Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

I don't think anyone ever told me that a task done absent-mindedly--such as doodling--would benefit me in my career. Of course, at the time I was doodling, I didn't care much about my future career. The doodle was a distraction, a way to stay awake, a way to look productive when your mind has signed off for the day. For instance, I spent a lot of time looking at my planner. But I wasn't really organizing my day; I was filling the pages with pen scribbles and sketches in all sorts of colors (this was back when gel pens were popular. Oh, the days before Snapchat). I am not here to tell you that I am now a famous illustrator (because I'm not), or even a competent sketcher, but that I've discovered that taking the time to draw something often makes work go faster in very tangible ways. Every time I have to fax a request for supplies down to our Materials Department, I include a sketch I call this the STAT cat If there is some sort of theme to go off of, it rea...

It occurred to me, while making an attempt at journaling, that I had written a blog post about societal problems and work as my first post to Facebook since Mark and I (but mostly Mark) announced our engagement on that esteemed social Gazette. This, I realized, is probably not what people want nor expect to read. They probably are hungry for the tidbits and teasers of our relationship that I have been keeping in reserve. You may safely assume that I love him. But let me help you with more details. Mark and I share many commonalities. We're both well-read, nerdy, analytical, practical, obsessed with milk, come from Swedish ancestry [that really has nothing to do with our compatibility], have 3 siblings [ditto], appreciate The Outdoors, etc. etc. (I'll spare you the rest). So the idea of opposites attracting is really only demonstrated in temperature: he generates heat, and I generate cold [ in the strict physiological sense, you can't generate cold, but my hands and f...

This past week, I noticed as I went into one of my patient's rooms that he had a can of chewing tobacco at the bedside. I didn't say anything, but I did let the surgical resident know. The next time I went in, as part of my assessment I asked to see his mouth, and noted to him the discoloration on his teeth and gums I could see from chewing tobacco, and talked briefly about cancer risks. I mean, after all, he had just had a surgery for lung cancer, so you'd think that would be motivating. Nada So later in the day, when he expressed concern about his high blood pressure, I went in and told him of the negative effect that tobacco has on blood pressure by increasing systemic vascular resistance (SVR; yes I still remember your lecture Dr. Blad!) that the heart has to push against. That's when he had an aha!  moment. "Oh, I bet that's why my blood pressure doesn't come down easily" Yes, exactly. Then he thought about the feasibility of changing. ...