really bad.

So, I did what any other grown woman would do: I walked straight over to my car, like I had intentionally parked backwards into a ditch and drove it out of there! Then I pulled into the nearest gas station to inspect it, and there wasn't a single scratch on it.

Can you believe it? What a goofball I am! I figure that I must have forgot to put on the parking brake as my car has manual transmission.

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I also went for my first run in about a month. I only did 2.5 miles (with walk breaks). I went to my usual spot along the lake parkway. I was almost a mile in when I saw the police tape. I had forgotten all about it, but this morning there was a story on the radio about how a jogger discovered a body along the parkway. I don't know why they still had the area roped off after almost 12 hours, but the four officers just by their cars looked pretty bored.

And that was about all of the adventure that I could handle for a Tuesday!

Second Wind

Today I took the final part of my medical licensing exam. I was somewhat anxious about it as for Steps 1 and 2, I had blocks of vacation during which to study in 6-8 hour sessions. This time, I didn't want to use one of my precious vacation weeks for board studying, so I've been trying to cram in a hour or so of practice questions or reading here or there. The mantra in med school as to necessary study time is "Two months for Step 1, two weeks for Step 2, and for Step 3-- bring a #2 pencil." That is all fine and dandy, except I have a friend who actually failed Step 3 a few months ago, and at over $600, I don't want to make that mistake.

I think that it went well enough. The exam is actually computerized these days. By the end of it, I was kind of absent-minded, but I think I did alright. I won't find out now for over a month. Some of the cases were ridiculously easy, and other ones left me playing eenie, meenie, miney, mo between options of bizarre syndromes.*

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Yesterday I ran by the lake again. I don't know what the heck people are talking about when they talk about runner's highs and all that garbage. The best feeling I've ever had is getting to that point where I'm not painfully aware of my labored breathing while trying to find a semi-dry area of my hand with which to wipe away the sweat.

The humidity was a killer. The air was so moist, you could feel each oxygen with its two attached hydrogens hurling itself at you. The air was so moist that if you grabbed a handful of it, you could squeeze the water out of it like a sponge.

Mile 1 sucked. Mile 1 always sucks. I took my walk break, and knocked out Mile 2. Second walk break. I hit the hash mark on the path, but I wasn't ready to turn around and start running again, so I walked down to the water's edge. This run sucked-- even the squirrels were lined up along the path, laughing at me.

And then for once, the shuffle option on my iPod saved me. Instead of it's usual trickery of breaking my stride with something like Enya, AC/DC came on. It was a song I hadn't heard in quite some time-- the one I convinced the squad to choose for the halftime performance, much to the dismay of our coach. It was time to stop being a pansy, and run. Miles 3 coasted by, and by the time I hit Mile 4 it was over: bad mood abolished.

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I know I have mentioned this before, but days at work seem to almost have themes. The other day, it was nosebleed day. And, more recently it was "Bad News Day". I can understand that no one likes giving their patient bad news, but when I am at least the fourth or fifth person to speak to a cancer patient that week, I don't think it's fair that I am the one stuck telling them they aren't going to get better.

I had a handoff patient at signout. They had been seen by someone else. I was just supposed to wait for them to get back from radiology, and send them home. Simple. The woman comes back and starts puking all over the place. I get that under control, and then she asks me why she keeps going into renal failure. I tell her that I don't know. I ask her what's going on with her colon cancer. She says she doesn't know what is happening, but her surgeon said he wouldn't operate because the cancer had "exploded all over her abdomen".

Then I ask her what her oncologist said was the next step. She said she didn't know. So there I am, stuck telling her that while I don't know what is going on with her personally, sometimes when cancer starts spreading, different organs start shutting down, and they don't get better. She looked like I had slapped her. I told her that I could treat her urinary tract infection, and give her medicines for pain, but that she needed to talk with her oncologist about her options. They left shortly afterwards, but not before I saw it-- the recognition that she was losing her battle.

It's not fair. I have a hard enough time doing my job-- I don't want to clean up after somebody else. And I don't mean to crush anyone's hope. I do think that attitude is a big part of healing. However, if you are being turned down for surgery because your cancer has metastasized, someone should tell you that this is not only a bad thing, but a VERY bad thing. I went into emergency medicine partly to protect myself from becoming attached to patients. While helping to improve the quality of life of a terminal patient is important, it's also hard to watch them go.

Then there was the very anxious executive who came in after a car accident. He looked absolutely fine, and wouldn't you know it, there was an abnormality on his head CT. Some sort of "spot" that they couldn't determine whether or not it was a benign lesion, a dilated blood vessel, a chronic deformity... or MALIGNANCY. Great. As you can imagine, that little news bit didn't go over so well. "Uh sir, there's something unusual on your head CT..."

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Tomorrow the PU's (parental units) are back in town. It's not exactly the best time, as I am working every day but one of their visit, but I guess that leaves them plenty of time to explore on their own. They have a huge RV now, which somewhat complicates things as it won't fit in my driveway, but I guess it has been working well for them.

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*I know you don't want to actually think of your personal physician just randomly guessing at crap, but if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you should know that by now, NOTHING IS SACRED.

Play Ball!

I just got back from playing softball. We have a team composed of residents, department nurses, and spouses. And we are horrible. The game got called in the fifth inning because the other team was so far ahead. I did manage to bat a run in, and the other time I struck out. I ended up being the catcher, a position that I find scary since we don't have masks or helmets. Our original catcher got clocked in the face by a over-aggressive runner and ended up with a cut below her eye. She probably will have a nasty bruise tomorrow. The good thing about being a catcher is all of the squatting probably is a good butt workout. The bad thing is that you get hit in the shins by bouncing softballs a lot. At least I do.

A few hours before the game I went for a 4-mile run... and rewarded myself with a sundae for dinner. With all of the night shifts lately and weekend activities my running has kind of fallen by the wayside. This is unfortunate as that 10K is rapidly approaching. It most definitely will be a run/walk event for me.