Category Archives: rural doctor

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bravery

There is more than one list of seven virtues. Courage, or bravery, goes back to Aristotle and Plato as one of the four cardinal virtues.

What is bravery to you? An extreme sport? A warrior?

My sister endured cancer treatment for 7 years, over 30 rounds of chemotherapy. She said, “People say I am brave, but they don’t understand. I don’t have a choice. It’s do the therapy or die.” It’s still brave, though, isn’t it.

The person who comes to my mind for bravery is a woman, a long time ago. She spoke Spanish and we had a translator. Her son had had rheumatic fever and they had gone to the pediatric cardiologist for the yearly visit. Her son had a damaged heart valve that was getting worse. He was somewhere between 9 and 12.

“The heart doctor says he needs surgery. He needs the valve replaced. But the heart doctor said he could die in surgery.” she said.

I read the notes and the heart ultrasound. “The heart valve is leaking more and more. If he doesn’t have the surgery it will damage his heart. He will be able to do less and less and then he will die. If he has the surgery, there is a small chance that he will die. But if he doesn’t, he will be able to grow and to run and to be active.”

She said, “I am so afraid.” But she returned to the pediatric cardiologist. And he got through the valve replacement surgery and did fine.

That is courage to me. The parents who take chances for their children: get into boats to escape war. Search for treatments. Fight for their home, their children, their loved ones. It is both men and women, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, and people who have no blood relation to a child that they reach out to help. Adoption, volunteering in schools, supporting a student, supporting an organization that helps children grow and thrive.

For the A to Z challenge….and last year.

 

 

 

 

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ardor

“the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra, la!”

I walk uptown today in the sun and the birds and I are out in the sun. It is warm and just amazing. There are flowers everywhere. Arriving home I change to bike gear and then it’s cloudy again. I change out and here is the sun. I will do the A to Z after all, because I am posting daily anyhow and the alphabet trickles round my thoughts. A, a day, a day late, arduous or ardor?

The birds and I are
slain by the sun: welcome
ardor spring flowers

My topic is Virtues and Views….there are Seven Virtues just as there are Seven Sins. Last year I wrote about a different feeling each day. Are the virtues feelings? And there is more than one list of virtues….

 

 

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new growth

I’ve been thinking about the A to Z challenge again. I did it last year, with 7 sins and friends. I wrote about an emotion each day…. and I planned to do it this year starting with the 7 virtues. Bet you can’t name as many virtues as sins…. though I don’t think any of the emotions are sins. They are part of us. They are part of the way we respond to the world and survive. We have to learn to pay attention to them and not label any of them as negative or bad. We cannot excise grief or fear or anger from our psyche and remain human. Instead we need to learn to be curious about each emotion….

…..and there has been a shift in my life, three parts all shifting at once, this week. It is very odd to have all three go at once. I may leave the virtues until next year, because this sudden freedom is strange, peculiar, unfamiliar…. I need to expand in it and explore it….

New growth….

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Home

This is not a perfect photograph…. and yet, at the same time, it is for me. My daughter was home last week for spring break. She had a haircut and sent her hair to Locks of Love. The background is cluttered with the cupboard open and counter, but her concentration and quiet is a contrast to that. And anyhow, I am biased, right? We love even terrible photos of those we love.

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Bones

At Deception Pass, I hike and come to these rocks. This looks like a spinal column to me and ribs to each side, the bones of the passage, the bones of the earth. Or like the back of a sea lion as it breaks the water. This is no timid small mammal and I step lightly and carefully across, hoping not to disturb or awaken it.

Another friend for Mordechai and me.

 

 

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A friend for Mordechai

I drove my daughter back to school in Bellingham on Friday. On the way back I hike at Deception Pass and then stop in Coupeville before going to the ferry. In Coupeville, I found friends for Mordechai, my clinic skeleton. This is a sea lion and there is a whale and a dolphin, all skeletons hanging from the ceiling. I suspect that they are real skeletons and not plastic, as Mordechai is.

My daughter says, “Mordechai was not alive before.”

“I could argue that she was. She is made from plastic, which is made from oil, which is formed over millennia from plants fallen and slowly changing.”

“Ok, you win on that one, mom.”

Doesn’t this sea lion look like she is flying?