Elite Gymnastics and Family Life: the Karolyis and dominique moceanu

Bela Karolyi : If  Blogspot would let me tattoo "666" on his forehead, I would.

Marta Karolyi : I would add horns except that I lack the means to do so with this program

Last night I read Off Balance: a Memoir by Dominque Moceanu. Moceanu was a member of the 1996 US Olympic gold medal women's gymnastics team. the book was both informative and depressing. Much of what she wrote was subject matter with which I was already familiar, as I wasn't far from the elite level of gymnastics when I performed my legendary back walkover followed by a cartwheel on the upper beam of the roof of our two-story house.  Thus abruptly ended my gymnastics career. Now that I'm eighteen and can no longer be protected from my own idiocy, of which  there is less from which I need to be protected, I might add, I dabble in gymnastics. i took courses in gymnastics and tumbling to fulfill fitness course requirements, and the department head gave me carte blanch to use the gym facilities anytime someone from the staff was legally on duty. 

Some of what I read from Ms. Moceanu's book was mind-boggling, though. I've never liked what I've heard about  Bela and Marta Karolyi, the Romanian couple who escaped the Ceausescu regime to essentially take over gymnastics in the U.S. One thing I find ironic is why the Karolyis ever left Romania when their style of coaching was so perfectly suited to a totalitarian regime in which they had total control over their protegees and could beat them or do whatever they wanted to the young female gymnasts.

As it stood, because Ms. Moceanu was herself the child of Romanian immigrants,  Karolyi could simply ask Ms. Moceanu's father to beat her and he would do so. He, too, was old-school Romanian, and he thought his daughter's chances for success were totally controlled by the Karolyis. He probably would have had all her teeth pulled if Bela or Marta had said that it was necessary for her gymnastics success. 

Marta Karolyi in particular at the present, if I'm correct, still wields more control over the sport of women's gymnastics in the U. S. than does any other single individual.  Why do we let these people immigrate from a totalitarian regime (I believe they came when the Soviet Bloc was still intact, but I don't think Romania is exactly the land of the free and the home of the brave even today) and turn women's gymnastics into a dictatorship? This is America. We don't have to tolerate such nonsense. Relegate the Karolyis to an old folks' home and give them dolls to mistreat instead of allowing them to starve and psychologically abuse real girls, all the while holding the girls' gymnastics careers over their heads.

Dominique Moceanu had a limited-at-best chance at a normal childhood even without the Karolyis' "intervention."  Dominique's father was so accustomed to having is own way and to making the lives of his wife and children miserable if they offered the slightest resistance that Dominique's chances for anything close to idyllic by way of family life were incredibly slim.

As a brief side note, it isn't easy to find picture of the Karolyis with stern expressions. Those who have trained under them will say that they behave one way when cameras are around and another way when there's no one there to record their facial expressions or actions.

I think about myself and gymnastics sometimes. My parents would never have allowed me to live anywhere other than in our family home while I trained,  nor would they have uprooted our family for the benefit of my gymnastics career. Whatever gym was within driving range of our home would have been where I trained as long as it had a reputation for being safe. If I had told my parents anyone  psychologically abused me, that would have been the end of my attendance at that gym, and if I had said I was tired of it, I probably would have been required to finish out the minimum number of hours for the interval that my parents had already paid the tuition, but I then would have been encouraged to quit. (As it stood, when I performed my rooftop gymnastics maneuvers, my parents left several thousand dollars worth of tuition sitting at the gym, unused.)

My childhood would have been different from that of Ms, Moceanu because my parents' style of raising children was so very different. My parents were not from eastern bloc counties.  My mother was not afraid in the least of my father, and they got along well as far as I could tell.  My parents didn't need to live their lives through me or my brother. They had us because they wanted children, not because we were their tickets to  success in life. They'd already had plenty of success in life on their own without needing to draw upon us to provide it for them.

Our home was not a democracy,  and even isn't to this day, although I have  freedom to speak my mind since I've reached the magical age of eighteen.  Prior to my turning eighteen, most things were open for discussion to a point, but once a decision had been made, that was it, and to continue to debate after being told the answer was no would have resulted in negative consequences.

I have a  savings account with money I've earned that's fairly substantial for a person my age who is not a movie star or teen singing sensation because my piano and organ skills commandeered decent wages. There were times when I thought that once a reached a certain age, I was going to do a given thing with my money because it was and is my money.  One thing kept me from ever making that statement to my parents, or still making it. It is my money, but I like the idea of a safety net should something go wrong with my money. My parents have a lot more money than I do.

I used to watch "The Cosby Show" reruns. This particular episode, or clip from it, resonated with me. I know that if I had complained about not being able to use "my money" in the way I so chose, my parents' reaction would have been similar to that of the fictional Huxtable parents.  (So parents out there, TV can be a valuable tool.) Someday my money will be totally up to me to spend; not yet, though.

                                                     realistic TV if you live in my house

The Many Banes of My Existence by Alexis: After One Day in a Lab, I'm Practically a Patholo...

The Many Banes of My Existence by Alexis: After One Day in a Lab, I'm Practically a Patholo...: the ultimate kick-ass ADA a close second After one day in a lab -- I don't count my time in the death t...

After One Day in a Lab, I'm Practically a Pathologist (Just Kidding)

the ultimate kick-ass ADA

a close second

After one day in a lab -- I don't count my time in the death trap as time in a real lab -- I do think I want to go into pathology, but there are different branches.

At one point I was seriously considering forensic pathology, wherein the pathologist determines a person's cause of death.  I think I could get beyond the gross-out factor. I'll have to in the first year of medical school, anyway, once I'm assigned my first cadaver.  I do find the detective aspect fascinating, and, especially if i got a law degree as well, my job could be almost like one of those on TV , say 'quincy, MD" or "Jordan's Crossing." (I love Jill Hennessy. She, or Claire Kincaid,  was my favorite mother ship Law & Order ADA. Alexandra Cabot was my all-time favorite of all the versions.)  On the other had, as exciting as combining law and medicine might be (the doctor who is going to take out my tonsils over Easter break is also an attorney and member of the California bar, although I'm not sure how he uses his legal background), I think I'd rather try to keep people alive than determine precisely why they died.

Anatomical and clinical pathology are becoming increasingly closely linked.  Many pathologists practice both.

I'm a bit drawn toward hematopathology, which is, of course, the study of pathology of the blood.  It's fairly closely related to clinical pathology.  A lot of what my dad does is related to both clinical and hematopathology, although he's technically more of and oncologist and hematologist. He is board certified in pathology as well.

The one nice thing about a person's third year of medical school -- that's when they first start to work a person to death, so it's really the only nice thing about it  -- is that all students do rotations, usually in three-week blocks  -- called clerkships. The third-year physician is exposed to virtually every branch of medicine during this time. pediatrics is usually the worst for everyone because they're exposed to all sorts of crud to which they have not been exposed for many years, so during a med student's pediatric clerkship, he or she usually spends the entire three weeks plus the next week sick, but you pretty much have to work through it or you'll get behind, because you have to put in your three weeks.

So I may think I'm drawn to pathology because of what I've seen my dad do all of my life, but I may find that I like something else better. Maybe rheumatology will be right up my alley. Who really knows?

Except for the lack of sleep, medical school is set up well in that one is exposed to every branch of medicine the year before he or she must try to find a match for a residency. Finding the match is a whole different  ball game, but you cross that bridge when or if you come to it. I haven't even been admitted to medical school yet. For all I know, i may have to go to the Cayman Islands to find a medical school to accept me, and i don't even know if they have a medical school in the cayman Islands.

Good night. I need to be at work in less than five-and-one-half hours.

#

Long Overdue Follow-Up -- New Internship

only a slight exaggeration

Do you remember my old internship that lasted almost two days, the one in which hazardous materials were being cleaned by untrained interns without proper protective gear or procedures, or even rubber gloves? I don't think I ever followed up on the internship I was doing -- the one my dad didn't want me going back to but that I needed to complete as an unofficial medical school application requirement. I never made it back because before I was to report again, I developed that condition where scar tissue from an old abdominal surgery wrapped itself around one of my Fallopian tubes. My dad considered leaving it alone, but he decided that if any of the other eight interns developed health problems related to the the substandard  procedures used in disposal of waste, he'd have a hard time dealing with the guilt.

In everything that's happened since, the whole issue was shoved on the back burner for me. It wasn't for my dad, though.

