Resurrected

Ugh. Nearly 2 months have gone by without a post.  Unforgivable.  So, before February slips by, I figure I better get on it and say something here.  I'm not sure what to blame my absence on.  It could possibly be the seemingly millionth respiratory illness I've had this winter, thanks to, never my patients, always my child.  This makes me laugh at my pre-parent doctoring when I would proclaim the proven benefits of daycare (better immune systems! less allergies! less eczema!).  Now, I know better.  I don't give advice.  When parents ask me about nanny vs. daycare, I simply say there are pros and cons to both, and every family has to decide what works best for their own situation.

Because guess what?  My kid has been in daycare since 4 months old, and you know what he's had a lot of?  Eczema and illness.  And guess what else?  I breast fed him until 14 months (also known to help decrease illness and boost immunity).  So there you have it.  Kids get sick.  And they cough in their mama's faces.  And their mamas get sick.  All.  Winter.  Long.

This particular week we are both (the baby and me  - somehow dad never succumbs.  Maybe because he went to daycare as a young child) holed up in the house, cranky, with hacking coughs and runny noses.

While combating near constant illness around here, I started my new job last month. In retrospect it might have been a blessing that I didn't blog about it last month.  The first few weeks, as expected, were a painful whirlwind of acclimating to new coworkers, patients, electronic medical records, etc.  My first day seeing patients nearly brought me to tears with the complexity of the medical issues before me.  Could I dig deep enough into my brain to figure out how to take care of end stage renal disease patients with urinary tract infections who don't make urine and therefore can't give me a urine sample (and the cath kits can't be found in clinic because of a major remodel that has resulted in the medical supplies being misplaced)?!?  HIV patients on a million medications causing a million side effects?  Patients with chronic pain from being tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime?  I felt akin to Dorothy because I certainly wasn't in Kansas anymore.  (Kansas being a Utopian world where patients have insurance, fairly good access to specialists, speak English, have enough money to afford necessary medications and procedures, and have fairly straight-forward illnesses and symptoms.)

But after a few weeks of smoothing out the kinks, or at least learning how to deal with the kinks, I am feeling a bit more settled.  And there's one thing that is certain:  this job is never boring.  One particular day after seeing two different patients, I found myself googling Khmer Rouge and khat.  Synopsis: 1. a bad bad thing that happened in Cambodia in the 1970s causing many of my patients to flee their home country and subsequently develop depression, anxiety, and/or PTSD, and sit in front of me and hope I can help; and 2. a meth-like mind altering substance that is probably better left untouched that you can apparently buy on the black market in many stores in Seattle.

So it has not been for lack of interesting patients and stories that I've left you all (if you all are still out there) hanging these past few months.  And I promise to do much better in the coming weeks of keeping you abreast of my adventures in doctoring and parenting.  With that, I'm off to blow my nose.