She-ra, Princess of Kidney Stones - actually much more powerful than a mere Princess of Power
Actually, as far as I know, the stone wasn't particularly bloody, but that's what the urologist in New Zealand said, so I'm going with his choice of words. It was 6mm by 5 mm, but my mom is She-ra, Princess Kidney Stones, and has passed stones more than twice that big. She probably didn't even need the stent.
Now my Uncle Ralph and my Uncle Jerry can quit fighting over which of them would get to pay for the air ambulance if needed. For the record, they both wanted to foot the bill as opposed to wanting the other to do so. I thought maybe they could split the bill, but they have lots of testosterone, so such solutions don't come as easily to them.
My mom is back at the hotel and is resting comfortably with drugs because stents and stones leave residual pain, but everyone is quite happy. My dad is watching the Little League World Series while drinking New Zealand beer, and my mom is resting very comfortably with Vitamin V and a little Dilaudid, or whatever it is called in New Zealand. They'll be able to resume touristy stuff tomorrow.
Doctors don't deal with as many stones in New Zealand as in the U.S.. I don't know that their diet is that much less conducive to the production of stones. They eat a lot of meat, and large servings of protein can be a contributing factor. It's a lot cooler in New Zealand and people there probably stay better hydrated. Australian doctors probably treat more urinary calculi than do the doctors in New Zealand.
For anyone who interceded on behalf of my mom through prayer or any other means, thank you and bless you. Now I have one more favor to ask. My Pseudo-aunt Jillian is surfing for the very first time. She has a lady who is probably the number one female surfer in the world helping her, and she's surrounded by people who will go down after her if a wave takes her under, but a few prayers or positive thoughts on all their behalves would be appreciated. The people helping don't want my Uncle Scott, who is a surfer, in the water with them because they think he would be too nervous and would just get in the way, so he's on the beach with his camera taking pictures. If he sends me any good ones, I'll share them.
I'm thankful for nations with modern medicine and clean facilities.
My mom is a kidney stone producer to the extent that if kidney stones were worth what diamonds are, my family could realistically afford to move in next door to Bill Gates even though our front doors would be a mile or more from each other. She's now in New Zealand and experiencing major kidney stone symptoms.
The good part is that my dad has medical contacts even in New Zealand, so he and my mom are not having to trust doctors they find in the phone book or whatever hospital into which they wander, and that even though our insurance probably won't cover much of her treatment, my parents can afford it. The bad part is that my dad has to convince the doctors not to expose my mom unnecessarily to radiation. My dad doesn't want her to undergo radiological procedures that are not absolutely needed to preserve her life, Because of my mom's history of leukemia and my dad's desire to prevent a reccurrence. he'll go along with a simple KUB xray, as the radiation exposure is relatively low. If the stone is large enough to be causing any major damage it'll be evident in the KUB xray. She can safely undergo an ultrasound, which exposes her to no radiation whatsoever, to determine if kidneys or ureters are distended. He doesn't want her to have a CT scan unless she' going to die without it. As insane as it sounds, he'd almost prefer exploratory surgery, especially since they're not in a third-world country.
My dad's local contacts understand the situation and have determined that the stone is not interfering with the function of the kidney. It is partially occluding her left ureter but is only five millimeters, which my mom should be able to -- barring unforeseen complications -- pass easily enough. My parents travel with a safe amount of prescription oral drugs, but my dad can't bring IV Demerol or Dilaudid along on foreign flights. At least those drugs, albeit with different names, are available in New Zealand.
I feel bad for my mom because she and my dad didn't spend the money traveling so that she and my dad could get an up close and personal view of the inside of a New Zealand hospital. The doctors there have inserted a stent, and they're pumping her as full of fluids as is safe and are giving her, in addition to painkillers and anti-nausea meds]ication, New /Zealand's equivalent to tamsulosin, which is that Flomax most frequently prescribed to men with prostate problems. If my mom is symptom free in another twenty-four hours or so, which I don't even know what time we be for her locally, she'll be released and she and my dad will finish their touring New Zealand the best they can. If she passes the stone, she'll have minor discomfort that can be managed with oral medication.
The worst part will be if my parents have to fly home next Thursday without my mom having passed the stone, because she could then have major episode on the plane. My parents can't wait around New Zealand indefinitely. I don't know if the doctors there have he power to get IV drugs onto my parents' plane. I suppose that's when we might have to consider asking my one of rich uncles to fly her home on an air-ambulance. I don't like the idea of traveling that distance on anything smaller than something like a standard 747, but it may come to that. Perhaps the airlines can be persuaded to carry the IV drugs. I hope so if it's necessary. I think my parents fly to Australia, then to Hawaii, then to LAX..
The easiest thing would be for the stone to pass before my parents come home; tonight would probably be ideal. If anyone has any prayers, positive thoughts, or anything else to influence the God of Urinary Calculi, or The Universe or Karmic Forces, on my mom's behalf, please intercede in the way in which you best can help.
I wouldn't look quite so ridiculous in terms of size, but my attire would more that make up the difference.