My dad  called someone from the health department that he knew wouldn't tip anyone from the lab off that a surprise inspection was in the works. (A surprise inspection is always a possibility, which is one of the reasons the lab was crazy to manage its operations in the way that it did.)  This was to be a little more than a routine surprise inspection, though.  My dad contacted compliance officers from two institutions that accept results from this lab to invite them along on the surprise inspection. I told him that someone was very likely following the identical schedule on Mondays  and Thursdays that I was following on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and when the most incriminating time to walk in would be.  My dad had the legal department from the local hospital from which he does much work now and which does some business with this lab obtain a search warrant, and spoke with the city chief of police under conditions of what he was assured would be complete anonymity to let him in on what was happening and to inquire as to whether anyone on his staff was qualified to assist in the inspection or whether either the sheriff's department or the FBI would be needed. The chief of police pulled up resumes on his current employees and noted that his lead detective had an M. S. in biochemistry. It was determined that the man was highly unlikely to have any ties with the lab. It was further determined that the lead detective wouldn't be told what or where the inspection was to take place -- only to be available at the specified time.

The inspecting team would consist of my dad, who has about as many different certifications concerning  lab operations as I have white blood cells, the police detective with the advanced degree in bio-chem, a lab official and an attorney from the local hospital, and the same from the diagnostic clinic across the street, and a representative from the district attorney's office. There was consideration given to inviting the professor who assigned students to the clinic to the inspection, but it was determined that there was no guarantee he wasn't part of anything illegal that might be going on.  Instead, his counterpart at another University of California was issued a subpoena and was picked up and transported to the site just before the inspection was to be undertaken, but was not told what the case involved. His role would be to act as an expert in terms of assisting to determine what should be searched once he was apprised as to the situation. (After the fact, he was well-compensated for his time, and he was picked up in a most inconspicuous matter, and his wife was given  a number to call so that his whereabouts could be explained.) Warrants to search the original professor's home and school offices were obtained. That would merely involve detectives removing computers and files from his offices with the names either of labs or of students who had been assigned by him to internships in the past three years - roughly one hundred students.

I was visited by the local police department and warned that I could be charged with obstruction of justice if I told anyone about this in advance, even though I had no specifics concerning time of the inspection. I was more than happy to comply, as being threatened with being charged with anything was more than enough to scare me out of what few wits I have left. This was after I had already blogged about my dad planning to show up at the place. Although I was afraid to do so,  I showed the officers my semi-anonymous blog concerning the matter. They had me temporarily remove it to draft, though  they said it was probably no big deal because that I had no idea it was a police matter when I posted the blog, so I was in no way at fault. When he learned of what I had been told, even though the officers had grown nicer toward the end of our interaction, my dad still had harsh words for the police chief concerning the officers' demeanor in speaking with of me. He said that I was a victim in this alleged mismanagement of the lab, and that, furthermore, I had previously been the victim of violent crime, and that their treatment of me was highly inappropriate. The officers showed up at my house again, (when I saw them at the door, I ran into my bathroom and hid), but they were only there to apologize for frightening me when I had done nothing wrong and they had no cause to believe I would do anything wrong with regard to the inspection.

The inspection, AKA "raid," began at 1:20 p.m on a Wednesday. It was determined that someone  else would likely have assumed the identical duties to which I had been assigned, so it made the most sense to conduct the raid on one of the same days of the week that I  had worked. The inspection was videotaped, and I got to watch the videotape after the fact. The building was cleared of everyone, including clerical workers, except for the eleven interns who were working at the time, who were told to remain exactly where they were told to be at the time and to stay there until someone from the investigating team had spoken to them about what it was they were assigned to do and were asked very specific questions. Some of the guys were pretty laid-back about it, although one got upset enough that he had to be allowed to visit the bathroom. The four females didn't handle it nearly so well. Most just cried or were visibly shaken, but one hyperventilated and fainted. My dad took care of her until paramedics arrived on the scene.  He immediately carried her away from the biohazardous waste she was cleaning with no  gloves or mask, as just breathing any fumes from the stuff would be dangerous, but inhaling it in the manner one would when hyperventilating would be much worse.

This operation was basically being treated like a heroin bust when all it was really about was untrained interns handling biohazardous waste in a manner that might jeopardize their well-being. To me, it was a classic case of overkill. Still, there were things I didn't know at the time about the lab operation. Had I hung around for three  weeks, I would have found that I, as an undergraduate student,  was making determinations as to whether or not patients had leukemia, e coli, or appendicitis without anyone properly qualified confirming my diagnoses double-checking my findings.  All sorts of patients are needing to be retested, and it's possible, even likely,  that a cause of death in a particular case was due to a ruptured appendix and the resulting peritonitis from a misdiagnosis by a third-week intern.. By the time a death was discovered to have been attributable to the mismanagement, the whole affair ended up being far more serious than anyone thought. Someone  -- not an intern -- will be brought up on negligent homicide charges.

The interns were reassured the investigation had nothing to do with them except to the extent that they were being asked to assume duties for which they were not qualified to assume even with on-site training, and to perform some of those duties without proper safety equipment.  They were still scared. Someone called for a crisis counselor, and good old Dr. Jeff and one of his cohorts showed up on the scene to attempt to help the interns understand that they were victims in the scheme, not people on whom anyone would attempt to place blame.  Except for the sick girl, they were all taken to a local pizza parlor with  a private room and fed whatever they wanted from the pizza parlor's menu while being reassured that nothing regarding the inspection was their fault and that nothing that happened as a result of a misdiagnosis on their part was their fault.  The interns who had reached week three were told that they were merely looking at slides under microscopes for their own benefit and training.
If one of them were told to look into a microscope and make a diagnosis, it wouldn't make any difference if he or she had erred, as they had been asked to do something for which they had not been properly trained, and had been assured that their findings were not being considered diagnoses. They were merely, as non-employees and volunteers who needed positive evaluations for their resumes, following directions by people they believed in good faith were following standard procedure.

The girl who hyperventilted spent the next two nights in the hospital. The pathogen of which she was disposing needed to be idetnified, and  herlugs treated for possible inhalation. my dad saw each day until she was reeased and said she was fine both physically and emotionally on the day she was released. She had been, quite understandiblt, terrified by the whole experience, but once everything calmed down, she received her precautionary treatment and was even able to assist in her tretment. my dad talked to her arnts over the phone. He said that he would send them the names and sumbers of several good lawyers, and to to worry about her hospital bill, as it would be sent directly to the lab's accounting department.

The way this and similar labs work is that both the hospital and the clinic run their own labs, but they cannot require patients to utilize their labs, If another lab offers the same procedure for less, the hospital has to allow the patient to choose. Furthermore, there are certain operations that hospital and clinic labs do not undertake on their own. The only obvious thing I can think of off the top of my head is kidney stone analysis, but I know there are many other lab-related services that hospitals, doctors' offices, the main diagnostic clinic here, and other smaller clinics don't handle. They rely on this la and other labs to take care of such diagnostics. In the future, it won't be THIS lab on which they'll be relying.

Any one intern who served any period of time at all with this particular clinic will be given credit for a full internship. In theory, that includes me. My dad told me I should do another internship anyway, because an internship in a lab is a valuable experience, and two days of unsafely clearing pathogens and cleaning restrooms did not give me the worthwhile experience that one should gain from an internship. He said that I should not list it on my medical school resume, but should list the time with no institution or experience attached but, rather,  with an asterisk, and then explain when asked in an interview. He said listing it might appear to be taking credit for two days worth of work and trying to pass it off as an extra internship, but not to list it at all might be considered equally disingenuous in terms of trying to disassociate myself from a highly unethical and dishonest organization, even though I'm way too far down on the food chain to be considered responsible for anything that went wrong.

My dad said he's going to advise those who did not complete the internship but who were given credit to complete at least another short internship. An internship is "recommended' but not required, but a serious candidate needs a lab internship on his or her resume. Which brings me to where I am right now.

I'm doing a weekend internship in a hospital lab up the road about thirty-five miles up the road from where I live,near my Uncle Steve's home and practice. I'll drive up either Friday night or Saturday morning, Spend seven hours a day in the lab on Saturdays and Sundays, when they're understaffed and needy. At first I'll be a gopher, but I'll gradually be trained in their lab's  technique , which is, I hope, not far different from the lab technique of most of my classes. As I progress, I'll actually prepare slides under supervision, and will look through the lenses of microscopes, at first after being told what for which to look, but later, to actually see if I can make an educated guess as to what it is I am seeing.

