25-Hospital Sketches

I have been a huge reader ALL of my life. The first book I ever read to myself was Ferdinand the Bull about the bull who would rather smell flowers under his favorite cock tree than fight in the arena. The first book I ever stayed up all night to read was Magic’s Pawn by Mercedes Lackey when I was a sophomore in high school (shhh, don’t tell my parents). The first chapter book that I ever read by myself was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

We’ve all seen the various movie adaptations where various actresses spanning generations played Jo, the headstrong March daughter. These actresses vary from Katharine Hepburn to Saoirse Ronan, seven in all from 1918-2019. Her story remains the same. So does the story of the doomed March sister, Beth March, the gentle soul that contracted scarlet fever while providing care for a poor family in their town.

But as a child and teenager I read all the Louisa May Alcott books I could get my hands on. Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men, Jo’s Boys. I own a very old copy of Aunt Jo’s Scrap Bag that I got in an antique store in Wyoming. These are the books that dealt with the March sisters. There are also more like the Eight Cousins or the Aunt-Hill, Rose in Bloom, Under the Lilacs and Jack & Jill. This last book was written in 1880 and the Jill of the title was a poor girl who had a friendship with Jack of the title while they were young. Through childhood misadventures she tumbled down and broke her back, like the nursery rhyme while Jack got a bump on the noggin.

Louisa May Alcott desperately wanted to go to war and wanted to enlist but she was denied because she was a woman. She volunteered as a nurse during the Civil War in 1962 and was confronted by the dirty, nasty, medical mess that accompanies war. She served only 6 weeks of her 3 month assignment, becoming seriously ill herself. She sent home stories that were compiled into Hospital Sketches in 1863.

I had no idea this novella existed until I heard about it on an NPR program about Louisa May Alcott. The library didn’t have it but Amazon did and I purchased it immediately. It is a little book, only 99 pages. I am glad that I didn’t read this book until I was an adult and a working nurse. Because my 24 years in the hospital trenches allowed me to understand Tribulation and to empathize with her.

It is about a woman in the 1862 who is bored. This is Tribulation Periwinkle. She doesn’t want to teach, or write, or get married, or act. Her little brother suggests that she go to war. And she does.

Although not without difficulties or barriers in her way. The battlefields were a long way from New York.

While nursing the desperately wounded, Tribulation has conversations with the dying soldiers. One dismisses his injury as just being shot in the stomach and wishes for a drink of water. But there was no water to be had as the water pails were being filled. Tribulation took the first mug and hurried back to her patient patient, who was dead. There is something about the description of the patient patient who is patiently waiting for water that never comes.

Louisa May Alcott touches on the senselessness of war and the unceasing dying of the soldiers. She writes of families that are holding vigil at bedside for those who were dying. She writes of sitting vigil herself and the conversations that she had with the wounded.

Tribulation Periwinkle goes home and writes about the surgeons and the patients and the other nurses. The last paragraph in the book is about her wish to volunteer at a hospital for “colored regiments” because she knows that society owes them a great debt.

A little book, yes, and a bit disjointed, but it really gives a snapshot of what it was like serving in the Civil War battlefield hospitals. Some good, a lot of bad.

Rather like today. Even with all of our pharmacological advancements and surgical advancements and technological advancements we sometimes don’t in. And Louisa May Alcott knew that.

Medical fiction and non-fiction book report 8/3/25- Little Miss Diagnosed by Dr. Erin Nance

Something happened during the pandemic.

People got bored.

A lot.

Even healthcare professionals.

And they turned to YouTube and Instagram and TikTok to make reels as a way to release the pandemic pressure and to make us smile.

Dr. Erin Nance was one of these.

She is a double board certified orthopedic hand surgeon. This is her story.

She is also big into treating the undiagnosed and unheralded medical problems of women. Because, you see, she was also dismissed because of her gender in her internship selection. And she knows that many women are dismissed because of their gender when they seek medical care.

I like and admire that.

We all know that surgery is my favorite. But my especial favorite is hand surgery. I have stared down other orthopedic surgeons who wanted to bump a finger amputation because to them it is just a hand. Yeah, that is like calling brain surgery easy.

