1.Media is cheapened by its accessibility. Whether or not you pay for music or movies in your life, think about the more subtle ways this is true. How many pictures on facebook can you process without pausing to see beauty? How many songs can you hear in a day without ever knowing what they even say or stand for? It frightens me that works of art that have taken hours and months to produce can be processed into kilobytes and consumed. Isn’t it true that if something doesn’t cost us anything, it probably is not worth much?

2.Boredom is dead. I-touch, blackberry, android… television, mp3s, and wikipedia available around the clock means very little time for people to have nothing going on and think. The passivity of consuming information can make you think- yes. But surely boredom has some value in children who learn to use their imagination and create?

3.What will my life look like in a world where I control everything? When I grow up with the ability to never be subject to what I don’t like (fast forward/ click off/ next channel) my excess of choice will actually make me more narrow minded since I will rarely watch or listen to something that will truly challenge my concept of beauty or skill. It goes without saying that our relationships and parenting will suffer from this self-centeredness and on-demand entertainment.

4.Erosion of our families and community is inevitable. Where do we turn for answers about world facts and history? The erosion of valuing elders for their knowledge seems dangerous to me. Family memories are displaced from stories to hard-drives, and simple life-knowledge about finances or oil changes can be found on YouTube… I don’t think it’s a coincidence that respect has little value in our culture when we can get an answer much quicker from the internet. How can we preserve the timeless value that elders bring in this media-saturated environment?

What if we turned off our routers and unplugged cable for a few days? What would fill the silence? Would you pick up that instrument in the corner? Talk to that neighbor? Travel? Create? I dare you.

(inspired by this )

I wish I could just push 200 units of insulin and get rid of that bastard

Or, another nurse to a hospital security guard on patrol:

Nice tazer. I wish I could just go in there and taze the hell out of that.

and

Don’t even introduce yourself – that man is a monster.

Pedophiles seem to bring out the finest in us all.

Strangely enough, his pedal pulses were normal.

The Great Fatigue and i meet again -  night shift and I become mutual friends for a little while longer.  So far it hasn’t been bad, and I’ve got to see two deaths this week already that were pretty eye-opening (They have started calling me GR at work for Grim Reaper – hehe nervous laughter). It also gives me good blog material i must say.

Death #1 -man in his 70′s, with lung disease for years that finally couldn’t be cured. he knew he didn’t want the breathing tube, so asked to come off the mask. On a piece of paper he wrote for all of us to see ” Make me comfortable, Let me go” and underlined it numerous times when the doc started his spiel.

I drew up some comfort meds, pushed them in his veins, and we took his mask off. 15 minutes later, gone.  Family at his side, it was time to go. No questions asked. It was a hospital, but there was no debate, no guilt. Let me go.  Wow.

Death #2- this one was not as interesting as what came afterward. Young 37 year old cancer victim was on the donor registry and was eligible to have her corneas harvested (that’s the term they use) for someone else to see through someday soon. Three hours after the death, once the family was gone, the eye-guy (the farmer) came up to the unit ready to do his thing. Said we could watch and that he’d call us when he was done preparing the patient.

Preparing a patient for corneal harvesting leaves the patient with brown smears around their eyes from Betadine , then a drape is put over their face to isolate the eye with a sterile field. The conjunctiva is scraped away (a thin layer above the white of the eye) then squirted with saline. A small incision is made a few mm from the iris (colored part) and then some mini scissors snip snip a circle around the iris, then is peeled out, the iris is separated from the cornea, and then dunked into an antibiotic solution for transport..

Did you know that inside your eyes, it’s all black? Kinda like a dark room i guess.

Also did you know the lens of your eye looks alot like a vitamin c gel pill? I got to hold it, it was pretty amazing that someone was seeing through this only 4 hours ago! Wow! What a gift she is making.

The worse part of it all was seeing the drape come off, and seeing a 37 year old with her now oversized pupils (cut out) making her look like a doll..  very odd indeed. haha

I actually find it amazing to be at a person’s bedside when they are dying. It’s a truly unique moment in their life.. the end! Wow. How many people have been there? I remember one guy who was dying and i was the only witness to it! So sad that a paid professional is the only one to be by your side when you’re outgrowing your earth-suit.

Someone definitely get me a Lexicon and an English teacher STAT. They must have slept through If-you-add-an-adjective-to-the-sentance,-it-doesnt-make-the-sentence-more-interesting class.

2. How lame is it to PRAY what you don’t have the guts to SAY? I think I’ll come up with a new Christianese dictionary called “How to be a good Christian and end a conflict.. without ever confronting the person!!” (Call 1-800-I PRAY call now and we’ll throw in a free Bible with referenced verses to really tell ‘em what you REALLY think!). I think it would be less obvious that way, and eliminate the need to be creative.
Here are a few starters

“Dear God, give us flexibility today” ==means===> I need you to be less stubborn.
“Dear God, help us be humble today” ===> I want you to submit to my authority
“Dear God, give us grace with each other” ===> Stop hating me.

This can also be delivered in the form of Bible verses but that may be volume II of the series.

2. People attracted to emergency/trauma medicine happen to be a different breed. Many of them I have met have a lot of issues with self-worth and insecurity and seem to feel the need to compensate in their work. Their insecurity is obvious, and the competitive nature of these people makes them really not fun to be around, or as a nurse ever get report from. I don’t know why I thought that relief & development work would be any different.
It seems that in the past 2 months we have really met alot of big… jerks! Insecure, competitive, cocky, agressive, foolish are a few adjectives that come to mind when I think of the development workers I’ve met in Thailand. Isn’t that sad? Not only that, it’s actually really exhausting to be around. Being an outsider I’ve been rarely esteemed as having anything to contribute, and even after being here for 2 months am told “welcome” by people I’ve never met before in my life.
Some of these folks we’ve noticed have a very hard time not being the FIRST to know about a restaurant, idea, culture when they’ve been there for a whole 2 years. Wooow. How non-impressive.
A conversation goes something like this:
-Oh how long have you been in Chiang Mai?
-2 months
-Oh.
-How about you?
- almost 2 years
-Pretty good pad Thai eh?
-Well the BEST pad Thai is at…..
-Wow this is spicy
-You should try the BLABLA it’s REALLY spicy, one time, I ..
-Oh shut up. (I wish I had the guts to say that part)

I think this is very unhealthy and makes me seriously consider ever working in relief again. I’m just not interested in playing the game because I feel like I really don’t have anything to prove. Hopefully I only have Christ to boast in.

Ok, I’m done. Phiew I needed that. hahaha.

Synesthesia from Terri Timely on Vimeo.

Social criteria such as celebrity status, wealth, or prison status, are excluded from medical criteria and therefore are not permitted in consideration of organ allocation. Federal law permits use of medical criteria, not social criteria in organ allocation policies.

(source)

Under the UNOS policy 3.7.3(d) (yes, i looked it up under policies) part of the criteria for being at the top of the list for receiving a heart is being on a continuous infusion of a medicine that will be benificial in heart failiure for example Milrinone.
My patient today is on Milrinone, but he is not on a high enough dose to be counted on the 1a list, so we are giving him another medication to make his numbers look worse so that he will require more Milrinone, and be bumped on the list.
Shady buisness? Absolutely.

I just got done talking to our transplant coordinator and asked “is this cheating ?” Well no! Since of course, it’s in our patients favor. But where the ethical dilemma is, is what bumping someone UP on the list does to the person who WAS on the top of the list.. she didn’t have as much to say about that.

Today is nurses day so don’t forget to tell a nurse they need to shape up.
i got a free shirt, bagels and ice cream today. Pretty nice.