I'm now completing the first of my eight weekends. (I will be off on labor day weekend.). I went to work at six, and am off now until tomorrow at 6:00 a.m.  I will stay Saturday nights, as well as some Friday nights at Uncle Steve's house with his family. I still have a room there -- Uncle Steve's office that he hardly ever uses -- with a flat screen TV with cable and a Westin bed. It's not a bad place to be. I genuinely like my Uncle Steve, Aunt Heather, and their son and daughter. I haven't spent as much time with them since we all moved from northern California to the central coast of California,and I miss them. Before, they were only about two blocks away from our house, and now they're thirty miles or so up the road. I see Uncle Steve when I'm sick, and we see them for family gatherings, but before, if it wasn't every day, it was several times a week, and Aunt Heather usually took care of me if i was sick and my parents were working. They're two very important people in my history (I was only three when the two of them started dating) and it makes me sad to see them not so often. I'm glad for the opportunity to spend time with them on the weekend for the next eight weekends or so. I hope they feel the same way. 

Over Labor Day weekend, I'm going to stay with their children while Uncle Steve and Aunt Heather go to Santa Cruz, and I hope to provide free babysitting on several occasions while I'm staying with them so that they can go out for dinner or a movie or whatever.

I suppose all is well that ends well, but things didn't end well for the person whose white count was ridiculously miscalculated and who subsequently died of appendicitis, nor will it end well for the person or people deemed to have been responsible for his death.

#

P.S. It  doesn't appear that the professor who sent the students to the lab for their internships acted in any way in bad faith. He possibly should have inspected the place more carefully, but the lab personnel likely wouldn't have allowed him to see what was really going on inside there, anyway.

Just give Me a Reason (to Throw a Nerf Football at Your Head)

my dad's weapon of choice

Late Tuesday night / early Wednesday morning, I wrote of my experiment I conducted purely in the interest of science, when I played Chopin's Fastasie Impromptu at 12:45 a.m. to see how long it would  take my parents to figure out it was not my brother  Matthew -- from whom they tolerate such rudeness --   but I who was actually the one playing. I'll give them credit, as I think it only took them about eight bars to tell the difference. I thought I had most of the way to the andante cantabile. I'm guesssing, because I have to factor in the amount of time it took my dad to find a nerf football, which he threw from the very top of the stairs directly at the side of my head.  It was a direct hit.

I'm not good at estimating distances, but that particular staircase is long, and he was throwing halfway across the living room as well, and our living room isn't small. I think he hit me right where he intended to, because even a nerf ball can hurt someone if it's thrown hard and hits the person somewhere like right in the eye. He nailed it. Had he been just a bit bulkier (he's 6'1" and weighs in at abut 160, built somewhat like a distance runner) he might had had a career as an NFL quarterback, and our lifestyle might have been a bit more luxurious.   He was actually a four-sport athlete, but spent most of his time time playing tennis. As it is, I can't complain too much, because I live in a nice community and  in a nice home, the nicest part of which is my bedroom and bathroom. Still, we  could've been stinking rich if he'd just eaten a little better and spent more time lifting weights. He also got his mother's thin gene, which didn't help. On the other hand, he could have gotten his father's bulk, but along with it, his father's brains, or lack thereof, and could have turned out to be something like the character of Matilda's dad in the Roald Dahl book that was later a movie. (It's one of the few movies I liked roughly as much as I like the book.  It was well-cast, and the Danny Devito narrations were perfect.)

This is thoroughly off-topic, but when I was younger and loved imagining I had someone other than my own parents as parents, the celebrity couple I had picked out as my ideal parents was Rhea Perlmann and Danny DeVito. Sadly, they split not long ago, and they'd been together for quite some time. I hope things worked out OK for both of them, because they seem like genuinely nice people.

Anyway, back to my impromptu midnight piano concert,  My dad yelled down,  predictably enough, "What the fuck are you doing?" immediately after he had gotten my attention with his football-to-the-head maneuver.

"Matthew does it all the time," I said in reply.

"Matthew also thinks he's been successful if he pisses within a foot of the toilet,"  my dad countered. (This is true. One of the great moments of my life was when we moved to our last house in northern California and I no longer had to share a bathroom with him. To my mother's credit, every day since he was seven years old that  she wasn't  [or isn't] too sick to to deal with it, my mother has walked into his bathroom, and if it fails the sniff test, he has to throughouly scrub the toilet area -- walls, floor, toilet itself -- the works. My parents put a urinal in his current bathroom because he seems to do better with those. Regardless, he's become adept at cleaning bathrooms. If he flunks out of med school, he will make a fine janitor.)

The implication was the same as always. More is expected of me than of Matthew, either because I'm female, or because my mental development isn't that of the Australopithecus afarensis species.  My dad and I sometimes call or refer to my brother as "Lucy." He doesn't remotely get the reference. I think he believes we're talking about Lucille Ball, and he can't understand why we would see any resemblance, physical or otherwise. We don't, obviously, but explaining it to him would be like explaining calculus to a three-month-old. My mom thinks we're mean and that we'll hurt Matthew's self esteem. She's wrong. One of the few things in this world that's safe is Matthew's self esteem.

As I stopped playing piano and headed upstairs to my room, I grabbed the Nerf football and took it with me. I knew I would need it soon, if not the very next night. It turned out that it was the next night I needed it.

At almost precisely 3:00 a.m. I was awakened by what sounded like a two-by-four hitting the keys of the Steinway downstairs, yet miraculously getting the most of the right notes to Pink's most recent hit, ''Just Give Me a Reason," which Matthew seems to love to play now. He finds a different song about once every four weeks and beats it into the ground until the song of the month has the effect of  the proverbial scratching on a chalkboard to everyone who lives here. It's funny, but when he plays in the daytime, he still has a bit of the "lead wrist" effect, but it doesn't sound like he's hittting the piano keys with a sledgehammer. I wonder if  alcohol could be involved. He wasn't driving last night, so it is a possibility.  (I know people can change or lie or break pledges, but Matthew and I are both fairly firmly committed to not driving while under the influence of anything stronger than Kool-Aid, and we both signed notarized agreements before we were given titles to our cars that if we were caught by either our parents or law enforcement officials driving  or having driven in a state of intoxication, we would forfeit ownership of our cars.)

Anyway, I gave my dad about halfway through the song to react. He didn't react, because, in his justification, it was "Lucy" with whom he was dealing.  I got out of bed,  picked up the Nerf football, which I had stored on a shelf in my room even though it was neither pink, black, nor white (it  stuck out like a sore thumb for those twenty-six hours, but the aesthetic irritation was well worth the brief eisode of OCD triggered by it), walked to my parents door, which was open a crack, and went in. (My parents close and lock their door when they need privacy, but ever since the brick and rock went through my window, they've left their door slightly open at night when they're not especially in need to be behind a closed door.) I thrust the Nerf football in my dad's face, waking him up since the  sound of the iron meat tenderizer on the piano keys didn't see to do the job.  "Someone is playing the piano in the middle of the night. It's time for you to throw the football at his head. That's what you do to people who play the piano after you're  asleep. Remember?"

He threw the football back at me and pulled the covers over his head. From under the cover, I heard him mutter, "Throw the damned football at him yourself  if you want. I'm not getting out of bed."

My mother is a lighter sleeper than my dad. She had already heard the piano being axe-murdered to the tune of the lovely Pink song. She just hadn't bothered to do anything about it, as she hadn't when I played the night before, either.  "John," my mother said, "you need to be fair. Just because Alexis doesn't hose down half the bathroom with urine is no reason Matthew should be allowed to play the piano at this hour. And your throw needs to be equally accurate. If  you miss, we'll tell everyone you're losing your touch."

My dad said a few choice curse word as he somehow got himself into an upright position. I handed him the football and followed him to the top of the staircase. "Go back to bed, " he muttered at me.

"I wanna make sure you actually hit him, " I answered. I can now mildly disobey and talk back a bit as long as it's not blatant since I'm eighteen.

I followed my dad to the stairs. He paused momentarily, then fired the Nerf ball, nailing Matthew maybe a bit harder and only slightly higher on his head than he had hit me the previous night.  Considering that he was only half awake, it was impressive.

"What the fuck?" Matthew hollered. The foam rubber blow to his head shook him out of a deep Pink reverie.

"Go to bed, Matthew," my dad said. "You do not come home  and start banging on the piano after every sane person in the house is asleep."


"You never compained before, " Matthew complained. "I thought you liked my piano playing."

"I like it just fine before midnight,"  my dad answered, "but you don't need to be waking people up like this. There are seventeen hours in a day that you can play when no one will complain. I don't want you playing between midnight and 7:00 a.m anymore. Go to bed."

