Tag Archives: water

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Mother and father

This is a photograph from 1963ish, both of my parents and me in the front of the canoe. This is at my maternal family’s “shacks on a lake”. Cabins, but no electricity. We filter the lake water now but we did not while I was growing up. My parents look way too young to me in this photograph. I still miss them!

I do not know who took the photograph. My grandparents?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: mother.

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Long way

I am a long way from my ocean and from home.

I looked for a job close to home and then the temp company mentions a job in another state. “Where?” I said. They told me and I said, “I’m interested!” We started the process. I always forget what the process is like. It is hella annoying. There is miles of paperwork. We had a delay from the state, because I need a license for each state and they weren’t meeting until after the start date and then they said, “We’ll let you know in two days.” and THEN they said, “We’ll let you know in two days to two weeks.” So I had three weeks of being half packed and trying to just flow with it. I finally got word, yes, ready, two weeks ago Monday. By Friday morning the cats and I are in the car and headed out.

Now I have worked for a week here. The US currently has 500 different electronic medical records and I supposedly learned my 8th (or 9th) on Tuesday. About six hours of training on the computer and my brain shut down after four. However, the support on Wednesday was good and I started seeing patients. I was careful to say, “If I look grumpy, it’s at the computer, not you.”

So far mostly good. Except, one cat got out two days after we got to our destination. He is chipped and I am still walking miles and calling. The local lost pet group is trying to help. I miss him quite terribly. The door popped out of the carrier when I put it down. I feel like a cat mom failure, but things happen. Elwha is big and strong and I may yet get him back. Sol Duc was sensible enough not to run, but I had to secure her before going after him.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: flow.

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I am Elwha

Mother is cutting our food again. Sol Duc and I would rather eat through the day whenever we feel like it AND out of each other’s bowls. She picks up my bowl sometimes! Then the other bowl is empty and there is NOTHING!

As you can see, I continue to offer my favorite things in exchange for food. Mother took platy, but she just rinsed her in the sink. I got her back when she dried. Sometimes if I drop toys in the puddle, the little ants come. They do not taste good. They are not good food. Sol Duc and I persist, though.

I may put the finger box back on the small noisy sky thing setting. Since Mother won’t give us more food. She did get a new water thing. I am not sure about it. I would rather have food.

Ragtag Daily Prompt: puddle.

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You can have some of the things some of the time

My father’s name is Malcolm Kenyon Ottaway. He went by Mac. He died in 2013. I miss him and I still follow Mac’s Rule.

Mac’s Rule is simple: You can get one third of the things that you think you can get done in a day.

I played with this on my days off for quite a while. I would write a list of all the things I wanted or needed to get done. Once I write the full list, it looks silly. Soon it is clear that he is correct.

When I am working full time in Family Medicine and have a five year old and a new baby, I think about getting something done on the weekend. Clear my desk, organize photographs, that sort of thing. After a while I realize that the weekend was more like this: Meals. Get kids clean and dressed. Laundry for the next week. Clean the house a bit. Do some fun family things! Read to kids and put them to bed! My list changed and instead of the ambitious “organize photographs”, I would think of something very small. Perhaps take one roll of developed photographs, pick some of the duplicates, send them to the grandparents. That was it for the entire weekend.

If I apply Mac’s Rule to my life and list all the things I want to do, which third will I pick? For years I write lists for a day off and then pick the top third that I want to get done. If something is added to the list, a friend calls to go to coffee, I take something else off. I make sure that the list always has something that I need to do on it (and often don’t want to: start taxes, pay bills, clean a bathroom, whatever). And something fun.

I don’t try to do it all. It’s very satisfying to get that 1/3 done on the list. And I feel like superwoman if I get an extra thing done! I get to choose which third to do and think about it. And the stuff that I don’t want to do slowly gets done over time. It isn’t that awful to do one of those duty jobs, thank you letters, tax information, dental appointment, mammogram, every day and then it gets DONE.