I'm getting tired of thinking about what to wear at my recitals. The more I think about it, the more firmly I'm convinced that the whole system is wrong -- just plain wrong. As far as the adjudication panel is concerned, in my opinion, they should hear but not see who is playing and should not even have any idea who is playing. They should have no access to the schedule of rehearsals. All scheduling should be managed by a confidential third party so that even one's specific instructing professor does not know any closer than to the month when a student's recital will be, so that the prof couldn't let it slip to an adjudication panel member as to whom it was playing a given recital. The department chair's secretary basically runs the department anyway. She's up to the task. So what if a musician does not have a sufficiently serene expression on his or her face? Some of the world's finest pianists and string musicians look as though they're giving birth to five--pound kidney stones while they're performing. So what if the attire isn't quite perfect? It's not supposed to be a fashion contest. If a player's fingering or technique is awkward, it should be apparent to the trained ear. I can tell when I'm walking past a practice room when a pianist's fingering is even slightly off, and usually can detect errors in violin technique even when the correct notes are being played. if I don't need to see the musician to discern technical inaccuracies by sound alone, the adjudication panel certainly shouldn't need a visual image to do the same. Blind recitals as far as judges are concerned would remove the politics connected to scoring. While we would like to think all judges are objective, honest,and fair, we know better. While some of the politics are eliminated by disallowing a candidate's own instructing professor from adjudicating his or her recital, other professors who specialize in the same instrument may have petty reasons for wishing for the degree candidate to receive a score lower than one of his or her own protegees, even though degree candidates' scores are not compared to one another, and a computerized system is used for determining the letter grade, as some professors consistently score higher or lower than others, and the computer keeps track of this so that someone who is unlucky enough to end up with a panel of low scorers isn't penalized in the grading process. (Computer-adjusted scores are available later that night, so we're not left wondering for a week. Part of potential bias is reduced by having a five-member panel, with no more than two judges specializing in the candidate's instrument. Anyone in the department should have adequate background to competently score for any instrument used in a performance. Furthermore, any score that is ten points lower or higher (on a 100-point scale) than the next lowest or highest score is automatically eliminated from all consideration.. All of the professors except my mom, who is new to the faculty but wouldn't be on my adjudication panel for obvious reasons, have been doing it for years. If I had time, I would do a third recital in the spring quarter merely for the hell of it on my third instrument -- the tuba. I haven't touched a tuba for three years, but I'd pick it right up again if I practiced for a week. I'd do it as an audit or schedule it too late for it to be considered in the medical school application process. I'd show up in a colorful and over-sized controversial T-shirt - probably with something about Governor Rick Perry and his profoundly retarded (sorry, Rosa of Rosa's Law, but "profoundly retarded" fits here more aptly than does "cognitively disabled") reproductive policies, along with wildly striped leggings and Converse high tops. I'd wear a decorated paper bag over my head with holes cut out for the eyes and nose, and an especially large hole cut out for the mouth. I'd use a sousaphone, which wraps around the player and is used typically in marching bands, instead of the more dignified concert tuba, which would be considered a bit tacky for a senior recital, further adding to the overall effect. I'm not big enough to play an actual tuba anyway. this would be my way of thumbing my nose at the antiquated system and sticking it to the man, so to speak. It would be a memorable recital. I'm almost sad that it will never happen.
We're in online negotiations, as my mom is in New Zealand. Her opinions are influenced by the fact that it is winter there, and she's only seeing covered-up girls. No matter what, a female in a senior recital will not wear restrictive clothing. I'll have to play in all dresses I'm seriously considering before choosing them, anyway.
I wish I could buy everything I like and just put it in my closet. The problem is that a musician only wears such clothing for a major recital. I will not have many major recitals in my life. For other occasions, I will wear basic black as a musician, as professional musicians do when they're accompanying. Be invisible. It's the rule.
The bottom line here is that I'd much rather be practicing than obsessing over what I'm going to wear. I'd love to walk onto the stage in a king-sized pillowcase with holes cut for my arms and head [with opaque tights or legings for modesty] just to make a statement, but when I really need an A, it's probably not the time to make a statement.
order 2 sizes too large and have altered to fit me, with extra fabric going for straps
i'm not sure it's formal enough, but Ilike it.
Meanwhile, I've come up with a few different selections.
what I would wear if I had noticeable boobs
same deal;
I'd order two sizes too large in order that it has straps and is long enough
would flow nicely for violin
My shrink's wife, who is a fashion consultant, wants me to war this for the violin recital. She says it's lightweight enought to flow, but that i cn pull off the form-fittedness at the waist, which is totally unforgiving, but since I have no boobs or wasit to speak of, it would work for me with a very slightly paded bra. I'll consider it though I don't like the color.
My laptop is possessed, Except for the bottom one, the caption are mostly attached to the wrong dresses.
Just because you don't have to wear black doesn't meanyou can;t wear it. i like this, so it's in the top three.
This one's probably number one in the running.
It will be longer on me than on her, and straps will be added.
My recital dates for both piano and violin have been set. My piano recital will be before thanksgiving in November. I've been fighting with my professor about this. Her star student had a great deal of confidence and scheduled his recital for the Friday after labor day. Unless one has already postpone a recital or has given up all of his non-studying time to practice in the spring and has devoted his summer to practicing, this is a brazen move, perhaps even a foolish one. He decided about a month ago that he was not ready. because I can play through my pieces error-free, my professor thought I should step in for him and take his early September date, giving him my mid-November date. Theoretically I could do so, and I would pass, though letter grades are given, and I don't know that my performance would earn an A, which I need. I refused to switch dates with him.
Even though I'm not taking summer school, I am taking half a credit of piano pedagogy just to meet with my professor twice a month, She is, as I mentioned earlier, also the professor of the guy who thought he would be ready in September and would wow the adjudication panel by being spot-on so early in the term, had he been ready, it would certainly have made an impression. Had I felt ready and as though I was killing time waiting around November, I would have accepted his proposal for a trade in recital dates. I feel, on the other hand that I still have polishing to do on a few pieces. I'm not willing to be sacrificed for his benefit, which is essentially what my professor is trying to do to me.
My mom told me vi Skype -- she's in the land down under with my dad (even if it's winter there, don't feel sorry for her; they're having a perfectly marvelous time, and they head to New Zealand tomorrow, which is one of the places I most want to visit in the entire world) -- to fill out a "change of supervising professor" slip and turn it in immediately before this woman does anything to thoroughly screw m over. Her power is limited, as my summer half-unit is an audit, and she has no say in my final grade -- the adjudication committee will determine my grade based on my performance at my single recital -- but I've made the woman very angry. My last two "lessons" consisted of her trying to persuade me to change my recital date, then of berating me for my refusal to do so. She's called me selfish and spoiled.
My professor expects me to throw myself atop the sacrificial table and take one for the good of her stable of talent because doing so will best highlight the student she considers most promising. He is more promising as a musician than I am. He's put all his eggs in one basket - that of the piano, while I'm majoring in violin performance and biochem as well as piao performance.. Still, I'm under no obligation to have anything but my very best showing under optimal circumstances. I picked my dates for both conferences early and carefully, considering academic load, length of time between recital, and when I thought I could be realistically be ready for my first recital. I didn't just close my eyes and randomly point to a date n a year-long academic calendar in front of me. much consideration went into my choosing of recital dates, and I am quite happy with them as they are.
