Name that Kitten

This week two kittens followed some kids down the street and ended up on Sweetie's front porch. They stayed. Meanwhile Sweetie had just adopted a kitten for her youngest daughter the week before at the shelter. "There must be a sign over my head" Sweetie complained since most strays human and animal seem to end up on her front porch sooner or later. I think it's the halo myself. In a fit of enthusiasm I volunteered to take on of the new kittens. All last summer a litter of kittens lived in the back alley. The neighbors and I got them collected up and adopted out eventually but all summer long I hankered after one of them. My Beloved kept wanting to grab one but they were just too wild. So, after Sweetie spent most of yesterday at the shelter getting all three kittens vaccinated and medicated she stopped by the office. Her youngest daughter said I could have "Tiger" who was virtually indistinguishable from "Leopard." Dogzilla was here working with me and didn't actually notice the kittens at first. When he did he thought they were worth leaping and wagging at right up until somebody hissed. He stopped dead in mid-leap and got an "Uh-oh, I know what those are" look on his face. Princess, the boss cat at our house has skewered Dogzilla once or twice. After this realization he took decidedly less interest in the little creatures. When we got in the car he was horrified to realize the little beasty was coming with us. He nearly climbed into the back seat where he never usually wants to go. We arrived home after only one incident of me nearly hitting the curb while I fished a kitten out from under the peddles. The resident felines are not particularly thrilled about the new one but it's going better than the last introduction of a cat when for weeks Princess hissed at everything that moved AND every place she'd ever seen Killer hide.
Now as it happens the kitten is a tabby female and not to long ago My Beloved volunteered spontaneously that IF we ever got a kitten that stripe-y kind was his favorite. My Beloved has never had a kitten before and I was touched by the genuine shock and outrage in his voice when the kitten attached herself to his arm during her bath. He seemed deeply hurt that something so little and so cute could inflict so much pain. He looked at her much the way Dogzilla looks at cats for a while but he got over it. He nevertheless let me spend the evening picking fleas off of the tiny body. Once I was satisfied the she was flea free she was allowed to come in. My Beloved proceeded to fuss over our little guest arranging prep-bowls full of milk, water, and kitten-chow on a tray and offering them to her in turn. I think he spent a lot of the night awake feeling around under the sheets for her and he engaged in high-level diplomatic negotiations between the senior animals and the little-bit. He got up and fed her at least once during the night that I know of. We can't go on referring to her as "The Kitten" and if she doesn't get named soon she's going to respond only to Kitty-Kitty. I name cats based on the T.S. Elliot model meaning they get three names. These are: a formal name by which they can be properly introduced, a nick-name to be used only by their familiars and their own secret and inscrutable kitty name known only to them. This latter is what I believe cats sit around thinking about all day when they appear to be staring into space. Recently, in order to protect their privacy I've had to add a fourth name which is the blog name. Any suggestions?

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Shameless Boosterism

I am really enjoying my new camera in case you cannot tell. Please check out the sidebar where I've placed a new link to my latest "photo essay" entitled "Parish Festival". It all sounds so grand. Zed recently commented something like "I liked the funnel cake series." I became delirious. Series? How impressive! Am I high on blogging or what? Please share my enthusiasm and check out my sister's much cooler and less self-conscious blog Life on the Other Side. Then go check out the tasteful and thoughtful blog by my friend Caleb Walker. Last but not least go read the discussion in progress at Opiate Addiction Rx.

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I am having a good day

Today I have the use of my arms and legs. I can speak and I can breath. I can taste and swallow my food. I don't always find the view pleasing but I can see. I don't always like what I hear but I can hear it. Remind me about this tomorrow.