I am working with someone who puts RUSH at the start of every single email subject line. I have to say that it makes me want to dig my feet in and not even read the email. What kind of rash haste are they working under and why would I pay any attention to the RUSH by the ninth email? It is annoying and ludicrous. I move those emails to the next day list and don’t read them on the day of arrival. No pressure, so there.

Blessings on my father, for Mac’s Rule.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rash.

The photograph had to be taken before May 2000, because my mother died on May 15 and she is on the boat. I don’t know who took it, another group sailing. Both my kids are there, my father with the tiller, and I am tucked behind the friend facing the camera. Why haven’t we pulled the motor up? This is Sun Tui, the boat currently in my driveway on a trailer.

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Tenacity

Two skills needed in primary care are tenacity and listening. That is a combination that can make a diagnosis. Here is an example.

In residency, many years ago, I have a patient with developmental delay. He lives in a group home. He can’t talk though makes some noises. The group home staff bring him to me. His head is misshapen because his mother had measles in her pregnancy.

The staff says, “We think his head hurts. He just isn’t behaving right.”

“Did he fall?”

“We don’t think so.”

“Fever? Nasal congestion? Cough?”

“No.”

“How long?”

“Over the last week.”

I do an exam. I really can’t see his tympanic membranes because of his skull shape.

“Maybe he has an ear infection. I can’t see. We’ll try antibiotics, but if he is not improving, bring him back. In five days.”

They bring him back. “He’s no better.”

I get on the phone. I need a CT scan of his head and the group home say he won’t stay still. I need anesthesia to sedate him for the CT scan. It takes two tries and quite a bit of phone explaining with both the anesthesia department and the radiology department. Persistence. I am looking for a subdural bleed in his head from a fall, or a sinus infection, or something.

It is done and I get a call. Not from radiology or anesthesia but from the ear, nose and throat surgical resident. He is very excited. “Your patient!”

“Yes,” I say.

“He has a pseudocyst! In his sinuses! He has abnormally large sinuses and this is the biggest pseudocyst anyone here has ever seen!”

“Um, ok.” Honestly, I’ve never heard of a pseudocyst. It turns out to be packed nasal drainage in the sinus. Bad ones can erode through bone into the brain. Certainly that seems like the cause of the headache!

“We are taking him to surgery!”

Residency can be pretty weird, when someone gets really excited about a rare disease or interesting trauma case or whatever. I found that I was entirely happy just doing health maintenance exams and encouraging people to quit smoking and exercise and drink less. However, I was also good at finding weird things.

The ear, nose and throat surgeons in training were very happy about the surgery. The group home staff were happy too. “He’s back to his old self. Thank you!”

It took tenacity to set up the head CT. It’s important to listen to the families and caregivers too, because they know the person better than I do. They were right: his head hurt. And we found out why and were able to treat it.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: tenacity.

Water is tenacious too, wearing down stone and wood and glass.

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Matter

If something doesn’t matter, is it anti-matter?

Lily’s person moved two days ago, much closer. Supposedly to a place where Lily the cat can go, but instead of a private room, there is a roommate. It took me a month to get Lily cat to let me pat her, so the roommate won’t work. We are all very very frustrated. And next week daily treatments for Lily’s person start, thirty minutes away, without enough warning to get volunteer drivers. So it will be me. I am tired. But I suppose it’s anti-matter, right? We were given 24 hours notice by the nursing home and by the physicians about both the move and the treatment and they wanted to start the treatment the same day that she was moving. Whether we can provide all the transport seems to be irrelevant.

The stealthie is from Whidby Island. Right, I’m just an irrelevant shadow as far as the medical dysfunctional machine is concerned.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: irrelevant.

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Last on the card, March 2024

For Brian’s Last on the Card, unedited from the two cameras I’ve been using.

The cover one is my Panasonic DMC-FZ150, taken out North Beach on March 29. I thought there might be otters, but no, zoomed in it is mostly mussels. Happy mussels. The tide was way out.

Trees in bloom at church, taken with my iPhone SE.

Happy March and happy April!