Even though my mother has less seniority than my piano professor, the department chair likes her better. That shouldn't figure into the equation, but it will. The bottom line, nonetheless, is that students here pay a hefty price for their piano professors' time. If for any reason they're not getting the most of that time for which they re paying, their requests for changes should be honored at least the first time a request for a change in supervising professorship is requested. If a student cannot get along with more than one or two supervising professors, the problem my be the student, I'm confident that my request will be honored. This professor will denigrate me to other faculty members, including the adjudicating panels for both of my recitals, but she won't make much headway. I haven't cause the slightest controversy in the department, and my mom is well-liked within the department even though she's new. My mother shouldn't matter in the least, but this is the real world, where nepotism is alive and thriving. I'll be the victim of reverse nepotism enough times in my life; I already have been for that matter. It's only fair that a family relationship should work in my favor once in awhile, especially if it's not at the expense of someone else.
Enough of the negatives. It's time to choose dresses for my recitals. this is one of the fun things related to recitals. Usually a musician wears basic black, but at his or her (particularly her; a man would still wear a tux) recitals is the ne time a musician need not fade into the woodwork and may stand out a bit. my violin dress need to be a bit longer, my piano dress may be relatively shot as long as it doesn't appear indecent. Wardrobe malfunctions should not happen at recitals. For that reason, only a fool would wear a strapless dress, particularly for a violin recital. I have a seamstress, however, who can either match the fabric or take fabric from the hem to create spaghetti straps. None of these dresses will likely fit me as they are, but must be remade. In the case of some, they'll be too short in a size that will fit me. In the case of others, they'll be too large in a size that is an appropriate length. Keep in mind that whatever dress I choose, it will be made to an appropriate length
and spaghetti straps will be added if it's strapless. one doesn't want an excess of sleeve fabric when playing either instrument. Spaghetti straps or a single wider strap, or sleeveless at the very least, are perfect. It's tempting to go for a strapless s dress, as there are so many cute ones, but a wardrobe malfunction can make the difference between an A and a B. I don't want a B, so I'll eschew strapless dresses, though some I'm showing are strapless, as the straps can be added.
I'm inclined to choose a backup dress for each occasion just in case something goes wring. my parents both say I have a closet full of clothing, at least some of which could be used in n emergency for the concert, If I need a second dress for each concert, I'll need to pay for it myself, That is precisely what I'll do. I've been working part-time since before I was thirteen and have plenty of emergency cash just for such occasions.
The dresses at the top of the page re ones I'm considering for my piano recital, and the ones a the bottom re ones being considered for my violin recital. I may not be through looking, and I may look for longer if the need be.
obviously will need straps
Maybe too sophisticated?
you get two of these because my computer is malfunctioning and won't let me delete
I would never begin to compare my own woes to that which this man and others like him suffered.
A couple of months ago I said something in a blog that did not make the subject of what I said very happy with me. At least I would assume from her essential excommunication of me from her circles that it was the likely thing that happened. It could be that she simply grew tired of me. The few times I put links to my blog in the comments section of her blog, she deleted my comments, and once she wrote a blog about what causes posts to be deleted from her blog that could easily hav been directed at me.
I was unaware that she read my blog at anytime unless I sent her a tweet with a link telling her specifically it was about her. Chances are that one of her minions read it and told her. Regardlessof how she learned of the blog, there are consequences to our actions. If she read it, or if she even relied on a second - or third-hand summation from someone else, it may have hurt her feelings. That was never my intent. I never thought she'd see it. Again, she's never indicated reading my blog except when I've written blogs in praise of her.
The gist of the blog was the over-application of PTSD as a diagnosis. This oerson had a child born with a horrble condition that usually results in instand death of the baby immediately followig birth if not before. This baby was a real fighter, though, and beat the odds, and appears to be thriving at the age of three or maybe almost four by now. We heard she was over-achievingand no longer eligible for any special services, but then we heard again that she seemed to have some deficits, but then again we read that all was OK. Maybe it really wasn't , which was adding to the mother's angst. Maybe she liked to praise her chaildren as most goood parents like to do, but there were things going on behind the scenes about which the readers knew nothing.
Maybe, as a person who has a PTSD diagnosis -- maybe anyone with a PTSD diagnosis -- is the last person in the world to suggest that the cause of another person having it is a bit flimsy. Who am I to judge, really? What the lady went through was traumatic but somewhere down the line, if a person's child lives and thrives, to me it seems like a good time to at least try to rid oneslf of PTSD rather than to continually embrace it, as in "I am the face of PTSD."
The woman has other problems in her life, including a marriage that broke up a year or so ago. The non-insiders were never really privy to the details. I have no clue, nor is it any of my business, if infidelity or something even more insidious, although I'm not sure what that might be, were involved. The lady alluded to things in her blog that some in the group apparently understood and were "in the know" in regard to, but the outsiders never knew what went wrong.
Anyway, she never responded in any way to any comments that I left or to any tweets. I left one comment at some point that if she deleted that particular comment, I would understand that my comments were not wanted there. She deleted it. I'm a little slow on the uptake, but that particular message I did get.
It's a teeny bit painful, as this lady unofficially adopted me as her niece at a time when seven out of my fifteen aunts had disowned me. Still, I wrote something that must have been hurtful to her, though I had no idea she'd see or hear of it. I have to accept responsibility for my actions.
On the other hand, I don't think this lady can continue to have it both ways for the rest of her life. She can't have a little girl who is a superstar in every imaginable way, yet pull the PTSD card out whenever it is needed because of the circumstances surrounding the child's birth. For any parent who loses a child, I can't imagine that there is anything worse, and they probably epitomize lifelong PTSD. The same may be true for the parent who gives borth to a child with a life-altering disability or incurs some injury latr on that causes a major disability. if the child really is Super Three-Year-Old, my opinion is that somewhere down the road it's time to quite dwelling on PTSD and at least give a try at moving past it.
I'm sorry for any feelings I hurt, and I'm not a psychologist or a mental health professional, and my mother probably would have given birth to a beluga whale had she seen what I wrote.
