Balcony Day

Balcony Day. Number One.

Today was quite possibly the first official balcony day of the year. A few Sundays ago might have counted as a balcony day, but you can't really have a balcony day on a weekend, or vacation day. You know the days I am talking about...

I'm walking down the hall, and I look outside and I can see the beautiful blue sky, and I just know that the weather outside is perfect. And the day is going great. Things make sense. I'm taking care of neat kids, caring parents, my attending is in clinic in the morning, so I get to round on all the kids, see a new kid, and have a little autonomy in the morning, before he comes for afternoon rounds, agrees with my plans from my morning notes, and then he even takes the time to take me down to the hematology lab and review some slides under the microscope. I still manage to sneak away from work at a decent time, and all of a sudden I feel like a kid who has a half day. And all I want to do is sit on my balcony, send a text message to my flatmate saying this is a balcony afternoon, which mandates that we will take our kitchen chairs and sit out on the balcony drinking beer and listening to our balcony CD. Of course, I don't have a balcony anymore. I don't have that cool flatmate anymore. But that's ok... The important thing is realizing that sometimes, ya just gotta stop and admire the moment.

I know, you're wondering why can't you have a balcony day on a weekend. Think about it...

Ok, it's way late, and I have to finish up a presentation for tomorrow.

Cheers,
B

PS-Hope you have a balcony day soon.

Dinner for 20

I went to see family in Chicago this weekend. (Not Chicago proper, about an hour south of the city). It was really a much needed trip. It was great to see my grandparents (who will turn 85 and 90 this summer), and the rest of the gang. "What are you going to do?" Nothing I told people. Absolutely nothing. Spend the day with my grandparents, the afternoon with my godfather in the bar, and then dinner with whomever shows up. It was exactly what I needed. 48 hours away from my life. Away from Springfield. Away from my apartment. Away from the cold. Away from work.

I had been in a bit of a rut. Just kind of going through the motions. Complacent. Status Quo. I've just been a bit unsettled. But things were brought back into focus recently. And my trip to Chicago solidified that. There was something special about sitting down to dinner with 20 family members last night to remind me that I have great family in Chicago (and Denver). And of course, great friends, from coast-to-coast, and sprinkled around the world. And while I do have good friends here, it's just not the same. And recently, that's what I miss the most. The people who I've known for ages, aren't here.

Anyway, just some recent thoughts.. I should clean up the kitchen now. I've cooked enough food (lentil soup, sweet potato samosas) to have wonderful dinners all week long.

I'm wrapping up pedi heme/oncology this week. I'm switching back to Adult-land after that, and will be in the Adult ER in April. I have really enjoyed my past 3 months in pediatrics, and it's going to be a bit of a transition back to adults...

Cheers,
Brian

Yemen Week...

Like the good cup of Yemen coffee I posted about on Sunday, this week has been the shake-up I really needed.

I've been in the pedi heme/onc clinic most of this week. Have seen a bunch of really cool kids (and parents). It's really nice to be in unfamiliar territory. I know very little about the heme/onc world. As a future practitioner in rural areas, I don't want to be the guy who misses the kiddo with leukemia, or the guy who has to send a family to a specialist 5 hours away if I can get the work up done myself.

What's made this week really good though, have been some simple reminders of how wonderful it is to be a doctor.

I volunteered in a free clinic Wednesday night (now that I have some free time this month). It's ENTIRELY volunteer. This clinic is getting meds to people who would otherwise not have access to meds. The crowd falls mostly into the under-insured category. It runs out of a private Ob-Gyn office. Very cool. Very simple. It's my cup of tea.

Then, today in clinic I saw 2 of my favorite patients, and one of my most complicated patients who is non-compliant-generally-drives-me-crazy-but-has-really-grown-on-me patients. I also saw 1 really cool kid, and one of my cool teens who we're starting on ADHD treatment. It was one of those days where I didn't care about running on time (and my patients didn't care either). It was just great to take the extra time to talk to patients. Amazing what you can learn in a few minutes. One patient and I talked about what his life was like before his health deteriorated, and for the first time I saw how much his life has really changed. One patient and I talked about his recent cruise with his partner, and their evolving plans to retire to Florida. One patient (a woman in her 80s) told me about one of her trips to London, and how having grown up in Jamaica she was able to visit all the places she had learned about as a school girl, and how one afternoon as she was taking the escalator out of the tube station one of the security guards stopped her, and it turned out to be a classmate from primary school some 30 years previous. Is that cool or what!

I don't know how doctors see 20-30 patients a day. What's the point? If you don't know who your patients are, why bother?

Maybe I'll write a few scripts for a good cup of Yemen Coffee. Free Refills, of course.

Cheers,
Brian.

Not Settling...

I was deathly low on coffee beans. Tomorrow is Monday morning. Obviously, you see the problem. I swore I wasn't going to spend any more money once I got home from brunch this morning, but this coffee bean thing was an issue.

I decided to take my pediatric heme/onc book to Barnes and Nobble and read and get some coffee beans. I'm a huge Sumatra fan. It's my go-to. In a pinch, I can count on it. But I was saddened to see that they only had ground Sumatra. I really wanted Sumatra, but I wanted whole beans. I couldn't settle. So I decided, what the hell, might as well go get some freshly roasted coffee beans (which made me realize I really need to start roasting my own regularly) and went to Rao's Coffee in Amherst. Yeah, it's half an hour away, but it's one of the best coffee shops in these parts... and I got me a pound of Yemen coffee. This stuff ain't no Folgers.

My most favorite coffee in the world is the Yemen roast from Bluebottle Coffee Company. This is how Bluebottle describes their Yemen: "One more thing: you might not like it. Lovers of clean, snappy Costa Ricans, or Colombians might consider drinking a cup of Yemen uncomfortably similar to being picked up by the lapels, shaken, then tossed into a grimy Manhattan snow bank. But for some of us, this is the most complex and desirable cup in town." And this is what Rao's has to say about their Yemen: "Yemen has not, for the most part, modernized it methods of coffee cultivation. The result is an unwashed coffee with subtle complexity: wild and exotic with flavors of berries, nuts and chocolate. Yemen’s simultaneous characteristics may take a whole cup to really grasp. "


In life, some things are worth settling for. But other times, ya just gotta go out of your way to get what's really important. Tonight, it was good coffee.

Shaken. Desirable. Unwashed. Wild. Exotic. Grasp. Sounds like the swift kick in the ass I need after recent events, and the perfect way to start a new week, a new rotation, a fresh outlook. I'm not going to settle...