Six more sleeps until vacation

As I was waiting the arrival of the prodigal son (he was lobstering today) in a quiet house I browsed a book from the library called Rightsizing Your Life by Ciji Ware with the subtitle of Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most. Boy could I have used this guide over the past few years. It’s written for folks figuring out where they want to be and live – fits right in with Retirement Planning One Day at a Time eh? However, it seems as usual I’ve figured some things out the hard way. I spent a bit of time quizzing the girlfriend about her test on the respiratory system tomorrow (she’s studying to be a CCA or Continuing Care Assistant) at the Community College and she seems to have grasped the concepts of lungs and all their attachments.

Today was a day to work in the district facility – long pretty much sums it up. It did give me a chance to pick up a few items on our Cuban family’s wish list though which are not available locally – coffee grinder, sneakers on 50% off at a closing out sale, and children's clothes.

This evening I made a batch of chocolate cookies for the staff of the Alzheimers Unit and will take those over tomorrow with a thank you card. On Tuesday when I was back in the office I was missing my daily trek next door as it had become a part of my routine.

I also have to start packing up the office (ugh) because there is a flooring project underway where we all have to be relocated for 6 to 8 weeks while the floor is replaced and walls painted. Apparently the move date is February 11th when I will be unconcernedly sipping a rum punch and NOT thinking about work so I have to have it done before I go next Wednesday. Actually, tomorrow is a gift as I was originally scheduled to be in Halifax for computer training, which has thankfully been rescheduled to a conference call.

Speaking of being thankful there were a couple who were authors of a book (sorry I can't remember the title or their names - woman of a certain age and all that) about being grateful, living right, and giving back on CBC radio which I was listening to on my way home from work yesterday and it reminded me of a medical student's blog which I read - I'm pasting it here:

What Broke Me
Posted 01/15/2008 on Medscape Monica Kidd, BSc, MSc

I had been wondering what would break me.

In November, I was privileged to join a small group of physicians, nurses, and support staff from Atlantic Canada and travel to a village in northern Haiti for a 2-week medical mission. Bod Me Limbe, a few hours from Cap-Haitien, is home to about a thousand people, mostly fishermen, subsistence farmers, and their families. The community has no running water, no electricity, no stores, no cars, and very little arable land; it does have a school and a church.

About a year ago, Dr. Tiffany Keenan, an emergency doctor from Miramachi, New Brunswick, Canada, began offering medical care there. Since November 2006, she has gone every few months with a group of volunteer healthcare workers toting cardboard boxes and hockey bags full of medical supplies. For 2 weeks at a time, they work through the daylight hours seeing local people with all manner of acute and chronic conditions.

Yoella Teplitsky (a classmate) and I convinced our medical school to let us join a trip as an elective in community medicine. In Haiti, we took histories with the help of our Creole translators, examined patients, and, with Tiffany's guidance, came up with a diagnosis and a treatment plan, just like we would do in a clinic at home. With very few investigations available to us and -- owing to language difficulties -- histories you could drive a truck through, the work tested our confidence by the hour. Not to mention our endurance: By the end of 7.5 clinic days, our group of 12 workers would see more than 1200 patients.

The days were an appalling blur of malnutrition, poverty, and illness. I saw a man who told me he'd been coughing blood for 2 years; his sputum tested positive for tuberculosis. Another man, likely in his 30s, was so thin I could see the muscles at the back of his neck flex with the effort of keeping his head erect as he was led away for a bolus of fluids.

A 19-year-old woman, pregnant for the second time, explained that she had lost her first baby because she had been alone at the time of its birth and it had died because she hadn't known what to do. An 18-year-old woman explained that the scars on her arms were from her parents' beatings for becoming pregnant. There was a woman with a goiter the size of a softball. Yoella examined a child so wasted that he looked like an old man; his mother -- who had already lost 5 children and had 4 others at home -- was not much better. There was a man whose nose was kicked off by a donkey, and countless cases of scabies.