Dogzilla--Miracle Worker

I used to routinely take Dogzilla to the hospital with me on weekends. He lit that place up like it was the Second Coming or something. Then one day I got a letter from the Medical Staff President referencing a "no-dogs" policy at the hospital. It didn't say anything like: Hey I saw you with your dog on such and such a day and that is a big no-no. It pretended to just be an FYI type thing as if they were sending this announcement out to everybody. Now it's not like I didn't suspect there was a policy along these lines but I had decided that I would bring the dog until somebody told me I couldn't. Ever since then I've been limited to taking him to the nursing homes and to my office. He is an absolute rock star at the nursing home. People whose eyes have been staring into the middle distance for the last 3 months suddenly perk up and go "I see a small dog" with sort of a "pinch me" tone of voice. People who can't speak make noises that sound just like "I see a small dog" in a "pinch me" tone of voice. It is both wonderful and heart breaking.
Dogzilla is presently napping on his fleece bed under the bookshelf. He has worked his little tail off all day. He takes his responsibilities as a dog very seriously. Even when he can barely keep his little eyes open he drags himself along from exam room to exam room in my wake. He greets every patient personally in the waiting room. Even the most irritable miserable hurting people in the world can't resist his power. He melts them just like that and they feel better immediately. I believe in the therapeutic power of the relationship between physician and patient but I have to work at it a lot harder than Dogzilla does. For the most part people leave my office feeling better and with a slightly lighter load even when they've had to get by on just a visit with me without the Little Miracle Worker. I need to find my own equivalent of a little fleece better and a piece of raw hide but until then Dogzilla will just have to work his magic on me, too.

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Old Italians

The block I live on is cut up by alleys arranged like a capital I. The garage exits onto the long part of the I while one of the cross bars goes by the side of the house. This makes sitting out in the yard a fairly social event. All sorts of people go up and down the alley. Kids on bikes. Old folks on the way to the pharmacy. Families coming home from church. It's an oddity really anymore but the neighborhood is identifiably Italian. Even if there weren't Italian Festivals and Italian Restaurants, Italian cards in the card shop, a shop selling a plaster model of every saint in heaven, and green white and red striped parking meters and curbs you'd know it was Italian. It's the yards that give it away. Most have gardens, but even the ones that have been paved over are painted, and have a grotto with a statue of the Virgin Mary in it, with or without a water feature. Strolling the neighborhood is serious business for some. There is a nightly circuit of old guys who casually stroll by to eyeball your garden. They peek to see if your tomatoes are blooming yet and glance to see if you've staked your peonies. No detail escapes them. If you walk past one of their gardens they watch you to see if you are checking out their efforts as well. Patsy is the neighborhood's lead gardener. He has no yard of his own but for a million years gardened a little plot behind the chapel across the street. When they tore the chapel down and put up a medical office building they fenced in a special area for Patsy's garden. Before we knew him well enough we got our gardening advice by looking out the front window to see what Patsy was doing. When he staked his tomatoes we staked our tomatoes and so on. Now that we've had one complete turn of the seasons and have exchanged produce and flowers more than a few times Patsy has become generous with his knowledge but not delicate with his advice. He generally starts out something like "Youa do it a' wrrrong!" but then you have to be ready for the stream of gardening pearls that follows. Despite our wrong-headedness, our efforts are duly noted. The new paint on the garage, the eager perennials sprouting willy-nilly all over the yard, the tomatoes and basil we so obviously enjoy have earned us approval. Yesterday our neighbor Bruno passed by and commented: "Youa keepa so nice."