I slipped into my room before Matthew made it up the stairs so he wouldn't suspect I had anything to do with Dad's sudden change of heart regarding Matthew's middle-of-the-night concerts.  It was probably a needless action, though. In his state of inebriation, I doubt that Matthew would literally have been able to put two and two together and come up with four, much less infer that I was in any way responsible for the Nerf football in his head.

Matthew's kindred spirits

I'm Turning Into My Brother

This is obviously not my father (the scrubs he sleeps in are a paler shade of blue, and he does not sleep with a stethoscope around his neck) but this is roughly what I expect to see in a few minutes.

I'm not trying to turn myself into Matthew in any sort of literal sense. I'm not having a sex change operation, for starters. For that matter, I'm not even cross dressing.  To do so would require some serious shopping, and I don't wish to spend money on clothing that wouldn't even be comfortable, although, come to think of it, if I thought I got shock value out of Slut Week -- the brief interval when I dressed like a total skank -- what would my classmates and professors think if I started dressing like a boy? The thought is intriguing, but I'm not going to do it.

The way in which I'm turning into my brother is that I'm becoming rude. If Matthew comes home at 2;00 a.m. , isn't tired, and can't find anything worth watching on TV, he plays the living room piano. Loudly. And not all that well. I taught him the best I could. My mother couldn't teach him at all; she threw her hands in the air in disgust and said, "Some people are not meant to play the piano!"  When I taught Matthew, we never got past the moderate classics -- stuff like Moonlight Sonata, Clementi's Sonatina in G, and Mozart's Sonata Facile in C --though it was much further thn my mom ever thought he'd get.. He can sightread a bit, and he can learn a piece of sheet music if he plays through it a few times. He even plays by ear a little. What most of us don't want, though, is to hear Pink's "Just Give Me a Reason" at 2:00 a.m. played on a Steinway by someone who seems to have lead weights around his wrists.

I can't sleep. it's 12:58, not 2;00 a.m. I have a piano in my room, which I could play if I really wanted to, but I'm sure I'd soon be told to stop. There's also a piano in the loft, but that's still pretty close to the bedrooms. If I go down to the living room to the Steinway, my parents will first think it's Matthew, because Alexis doesn't do rude things like play the piano after midnight. Eventually, however, they'll notice that what is being played is not something by Pink or maybe Beethoven's Fur Elise, but a Bach Partita or  a Chopin Etude. They will put 1 + 1 together and come up with 2. My parents,,while clueless regarding some social issues, are not entirely stupid. They'll be able to tell the difference between my playing and Matthew's.

The question is will they leave well enough alone when they would  tolerate the same behavior from Matthew, or will one of them come downstairs and tell me to shut the hell up? My prediction: I'll start the piece, which is going to be Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu, and before I even reach the andante cantabile section,  my father will be standing at the bottom of the stairs in his polished cotton surgical scrubs in which he sleeps in cool weather locations (I won't share what he sleeps in, or doesn't sleep in, in warm weather locations) asking me what the fuck I think I'm doing.

I'm mainly doing this in the interest of science. Human behavior, and the prediction of such, is a fascinating area of study. I'll let you know tomorrow (or, more precisely, later today) how it went.

                     What I will be playing momentarily, though I admit, not quite as beautifully, although, I will note that Yundi Li IS using using music, and I don't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvm2ZsRv3C8

                         

What my brother would be playing, or probably will be paying at 2:00 a.m tomorrow night or the next.


                                        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWI6O0pP2aM

White Trash Temple Wedding Extravaganza

Eat at your own risk.

This blog will be relatively short by my standards because I have to go check out some Tom Trails videos which were popular in LDS seminary when y dad was a kid. I've never seen a filmstrip, so it will be an educational experience.

The latest on my cousin Celeste's wedding is that she and her mom tried making a practice wedding cake and it was the single biggest disaster in the history of baking. I suggested to my mom that she suggest to them that they   get one of those tiered trays that displays cupcakes beautifully and master the art of making cupcakes or mini-cupcakes. they'll need to invest in (or have Uncle Mahonri steal) a device that frosts them nicely, because they just can't take a knife and spread frosting out of a can all over cupcakes when it's supposed to look really nice.  I just don't want them dumping this project in my grandmother's lap. she's getting old, and it's too much work for her. She can maybe advise them, but they cannot dump the whole project on her. There's no one currently in Utah we can trust to make sure that my grandma doesn't get stuck with the whole project.  If that happens, she'll be exhausted and maybe even too sick to go to the wedding and reception, and she should be the guest of honor.  My dad told her NOT to do it, nd he's calling her doctor about it as well.

There's a curtain between the chapel and the cultural hall in Mormon buildings. They're going to open the curtain, and they want my mom to play the piano the whole time. That's really gracious, isn't it? Invite someone to a wedding, don't actually let her come to the wedding because she's not worthy, then expect her to play the piano through the whole reception (for free when that's essentially what she does for a living). My mom said she doesn't care, though. She'd rather play the piano than hang around the relatives, and she says she'll play whatever she wants  regardless of what the bride and groom want, because she's fairly certain based on everything else she's heard about the bridal couple that they have no taste in music just like they have no taste in anything else.  Actually, she has to take part in a faculty recital a couple of weeks later, and she'll play mostly what she's playing for that, plus whatever pops into her head. She has a good memory just like my dad and I do. She doesn't need to bring music with her.

This LDS chapel supposedly has a nice Kawai piano, and my dad will tune it right before. My mom said it would be hysterical to have the curtain partly closed, to have me be the one playing the music, to have them all commenting on how beautiful the music is, and then to open the curtain all the way and show them that it's the Anti-Christ Child actually playing and not my mom, but that's not going to happen because I'm not going. My mom knows this; she was just speaking hypothetically.

I feel sorry for the people who attend this soiree, because if the people in charge don't take my advice and bake cupcakes, chances are the wedding cake WILL fall on the floor. The slobs making it will scrape it off the floor, re-frost it the best they can, and serve it to the guests using the five-minute rule. The five-second rule would be bad enough, but allowing people to eat cake that's been sitting on the floor of a building that is NEVER professionally cleaned (LDS Inc. makes the proletariat clean the buildings on a "volunteer" basis) sounds like a case of salmonella, e coli, or worse just waiting to happen.

Gotta check out Tommy Trails and practice a little more piano and violin. Ciao.

#

Somehow, even though certain specifics of the song aren't particularly pertinent, it fits. By the time the bride's father is dressing in black  and stealing neighbors' flowers in the dead of night in a completely futil attempt to dishuise basketball hoops, and the weding cake has been scraped off the floor AT LEAST once, the event is pretty white-trashy. This is the Dixie Chicks performing "White Trash Wedding."  Someone really clever shoud come up with a "White Trash Temple Wedding"  version of the song. Maybe the Osmonds, The King Family descendants, or even the Three Dees if they're stilll alive, could record it.

Surfin' USA

It just looks like fun, but is it more dangerous than the naked eye can detect?

My parents will be most happy, should they read this, to know that I'm airing the dirty laundry of people who are related neither by blood nor by marriage to my family. Furthermore, I will leave out identifying factors so that unless you know these people well, you won't now of whom I write.

The husband in this family is a surfer. He belongs to a large and exclusive surfing association that meets in various locales once or twice a month to hone their skills and enjoy their sport.  In this association are surfers who would be considered among the top echelon or surfers around,  a few entertiners who surf, as well as paramedics and professional water rescue squad members.  If he has to surf, he probably couldn't be in better company. Also among the group are law enforcement members, and so the group is generally pretty safe from thug surfers. From the words of an ancient Beach Boys song (I can't remember what song, so I can't say), "The bad guys know us and they leave us alone."

The group is going to Hawaii in January.  The husband would like to go, but not without his wife. The wife has to work that week. she would have to call in major favors to get the week off, and she's not sure she should do that.  The wife says the husband should go and have a good time, and call her every night to make sure he hasn't been tossed into a coral reef or eaten by a shark. The husband won't go without his wife, so he wants to go the following week with her and not with the rest of the group. The wife thinks if he's going to go at all, he needs to go with the group because of the whole "safety in numbers" factor.

They're at an impasse, but they're civil people. They aren't mad at each other because they cannot agree on this one issue. They'll probably continue to have sex. They're just having trouble working through this. Incidentally, the wife would prefer that the husband not surf, period, but it was an understanding reached even before they became engaged.  He would surf -- not forever, as he knows that there comes a time to hang it up with certain sports, surfing being one of them, but at least through his twenties, he would surf.