Still, I'm someone who has a PTSD diagnosis. Five years or so down the road, I hope I will have put much of it behind me, although I may always be wary in terms of who follows me into public restrooms, I may continue to carry a slighly irrational fear of objects being projected through the windows of rooms in which I'm sleeping, and I may never totally be comfortable with smoke alarms and being inside smoky buildings. That last part, in itself, though, doesn't necessarily indicate the continued presence of PTSD. Smoke alarms , when they're functioning properly, and smoke-filled rooms, are a warning to get the hell out of a building, not to stay put and do Lamaze-style breathing while reciting "I'm in my happy place." So it's not PTSD manifesting itself when I'm in a hurry to leave a college dorm if its filled with smoke, even if it ends up it is only from someone burning popcorn in the microwave at 2:00 a.m.
Nevertheless, in spite of a little rotten luck as far as being the person whose paper the thug chose to plagiarize, which set off a chain of violent events, or being in the home of relatives who neglected me to the extent that I was left in a semi-mobile state at best all by myself in a smoke-filled home with a raging infection on top of my inuries, PTSD never did, nor never will define who I am. It's a passing phase, which I hope I'm coming a little closer to passing all the way through and out of it each day. If someone else chooses to cling to PTSD and to own it, it's none of my business.
The kid is cute, but I do not wish to play for my recital any piece that sounds as though it was composed by her.
Tonight I worked with my piano accompanist for my violin senior recital. We came up with tentative line-up. I'll email it to my violin professor tomorrow, who will email it to the chair for my panel, who will then email his decision. One or two selections at most will be rejected. I'm not submitting my encore. That's my secret weapon. It's the one piece I already have nailed that is far beyond my overall ability a violinist.
I'll need a flutist and a guitarist. Recital committees tend to like a little musical diversity. The Paganini piece with guitar is lovely, and I happen to be closely related to a man who had a major in guitar performance. He's closely related enough that he already has the date blocked out on his calendar. He won't say no.
I have a few choices as flutists. The obvious choice would be my mom, but it might be viewed by some as nepotism. My mom's best friend's daughter is a flutist and could do it easily, but she's a tad flaky. I would think she'd understand the importance of commitment in this case, and my Godfather would make it financially worth her while to show up. I could also ask my Aunt Victoria's best friend, who has a master's in flute performance as well as in conducting, and would be considered a professional., although the conducting won't do me any good. The connection is the weakest, and I hate to ask her to travel the distance, but she's the best of the three (mom, mom's best friend's daughter, and Godmother's best friend). Mom's best friend's daughter does have really good tone -- maybe not as good as the professional's tone, but good just the same. Furthermore, she's pretty. It shouldn't matter, but in a subtle way, it does. People, even selection committees, like to look at pretty people. My mom's pretty, too, but she's 46, not 22, and the selection committee sees her all the time, anyway. They're all used to looking at her.
My mom and my professor will disagree with my saving the Preludio to the Partita for my encore, as it's what I play anytime I want someone to think I'm really good, so it would seem to them a waste not to use it as one of my regular program pieces, but an encore can raise your score; it just can't lower it. For that matter, even though it has a high degree of technical difficulty and is incredibly impressive, it doesn't really showcase my tone quality, which is my asset as a violinist, and for which the adjudication panel will be knowledgeable enough to listen. The Telemann, the other Bach piece, and the Mozart piece are pushing my ability, but I have six more months to prep, and I'm not that far from having them nailed. An encore should be short, which the Telemann Partita, if played correctly, is just under four minutes ling if I recall correctly. In any event, it's the shortest of the three Baroque pieces. Everything else I have, other than my modern piece, is too long. I only have one modern piece, so I can't switch it out. I could come up with something else for the Classical or Romance period without too much effort, but I don't want to.
The Paganini piece is divine and stays in the program even if I have to bribe a committee member.
The modern piece is controversial. I absolutely detest the dissonance of Hindemuth, Bartok, Prokofiev and all. If my selection is rejected, I'll probably look for an obscure Gershwin piece. I'm not sure how much he did for solo violin, and transcriptions aren't usually accepted. I don't mind bluesy chords. It's just outright dissonance occurring continuously that grates on me. The rare occasional rustic chord is nice, but when a piece is based on a sequence of chords that make no sense either by themselves or in place and sound as though they were put together by a deaf eighteen-month-old, it's not something I can practice for the amount of time necessary for the piece to be recital-ready without the involvement of drugs, legal or otherwise.
Pope John Paul III approves of all my selections. If he likes something I'm playing, he sits at my feet. If he doesn't like it, he stays in the room but moves as far away as possible. That reminds me that I need to have written orders from one of my doctors for The Pope to attend both of my recitals. It shouldn't be hard to find someone with a medical doctorate who will do that for me. God knows I have enough of them in my life. What if a terrorist storms the stage right in the middle of something that I'm concentrating so hard on that I don't notice it? The pope (my dog, not the actual one; His Divine Eminence, or whatever he calls himself, probably thinks there are too many American smorgasbord Catholics as it is, and the loss of one wouldn't exactly harm the cause) will protect me.
For the record, my proposed recital program as submitted August 21, 2013.
Baroque
Telemann Sonata for flute and violin
Bach Sonata Number Three in E major for violin and piano
Classical
Mozart Violin Sonata 33 in E-flat major
Romance
Paganini Cantabile for piano and guitar
Modern
Falls - The Musical Priest (unaccompanied)
Encore
Bach Preludio to Partita for Violin (unaccompanied)
(not submitted to professor of committee)
If you hear this, you'll understand why I want it as my encore. It's violin as God or Buddha or Maitreya or the Dalai Lama intended for it to be composed for and played.
John Paul III, my beloved friend, protector, and family member, whom I would not trade for any dog or, for that matter, anything in the world
I'm spending tonight at the home of my pseudo-relatives because my parents are chasing wallabies and dingoes all over the land down under and trying not to crash into the great coral barrier while they (or my dad, anyway; my mom's probably too sensible to attempt it). Even though we have a fairly sophisticated alarm system, I don't stay at home overnight all by myself. It sounds immature, I'm sure, and it probably is, but it's not something I'm ready to do. Two years ago I couldn't even be at home in the daytime hours by myself, so I have at least made some progress.
Last night I was too tired to risk driving the forty or so miles home because of sleepiness so I spent an extra night with Uncle Steve and Aunt Heather. I'll spend tomorrow night here with the pseudo-relatives again. The Pope (my dog, Pope John Paul III, not Pope Francis) needs to travel with me wherever I spend the night. He's quite friendly with the pseudo-relatives' dog, Pippa, but he and the pseudos' cat, Claudia, are somewhat wary of each other. Once and a while she hisses at him, but mostly they just give each other death glares the entire time they're together. I don't know if they'll ever be friends or even anything less than mortal enemies.