Get a Life

A little while back, okay maybe two weeks ago, I ran into a friend and had my first opportunity to have blogger shop talk. Later Caleb recommended an article about being a better blogger which he had found helpful. I was not so much surprised as heartened by the article when I read it. It made me think about why I'm doing this blogging thing. I originally had the notion this would be an outlet for me to share pithy medical stories. I didn't even understand my title or subtitle. They just happened. The blog has evolved if I can use such a dramatic word for something this embryonic into just what it apparently always meant to be. Now that I look at it I realize that the name is so obviously medical because that is what dominates my life and the subtitle reflects my desire to take as good care of myself as I do of my patients. As it turns out the blog has been quite personal and lately I have grown to really resent it when I don't have enough time to post anything. The article Caleb recommended was full of concrete advice that boils down to "get a life". If you want to blog something somebody out there might enjoy reading: get a life. This is a really good idea. This is also, as it happens, what I have been long struggling to have and to do. I had a life once. It had books and people and places in it just like the lives I'm always trying to help my patients have. Medical training is a gruesome process and has a tendency to take young people who've never actually had a life and turn them into people who are incapable of having one. I had a life before med school and I miss it. But, it is damn hard to fit it back into the little tiny hairline cracks that are all that remain outside of my professional persona. Thank god this silly little blog thingy that was supposed to be more of the same: ie me the physician rejected that notion and has become about this human who happens to be a doctor.

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June roses and my first peony

June roses and my first peony
Originally uploaded by still just me.

Doesn't this make it look like I have such a nice life?

Hotel California

Over the years I've spent a fair amount of time riding along the highway in a variety of trucks, cars and the family wagon. I suspect the long car trip is nearly a thing of the past. I asked a European friend recently while riding shotgun down an immaculate little highway in his charming country whether kids there had games they played and songs they sang just when riding in the car. He looked at me like he was afraid I might be going to start singing and said no. I was remembering "99 Bottles of Beer on the wall" and so on. I also remember spotting license plates from all 50 states and playing alphabet games. (I'm going to Altoona and I'm taking an anorak, etc). I suppose these have been done away with by dvd players. As an adult surfing the radio stations was the bigger pass time. If ever you woke up in a rest stop with your knees jammed against the dashboard and you head wedged under the edge of the headrest and weren't sure what planet you were on you could narrow things down quite a bit by scanning the dial for Hotel California. I have come to believe that where ever you are in the United States, be it night or day Hotel California can be tuned in on the radio. I wouldn't be surprised to learn it is being broadcast into space as a lure for alien life. Last Wednesday I was doing laundry and other chores around the house and was mesmerized by the Eagles concert on TV. That show should have had a disclaimer at the return from each commercial break warning those of us sensitive to flashbacks to change the channel and quick. That stuff wasn't just music for the little household of women I grew up in way back when. Not having a brother, or a father who ever came home from work, it was an oracle for the opposite sex. It was really bad advice, too.

Small town hunk circa 1979

Apparently the ghost of the small town hunk is still out there driving around in his Buick Skylark convertable. I pulled up next to him at a stop light a summer or two back. I was shocked to find him here in the rustbelt so far from his midwestern home. He was still tan, shirtless, blonde hair to the nape of the neck his left arm resting on the top of the door frame the hand just draped over the steering wheel and the right arm stretched out along the back of the bench seats where his girl ought to be sitting. In 1979 he was probably listening to REO Speedwagon but this one had upgraded to the Kinks.

June

I can tell it is June. Not by the grey sky outside my window or the chill in the air. Not so much by the late hour of nightfall as I'm often still at my desk. I can tell because my rose bushes are covered with blooms and there is one giant white peony bobbing at the top of my spindly peony bush. Last spring when we moved into the house the back yard was barren. A previous owner with allergies had had all but the crab grass pulled up. So, the climbing hydrangea was a leggy adolescent when I bought it at a garden fair and put it in next to the garage wall and the rose bushes were spiny and spidery when they moved in next to the fence. Last fall in the purest act of faith I carefully buried three gnarled shaggy clumps purported to be peonies. As soon as the snowdrops popped up under the frosty lawn I started hovering over the future peonies. All spring long I would tip-toe across the soggy yard in whatever pair of heels I'd worn to work and encourage the little hopefully-not-weeds that sprouted there. Meanwhile the lilies of the valley, the chives, the helleborus and the allium grew. They sprouted, they grew, they made little buds that opened into flowers just like they knew what they were doing. I am looking forward to the garden's July when I accept on faith that there will be poppies, echinacea, phlox and lilies to enjoy.