His Blog

The Last Last

Sun, 8 Jun 2008 22:10:52 -0500

Things are winding down here in New Haven. Actually, that’s not quite true. Winding down implies a slow and steady decrease in pace. This was more like a frenetic dash through calendar days until suddenly... there’s nothing left to do.

We sold our house. We went to Texas and bought a new one. I gathered multiple documents and applied for my for-real-grown-up-doctor medical license. We packed up and moved our belongings. I went to the Pediatric Academic Society meeting in Hawaii to interview for the Pediatric Scientist Development Program. I studied for (and passed) the Texas Medical Jurisprudence exam. I worked long into the night making and editing our final residency class skit. I went to my graduation dinner (skit a huge success, thank you very much). I found out that I was awarded a PSDP grant.

Now I find myself vaguely blue, or at the least sentimental. It’s not that I’m not ready to move on with life. I most assuredly am, and will be glad to be done with residency. It’s just that our time here has been so filled with change and intensity. Despite how ready I am to be done there’s this angle of bitter-sweetness or melancholy that I can’t seem to shake.

I’ve been ticking lasts off of a mental list. Last call night. Last day on the wards. Last ED shift. Last night in the first house we owned. Last visit to restaurants we like. Last time I’ll see this friend or that attending. Last end of the year dinner. Last night with Julia and Grace in New Haven. Soon last continuity clinic and last night of pager call. After that, last day of residency. Then... what? I get in a car with the dog and drive out of town. And somewhere in there is the last last. At some point I have to stop counting lasts and start counting firsts.

One Man and a Baby

Sat, 1 Mar 2008 12:28:01 -0600

OK, toddler. Due to the recent sad events in Julia’s family, she’s off to be with her family for the weekend. This means it is Grace and me (and the dog) left to our own devices for two days.

So far things have been pretty good. When she woke up this morning to find that Mommy was gone there was a period of 10-15 minutes of pouting, not wanting to be in the same room as me, etc. We got over that pretty quickly though, and things have been pretty smooth since. We have come to terms with the fact that “Mommy on plane, see Nana and Granddaddy” although we’ll see how that goes tonight.

Lunch was a fun experience. Grace has been on quite the non-eating kick of late. We had a showing of the house at 11:00 this morning, so after some frantic house cleaning, bathing, snow shoveling and dog walking we jumped in the car to go to a local burger/hot dog joint. Two weekends ago the three of us went there to be out of the house when people came to see it, and at that point Grace was very into french fries. I thought perhaps I could capitalize on this to get her to eat something. It worked! Well, sort of. She greatly loved dipping french fries in ketchup. She also loved sucking the ketchup off of the fries. Eating the fries? Not so much. There were some solid (albeit not the most healthy) calories consumed though. Afterwards we got a cup of chocolate ice cream. Gracie devoured it. By which I mean she devoured it the way a glacier devours a mountain range. I might have saved us both some time and just acquired a milkshake. But, by the time she was done converting herself into a messy chocolate monster it was time for us to go back home, so I can’t complain.

Some other things I’ve learned this afternoon:
Grace lies. She will tell you she wants to go upstairs and go night-night at nap time. Do not believe her.
Grace hates Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I’m not sure why, but something about that guitar controller sets her off. Needless to say, I won’t be making much progress this weekend on either game.
Grace has a renewed love with keys. Every infant loves to jingle them around. Now that she’s figured out what they’re for, she goes around sticking my keys into everything: door knobs, cabinet pulls, DVD players. Some of these tolerate unlocking better than others.
Grace is a harsh music critic. Guitar Hero aside, she also makes amazing snap judgements on whatever music we’re playing on the stereo. Within about two notes on some songs she will loudly declare “no like song” followed imploringly by “diffint song”.

So far so good though. I may be singing a different tune if I can’t get her to bed until 10:30 or something, but I choose to be optimistic. Now I have to run, before Grace tries to unlock the dog or something.