The husband tossed out an idea to the rest of us while she was out of the room that he play a round of golf with wifey's boss and see what can be done about her schedule.  We were split on that one. I said she'll be furious when she finds out he's gone behind her back, and the females agreed with me.. The males present said "Go for it!"

He's going to do what he's going to do, and she'll react however she'll react, so it's pointless to take a poll as to which side is right.

My question is this: Just how dangerous is surfing as a sport if one doesn't take unnecessary chances? any ideas? I was thinking of trying it myself.

Preview of Recital

This is actually the CD cover, and is made to look like a Schirmer & Co. music manuscript. The edition I have of this song isn't even by Schirmer, nor is most of the music I'm playing now.

My Uncle scott didn't work today because he was helping his sister move. The van arrived there (about foty-five minutes from here) at 8:00 a.m. sharp, and by three, they even had the pictures hung, There was a lot of help and it was all very organized.

People are showing up here for pizza. Brooke, the sister who is moving in down the road, doesn't want to sleep in the new house until Thursday when the whole family arrives from Utah.  The three girls still in Utah will fly here with their father on Thursday. She's here with her twin baby girls Jillian and Kristina, and her one-year-old, Bristol.  I almost said twin baby birds, because the twins look like little birds -- cute birds, but birds just the same.

Scott was tired and wanted to vegetate, so he told me to play the piano for him. I told him I would play everything I had chosen for my senior recital, nd he could critique my selections. He doesn't really need to critique technique right this very minute, as there's time for that later, and I'm more at ease if it's not errors in fingering or sloppy use of the pedal he's listening for. My mom came in to listen  as well.   I didn't play my surprise encore, of course, because no one will know that.  I might tell my mom on the day, but mostly I'll practice it when she's not home.

Anyway, even though they weren't in theory critiquing technique, both said I'm virtually ready to go. My mom said she still wouldn't trade for the September date if she were I, because  it's too much pressure, and while I'm ready, there's always the encore to think about.   My Uncle Scott thinks I have more music than I need, and he recommended tossing the Buxtehude. That surprised me. I thought if anyone wanted anything tossed, it would be Handel's "Harmonious Blacksmith," but he and my mom said that was too perfect and very suited to me, and needs to stay. I wasn't in love with the Buxtehude.  Uncle Scott said he plays Chopin's "Fantaisie Impromptu" but not as well as I do. I'm not sure that's true, but if I even play it as well, it is high praise. Both he and my mom loved Billy Joel's Fantasies and Delusions and agreed it must stay.

Pizza should be here soon. I'll play with Bristol, the one-year-old, until it arrrives.

#

Program for Senior Recital in Piano

What I looked like  few years ago, and why I shouldn't be penalized for practicing while my contemporaries were dancing to Hannah Montana.

                                            Prospective Line-Up For Senior Recital


Buxtehude's Suite in D major
Handel's Harmonious Blacksmith Theme and Variations in

Bach Partita #5 in G major

Haydn Sonata in D major XVI.37
Mozart Sonata K33 in B-flat Major

John Field Nocturne #8 in E-flat*
Ludvig  van Beethoven Sonata #31 Opus 110 in A-flat major
Frideric Chopin - Fantaisie Impromptu


Billy Joel - Fantasies and Delusions

All four periods of music - baroque, classical, romantic, and modern, must be represented. I wasn't sure the department would accept the Billy Joel as a modern classic, but it was from his brief foray into modern classical music, and however unacclaimed it might have been by the serious critics when it came out, its intended genre was clearly "modern classic." I like the sund of it enough that i won't go crazy in perfecting it. I can play it, but not quite to the level of perfection required for a senior music performance major's recital. (Music education majors are required to fulfill senior recitals as well, but the standards for passage are much less demanding.)

I'm not pulled toward the really BIG pieces, but a candidate must include at least one and ideally two selections that are impressive in part for their loudness. The Chopin and Beethoven work are both relatively big-sounding, although the Fantaisie Impromptu does have the dolce midsection. It begins begins big, and ends big until the final eight bars. The Chopin work has the advantage of its degree of difficulty being off the charts. I've always loved it and have been working on it since I was eight years old. My professor doesn't know that and doesn't need to know it. The ajudicattion panel neither knows nor needs to know it. What I did before I arrived at the university is really not the university's business. If I was playing Chopin while someone else was singing along with to Britney Spears, I should not be penalized.  It would be one thing if I had played the Chopin piece for a senior recital elsewhere and then tried to play it for a master's recital here, but such is not the case. It has not been used for audition or academic credit purposes, which is all that matters. It's my ace in the hold, to which I've been holding it for a long time.

The Buxtehude, Mozart, Hadyn, and Bach are solid and impressive parts to one's repertoire. The Handel ("Harmonious Blacksmith") is arguably the most questionable piece in the line-up in terms of degree of difficulty, but l've always loved it, and when you love something, it comes through in the playing of it. The Field Nocturne gives rightful credit to the Irishman who  pioneered the nocturne as a legitimate music form, and it seemed right to honor him as such.

This line-up allows me to drop one piece from anything but the modern era (the Billy Joel "Fanatsies and Delusions") or to use any one of the above works  except the Joel selection I've chosen to repreent the modern era,  as an encore.  

In terms of an encore, it's the very least of my troubles, as an encore is "not supposed" to count against you, as sheets are to be handed over to the chair prior to the playing  of any encore, though it can count in your favor if especially well-received. Panel members can use addendum sheets to add points but not to subtract. For that reason, it is wise to keep your choice of encore highly confidential. If a panel member knows of your encore selcetion and doesn't like your choice for some reason, he or she may arbitrarily take points off elsewhere long before you even play your encore. I'd love to think no one would do such a thing, but we're dealing with human beings, and who knows what department member my mother may alienate between now and November, causing me to pay the price? (I've told my mom who is on my panel, and I'v told her to sty the helll away from them except when absolutely necessary. I'd tell her to kiss up to them, but I know her to welll and a)she wuldn't do it; and b) if she tried, she'd screw it up. I'm just lucky my dad doesn't work with any of these people. He'd botch things beyond repair, and I could kiss medical school good-bye.  

I will be vague if not outrightly untruthful with my professor in terms of what is my encore selection. In addition to on of the other pieces from my lineup that I may drop to the encore position, I'm considering Billy Joel's Nocturne. Though the nocturne wasn't from the same time period as the rest of Joel's foray into the classics, it clearly has a "classics" feel to it. If I'm feeling really good about everything else, I'll thrown in Billy Joel's "Nocturne" as an encore. If not, I have seventy or so pieces I can throw in at a moment's notice. I can afford to leave that until literally the very last moment.  come to think of it, I'll float a rumor among my peers that I'm playing something by Schubert as my encore.  Schubert is as perfectly benign as a composer can be.

For that matter, I read of someone who did a senior recital at Pepperdine and played that "Music Box Dancer" song, and not even as her encore. It has three freaking chords! I heard it once and went to the piano to play it by ear when I was about five, and my dad told me never, ever to play it again when he was home.  I don't know if the Pepperdine music department's standards have tightened since then (this was maybe fifteen years ago) but if not, I'm getting my music degrees from th wrong school.

The sequence does not need to follow the sequence in which the pieces were written, or even the sequence of the eras. I did not consult my mother in the least in my selections for the recital. If you read this soon, you'll see the list before she will see it. In terms of sequence, however, I will be heavily influenced by her suggestions. My instincts tell me to begin with the Haydn, and, if my energy will hold out, to end with the Chopin. As to what comes between, however,  I haven't a clue as to what is most advantageous.













*incidentally, referred to as #9 when arranged fo other instrumentation, but Filed himlef wrte it as #8 for piano

don't sleep nd type 2.0: cleaned up a bit

In my delirious state, I neglected to capture a pictureof the real thing. Mine was much more impressive, even though this one has been magnified to be just under four times the size of mine. but you can get the essence of the stone from this stock photo.

In retrospect, I don't think I had as much to say as I thought I did in my last post. Rather than edit, it was easier to start over. I could have deleted it, but instead I was at that particular moment in time, and as a reminder to all that lack of sleep can incapacitate a person every bit as much as alcohol or drugs can, and that one should keep that in mind before getting behind the wheel of a car in a tired state.

