Category Archives: rural doctor

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RDP Tuesday: ancestor

For our Ragtag Daily Prompt this delightful Tuesday, the word is ancestor.

How does ancestor strike you for a Tuesday? Tell us a story! Tag it with ‘RDP’, ‘Ragtag Daily Prompt’ and ‘ancestor’. Post it with a pingback to this post. Check in with other writers and posters for inspiration and community.

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Mundane Monday #205: curve

For this week’s prompt, I am choosing curve. I love the curve of the beach and the shadow and the cliff, all mirroring together.

Attach your favorite examples of curves in photographs and I will list them next week. Have a wonderful Monday. ________________________________________

Last week’s prompt was detail.

Bushboy checks in with a flower detail new to me.

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questions for equality

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: book. My second entry for the prompt today.

Skimming the reader’s guide at the back of a book today, I read one question and halt. Here:

“You’ve managed such an extraordinarily successful writing career along with being a full-time father. What has it been like to juggle the two?”

Yes, what has it been like? Because I changed the gender. I can’t imagine this question being posted to a male author. The layers and the sexism in this question are spectacular.

First of all, what is a full-time mother? Does it mean one who is “home” with the kids? Not working “outside” the house. Maybe we should call it at work with the kids if it’s full-time. If she is a writer is that work but it’s not work if she is a housewife? Is she a “full-time” mother with a writing hobby unless it’s successful and then she’s a “full-time” mother with a successful career? How are they defining success?

What is a full-time father? Does it mean the same thing?

Are there part-time mothers? Is a mother who goes to work outside the house a part-time mother? I work. My husband was the househusband. We also had some daycare. Was he a full-time father? Was he a slacker because he took care of the house and the kids and played golf? Our son was six months old when I started my family practice residency. Was I a part-time mother?

The question feels to me like more of the same gender discrimination and devaluation of both genders. A woman who is a “full-time” mother AND a successful writer, wow, that is made noble. But I have never heard a man called a “full-time” father or any questions of a successful man about how he juggled his fatherhood and his career.

It remains infuriating.

The book is Anna Quindlan’s every last one, Random House, 2011 and the Random House Reader’s Circle asks the questions.

Well, gentle readers? Are you a full-time or a part-time parent? Why? Was your father a full or a part time father and was your mother full or part time? And do they mean the same thing?



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Mundane Monday #203: repeating themes

My Mundane Monday #203 prompt is: repeating themes.

My example has multiple repeated parallel lines. I like the winding ramp that adds interest and makes it more complicated, but still has a repeating theme.

What photograph illustrates the repeating theme that you like or are drawn to? Link your reply and I will list them next week. Have a wonderful Monday and a wonderful week.

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Last week’s prompt is unexpected.

Bushboy’s world has an unexpected drama in a flower photograph.

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Influenza: check your pulse!

This year influenza is bad. My key test in influenza is not a chest x-ray. It is taking a resting pulse and a walking pulse.

Why? Influenza can cause a walking pneumonia. Walking pneumonia is where the lungs are infected throughout and there is tissue swelling. It is different from a lobar pneumonia. In lobar pneumonia people run a higher fever, look sicker, and on the chest x-ray, that part of the lung is white: infection, not air.

In walking pneumonia, the chest x-ray may be read as normal. This is because all the lung tissue is equally swollen. The swelling means that there is less air space. The person may feel ok at rest. They feel exhausted when they walk because the heart must take up the slack for the missing air space, the swollen lungs. At rest this week one person’s heart rate is 84. After walking it is 124. Normal is 60-100, so 124 is like running a marathon: exhausting and hard on your heart and body.

I have patients saying “I was sick two weeks ago and I am still exhausted.” If their pulse is much over 100 after they walk, they cannot work until it comes down. If they work and wear themselves out, the lungs can’t heal. The treatment is rest. If they are at work with a pulse of 114 or 124, then they risk getting a secondary infection in already damaged lungs. They could die.

Check your pulse at home. Count the number of heartbeats in 60 seconds. That is your pulse. Walk around, sit down, and check again. That is the walking pulse. Over 100 is not normal.

This is a bad influenza. The tamiflu (oseltamivir) helps but works best in the first three days of flu. Check your pulse, be seen, rest and get well.

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/three-die-of-flu-on-peninsula-public-helath-officals-say-a-fourth-death-said-to-have-been-in-seattle/

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school doors

This is for Norm2.0’s Thursday doors.

Look! I finally took some photographs of local doors! Hoorah! This is our new school, Salish Coast Elementary. My son was visiting this last week and we walked around the school on Monday. The sun was bright and there is a lot of glass, so I could play with the reflections in my photographs. The school opened in the fall and I missed the grand opening. Yesterday’s Dr. Suess picture is from the school as well. My son tried out the new playground equipment too. His hat and something about his position makes me think of both the Cat in the Hat and Waldo.