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End of Life Plan

My End of Life Plan and Wishes are as follows:

1. My plan is that my life should end after a half day of skiing for free at age 125 or 126.
2. My wish is to ski quite brilliantly, smoothly and gracefully, though not as aggressively as at age 110 and below.
3. My plan is that other skiers will ask who that brilliant skier is and that all the lift operators will know.
4. My plan is that I will have a delicious lunch, with a glass of champagne, in a condo overlooking the slopes.
5. I plan to have a hot tub and then a massage from one of the many handsome men who flirt with me.
6. My plan is that I will sit in a comfortable leather armchair with my feet on a foot stool, while three of my male friends vie to be the one to bring me the second glass of champagne.
7. My wish is that I will not need any cosmetic surgery or false eyes or ears or teeth or joints or heart valves and will retain my spleen, teeth, gall bladder, appendix and brain in full operating order.
8. My plan is that I will not be on prescriptions, medicines, vitamins, supplements, medical foods, or nutraceuticals nor under the care of any quacks of any sort.
9. My wish is that my male flirts will all think that I am not a day over 75.
10. My wish is that I will be listening to live music, a woodwind quartet or string quartet, just dropped in to say hello, along with three of my great grandchildren, showing off their olympic ski medals, summa cum laude graduation documents, or Nobel prizes.
11. My plan is that after the quartet leaves, I will fall asleep….
12. ….and not wake up, and that though my attendants are sad, none of them throws themselves off the balcony over the cliff and are all surprised at my true age and at the bountiful gifts I have left to each of them with proof that a long life and compounded interest have excellent results. My children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will live long and prosper as well.

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death in childbirth

When I was in residency, one of the obstetrics-gynecology faculty asked us, “Women died in childbirth. What did they die of?”

We were silent. Stumped. Infection? Well, when there was no infection control and the male physicians went from room to room with no hand washing, yes… but….

Preeclampsia? No. Not that common. Eclampsia? Ditto.

“What if a woman is in labor and the baby is stuck? What do they die of?”

Ick. “Bleeding?”

“The uterus contracts until it ruptures. It contracts until it is thinner and thinner. If there is fetal malposition or a hand presentation or transverse or certain breech positions, the uterus ruptures and both bleed to death.”

We were all silent.

When I hear people bemoaning caesarean section and too much surgery and too many interventions…. I remember what women died of. All the stepmother stories. In the 1797 diary I am reading, the “lady” dies of a fever. She is 24 years old. There is no surprise, just sorrow. The author writing is the same age and grew up with her and grieves, but goes on.

We would like to think this is in the past, but it isn’t. It still is going on, right now, in  poverty stricken areas and war zones where the hospitals have been destroyed, the medical people have left, there are no services…

When I was still delivering babies, I would tell patients: my ideal labor plan is the baby comes out and I hand it to you. And the placenta comes out and the baby nurses and I don’t seem to be doing much. But that is not always what happens. I do not have control nor do you. I will only intervene if I think it is your life or the babies life or both….

http://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2393-14-43

http://www.msf.org/en/article/perils-childbirth-democratic-republic-congo

http://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/documents/childbirth/en/

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/

Donate:  http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

The picture is me on my maternal grandfather’s lap. I was one very lucky baby. My mother had tubuculosis through the pregnancy. She coughed blood in her 8th month. If there had not been medical care and a Tuberculosis Sanitorium to be born in, I would not be here.

 

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Art at Quimper Family Medicine

I change the art at clinic, these for the summer. We had four reproductions up before, of alchemy paintings from the 1400-1600s. I thought they were creepy but also interesting and beautiful.

The painting on the left is by my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, of my sister, Christine Robbins Ottaway. On the right is an oil by an artist that I don’t know. It looks like my father. I inherited art, but I keep finding beautiful pieces. At least I can display a little and rotate them with the seasons…

 

 

 

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Black lives matter

My family moved from upstate New York to Alexandria, Virginia when I started high school. My mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, took life drawing classes at the community college to meet other artists and because she would have a model. More than one.

She met Michal Platt and took classes with him. He pushed her. My mother did tiny etchings and fantasy drawings and big drawings and watercolors. Micheal wanted her to do powerful drawings. So she did. When he had to be gone for a day from the class, he would have my mother fill in teaching.

I have this picture hanging in my clinic. The title is “One fist of iron”.

The stages of grief for the recent deaths include denial, anger, bargaining, grief and acceptance. It is not a series one goes through. We do them over and over, going from one to another, like a spiral, a whirlpool, a tornado. Black lives matter, police lives matter, I wish my mother were still alive.

 

 

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Night light

This is for photrablogger’s Mundane Monday #66, night lights! This is a light show with a band at the Palindrome, a summer solstice fundraiser for  BOOMFEST.

I danced on the porch because it was too loud and smokey inside. The High Council was playing… I wanted to catch the laser show and I liked the frame of the doors. Worked on the third try!