Shortly after starting at the regional orthopedic hospitals after we moved across the country I was offered and subsequently took on the hand service line. This means that I was responsible to knowing everything about the hand surgeons and the hand surgeries. I also ordered specialized sutures for the hand surgeons. Healthcare being healthcare I was also handed the trauma service line and the pediatric service line. This means that I had to know all of the fixation types to fix a broken bone or to fix a tendon.

It was a lot.

Hands hold and sculpt and cook and soothe and comfort. Hell, the opposable thumb is what allows for much of what the hand is capable. Opposable thumb means that you are able to bend, twist and touch the tip of your thumb to all of your other fingers. This allows us to hold a pen, or a paintbrush and create art or books. When they talk of fine motor skills, this is what they mean.

Put your hand out and take a look at it. Spread your fingers wide and note which muscles of your forearm control which finger. There are 23 bones in your hand. The bones of your fingers, we call these phalanges, each have a tendon attached to them that enables their movement.

I waited and waited and waited to get this book from the library. I have seen a few of her videos on Facebook and I found her to be warm and genuine and have really great stories. I was very excited to read her book.

I received and read her book in one sitting. Not hard because it is less than 250 pages.

As much as I was looking forward to this book, I didn’t like it as much as I was expecting.

There isn’t much of a narrative throughline. There is her brother Kevin who suffered a devastating spinal injury with spinal cord fracture on her very first day of her internship. The scenes written with him were warm and just on the side of Pollyanna puke that I live on. He pops up periodically as Dr. Nance celebrates his wins.

The stories are not told in a chronological order. This kind of bugged me and some of the stories I am familiar with through her stories were missing. Ones that I think would’ve made compelling reading.

Her very short chapter on the other denizens of the operating room left much to be desired. According to her explanation I, as an OR nurse, comfort patients and fetch them warm blankets and are a soothing presence as anesthesia is started. And my mood sets the mood for the entire room.

Yes, but.

She could have definitely gone deeper here.

The book was less surgery details focused and more her process focus through internship, residency and hanging out her shingle immediately after residency. This means that she opened her own practice because she couldn’t find a niche.

I can respect that.

But I didn’t like this book as much as I expected because it was so shallow. There isn’t a lot of detail that screams real life. This is a good book for those who are not in the know. There isn’t a lot of gore or death or broken bones.

I picked up the book expecting some of that and it did not deliver. That is what I meant by shallow. There are depths that I wish had been plumbed.

Medical fiction and non fiction book report 7/20/25- Re-reading in a different political climate is surreal

An ode to re-reading everything.

And I mean everything.

Do you mean every book you’ve ever read, Kate?

Yes, every book you’ve ever read.

It is amazing how a re-read shows that the story has changed. I have heard this from a lot of different readers. The books they loved as children, the books they loved as adolescents, the books they’ve loved as young-adults, the books of their early adulthood? All different because you’ve changed.

Well, you’re not the person who originally read the book anymore.

Things have changed. You may have gone back to school. You may have gotten married, or had a child. The country might’ve been taken over by a despot whose only concern is himself and how much money he can bilk out of his followers. You might have changed jobs.

I didn’t start this series out in a bid to change my mind about the classics that I’ve read, or about books that I enjoyed in the past.

But it has happened.

You’ve heard the Star Trek joke about not liking Shakespeare until you’ve heard it in the original Klingon?

I am not the person I was when I originally read these books. Fiction AND non-fiction. That means the lens through which I see them is different now. And my interpretation will be different now.

Case in point- I am re-reading the book Lock In by John Scalvi. Yes, that same John Scalvi. I started three books when I was on vacation. Lock In by John Scalvi, All Systems Red by Martha Wells (this is the books the Netflix show Murderbot was based on), and The Soul’s Guide to the AfterDeath by Gwenna Laithland. Lock In was the only book that was a re-read.

