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You know the worst thing about bathrooms? The bright lights in your face as you are trying to get ready for bed. You’re all sleepy and ready to snooze but, being the responsible human you are, you go to brush your teeth and wash your face first. BAM! Bright lights, multiplied by their reflection, in your face as you complete your nighttime ablutions. I have fixed this terrible problem in my bathroom by stringing some LEDs on the top of my shower (no tub in my bathroom). The lights are battery powered and the pack is secured in the top of my bathroom mirror cabinet. They are bright enough to shower and brush my teeth and mellow enough to encourage sleepiness. Not that I need much encouragement! As a kid I took ballet lessons several evenings a week and got in the habit of showering at night. I like not having to get up any extra minutes early too, now that I’m back on Gyn Onc and my day starts at 5am.
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I may be the last person in America to do so but I downloaded Candy Crush onto my phone a couple of weeks ago. While I like the Match 3 games, this one is a bit of a racket. They have so many in app purchases and features. It is really hard to progress in the game without them. At level 98, I may have reached the end of my Candy Crush experience. There’s these bombs that go off if you don’t match them away and they keep exploding less than half way through the level. I am down to trying the level once or twice a day and if I don’t get through, I just quit and play one of my other off-brand free phone games that don’t try to squeeze me.
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There’s a significant amount of muscle memory involved in mastering the surgery basics that I’m working on as an intern. The pressure you apply to a scalpel to cut through the layers of the skin appropriately, given the location, size and shape of the incision, the tissue underneath, the goal of the incision, the age of the patient and the condition of her skin. Today I was able to get through skin and into subcutaneous fat in one stroke. It has taken me 7 months to get that just right. It isn’t hard to stab through skin, but it is hard to smoothly, consistently apply pressure to skin so that it is separated evenly. And I can do that! Also there’s a wrist action that you do when suturing and a way to hold a needle driver that maximizes fine motor control (hint: it doesn’t involve your fingers or thumb being in any of the finger holes). Today I felt that wrist action consistently. Not every time, but many times. Perhaps even most. I did 5 surgeries today. And I did more than half in each surgery (except lymph node dissection, I don’t do that part yet. Cancer surveillance is pretty important).
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I have several friends whose main job in our relationship for the last several years was to allow me space to vent and process about my partner. Okay, maybe not their main job, but it certainly felt like what I did in most of our conversations. Because brains are kind of stupid about changing their ways, my brain has continued to try to bitch to these friends about things. Get one of them on the phone and my brain wants to give them an update on the latest stupid thing my co-parent has done, tell them about my frustrations and disappointments and generally dominate my half of the conversation with talk of someone I haven’t seen in months or spoken to in weeks. Bad brain! No donut! I’m making a deliberate effort to talk about other things in my life with these friends. Now we talk about my dog, the weather, how awesome my job is, how effed up the health care/education/political/just about any system is in the US, how awesome my kids are, my vacation plans, parenting, or just about anything else. My conversations are light hearted and funny, poignant and personal, filled with talking and listening, generally amazing interactions.
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Today my daughter said “maybe North Carolina isn’t so bad afterall.” And that it was beautiful here, she can feel it in the wind.
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