Today I helped my pseudo-aunt with reading through some of her legal material. I shouldn't really say I helped her, as she read through every bit of it herself as well, but she had me read and summarize it to assess my skill in that area. She's enough of a control freak that I'll have to read and summarize for practice for a long time before she'll ever just hand anything over to me for the real thing. That's after today's completely error-free performance.
I'm going to start spending most Thursdays at the lab. It's a light day for interns, the pathologist with whom I've been working has told me. That both gives me more opportunities and allows me to do more actual lab work while avoiding some petty jealousies of other interns. I can see myself doing this sort of thing for lifetime. Then again, in the third year of med school when students go through clerkships, where they work for roughly three weeks at a time in basically every branch of medicine, available at the facility of one's residency, I may fall in love with some other branch of medicine. It's nice that I've found something I love doing. If it ends up that I love something else even more, that's even better. it's a good position in which to be. For that matter, if Jude Alex's FB page administrator keeps screwing up, I could always apply to replace him. The guy needs one of those brush-up courses in reading comprehension, or he needs to show up for work not hung over. I'm not quite sure which.
I haven't finalized my fall schedule, but I have a couple of general ed courses to finish up in addition to my recitals. I did most of my English requirements as honors/AP courses in high school, and I've taken several upper division lit courses, but it appears that I need to take at least one lower division literature course on this campus to earn my degree from here. I don't want to take what I've already taken in high school, nor does my counselor want me to do so. There's a particular lower-division lit course where you essentially memorize huge volumes of poetry. You buy the book, which is humongous, and any poem or work of prose, of which a few are included, in the book is fair game.
I've had to memorize so much poetry in my educational career, in addition to the idea that verbatim memorization has always come easily to me, that I almost feel as though it's cheating to take the course, but I'm taking it anyway. "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" (AKA " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas) is even in the book. Some of what I've memorized is oral, and the punctuation has to be exactly as written by the author even if something else makes more sense, so I'll need to review the poets' conventions, but other than the precision in punctuation, I have enough poetry committed to memory to ace the course tomorrow. It doesn't require much in the way of class attendance, either. Basically, the students show up for an introductory session and three exams, including the final, to write out by hand their lines of poetry they've memorized. It is possible to complete what is required for an A in the first two testing sessions and not even need to show up for he final, but I really need to finish this class with number one standing. It may make a difference in the financial reward I receive with my baccalaureate degree. Most people won't be taking the class terrible seriously and will be content with the lowest "A," but I can't take the chance of another overachiever being enrolled in the section of the course long with me. I like poetry, and literature in general, and reviewing a bit of it will be fun.
I'll conclude with a selection from Edna St. Vincent Millay, "On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven." Ms. Millay is not even close to my favorite poet, but I believe she wrote a near-perfect poem with this one. Would it be disrespectful to use that quote about even a blind squirrel finding an acorn once in a great while?
Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease!
Reject me not into the world again.
With you alone is excellence and peace,
Mankind made plausible, his purpose plain.
Enchanted in your air benign and shrewd,
With limbs a-sprawl and empty faces pale,
The spiteful and the stingy and the rude
Sleep like the scullions in the fairy-tale.
This moment is the best the world can give:
The tranquil blossom on the tortured stem.
Reject me not, sweet sounds; oh, let me live,
Till Doom espy my towers and scatter them,
A city spell-bound under the aging sun.
Music my rampart, and my only one.
This stone is in the left ureter, but the overall idea is the same. Wuss patient.
I'm spending the night at Uncle Steve's house because he knows I was up late and he doesn't want repeat performance of a car rollover because of the driver falling sleep at the wheel. I'm not devoid of common sense, Even if he were not insisting, I would ask to stay over another night. I know when I'm too tired to risk driving further than a few minutes.
I practiced violin for an hour right after I finished working, because I suspected I'd fall asleep and sleep until late at night, when it would be too late to practice because the rest of the family, or at least the children would be asleep. My Aunt heather is awake, and she did ask me to play one song for her that she especially liked, but one song is different than practicing for an hour or longer.
The family had Hawaiian chicken for dinner. I sleep through dinner, but Aunt heather made a plate for me, which I just finished. It was tasty, and I was hungry enough to eat all of it. My parents and most of my adults now know that I will eat when the time is right, so they don't nag me so much. There are times when my stomach cannot hold much food for whatever reason, and there are times when I can find room for a full meal. Fighting nature accomplishes nothing.
I did a white blood cell count. The pathologist did the count on thedendritic cell. the pathologist said differentiating with ease will coe with exxperince. same patient with another slide, as my results at this stage of the game cannot be considered reliable. The procedure is done by placing a drop of blood on a slide, then taking another slide ad using it to push the blood and smear it across the slide. Then the blood must dry. Once it is dry, first a "Diffquick" solution (it's a brand name for a differentiating liquid) is applied and the slide is looked at under the microscope using a grid to count the number of total white blood cells. Next, different solutions are added so that the types of white blood cells present may be counted. I did well on the overall count, but not quite so well on the differentiating part. To me, a mycrophage looks a whole lot like a dendritic cell. The pathologist said differentiating with ease will come with experience. f/or practical purposes for this particular test the total count was what mattered. Appendicitis was being ruled out. the total WBC count was within the normal range. The pathologist repeated the procedure himself, as he always does to be certain, and came up with results even closer to mine the second time. The pathologist was able to determine that if appendicitis was present, it was in its extremely early stages. (The report sent from the ER also said that the patient was afebrile, further lending credence to the absence of appendicitis.) The pathologist asked me what test I thought should be run next. Relying on my own experience, I said that first I would obtain a urine sample if one had not been obtained and check for blood, which would be indicative of a urinary calculus. the pathologist agreed. In this procedure, urine is spun at a rapid rate to separate any blood that is in the urine from the urine itself. Sometimes it is present, maybe even just in trace amounts, but cannot be detected just by looking at the sample. /I suggested also a dipstick test for presence of nitrites and WBCs in the urine to determine the possible presence of a urinary tract infection. The pathologist agreed. We found nitrites, WBCs, and red blood cells, indicating probable urinary tract infection and possible urinary calculi. The absence of WBCs in the blood would indicate that the infection was at the lower level of the urinary tract and had not yet reached the kidneys.