My main point was, if I can both decipher what I typed and remember what was going through my brain, that I had passed my very first kidney stone, which I didn't even know I had until shortly before I passed it. It was probaby responsible for my illness not long ago. I'd experienced pain,  and it was significant pain, but it wasn't enough that I wanted to endure multiple tests  and I didn't want to be given drugs, so I toughed it out and stayed away from everyone so they wouldn't notice, which they didn't.  No one around here can have a simple sideache. It has to be something serious, or at least we have to treat it as though  it is.

The pain, though not of the magnitude that I had heard many stone patients describe it, had kept me awake for all of two previous nights. That would have been the reason for my incoherence when I typed my last post.

Anyway, had the stone not been so massive, I might not have noticed it, as I'm not in the habit of inspecting the contents of the bowl before I flush after each use, but 13 mm by 8 mm is tough not to notice. I don't know how much background or personal experience most of you have with the lovely phenomena known in the medical community as as urinary calculi but known more commonly by most of us as *#$^$!#!! kidney stones.  There are a variety of  reasons for and components of urinary calculi. My stone is being tested for its composition as I type. My dad, who now is an expert on kidney stones in addition to his myriad of other areas of expertise, says it looks like a classic calcium oxalate urinary calculus.

Anyway, for those of you who do not claim to have the level of expertise my dad claims, the rock-like formations form in the kidneys (hence the vernacular description "kidney stone")  and may remain inside a kidney for as long as they're comfortable there. The real trouble begins when a calculus begins its descent through the urinary tract. A stone leaves the kidney -- left or right, whichever kidney in which it has chosen to form --  through the ureter of the same side. Note that it leaves initially through the ureter, not the urethra. The ureters connect the kidneys to the bladder. The bladder then passes urine out of the body through the urethra. Classic stone issues begin once a stone has entered the ureter. The ureter cramps from time to time sometimes quite severely in the presence of a stone, even if the stone is relatively small. When the stone moves along, pain usually accompanies the movement as well. Sometimes a stone partially or totally blocks a ureter so that urine backs up into or stays in the kidney. This causes the most pain of all. If it continues for any length of time, it will lead to infection and can ultimately lead to kidney failure. Fortunately, by the time a stone has accomplished this much damage, a person is usually very ill. Symptoms, while a pain both figuratively and literally, exist for a reason, which is to let a person know that something is not quite right with his or her body.

For me, amazingly enough for a stone of that size, my ureter was never 100% blocked, or at least not for any significant length of time. I did experience  a couple of UTI's, which I self-diagnosed with over-the -counter tests. I've found that their results match up very well with my doctor's tests. What the tests don't note, however, is trace elements of blood in the urine, which is a classic sign of a urinary calculus.  In this regard, I might have been better off seeing my doctor, I admit.  What I did instead was to use a stockpile of antibiotics I have from when antibiotics have been switched on me mid-illness. This took care of each infection, but the damned infections kept coming back. Then I had an actual illness, though I didn't have a fever, which is idicative that the infection wasn't running rampant and the kidney wasn't blocked.

A few days ago I lost the ability to like to accomplish a vital body function. Sensations in tandem with this inability to pass body fluids made the nature of the problem obvious. I had three options: A) tell my parents;  B) seek medical attention on my own, as I am a legal adult; C) use what I know to solve the problem myself, knowing that if I didn't have almost immediate success, I would have to resort to option A or B.

I like to take care of things myself if I can. I took an anti-nausea tablet because I knew keeping fluid down would be a challenge. By this time I, even with my lack of genius, knew that it was a stone with which I was dealing, and I knew that it had to have passed through the ureter and bladder into the urethra. Usually once a  stone has reached the urethra, you're basically home free. The issue was that very rarely will a stone large enough to get itself stuck in the urethra ever make it that far in the first place. Usually a stone of such magnitude will have been  jammed in the ureter and have to be shockwaved out or otherwise surgically removed. Rare exceptions occur, though, and I was dealing with one.

The plan was to give myself ninety minutes to blast the stone from its temporary quarters in my urethra. I'm aware the dangers  of water intoxication, otherwise known as dilutional hypotranemia. (I became aware of it through a news story regarding a radio promotional contest that awarded a Wii to the person who could consume the most water in a given amount of time. A mother really wanted to win the Wii for her children and, in the process, drank so much water that she died while accepting the prize.)  Had I been able to drink Gatorade, I would have, but it's on my Donner Party List, and the list isn't arbitrary; I don't just put things on the list to irritate my parents or to make a point to corporations. (It's a moot point now that I'm eighteen, anyway. I eat and drink what I want.) Relying on  a human physiology textbook, I determined I could, at my size, safely consume 2.5 quarts of fluid in ninety minutes, if I even got that far,  without risking danger to myself.  I let the anti-nausea tablet dissolve, then gathered my beverages while waiting for the tablet to take effect. My mom noticed me carrying lemonade, 7-up, root beer, and grape soda up to my room. (Something non-alcoholic besides H2O is safer than pure water in terms of water intoxication.) She asked if I was expecting company. I just told her my refrigerator supplies were getting low. I have a mini-fridge in my bedroom.

The plan, as I devised it relying upon Internet knowledge***, was to space the beverages out over the course of ninety minutes.  I needed to consume a 12-ounce can (or glass in the case of lemonade -- I only drink the good stuff) every thirteen minutes.  It wasn't all that hard. I once had a colonoscopy, and compared to the Fluid of Satan that you have to drink for that, a can of soda every thirteen minutes was a trip to the zoo.  The idea is that you will feel the urge to visit the bathroom, but to hold on as long as you reasonably can so that the pressure will be at its maximum. After four cans of soda and one glass of lemonade, it was the "now or never" moment. I knew if the stone could not be blasted out at that point, a trip to the E.R was in the immediate works.

God must've known the ER personnel had better things to do than to deal with kidney stone patients, because that puppy blasted right out of there.  I gave myself a few moments to recover, then left my bathroom in search  of rubber gloves.  I put on the rubber gloves and did the unthinkable, which was to reach into the toilet (yuck even with rubber gloves) and pluck the nasty little bastard out of the bowl and into a jar.

There was no point in postponing the inevitable. I took the stone to show my mom. I was glad my dad wasn't home, because he would've had more incriminating questions to ask, though my mother herself is a kidney stone veteran. I have no clue as to what her stone count is, but I know it's more than twenty.

"YOU PEED THIS OUT?!?" my mom demanded. She may have passed more stones than I , but never one that large without assistance, apparently.

"No, mother, I went outside and found a rock and brought it in here so I could tell you it was a kidney stone and you would feel sorry for me. OF COURSE I PEED IT OUT!  Why would I say I did if I didn't?" I responded

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "I've just never seen one that big that came out on its own. Damn, that must've hurt!"

"It did," I concurred. "I'd never seen one, period," I told her. "I didn't know it was unusual."

"This," my mother told me,  "is  probably the excretory equivalent of having delivered a sixteen-pound baby vaginally."

"This doesn't mean some OBGYN will think I'm capable of doing THAT?" I asked her.

"No," she replied. "The two have nothing to do with each other, thank God. I don't think there would ever be room inside you for a sixteen-pound baby anyway." She paused. "I need to call Daddy." My dad was doing one of his once-or-twice a month stints in the E.R. He needs to spend X number of hours in direct contact with patients in order to maintain his license to practice medicine.

"It's already out, Mom," I pleaded with her.  "Do we have to call him?"  More than anything, I was concerned about the possibility of a pelvic exam of some sort.

"Just because it's out doesn't mean no damage was done," she answered, "and is that why you were taking all those sodas up to your room? Did you know something was wrong?" she demanded.


"Sort of, but I had things under control, and it's neither here nor there now that it's out," I answered.

"Not really, but we'll address that later," she said as she picked up her phone and speed-dialed my dad. It went to his voicemail, so she called the hospital and asked that he be paged. Though I could only clearly hear her end of the conversation, I could tell from the volume of the Charlie Brown's teacher sounds coming from the phone that  he was his usual  [sarcasm font] calm [end sarcasm font]  self.  Fortunately his shift was to be all night. In the morning he would be too tired to be so vitriolic, or at least I hoped such would be the case.  He told my mom he would have her bring me to the ER, but that they were so packed that I would be better off at home. He was sending a doctor friend to take my vitals  and to collect blood and urine, as well as the precious stone, to take to the hospital.

A few minutes later DR. Jeff, AKA Chairman Mao, came to our door with his bag.  He lives three houses down and around the corner.  He took blood, asked for a urine sample, checked my pressure, and felt for my pulse. "You're not dead," he told me.

"You must have graduated Number One  in your medical school class, " I told him.