Faster Than a Speeding Bullet

Tue, 5 Feb 2008 16:24:49 -0600

I just got back from my Super Tuesday voting. It was about the speediest political interaction of my life. When you’re a Republican in the northeast you waltz past the line of Democrats that nearly reaches to the door and give your address to the two lonely people manning the table for the GOP. They hand you a folder with a lone piece of paper in it, you walk to the little fold-up table with three plastic screens to protect your privacy (always reminds me of when you were supposed to shield your paper from other students with your Trapper Keeper in 2nd grade) and bubble in your choice on the single issue you have to decide in a primary.

I come from a pretty darn politically minded family; a conservative dad and a liberal mom made for constant political debate in the formative years. I have a pretty early memory of going with my mom to vote in the elementary school library. I don’t think I even went there yet. We both squished into the little portable booth, she punched some holes, or drew some circles, or something. I looked under the curtain at all the calves and shoes of people beneath their curtains.

I also remember the first election I got to vote in after I turned 18. I think it was the 1996 presidential election. I was an absentee voter though, so it was far from climactic. If I recall, it was bubble in with a #2 pencil, put in envelope and put in mailbox. Whee!

This is the first time I can recall really being excited about voting. Obviously it’s a hotly contested race in both parties, but more importantly this election has made me realize what I really care about. I have for the last few years felt trapped in the Republican party. Were it not for abortion I’m not sure I have a ton in common with the party. Or more accurately I should say that I have little in common with what the party is today.

We had friends over the other day and got to talking about 3rd parties in the US. He paraphrased Ralph Nader (I think) talking about being a 3rd party candidate to his dad. His dad responded with something to the effect of: 3 parties? I’d be happy to have two!

That’s sort of how I feel. Candidates for both parties talk about their differences, but in action, how exactly are they meaningfully different? Democrats want to increase military spending, there are Republicans that support abortion.... When faced with the decision of Gore vs Bush in 2000 we had an unprecedented projected budget surplus. Both candidates made their spending proposals. I remember hearing on NPR that if Gore got his proposals passed it would be the largest spending increase in US history. By contrast, if Bush won the election and got all his proposals passed... it would be the largest spending increase in US history.

We spend billions developing advanced fighters and bombers, all so politicians can pump money from military spending into their states and districts. The B-2 bomber has some part of it manufactured in all 50 states. We spent billions developing the F-22, and are now working on the F-35 with 8 other nations. Shockingly, costs are sky-high and climbing. What exactly does our vast air superiority get us in actual defense? Judging by the air weapons of 9/11, nothing.

And so we come back to the ballot box. I voted for Ron Paul. Both Democrats and Republicans seem to be oblivious to the fact that we cannot continue to afford to disperse our military across the globe. We as a government seem to have the same fiscal strategy that we the people have: keep going deeper and deeper into debt to support a lavish lifestyle we can’t actually afford. We have the FBI talking about collecting all manner of data on our citizens, not to mention the Patriot Act, a name so ironic it’s painful.

At any rate, I was so pleased to care about a candidate. I realize he won’t win. That’s OK. I’m tired of compromising on the candidates I choose. I’d rather fight the good fight and lose, and know that I voted for the candidate that understands what this country was built on.

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” --Attributed to Ben Franklin

A Few of My Favo(u)rite Things

Sat, 2 Feb 2008 13:18:07 -0600

The part of my job where I get to enjoy staying up all night has little to recommend it. Sometimes it has its advantages though. OK, so you may be wondering what a picture of an Xbox 360 would have to do with my latest run of emergency department shifts. Well, as senior residents we (sometimes) work 12 hours overnight from 7:30p to 7:30a. It pretty much stinks. The ED is relatively quiet then, so that’s not usually too bad, it’s more the havoc it inflicts on your schedule at home.

You eat dinner with your family, go to work, come home, eat breakfast as they’re just getting up, and then you go to bed to try and sleep all day until about 6 p.m. that night, when you do the whole thing over again. You’re pretty much unavailable to do anything useful. You don’t really get to see your wife or child.

But there is one part of it that’s good. Unlike on the wards where we start our stretches of nights by being on call all day the day before, in the ED you almost always have the day off leading into it. So the goal becomes to stay up as late as possible that night so you can try and sleep into the evening leading up to your first night shift.