The pathologist asked what we should do next. I said that other than reporting our findings, basically nothing. Our job was finished. It was now up to the examining physician to order some form of radiological procedure- most likely a CT scan, though possibly a simple kidney-ureter-bladder X-ray or maybe an ultrasound if indication was that the stone, if there really was a stone, was obstructing the ureter and causing any backup urine into the kidney. KUB plus ultrasound is less expensive if that's an issue, and there's also less radiation to which the patient is exposed.
The pathologist said I got an A for the day. Of course it was figurative, as we don't receive daily grades.
He texted me after I was gone to tell me that the patient has a 9-millimeter by 5-millimeter partially obstructing stone in his right ureter. A stent will be placed in the ureter, and as soon as possible, it will be blasted with lithotripsy if it cannot be moved along simply by increasing IV fluids and possibly giving the patient tamsulosin, which increase the flow of urine. (Often known by the major brand name Flo-max, its primary use is to help men with prostate problems pass urine.) . I texted back that the patient is a wuss because I passed a much larger (13 by 8.5 mm calculus) all by myself with nothing but a little soda and lemonade. The pathologist texted back to ask if I wanted a medal or a trophy. I said either would be fine.
We're having a thunder storm. I shall turn off the lights to enjoy it, while hoping that everyone has been able to seek shelter.
The internship is going well. I do spend a fair amount of time playing barrister -- I can make a much better latte than I could before I took this position -- and shredding documents, but I'm not a full-scale custodian. I haven't cleaned a single restroom, nor have I emptied a single waste basket.
This is the person I refuse to be, either in class or at my lab internship job.
The lab for which I work considers this to be a position which should be mutually beneficial to the lab and to me. For that reason, I do a fair amount of filing, shredding, and gopher tasks. They also ascertain, on the other hand, that all of us are exposed to actual lab work, even if it only involves observing the process. Most pathologists and paraprofessionals take the time, even if it adds time to the tasks they're attempting to accomplish, to let us look through microscope lenses, or show us how to operate the machine that spins the liquid specimens, which breaks down the contents of the body substances being tested. We certainly don't make any actual diagnoses [unlike the other pseudolab where I spent two days, but a few pathologists have asked us to offer opinions about what we've observed and what it might possibly indicate. This is the learning experience it is supposed to be.
A form of mold was being evaluated. It was in a petri dish. We weren't allowed near it until we were wearing scrubs, masks covering our mouths and noses, eye protection, and rubber gloves. After observing the viewing and photography of the mold, a portion on the mold was put on a slide. The pathologist looked at it. He asked each of us to have a look. He asked each of us what we thought it was. The consensus among my fellow lab interns was that it was stachybotrys. I said it looked like cladosporium to me. The pathologist, a balding, not particularly thin but far from obese probably late-forty-ish man, pulled out a small, spiral-bound book, and flipped to the cladosporium page, then flipped to the stachybotrys page. He asked us all to look at both, and if we still stuck to our original diagnoses. We did. He asked me why I thought it was cladosporium. I said that based solely on appearance, it looked greener and less slimy, and a little more powdery or velvety, than stachybotrys, but that I would be interested in knowing from where the sample came before making a final diagnosis. I also said that the molds react differently to alcohol, and that dropping it into alcohol would help to confirm the findings.
The pathologist said we didn't need any more testing because I was right and that I have a good eye for mold. He said the sample was obtained from an interior PVC supply duct, which is a more likely setting for cladosporium. He said the main indicator, though, was the appearance, the color and the perceived texture. He dismissed the rest of the lab interns for the day, two of whom shot me visual daggers as they walked away, but asked me to stay for a moment. one guy, a tall, tanned blond who was probably twenty-two or so, whispered, "Teacher's pet!" in my ear loudly enough that the others heard. When gave him a puzzled look, he said, "Good work!" I don't really know what to think of him yet.
The pathologist asked how old I was. I told him eighteen. "Are you sure?" he asked
"Pretty sure," I told him. "I can remember every birthday since my second, and I don't think my parents were lying to me about that one."
"I don't mean 'Do you know how old you are?' " he explained. "I mean 'Are you telling me the truth? ' "
"Yes," I answered. "I have documentation of my age, and you can call my parents if you want."
"You're John Rousseau's kid, aren't you?" he asked.
"Yes," I answered, less than thrilled that he had made the connection. I'd rather be judged by my own work, good or bad, than by anyone's preconceived notions related to my father's eminence.
"I didn't mean to accuse you of lying," he clarified. "It's just that you don't look eighteen."
"It's genetic," I told him. "My parents always looked young for their ages and still do -- especially my mom."
"How old is your dad?" he asked."
"Almost forty-eight," I answered.
"You're right," he concluded. "He doesn't look anywhere near forty-eight. He could pass for his thirties, although he's been around for long enough that most of us should know he has to be older than that." He paused. "The age thing, " he continued, "may seem like a curse now, but you'll be grateful for it later."
"That's what everyone keeps telling me," I agreed. "But I get pulled over about twice a month just because the cop or CHP thinks I can't possibly be old enough to drive. And I'm eighteen, not sixteen. It's gotten to the point that I'm no longer nervous when I see the red lights flashing."
"The reason I asked about your age, " he continued, "is that if you're eighteen, you can handle toxic substances under certain conditions. You can prepare slides, for one thing."
"Do you want me to prepare a slide?" I asked eagerly -- probably too eagerly.
"Not today," he answered. "I'm out of here in a few minutes, and you should already be gone. But next time, definitely." He paused, looked in both directions, and continued. "I've got employees with M.S. degrees who would have insisted stachybotrys on that one. You have good instincts. Or you paid attention in microbiology class. Or both."
"Thank you," I told him.
"Don't thank me, " he said rather abruptly. "I'm merely stating the obvious."
"Point taken" I answered, not knowing what else to say.
"I won't say anything about your father," he advised me, "and you shouldn't either. There's going to be plenty of jealousy directed at you as it is."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you know more than you should know at this stage of your career," he answered. "Some people don't study very hard and don't take very good notes," he explained, "and they resent others who do. Don't take it personally if other interns do take it personally."
