Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

To get to and from work, I take the metro, then a shuttle bus, then I walk through the university campus to the hospital [and the reverse of that to get home] . Sometimes the shuttle bus isn't immediately there, so when it's windy and cold I wait in the lobby of some gymnasium building where I can keep an eye on the bus stop but not freeze while doing so. Recently, while waiting for the bus, I noticed there were several manikins in school-color uniforms. And I realized, without having to look too closely, that the female manikin in field-hockey garb was wearing a sports bra underneath her jersey. I gotta wonder what made that particular outcome occur. A few days after that, I killed some time looking at the sport trophies of the university: track and field, cross-country, field hockey, soccer, and basketball. Each one had a small figure in relief, matching the action and gender of the associated trophy; for example, a girl running on the "Cross-Country" cup, or a...

Most families have family traditions, especially surrounding holiday time. Same with Mark and me, except it seems that our "tradition" is more of a curse, and a year-round kind of thing. Remember when my youngest brother got married  and I noted that something is usually wrong with my parents' septic system right when Mark and I visit? Yeah...we almost had a visit to their house  this past week with no incident. Until I noted to my dad that the downstairs bathtub continually dripped water, and the sink faucet was loose. I'm not familiar with septic systems (or anything involving non-human-anatomy plumbing), so I wasn't aware that if water continually drains in a septic set-up, the septic pump has to run near-continuously, which is bad for the motor, which could lead to it dying, which would mean septic flooding. So, yeah, problem. Which is why a call to the plumber was necessary. Making this approximately the 4th-time-running that Mark and my visit to m...

Once again, I get to celebrate the birth of the Savior with family. Sometimes, that just means Mark and me. But this year, it means my immediate family: parents-in-law, siblings-in-law, and nephews; soon I will be able to celebrate with my parents and most of my siblings. Because Christmas means God extended so many blessings to our most treasured relationships—peace, love, forgiveness, and an assurance of the permanency of those relationships—it carries an additional depth of meaning to be able to be near loved ones. But this Christmas morning, as I listen to music joyously proclaiming Christ’s divinity, power, and love, I am grateful for the quiet before others wake. I get to have, in a sense, one-on-one time with Heaven. I get to feel His love for me personally, and I get to feel the thrill of God’s triumph over sadness, pain, and death. That doesn’t mean I don’t have any sadness or pain. At the moment, I am acutely aware of my smashed-in-the-door finger, of a now-chroni...

Last weekend my youngest brother and his wife came to DC, making them our first official visitors. I wanted Jaron and Liz to experience the best we had to offer--which was an air mattress, couch, and cold cereal for breakfast. We don't own red carpet. Anyway, while I was still at work, Mark took them to see the National Gallery of Art, the Air and Space Museum, and probably other things but I wasn't there so I can't say. I joined them for a late lunch, and suggested that if they really wanted to get in the DC mood, they should join a protest group. Turns out they had passed a protest, but since it was anti-vaxers, they weren't inclined to join, and if they--all 3 of them--had protested the protest, they probably would have been insulted and injured. I think that's close enough to the true DC atmosphere that we agreed to cross that off the list. Because we are all adults, we decided it was naptime, which we heartily did for a couple of hours, making us late f...

* note: for some reason I can't add pictures. I will work on that. eventually.* If I ever move to Seattle, I'm renaming my blog " The Seattle Sun. " Because it's quirky and unforeseen and would make me laugh. Although honestly, the past 3 times I've visited Seattle, I've seen a good amount of sunshine. And also honestly, I could be overestimating the sun's sky presence because I was mostly in windowless rooms during the day, because that's the most appropriate place to have an oncology conference. [I don't actually think that; a cancer diagnosis now has a fair bit of hope in it because of the amount of research and money devoted to its relief.] The JADPRO  conference was recommended to me by coworkers, and when I saw that it was a) aimed at advanced practitioners, b) all about oncology, and c) in a city where friends of mine live, I signed right up. I stayed in a very-small temporary apartment place down by Pike's Market, and got awak...

This past week, I attended a medical conference on treatments for gastrointestinal cancers (which include livers and pancreases, by the way). I learned a lot, but the most important thing I learned that day was not to implicitly trust Google Maps. The conference was held at a hotel in Crystal City (geography lesson: the Virginia border near DC), and my husband and I had checked Google Maps the night before and figured out that since it was just as long for me to drive there as to take the Metro, I should take the Metro and thus save on parking. So the morning of the GI oncology meeting, I put in the directions on my phone and rode to the directed stop, The Pentagon (which is also in Virginia across from DC). On exiting the station, I carefully chose to take the stairs that were for non-Pentagon-employees, then held out my phone in front of me like a water-divining-rod and started walking where my phone told me to go. It was tricky, because there aren't a whole lot of sidewa...

I am happy to announce that, although I still don't know exactly what I'm doing in medical oncology, I no longer feel like I'm drowning. Is that positive, or what? Some of my favorite stories: One of my patients reported that when she was first starting chemotherapy infusions, she mentioned to her doctor (Dr W, one of the two that I work with) that she was worried no one was keeping an eye on her mediport site [a mediport is an indwelling IV that can be accessed with a poke of a needle but otherwise is hidden under skin] . He responded, "What do you think the infusion nurses do, throw darts at it?" I was seeing a follow-up patient for a discussion of chemo treatment after surgery when I learned he was still on meds his surgeon had given him 3 weeks ago. I also simultaneously learned he was having bowel movements every 10 minutes. Guess what pills he was still taking? Stool softeners. When I was first orienting to the Georgetown hospital, I met with the r...