For me this meant staying up all night watching football, DVDs of Battlestar Galactica and playing a whole lot of the aforementioned Xbox. It was guilt-free fooling around. I was too tired to try and do much productive, but managed to soldier through a large part of Mass Effect. I’m not sure if it totally offsets the general distaste of working all night, but being a night owl by nature it was pretty good. The other aspect of this is the need to sleep all day. For some people sleeping in a well lit room with people running around the house would be hard. Thankfully it is no problem for me. You see, I’ve decided that sleeping is my superpower. If Heroes is ever going to come true I think I may be somewhat envious of people with more flashy superpowers. But for the time being I’m going to use my powers for good and not evil, in the limited capacity that they can be useful. In most situations my superhuman ability to sleep through any distraction (earthquakes, toddlers, etc) and for any length of time (what, sleeping into the afternoon isn’t normal?) is interpreted as laziness. But when everyone is griping about being sleep deprived because they’re on night shifts and can’t sleep during the day, they’ll be sorry.

Daddysitting

Tue, 9 Oct 2007 22:40:20 -0500

Tonight Julia is off doing grown up things, leaving me (however unwisely) in charge of the child.

6:30- We eat dinner. Sort of. By eat dinner I mean that I set food in front of Grace, which she plays with for awhile, but refuses to eat. This is par for the course. So far I am not a failure as a parent. We are however very excited by peas ("peez") and eat a few of them.

6:40- We go out to walk the dog, Grace strapped to my back in the Ergo. Grace is very helpful in holding the plastic bag should any business be taken care of by Abbey. ("Poo poo" is a favorite word. As I discovered last night it's exceptionally hilarious if you can get her to whisper it to you.)

6:47- We talk on a toy cell phone left by our babysitter. I am not sure what message this is sending our daughter. Grace clamps her finger in the clamshell halves. I kiss it, unsure of whether or not I am a failure yet or not.

6:50- Grace chases the dog around ("Aaa") and try to hold the phone up to her massive doggy head. She is amazing tolerant of this, but uninterested in talking on the beeping Minnie Mouse cell phone. I cannot blame her. Earlier finger trauma seems forgotten. My prospects of being a successful father are restored.

6:52- Grace holds on to a blanket and waves it frantically around while throwing little toy chilred up in the air. Soon this gives way to putting the blanket in my lap, pointing at it, and grunting incomprehensible baby noises. I am unclear on what I am meant to do.

7:01- Grace flaps her arms up and down as if a bird. Unable to fly she resorts to gathering toys and piling them up on the stairs. I throw the blanket over her head a great many times. It does not get old.

7:09- Grace attempts to type on this laptop. She is disturbingly proficient at using the mouse. Typing becomes difficult. Thankfully our attention span is very short and we go back to playing with foam block thingies.

7:14- We spend some quality time with said foam block thingies. They have cutouts in the center of them with various shapes. We try to put the shapes back into thei proper squares. Grace masters ball, all else is up to me. Grace seems awed by by seemingly mystical ability to get a shape back into its square with one good push.

7:17- We put the foam squares back into the toybox.

7:19- We get the foam squares out of the toybox.

7:29- After making me put all the pieces in the squares we put the foam squares back in the toybox.

7:30- We get the foam squares out of the toybox.

7:37- Grace runs the foam inserts in and out of the kitchen. They seem to enjoy the tour.

7:39- Minnie Mouse is calling Grace again. I am allowed to browse the internet.

7:44- Browsing is over. My job of putting foam cutouts in their squares is needed.

7:48- Foam squares are put back in the toybox. I smell something fairly noxious.

7:49- Grace checks out clean in the diaper department. I narrow my eyes at the dog.

8:00- I ask Grace if she wants to go night-night. She repeats "night-night". I am not sure if she knows what she's saying. However, she then points up at the stairs, so I feel reassured.

9:15- I return downstairs. The last hour and 15 minutes have consisted primarily of me practicing for a job with the CIA. After torturing my own child by refusing to pick her up when she is in “I don’t want to sleep in my crib” distress for about an hour, I feel well equipped to waterboard terrorism suspects. How much harder can it be? Eventually Grace caves and falls asleep, I count it a small victory that she still wanted to be held by me until the bitter end, despite the fact that I was clearly a horrible and uncaring parent.

9:45ish- Julia returns. All is set back to right in the world. Until next time.