Thus ended my most interesting day so far at the lab. It's such a comforting feeling to know that my peers may be aiming figurative or literal daggers at my back. I'm not going to wave my arm around like Arnold Horshak, but I'm not going to play stupid, either. We're at a point in all our academic careers where what we do or do not do, or know or do not know, now matters. I'd say that it's a dog-eat-dog world except that I love dogs too much. It don't like opossums. It's an opossum-eat-opossum world.
My cousin on my mom's side, Elizabeth, who is twenty-three, fell asleep at the wheel of her car on a country road in Nebraska very early this morning and rolled her vehicle. Fortunately there was no other traffic, and the area was clear of trees, and she didn't hit any telephone or power poles. She basically walked away with only a bloody nose from the air bag and her nose wasn't even broken. A concussion hasn't been ruled out, but she's basically fine -- walking around as though nothing happened.
The accident occurred in the middle of nowhere, but her car has (or had; the car is history) OnStar, so emergency vehicles were on the scene fairly soon, and the dispatcher called her boyfriend's house, so her boyfriend and his brother and father were there before the emergency vehicles were. They couldn't find her purse that night, but her boyfriend's dad found it about forty feet early the next morning. Her cell phone and all her crdit cards were in it, and there was no indication anyone had gotten to the purse before her boyfriend's dad did, so her credit and information is probably safe. She had about two hundred dollars in cash, which was still in her purse. Any thief who ws after her ID probably wouldn't have taken the time to write down her driver's license number and her credit card info but left the two hundred dollars.
She's probably fine. Her boyfriend's dad insisted she go to the hospital in the ambulance because she wasn't totally making sense afterward. Alcohol and drugs were ruled out. She ws just shaken up.
She was driving from her boyfriend's family's farm to back her apartment. The accident happened at about 1:30. The car had some feature that was supposed to try to wake her up if she swerved as though she were falling asleep, but it she over-corrected when the alarm or beep or whatever sounded, and it caused her to roll. She had her seatbelt on.
She's an RN. Because of the possible head injury which could interfere with her thought processes and because she's sore and and a nurse has to lift, she'll be off for a week. My uncle, who is a pilot, has a little comp time, so he drove the hundred miles or so from the family's home to her apartment. In a few days, once the insurance company has done its thing, he'll help her to find another car. She should probably get one similar to the one she had. It did everything it could possibly do for her except keep her awake.
Everyone should be mindful of the dangers of driving when overly tired. Elizabeth had worked eighteen hours straight because she worked her own twelve-hour shift and covered half of someone else's. Then she drove twenty miles to her boyfriend's family's house, watched a movie, and headed home. She should have had a clue that she might be too tired to drive. All's well that ends basically OK, but this accident could easily have had a very different outcome.
P.S. I put in two extra hours toward my intership today. I got to see what sickle cells look like for real through a microscope. They really are shaped like sickles.
This isn't the slide I saw (mine was stained more bluish -purple) but it's the same idea.
My Aunt Cristelle is an amateur photographer. This was her attempt at being folksy or artsy or something. My mom had just wanted her to take a picture of me playing in the living room. Aunt Cristelle has grander schemes for most things than does my mother. The weather was nice that day, so we drove east for about thirty minutes until Aunt Cristelle had a vision, which is what has to happen before she is able to take the simple action of clicking a button on a camera. What doesn't show in the picture is me running like hell as soon as she snapped the final shot because a bovine of some sort or other -- I'm pretty sure it wasn't a bull -- was headed in my direction at a more rapid pace than I was aware bovines could move.
P.S. Note the darkness of my hair. This was about as dark as it ever was. A couple of years ago I started highlighting it just a bit.
I ended up working Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in the lab (the free lodging is great), which puts me ahead of schedule. By the time school starts again in late September, I'll probably have finished the internship. I'm not in that much of a hurry to finish it, as I find the actual lab work aspects fascinating (I'm still somewhat of a gopher, so my time staring into a microscope lens is limited) but I do want the extra time to practice for my to recitals. I have a light academic load this quarter. No matter what courses I take, though, lengthy assignments seem to creep up out of nowhere. When that happens this quarter, I'll simply down part of a Guinness and write the damned papers. I find that my best writing is done under the influence of Guinness. Words seem to flow more easily after a bit of the stuff. I do proofread and edit once I'm stone cold sober. I'm not under the influence now, if you couldn't tell.
My violin pieces are starting to sound a little less forced and a little less as though I'm concentrating on technique as I'm playing them. As the techique comes without my even thinking about it, my richer tones will have an opportunity to come through. My technique as a violinist is far from the very best. (I'm taking a gamble and hoping that it is good enough to earn an "A" in my recital.) There are probably twenty violinists in the department who could kick my butt in terms of technique. What they can't do as well as I is pick up a violin and improvise an obligato off the top of their heads that sounds as if it came from a publisher and was practiced for months. My technique in regard to the selections I'm playing for my recital will get to where it needs to be soon enough. Technique overall may always be my weakness as a violinist. My mom, who has excellent technique, said she would seriously consider trading places with me in terms of our respective abilities, because I have a natural tone even using a mediocre instrument that she can't duplicate. Sometimes I think she's just trying to build my ego when she says things like that. At least she doesn't try to say there's something about my piano playing that is superior to hers, because I know that would be pure bullshit.
I was going to use my mom's violin for my recital. Mine is nice, but hers is better. I practice enough with both that it doesn't matter. But then my godfather got me a "cheap violin" so I would feel better about traveling with it. It ends up that the "cheap violin" is worth more than my mom's and mine put together. My mom asked if she could borrow it for a faculty performance in October; that's how good it is. (Of course I said yes. I'm not selfish nor am I totally stupid.)
I'm going to have to look up some more Pat Boone books. Perhaps Knotty and I should co-author an unauthorized biography of the man: Pat Boone: The Real Story. I wonder who we could get to dish up some dirt on him, although he's already spilled plenty himself that we wouldn't even have to bother digging up.