He smiled and and said, "You're rubbing salt in a wound." My dad graduated Number One in their med school class. Dr. Jeff graduated Number Two. Dr. Jeff  knew very well that I was aware of that.  The topic comes up frequently.


 He gave me an antibiotic shot. He told me that he wasn't giving me a painkiller until we had evidence from the blood test that nothing was seriously wrong with the kidneys. In absence of lab evidence that everything was essentially OK, pain would be the best indication that anything was wrong. He made me pinkie promise to have my mom call him if pain got worse at all. He said he'd come over with a painkiller -- something good -- once the lab reults came back clear.

Then he asked for the stone. It pained me more than the stone itself had pained me to give up my prized possession. This was a relic.  "Will it be destroyed in testing?" I asked him.

"Probably," he answered, "but you've got to give it up."

I handed over the jar. He looked inside and exclaimed, "YOU PEED THIS OUT!?!"

My mom laughed hysterically because those were her exact words.

"No, " I answered, "I went outside and found a rock and brought it in here and told you that I peed it out so you would feel sorry for me," I said again. "OF COURSE I PEED IT OUT."

"Sorry," he said. "I know I'm not a urologist, but even though I'm just a shrink,  I went to medical school just like everyone else, and I've never seen one close to this that wasn't removed surgically.  Your dad is going to be proud."

"Good, " I answered. "Maybe it will partially cancel out how mad he's going to be."

"I wouldn't count on it," Dr. Jeff said as he headed out the door with the precious 13mm stone that I would never see again.

I won't go into all the gritty details, but we are all again on speaking terms.  No real harm was done.In terms of the ureter through which the stone passed, the stone accomplished one of two things: either it roto-rootered it so that I can easily pass large stones, or it scarred it to the point that a much smaller stone will have difficulty passing. Time will tell if the problem comes up again. If it doesn't, there's no reason to conduct expensive and invasive testing to determine the status of my right ureter.

I will say by way of disclaimer that I wouldn't recommend that people medically treat themselves in this manner. I'm just the curious sort, and in the interest of science, I wanted to see if I could solve the problem myself. I had my cellphone nearby to call 9-1-1 if necessary at any point, and I also had the home intercom system turned so that my mother could hear from anywhere in the house if I as much as groaned.

I'm now going out on the deck to practice my violin. My mother needs a break from hearing me. My room is relatively thick-walled, but a violin can be piercing with its highest notes. My mom said the neighbors will go crazy if I practice out here for more than an hour, but an hour of culture is probably good for them if I play through real pieces without stopping and repeating, and if I don't play scales.

I promise that this has not become Alexis' New Hypochondriac Journal. If  I have another medical problem, no matter how minor or major, in the next six months, you will not know about it.   If, God forbid, I have a heart transplant in three months, I'll blog about the birds I see from my window without ever mentioning where that window is. This I solemnly promise.


*** I know about that lemon juice and olive oil trick, with or without honey, but trying it would be pointless for me. I would only have tossed my cookies,  even with ondansetron. I'm picky. I could never stomach olive oil, with or without lemon juice or honey.

don't sleep nd type

Don't sleep and tye. This not I, but ot coud have ben,tion

I'm sleepy enough that I probably should not blog tonight, becuaue what I write will likely be nonsensical. Still, if I do not preserve my thghts tonight, they will mostt likely be lost forever, and some day I'll wonder about tonightht nd what seemed of such,z fniir I coild type them and save them to draft, but thsat's never really been how I roll. I put it out there for all the world to decipher. Some are better at decphering my gibberish than are others. anyone who has ever taught special ed could probaby relate to my "sleepy" posts quite well, ads those special ed people r probably convinced thy I possess some form of learning disabiity or other, my mom assures e tht i dont. She says I'm not a particular adept typist, especislisly considering my[ babukuty as a oianisrm of sther[  (I lef that in so you should see just how drugged out I am without the benefit of a single drug in my system other than a beta bocker, whc i take to keep my heart from racing tike  metroneone set way too fast . my hert rae ie i'm a horse running neck-and-neck against another horse in the fins stretch of that race.Such is fine when you;r a hrse trying t win the fina e of the trie crwn, but when you're an eighteen -year  -old gir trying to get thrugh coleg, it;s not such s terrifc trait.  If God wakes you up some night in the midde of the night and asks you if  yould like to have a case ot tachycardia just fr the fun of  it, tell him thanks, but no thanks. On the other had, if he offers yu the choice  beteen tachtcardia and leukemia, take the tachycardia.'

I passed what was presumably my first [juebdy dtne tidat=y, /u sysoected t might b e  ybubaebfurb48ugh] that, by the way, at was supposed to say was "kidney stone;'








'It WAS a kidney stone; the only subject of dispute was whether or  was not actually the very first one. I've had so many symptoms before, but my aunt who is nurse said the sypmtom could have been from ths stone, which was thirteen by eight millimeters.  I've been told that's th reproductive equivent to giving birth to a sixteen-pound baby. I've neer bern in the habit o inspectin the cntentd of thr toiet sfter I use it, so onoy Gof noes if any saller ones hve already made it out.  Once you have one, Aunt Jilian says, you have 50%  chance of havng anther. Once you'v had the second one, odds are strong that y i'm not yet sur where i fall on the luc sce-- ony that I had asixteen-pound baby (immaculate conception) kidney stone that still hurts but U'm told eill get bettr fst. if only I'd known al along, I  could've scored some good drugs, regardless, im not that uch of  a "fix 'er up" type of girI/ My preferenfe is to rcover on y ow if fasible withut doctor except th one I likr, snf even just to visit them.auabtum ojyidinibisfgdf,

My mom sys I shul go o slep snd fix rhi ins rh iin th e irnin, /she ays i is psitiv e prof tht driving whike hil excessivy pey ins every bit as hazardus as a dYU. i don't knoe but tham bt /u wooooooouo /I lookforward t discussing it withsomone wh7uutppto goodnight,
'

My Cousin's Big Fat Mormon Wedding -- or Is It My Big Fat Cousin's Mormon Wedding?

OK, so this is a slight exaggeration of what the guests at the reception will see-- for one thing, the cake is much more professionally done in the picture than the real one will be -- but it's close enough for readers to  get the gist.

My cousin is getting married next month.  My parents received an invitation to the wedding and reception. Despite the printed invitation, they cannot attend the wedding ceremony  because they are not holders of temple recommends, and the wedding will be held in the Draper, Utah Temple. They will go to the reception and eat peanuts and little mints and maybe a bit of wedding cake with punch. LDS receptions in my family are high-budget affairs [sarcasm font]. Seriously, if that's all the couple can afford, it makes more sense to do it that way than to incur any debt over a wedding. I would like to think that the parents of the bride and groom could have scraped together a few pennies -- hell, maybe they even could have bonded over  a "collect aluminum cans day"  -- for a very slightly higher-scale affair, but my cousin's father is the legendary Uncle Mahonri -- pilferer, plunderer, prowler, purloiner, whatever one might wish to call him as long as it means thief -- of goods and commodities from the homes of every relation on the planet. 

As far as the groom's family's financial situation goes, I haven't the faintest idea as to where they fall in the grand scheme of all things pecuniary. They could be living on skid row, or thy could be practically the Romneys. More likely, they fall somewhere in between, but figure that if the bride's family isn't coughing up anything of significance to provide a moderate wedding reception, why should they, although I can't help wondering if they'll be embarrassed to invite their friends to the debacle.  Then again maybe they and their friends fit right in with Mahonri's crowd. Furthermore, my cousin is a granddaughter of a high-ranking authority in the LDS church. That alone will give a person or family a bit of a pass in terms of the gossip or ridicule that otherwise might ensue. Perhaps this is the way the church is recommending that things be done now.

Mahonri probably should've directed his theft toward the purpose of supplying foods, paper products, and everything else he would need for his daughter's wedding reception about six months ago every time he visited one of our homes. Then again, perhaps he did. The mints and peanuts the guests  may be eating in a couple of weeks may very well have not come have come from Ridley's Family Market or WinCo but, rather, from my Uncle Michael's pantry.  The punch may have been a direct raid on my Uncle Steve's children's KoolAid supply for the summer. My parents may have provided the sugar.  I'm not sure who in the family stockpiles cake mixes and frostings, but with Mormons and their two-year food supply custom, surely someone among us does.