Back to the analogy-

I originally read this book when it first came out in 2015. And I remember liking it. It is a near future story about people who have had a disease (Haden) and are locked in. There has been a flurry of these books over the years, think The Butterfly and the Diving Bell, but this was the first one that I read that was was fictionalized. This book has robots that can be piloted by those who are locked in.

The United States has just passed a law that will seriously impact those who are locked in. By taking away their subsidies. These are everyday Americans who have been struck down by an illness that they didn’t want and didn’t ask for because it is expensive, baby. To care for all of those 5 million Americans who are locked in. And the government would rather you take the cure that no one has yet, than be on the dole.

Not that most of the Haden sufferers don’t have a job. From coding, to the FBI agent main character. But caring for a body is expensive and having a second life piloting the robots is expensive. The robots are also expensive. You have to care and feed for the body that you are not using and you have to maintain the robot and make sure it is charged. That is why most of them have jobs. And still the funding for their survival and medical care has been cut.

Sound familiar?

This was definitely not how I interpreted it when I first read it.

It is funny how times and circumstances and bullshit that those in power and those in power desperate to stay in power are pulling on us changes our perception. Isn’t it?

Re-reading this book about a pandemic that locked in 5 million Americans and 20 million people around the world? Well, those the Haden virus didn’t outright kill. That has been a mindfuck to this operating room nurse who worked in a hospital nearly every day through the real 2020 pandemic.

Of course the government tires of taking care of these disabled Americans. Have we learned nothing?

Eye roll.

No Tuesday Top of Mind 7/8/25- Review of When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

No Tuesday Top of Mind for this Tuesday because I cannot get this book out of my head.

And also because there has been so much crap that has entered our consciousness in just the last 5 days as to require a little processing time.

Okay, it’s me. I require processing time.

AKA my mind is too full to discuss any of a number of things. From the supreme court giving the conman in the white house unchecked power to the minimal amount of reaction that I am getting from different source to the unfortunate but somehow warned of flooding in Texas to the idiotic yes-men in the federal legislature that are rubber stamping these inhumane practices to the attacks on healthcare to Medicaid being virtually unfunded through attrition because they put the bar so damned high to the continued attacks on higher education to to the file with names that didn’t want the names released disappearing tricks to the attacks by those who should know better but they are grasping at power anyway they can in any number of sectors to the thought of what will undoubtedly additional deaths to the concentration camp on American soil to apology we have to make to those who cried out never again and then they did it anyway to the women who are dying because of policies that purportedly put the child first, no matter that there is no child to the families who have been upended or straight up ended because of inhuman immigration policies to the man who has never heard the word no and paid attention to the boundary to any number of things.

This just in (July 8, 2025, 3:15pm)- to the conman who is “looking into” the take over of 2 American cities (DC and NY, if he doesn’t like their elections) because of the “red scare” that he is trying to engender. Well, the Muslim scare.

Ugh.

Cruelty is the point indeed. And so is irrationality.

To cleanse my mind, I will review When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi.

Published March 25, 2025 through Tor Books.

This book has been on my radar for quite some time. I massively enjoyed Starter Villain, which was released on September 19, 2023. But the first book I read by John Scalzi was Lock In, which was released on August 26, 2014. This was another of my library finds. I kept seeing it on the New Releases shelf and it mocked me until I picked it up.

Fabulous read but not the book I want to write about today.

I picked up this book from the library last week. It’s been on my library holds list for months.

I read it in two days.

I have thoughts. Many thoughts.

There will be spoilers for this book. But this is my take on this book.

Last chance for spoilers.

**************************************************************************************************

What struck me was the structured/unstructured path of the chapters. It wasn’t until I was nearly at the end that I realized that each chapter was numbered with a day since the moon had turned to cheese. And that the entire book takes place over 28 days, the length of a lunar cycle. This is genius and sneaks up on you.

Each chapter has a different voice and a different narrator. From a group of old men in a diner in the Midwest, one of whom is a retired philosopher, to the billionaire adrenaline junky, to the astronomy student whose entire academic life and potential career that has been upended, to the board of a bank who are worried at people pulling all their money out of the bank to live their bucket list, to the President of the United States and the First Lady getting ready for bed, to the writer who grew up a gifted and talented writer who got stuck on the first three chapters of her book to realize that there is no time, and more.

