So I got my edits back for Hell to Pay. Huzzah!
So I'm at a conference about physician leadership and the business of medicine. Huzzah! Uh oh. No huzzah…. See, these two activities will not coexist in my head without something crossing over to the dark side to relieve pressure before the entire cranium explodes. I cannot sit through Death By Powerpoint without editing the stinkin' slides in my head. Or continuing to develop better ways to "spruce up" the presentation language. For example, "Physician engagement in management decisions" really should be "Driving a stake deep into the heart of the evil overload of administration…." And "payment incentives based on outcomes data" should really be "in a macabre effort to flay the humanity from every physician, the diabolical management machine has created unattainable quests, knowing that the physician will perish of thirst before crossing the ever-enlarging desert of reimbursement". (enter maniacal laughing and a "buwahaha" and you have what goes on in my head all day long) Mixing business and business11/11/2014 0400 Call from Ob department. Patient in labor. Check.
0400-0600 Cannot fall asleep, so laying in bed, calculating time of delivery for a typical G2P1 at a rate of 1 cm/hour average dilation. Between calculations, mentally edit Dante's Inferno. 0630 In hospital checking on said patient. Pooh, she's only 3 cm. Going to be a long day. 0730 First patient in office. Office staff excited patient is in labor and crams all AM patients to be seen prior to 1000. "Just in case." 1015 Pooped from double booked morning patients, catching up on notes with my free time. Patient 5 cm. Sweet, I have 5 hours until delivery at this rate! 1030 Get Twitter followers for my Twitterverse. Cannot respond as I am at work-work. In between office notes, jot down a few extra POV details to buff up Dante's Inferno. Pray that there will be a week to work on it before Crimson wants me to overhaul Hell to Pay. No good vacation goes unpunished8/18/2014 You'd think being on a boat in the hinterlands of Alaska without any internet or cell phone access would be a good thing, right? Ok, it was, to a point.
The first two days of the ten day trip, I slept nearly 12 hours/day, thanks to every one of my Ob patients within 5 weeks of their due date dropping into labor and delivery within 72 hours of my departure on said vacation. I haven't had a nasty slog of sleeplessness and emergencies like that since fellowship. Yee haw. Mind you, this is a critical access (rural) hospital. We don't normally see big floods of patients or weird stuff. Emergency c-section? Check. Tachypneic 35 week baby on oxygen, requiring gavage feedings? Check. Shoulder dystocia? Check. Placental abruption? Check. And those were just my own patients, to say nothing of the flaming insanity flowing amongst my colleagues. Could someone tell me what spectacular, sex-inducing event occurred 9 months ago because I clearly missed the memo. So phew, back to the boat. Yay, no communication. No calls, no emails. Fabulous. On a whim, I linked up to a virus-ridden hot spot in Juneau and….#1) full request #2) contest finalist #3) contest finalist but not winner #4) publication offer. WHAT??!? Hold the all-you-can-eat buffet, Mildred! Yup, offer. It's been a long month7/27/2014 That's not to say it's been a bad month. Just very long. Like 5 c-sections, 7 vaginal deliveries (only 2 in the daytime, thank you for that, my sadistic little vampire babies), way too many scopes, and just a lot of the usual mess of stuff on my desk. That kind of long. Like when the phone rang after midnight last night, I started thinking bad words in my head. (But you know the rule, right? NEVER ever say those bad words to the nurses. They are making my life better by being awake all night, taking care of patients so I don't have to drag my lumpy butt to the hospital. And if there are nurses out there -- you know the gig: Crummy interactions with grumpy doctor = q1 hour phone calls until she cries uncle. Proud to say that's never happened to me, but I've seen it with colleagues.)
So the last thing I've wanted to do this month is edit, but slow page by page, I've slogged back through the first 50 pages of Dante's Inferno. I entered a few more contests, some for Hell to Pay, but more for Dante's Inferno, mostly because I really appreciate the feedback. I'd love to get the book as strong as possible before going out to agents/publishers. Monday Ramblings7/14/2014 Usually I'm not one for feeling overly intimidated. At least not in my day job. At least not anymore. Heck, last week I cut a human out of another human, which I have to admit never gets old. (And mother and baby are doing just fine. Baby has a massive shock of black hair that sticks straight up in every direction. So stinkin' cute. All my babies are cute. And if they're not, there's always something nice to say, like "Would you just look at that little nose" or "Those are some big feet" or "What a cute bald head" -- even if they come out looking like a squished lizard, one should always say something nice. But I digress.)
So I've faced life and death, cried with folks in joy and sorrow, laughed at the insanity of life and medicine. I've pulled diagnoses out of places where the sun doesn't shine to come up with esoteria like "leukocyte adhesion deficiency" or "pityriasis versicolor" (got that one today) or "gamekeeper's thumb" (today, too -- I was busy) or "bicornuate uterus" (yup, today, it was nuts in the office) -- which by the way, if you didn't know, bicornuate uterus is not nearly as cool as "uterus didelphys" because what's more awesome than 1 uterus+cervix? How about TWO? Like, which one do you do the PAP smear on or check for dilation? Or, even better, what if, in a small town in Appalachia, you start seeing folks that don't have a cervix? (true experience) Faster than you can say "A Fish Called Wanda," boom, you've got your own pocket (no pun intended) of testicular feminization. |
Jillian DavidAuthor, daydreamer, and practitioner of trying very hard to duct tape folks together and help when I can. Archives
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