Someone still has to bake the cake and make it vaguely resemble a wedding cake, and neither Mahonri, Marthalene (the bride's mother ), nor Celeste (the bride) is capable  of making a cupcake that either looks or tastes like a cupcake, much less a wedding cake that does the same. My Aunt Celine is probably the least  sub-par of the bakers among that faction (if my use of the word faction to describe a portion of our family sounds as if we're a family at war, such is not far from the truth ) of the family, so she'll probably be roped into the task of making the wedding cake. 

If Celeste were just a bit nicer to those of use who live in California, my Aunt Joanne (wife of Uncle Michael, and therefore aunt-by-marriage to the bride) is highly adept at baking and decorating wedding cakes and probably would have offered her services.  It was a skill she mastered in high school, and she relied heavily on it to finance her way through medical school. She still bakes and decorates wedding cakes for special people in her life, of whom I hope someday to be one. Her cakes look like the ones you might see on the cake competitions on the Food Networks (the real wedding cakes -- not the ones where the competitors are supposed to incorporate Tom Sawyer Island or the Pirates of the Caribbean themes into their  cakes) or at Charm City Cakes or on the Cake Boss. She's an artist. On the other hand, she earns whatever it is medical specialists earn in a single day. Why should she forfeit that pay to drive or fly to Utah and bake a fantastic cake for someone who A) wouldn't appreciate it; and B) probably already helped herself [via her father] to all the peanuts and little pastel mints in Aunt Joanne's pantry to feed to her wedding reception guests?

The reception will be held at Celeste's family's local LDS chapel. Mahonri will steal flowers from unsuspecting neighbors' gardens to hang in and around the basketball hoops in an utterly futile attempt to disguise the hoops.(It's actually only the flowers that are disguised.) That's a hallmark of a Mormon wedding reception held at the ward meetinghouse: what innovative way will someone come up with to attempt to disguise the ever-present basketball hoops?  The best one I ever saw was a non-disguise. Halfway through the reception, planned or not, tables were pushed out of the way, and the groom and his buddies, and even a few bridesmaids,  picked up a basketball and started a full-court game right in the middle of the reception. It was a classic.  The bride stood on the sidelines cheering on her new husband.

Oddly, I saw the same thing at an LDS funeral once as well, if you can believe it. Mourners left the chapel and entered the "cultural hall" (more typically referred to in churches as a social hall, but that's a very minor distinction) to have a light lunch of foods prepared by the  members of the Relief Society, the LDS church's women's organization.  Tables were at one end of the cultural hall. The deceased woman's thirteen -year-old son saw a basketball sitting idly (remember Newton's theory about objects at rest tending to remain that way) and chose to put the object in question -- the basketball -- in motion.  At first the mother of the deceased was taken aback, but before she could raise an audible objection, players had chosen up sides and a half-court game was in progress.   The basketball game was fitting in the particular case,  as the deceased had been a college physical education instructor and had coached teams in numerous sports, including basketball. She would have approved, and I suspect, wherever she was, she considered it a proper send-off. I didn't participate in the game, but my father and brother both did.

Mahonri wouldn't have a basketball game at his daughter's wedding reception if for no other reason than that basketballs are more difficult to conceal when stealing -- he has a belly on him, but not that big of one -- and he does have his probation to consider.  While he might have gotten his jollies from the risk of ripping off some twelve-year-old's basketball, the logistics would have been tougher to pull together.  Just whose basketball would he steal, anyway,  and how could he know it would be where he thought it would be at the time he planned to steal it?   Flowers, on the other hand, don't walk or roll away, nor are they stored away in the rooms of adolescent boys. If  Mahonri had thought of it in December, he might have given his son a basketball as a Christmas present, which then could have been use as a decoration and activity at his daughter's wedding reception, but even then, he probably would have needed to surreptitiously "borrow  it to obtain it in the first place, which would have set the whole logistical chain in motion again.  Furthermore, Celeste had no plans to marry way back in December. She met her fiancé in June, he proposed in July, and the wedding will take place in August. It's hard to plan a wedding with "borrowed" goods on such short notice. Mahonri has done well to acquire the supplies he already has.

Ironically, if Mahonri  just asked nicely, the flowers would probably be given to him freely even though his neighbor's probably think he's a horse's butt,, but my suspicion is that Mahonri gets a thrill out of getting up before the sun is up and of sneaking into the yards of others to help himself to what is not rightfully his. He does need to be at least a little bit careful, as I'm not sure he's free and clear where his probation is concerned  from the charges stemming from his theft  ("borrowing"?) of a carton of disposable douches from the loading zone of a local big box store, but that probably only adds to the thrill for him. If the neighbors attend the reception, I wonder if they'll recognize their own flowers from their gardens.

What would be hysterical beyond belief would be if all the neighbors within a mile radius or so of Mahonri's house cut all their flowers from their yards before they went to bed the night before Celeste's wedding and reception. When Mahonri awoke, donned his dark clothing, and went out with plastic garbage bags and shears and found nothing left to cut, he might possibly lose bladder control. A man with Mahonri's history of theft is  not a man thoroughly absent of wiles, though, and it would eventually occur to him to drive to a neighboring community and obtain the flowers from the homes of the saints living there.  Dawn would be growing closer, which would increase his chances of being caught in the act, but it might only add to the thrill for Mahonri.

As to my attendance at the wedding reception, it won't happen. I was not invited. The outer envelope listed my parent's names. The inner envelope listed very specifically, "Brother and Sister Rousseau and Matthew."  I was in my Aunt Marthalene's handwriting, so they cannot blame the omission on  a clueless member of the groom's family. Aunt Marthalene knows perfectly well that my parents have two children. It was a most deliberate omission, and, I might add, a most unnecessary omission. The aunt and uncle who left me in the smoke-filled house, then blamed me because child welfare services took its time in conducting its final investigation and returning their two youngest children to the family, will be present at the wedding.  There were more details in the negligent care I was given while under their supervision than I have chosen to share here. What I have just relayed scarcely scratches the surface of the horror  I suffered at their hands.  After a single court proceeding at which I appeared where they were present,  I told my parents that I never wish to see them again. My parents said that, to the best of their control of the situation, my wish will be honored. The family I wish not to see will be in attendance at the wedding and/or reception (children and  teens who have not been through the temple endowment ceremony aren't allowed to attend the temple ceremony even if they come from 'worthy" families).  Even if I were the guest of honor, therefore, I would decline the invitation.

My cousin was stupid not to have invited me. She just turned nineteen, has few college credits and fewer job skills. Her husband's college credits and job skills are even more lacking than hers. Despite my disinclination to attend, I would have sent a one-hundred dollar check independent of whatever my parents gave. Many (not all; I can't imagine the Coveys being cheapskates when it comes to wedding gifts) LDS church members are notoriously parsimonious (it was the kindest descriptor my brain could conjure at this late hour) when it comes to offering wedding gifts. Gift registries for weddings are a joke in most Mormon communities. One is more likely to receive a white elephant gift at a Mormon wedding reception than receive anything on his or her gift registry.  Baby shower gifts are a bit less penurious by nature if only because some of the givers are highly skilled at sewing, quilting, crocheting, knitting, and such, and share those talents in making baby gifts, but, for whatever reason, wedding gifts rarely receive the same attention or generosity. The one-hundred dollar check I would have sent with my parents, not because I'm fond of the cousin but because I know she and her future husband  need every penny of it and more, would have been one of a very few and will be missed even though the couple will never know they're missing it.  Matthew, though he was invited, will not attend. He doesn't find the same dark humor in such situations as I do, and he considers his time too valuable to waste on such a non-event. He will not send a gift separate from that my parents will give. He doesn't have the cash to spare, and if he did, giving it to the bridal couple is not the manner in which he would choose to spare it. He made a comment to my parents about his decline of the invitation to be an act of solidarity on my behalf.  I'm a bit skeptical of his claim, but I liked hearing it, just the same.

So my parents will attend the reception but not the wedding they've been deemed unworthy to attend because they drink a little coffee on occasional winter mornings,  consume alcohol (a little in my mom's case and a fair amount in my dad's),  and attend services at a church that is not The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Those acts make them unworthy to enter the Temple of the Lord. Meanwhile, the bride's father has been convicted of grand theft,  (the size of the carton of disposable douches upped the charge from petty to grand theft [that must have been one humongous-sized crate of disposable douches]) but the church found a way to rationalize his actions. Even though he continues to pocket things that do not belong to him right and left, Mahonri, father of the bride, is worthy to enter the Temple of the Lord and participate in the holy ordinances that will lead to his daughter's sealing for time and all eternity to a man who looks like Mr. Potato Head with an Osmond's teeth. If a church can justify that, it unnerves me to think of the many other acts it must justify on a regular basis.