Requiem for Breathing
College students, future generations of professional leaders that they are, do not have a reputation for stellar hygiene. Rather, they are known for being something of a dirty population–prone to sudden expectoration after an evening of imbibing beverages, rolling out of bed unwashed in order to make it to class on time, and giving their undergarments a second act of wearing before laundering. They are, after all, college students. They are known to be broke.
Because they have this sordid reputation, and because my wife and I both have been ourselves college students, we have something of a defense system in place to protect our offspring from the side effects of contact with dirty folks, namely, communicable disease. She accepts electronic papers from her students. I refrain from getting within two feet of any student volunteer at my agency, especially during flu season. As Emile is not yet capable of blowing his nose, our goal is to avoid upper respiratory infections whenever possible. I’m a fan of hand washing, although the skin on my hands is not. Read More…
The consequences of moderate-term sleep deprivation are many: frontal lobe activity is surpressed, leading one to blurt out inappropriate statements at inopportune times; memory fails, rote calculations become just out of arms’ reach, which can be amusing when trying to tip a waiter; and manual dexterity decreases alarmingly. For those Dungeons & Dragons geeks out there, consider this loss on a scale of -5 or so, something along the lines of a major cursed item. For the rest of us, I have an illustrative story.
Taking a few steps back to the last Monday in August, we were informed that our appointment would be moved earlier by an hour because our regular doctor had called in sick. So we met with another doctor in the practice. Instead of Sarah Palin’s doppelganger, who I’ve come to really like, we got a woman who looked like a soccer mom of 8 children. All I knew about her before this appointment was that she’s the doctor who does the circumcisions in the practice, and she’s kind of klutzy. Those are two tastes that I’m sure don’t taste great together, but on this day, I could be unconcerned with her gracefulness and focus on Susanne’s internal exam. Had our own doctor Palin been doing the examination, we’d have a clear idea of when to try to induce; as it was, we were going to have to wait for the fill-in to contact Susanne’s doctor, who would then call us, probably on Tuesday.
It started making its presence known in the wee hours of the morning, a little before the sun would rise, otherwise known as the time when even roosters are silent. I hate waking up when there’s only an hour or so until dawn, because I know, even in my groggy mind, that the next bit of sleep I can scrounge together is going to be wholly lacking in actual rest. It’s a piss-poor way to end the night shift.
I had a battle with a newly sharpened knife last night, and the knife won. I know better than to cut toward me, force a cut through meat, and all the other rules about handling knives, but it was late, I was tired, and I rushed through deboning a chicken I’d roasted so I could put it away. In less than one second the stainless steel sliced my left index finger just under my cuticle, and I shrieked over to the sink to get cold water on the cut and help numb the sensation. Susanne, firmly in her waddling phase of pregnancy, managed to skeedaddle into the kitchen and assess the damage, so we opted for some gauze and tight tape to staunch the bleeding. I realized, during this morning’s shower, that I am a professional when it comes to keeping recent wounds dry. And this is because I have stabbed and slashed myself accidentally so many times I can barely count the instances anymore.
I admit it: I was a touch fearful about talking to the doctor on Monday. I’ve got a short list of items about which most physicians get lectury, after all. But for the reasons I expressed in my last post, I needed to have a local doctor, so I was willing to lay it out there. Susanne declared it was a “test” of his cultural competency. I liked that as an approach enough.
My physical is tomorrow. I suppose most people call it an “annual physical,” but I haven’t had one in a couple of years because it’s been a while since I saw that physician. So it’s more my biennial physical, bordering on every 30 months at that.
We received an audience with Sarah Palin again today (read, the family practitioner who looks like Sarah Palin), and after waiting only 45 minutes, she joined us for Susanne’s latest exam. After a string of additional symptoms, like sudden, cataclysmic leg cramps, stubborn heartburn, and the mucous that accompanies late spring pollen bursts, Sarah Palin grabbed her fetal heartbeat monitor and pushed around searching for sound.
One must admire a city like Seattle for its principles. It still allows those awful plastic grocery bags as legal carrying devices, not yet having taken up the mantle of Earth-savingness like its nearish cousin, San Francisco. And it does continue to serve soft drinks and fizzy pop from automatic vending machines, a no-no in ‘Frisco as well these days. But the powers that be have put their collective feet down when it comes to salting the roads when it snows, given the proximity to the Puget Sound and accompanying Entire Pacific Ocean.
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