The Old

I've discovered a longing in myself to write about my 3rd-year experiences. I've never been a very good journal keeper (unlike my sister, who has kept journals faithfully almost her entire life), but I do occasionally feel the need for some form of written catharsis, or maybe just a self-actualization of what I'm currently feeling. I don't know what it is. But the point is that I don't have the energy (or time) to make myself a separate blog for med school tales. And since this blog is technically about being a mom and a med student, I'll just talk about my stuff in the same space.

I'm currently on my 3rd rotation of my 3rd year. If I have the time/inclination, I'll go back and talk about how my first 2 rotations, OB/GYN and anesthesiology, went, but right now I want to talk about this rotation. I'm on geriatrics, which is a 4-wk rotation, and I'm currently in my 3rd week. The 1st 2 weeks were spent at the local VA hospital, taking care of inpatients. It was an interesting time. I liked it, compared to Anesth., because I felt involved in patient care again, and I got to actually interact with patients, which is part of the whole reason I came to medical school. I had a mighty 2 patients for the entire 2 weeks, one of whom was discharged my 2nd day on the service. But that was ok, it gave me time to learn about my patient's various diagnoses, and it also gave me time to learn about the patient himself. But I was looking forward to the last 2 weeks of the rotation, which are spent in outpatient care.

Outpatient care on the geriatrics service covers a lot. So far, in my 2 days on this service, I've toured an adult day care center, made home visits with a geriatrician, seen patients in the geriatric clinic at my university, and visited hospice patients in a nursing home. The functional levels and living situations of these patients has varied widely, and the personalities of the patients I saw were also varied and highly memorable. There was the gentleman who couldn't hear a word I said, but who would insist, whenever I paused for breath, that we'd all "taken real good care" of him. There was the lady who dealt with the disfigurement of the treatment for her breast cancer by joking "If I were on that 'Girls Gone Wild', man, they'd be surprised!" There was the lady who thought I was her daughter, and kept telling me she loved me and that I'd always been good to her, and if I could just find her blue skirt, she'd be happy again. There was the couple in their 80s who told me about how much they loved to travel, and about their frequent trips to Mexico and Israel and Europe. And there was the man who insisted the med school had sent their model to take care of him (I'll let you guess who was my favorite...).

I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed my afternoon spent caring for hospice patients at a nursing home. I've heard from a lot of fellow students that they just don't care much for elderly people, and that nursing homes creep them out, and that they get impatient when listening to their patients tell stories.

Maybe I'm different because my grandpa died when I was young and foolish. I never listened to his stories, because I was bored and impatient to get on with my own impetuous life. I didn't have time to listen to his disjointed recollections, and I was a little bit in awe of my mother, who would sit for hours listening to him talk about his youth. I remember how nervous I used to feel around him, making the obligatory daily visit to his bedroom to say hello, to endure his struggle to recall my name. Age is difficult for youth to handle, I guess. My grandpa was in his 90s when he died, but I remember a time when he was more vigorous, when he used to take the car out to the river to check on the cattle, and pat me on the back, and call my daddy "Hound Dawg". Toward the end of his life, when he was bedridden and couldn't tell the difference between me and my mother, that's a big change in function to a teenager, and I didn't handle it well, I realize now. I wrote a song for my grandfather that me and my siblings performed at his funeral. I shed many tears over that song, partly because Grandpa was gone, and partly because I didn't know him well enough to write a more personal song.

So maybe that's the reason, but today, when my patient kept calling me her daughter, and asking me if I was feeling ok, and wanting me to find her various items, I felt more patient than I usually am on a day-to-day basis. Even though it was at the hour of the day when I'm usually itching to be away at my own home, with my own family, I was ok with listening to her rambling, I was calm when asking her whether she was in pain, and I was patient when I reassured her time and again that yes, we would find her skirt ("It's blue, I think...").

My grandpa never had to suffer through the various indignities and sadnesses of a nursing home, as my grandma fiercely defended her ability to care for him at home, even though she is not in the best of health herself. He died at home, with loved ones nearby, and a view of his beloved land from his bedroom window. I know he was well-cared for and well-loved to the end of his days. But it's my own personal regret that I feel that I didn't love my grandfather well enough.

I wanted this old lady to feel some love in her life, even if it meant making empty promises that I'd find her skirt and then she'd feel better. Maybe, in loving this woman, in listening to her stories and promising that everything will be better soon, somewhere my grandpa knows, and he knows that I loved him.

Dreams of Gold

E expressed ridiculous levels of interest in the men's and women's gymnastics competitions during this year's Beijing Olympics. He's always been an....active...child, so I decided I'd bite the bullet, take him out of dance class, and put him in gymnastics. (Maybe I'm a nervous mother, but I just have images of broken heads and ankles swimming through my mind whenever I think gymnastics...)

The parent crowd at gymnastics is quite different from that at dance, which surprised me. I expected the same group of blonde and/or hippie mommies, with various other tots running under foot, having conversations about their children's elite preschools, and pulling out well-organized snack bags at the first sign of temper tantrums.

But at gymnastics, there are just as many fathers as mothers, with quite a few grandmothers thrown in for good measure. As a minority, I'm no longer a minority in the audience. Most of the daddies have tattoos or piercings, which made my husband feel quite at home. And because we can see what our children are doing through the large glass windows (rather than watching them dance via the tiniest tv screen I've ever seen), conversations tend to be dominated by what we have in common, rather than what separates us.

It's a better experience for E, because there are at least 4 other boys in his class. And it's a better experience for me, because I don't feel quite so alone. That's what I get for putting my son in dance lessons, though...

Catching Up

Good grief, I've been gone a long time. Life gets in the way...

Tonight:
Evan - "Is it bedtime for big boys?"
Me - "It's bedtime for little boys."
Evan - "I'm not little!! I'm five years old and I'm BIG. I'm bigger than you expect me to be."

How right he is.