Someone stole my credit card number and used it for some bizarre very minor purchases all over the world. Do they make minor purchases and see if they can get away with it, then go for the big stuff? I don't understand the point of multiple one- and two-dollar purchases, a $15 or so transaction at an athletic apparrel store in the UK, and something for roughly twenty bucks in Australia. Why not just go for the one big purchase? Anyway, my account is temporarily on hold until my new card arrives in the mail in a week or so. That will effectively prevent me from picking up any vintage Pat Boone books off Amazon or elsewhere at least for a week.
Happy weekend, everyone, especially those of you who are already in school. I know that many students and teachers are. Whatever happened to summer vacation spanning the better part of summer, as in from mid-June until after Labor Day? My mom tells me it was that way in most of the nation when she was a kid. Now most states have a slightly longer school year, and they take extra breaks. In the grand scheme of things, if students are going to attend school for 180 days, perhaps it doesn't matter when those 180 days happen, but I didn't like the short summer and extended Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter breaks very much when I was in regular school. (My mom says that the consensus of the research she's read indicates that a kid forgets almost as much in two weeks as he does over the entire summer, so the more extended break that occur during an academic year, according to her readings, anyway, the more re-learning must take place.) My university finishes spring quarter in fairly late June and doesn't start again until mid-to-late September. That's a summer vacation.
Really? There's a connection between letting your children stuff their faces with candy and Takis or whatever those disgusting chips are called and allowing them to drink an unlimited quantity of sugar-laden beverages all day and eventually getting fat? And growing overweight as a kid increases your chances of ending up with Type II Diabetes? For real? This isn't something Michelle Obama made up just to push her vegetable garden agenda on the unwashed masses?
Everytime I see one of those TV commercials with the mothers talking about how hard it is to say no when their kids want candy bars and other garbage, along with shots of mothers filling their grocery carts with squash the size of a gestationally diabetic mother's newborn baby (hint: they usually have LARGE babies) I want to scream, because my assumption is that my tax dollar are paying for those commercials. Do the people who operate the organizations that make and distribute these commercials honestly believe that Honey boo Boo and her ilk are going get up off the potato chip crumb-encrusted sofa and pour their Orange Crushes down the sink and toss their Doritos in the trash because some poorly-compensated (you get what you pay for, and the quality of acting is so poor that even I could do better) actress is sayong that her mother didn't know that allowing your child to turn into a human form of Baby Beluga would be harmful to her children's health, but that she knows better?
There are things we know about nutrition that weren't necessarily known a generation ago. For that matter, some of those things we "know" today will be debunked in a few years, and we'll "know" a few more things in their place. Fad ideas about dieting and eating in general will come and go (remember TheFemaleFat Cell)The basics of nutrition, however, have remained contant for generations, ad haven't been kep
When I post about religion at all, it's usually to criticize something that came about as a result as a church-related incident or to poke fun at some religion-related fiasco that particularly hit my funny bone. I don't write or speak of my real faith often. Perhaps it's because I don't have all that much of it.
I'm Catholic from birth, but what are the odds that there's one right religion on the face of the Earth and I just happened to be born into it? I know the odds are not great. Still I go through the motions. Sometimes that's all I'm doing is going through the motions. I think the only time I believe there really might be an answer in religion is when I hear a song that strikes me.
The Romney crew isn't quite fit enough, even for the purposes of putting me to sleep, to jump over fences. They crawl over them, army-style. Actually, that wild-eyed youngest one, Glove, or whatever his name was or is, could probably clear the fence by a mile, but the rest of them would have to claw their way cross just like their Mexican cousins from Juarez who want to attend BYU.
I absolutely must get some sleep or I will be absolutely useless tomorrow at work. I'm putting in an extra day this week and one next week to cut the length of my sentence by one week. As s stands, I WILL be useless, but the trick is having everyone else avoid knowing how useless I really am. The secret is not to fall asleep mid-sentence while one of my job superiors is instructing me. Will I be able to pull it off? Time will tell.
Of course the person who runs this lab has to be someone who lives across the street from my Uncle Steve. I couldn't be ridiculously dysfunctional due to lack of sleep without the guy wandering across the street to tell My Uncle Steve. Uncle Steve is a whole lot newer to the concept of parenting as are my own parents (his older child is only nine), and, as such, has not yet developed the more laid-back and "don't sweat the small stuff" approach that my parents started to develop after I was left in the smoky house and thoroughly developed after the school restroom assault. Hence, if the owner of the lab came over and mentioned that I was terribly sleepy at work, Uncle Steve would keep both me and The Pope here all week so we could go to bed early. That would be a great way to part with a week of my summer vacation lickety-split.
So I need to go to sleep. My dad once told me to imagine I was in a Mormon church and Mitt Romney was either giving a talk (their equivalent to a sermon) or a lesson and it was having natural soporific effect on me. My eyelids were getting heavier and heavier. It works better when my dad tell the story and imitates Mitt Romney speaking about how important it is to do a good job when scrubbing the church toilets, or how abortion is wrong, especially if one is running for Governor of Massachusetts, but really not THAT wrong, unless one is now running for president. or how it's against or religion,
The Lunesta speech isn't complete unless my dad interjects Ann Romney's comments about having personally known poverty in her lifetime. Hell, maybe she really did know a poor person or two; she herself wasn't poor, but that doesn't mean the almost literally starving students around her weren't poor and she didn't know poverty; knowing poverty and being poor are two different thing, but they're not THAT much different, and just because one doesn't work to finance a university education but instead sells stock to pay for everything doesn't move the person or couple THAT far from the poverty level. Furthermore, paying for the care and feeding of dressage horses, which have typically grown accustomed to only the very best of everything, alone would make college students poor souls. YOU PEOPLE got it all wrong; the Romneys were indeed poor, or at least poor in spirit. What does St. Matthew say about "Blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is the Kingdom of God" ? One can own the whole damned Kingdom of God and still be poor for taxable intents and purposes. How in hell does one go about tabulating the property value of Kingdom of God ? I'd venture a guess the IRS hasn't a clue, nor do the local jurisdictions, except maybe the Commonwealth of Virginia, which would tax the hell out of the Kingdom of God on principle alone just as it does out of poor Navy men for owning used cars even two years after they leave the Commonwealth of Virginia and return home and register their cars there. Once a Virginian, always a Virginian.
This isn't working without my dad here to deliver the speech. I'll just have to imagine Mitt and Ann jumping over fences in their garmies. goodnight all, and pray that I don't get fired tomorrow.