With so much flying by every day, and being unable to speak directly to anyone because of language barriers, nothing had really been sticking, no individual stories. Then one day, just before lunch and after finishing morning clinic early for the first time, when it was cool and we were in high spirits, someone at the triage desk asked me if I would see a friend of one of the translators. He had no registration card, but he had come a long way, and well...

The man was 27 years old, and his complaint was that his nose had been running for 2 years. No headaches, no changes with the seasons. I looked up the right side of his nose -- nothing. But even before I could put my otoscope in the left side of his nose, I saw a white, gristly looking thing. I asked him to try to breathe through that nare, but no air passed. I went to get Tiffany, and she pointed out that his left eye was proptotic.

On the spot, Tiffany diagnosed him with a brain tumor. Cap-Haitien has a CT scanner but no neurosurgeon; his only option would be to go to the United States...which was a bit like telling him to go to Mars. We sent him away with some nose spray and 3 months' worth of acetaminophen for pain. I stared dumbly as the well-dressed young man stood up, turned, and walked out of my examining room.

After, as I closed up my room and was walking over to the kitchen for lunch, I broke. Had I seen him in a clinic in Canada, he'd have been sent immediately for imaging, and if the tumor were operable, it would likely have come out before the end of the week, and he could likely look forward to a long, productive life. But this was Haiti, a nation of people living in abject poverty a scant few hundred kilometers from the dizzying affluence of Fort Lauderdale. Here, the young man would die, a disposable human being in the eyes of the world.

Many things have horrified me here, but this one cut my heart to tiny bits. Why did this man affect me more than a wasted child or a man with no nose? No reason at all. But this one dug its heels in and stuck. Until then, the work had made sense to me in an intellectual way. Now I knew it in my gut.

Since that was kind of heavy, I leave you with a smile as a friend sent along this 1977/2007 smile – now bear in mind that 1977 was the year I was married:

This is sent only to those whose level of maturity qualifies them to relate to it...

1977: Long hair
2007: Longing for hair

1977: KEG
2007: EKG

1977 : Acid rock
2007 : Acid reflux

1977 : Moving to California because it's cool
2007 : Moving to Arizona because it's warm

1977 : Trying to look like Marlon Brando or Liz Taylor
2007: Trying NOT to look like Marlon Brando or Liz Taylor

1977 : Seeds and stems
2007 : Roughage

1977 : Hoping for a BMW
2007: Hoping for a BM

1977 : Going to a new, hip joint
2007 : Receiving a new hip joint

1977 : Rolling Stones
2007: Kidney Stones

1977 : Screw the system
2007: Upgrade the system

1977 : Disco
2007: Costco

1977 : Parents begging you to get your hair cut
2007: Children begging you to get their heads shaved

1977 : Passing the drivers' test
2007: Passing the vision test

1977 : Whatever
2007: Depends

Just in case you weren't feeling too old today, this will certainly change things. Each year the staff at Beloit College in Wisconsin puts together a list to try to give the faculty a sense of the mindset of this year's incoming freshmen (my youngest child included). Here's this year's list:
The people who are starting college this fall across the nation were born in 1989.
They are too young to remember the space shuttle blowing up.
Their lifetime has always included AIDS.
Bottle caps have always been screw off and plastic.
The CD was introduced the year they were born.
They have always had an answering! machine
They have always had cable.
They cannot fathom not having a remote control.
Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.
Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.
They never took a swim and thought about Jaws.
They can't imagine what hard contact lenses are.
They don't know who Mork was or where he was from.
They never heard: "Where's the Beef?", "I'd walk a mile for a Camel", or
"de plane, Boss, de plane."
They do not care who shot J. R. and have no idea who J. R. even is.
McDonald's never came in Styrofoam containers.
They don't have a clue how to use a typewriter.

Do you feel old yet? Pass this on to the other old fogies you know. Sorry there's no larger type, for those of you who have trouble reading... It is good to have friends who know about these things and are still alive and kicking!!!!