The first point is that the moon has suddenly, absurdly turned to cheese in an instant. Specifically around 1700 EST. Alarms were raised immediately when it was noticed.

Also the quarter moon is brighter than it should be in the sky. This brings to mind the moon shifting of the movie Bruce Almighty.

Of course, the moon mission that is a must do for the billionaire whose company developed the lander. Of course, the United States outsourced outer space to the billionaire class. Of course, the astronaut who was destined to be on that mission hears of the moon turning to cheese while on the phone with her mother.

Of course.

The following are notes straight from the notes app that I wrote to myself, annotated with page numbers. And also my stream of consciousness thoughts on the events of the book. I tried to match these up as best as I could. Your thoughts and notes will be different.

Philosophy. Astronomy student feeling unmoored because the moon has turned to cheese p. 145

Billionaire subplot. My thoughts are that it is basically a pull em out boys space race. Including the race between 2 billionaires to be the first to taste the moon cheese scene.

NASA outsourcing the space program to billionaires p. 169. My thoughts are of course they are.

Dry heaving in zero G was an interesting application of physics p. 175. My thoughts on this is what I learned p. 173 is something I already knew. That billionaires are spoiled brats and have never been told the word no. And they also get bored, to our detriment. The billionaire’s death (Jody) because of hubris was definitely an homage to the billionaire deaths from hubris on the way to the Titanic. See also billionaires being bored.

President and First Lady having a conversation, starting around p. 210. He drops his shirt on the floor, she tells him to pick it up, he argues that they have staff for that. She says, “If you dropped a shirt with the expectation that someone would pick up after you, I would divorce you immediately.” She continues “Dropping your shirt for someone else to pick up shows contempt. I didn’t like it when I was the person who had to pick it up. I don’t see why I would like it less now that someone else would have to do it.”

My thoughts are that I loved this exchange. And is also an answer to my own husband on leaving things on the floor for me to pick up. This will be my new answer to that. I feel that most women are frustrated or have been frustrated by this exact issue.

Back to the philosophical discussion p. 210. My thought is that there is a lot of philosophy in this book and it is a common thread. I have recommended this book to my cohort and will be recommending it to my dissertation chair.

The reaction of everyday Americans turns into fuck the moon sentiment and flipping off the moon to relieve stress. My thought on this is that might be the energy we need for I.C.E.

Unfortunately fuck the moon unraveled quickly to an attack on a cheese shop p. 217. My thought is that at least the estranged brothers who are running rival cheese shops across the town square from each other have reconciled. Also this is very evocative of Romeo and Juliet, which is actually mentioned in a previous chapter from the astronomy student.

Immigrant cook who says they want to go back to their home country because he isn’t as hated there as he is in America p. 228. My thought is that I realize this was written before the current administration crack down on illegal immigrants and naturalized immigrants. But oof.

There is a development in that the Lunar One which is the projection that is not unlike a meteor has been detached from the moon and is hurtling toward earth. My thought is cue the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. This has been earned because wipe it all out is something I’ve heard from various quarters.

Oh and Lunar One will impact the earth in 2 years and three months with a 95% confidence. My immediate thought was that I understood that reference. Which is a meta reference in and of itself to Captain America in The Winter Soldier.

The Lunar One impact will be devastating and lead to the cessation of life on the planet.

There is a chapter on the filming of an Saturday Night Live show shortly after the announcement that the earth has an expiration time. The studio audience laughs at none of the skits and are very unsettled. Finally, the host stands up and starts to sing “Imagine” to placate the audience after a pretty speech of coming together. He is immediately clocked by a chair and a riot ensues. My thought is that this is a delayed reaction to the celebrities singing Imagine on Zoom during the lockdown in 2020.

There is a chapter on a drunk, Caleb, interrupting a church service. Remember, the world knows that time is ticking. The pastor throws out his dial a sermon that he got from a sermon service and speaks from the heart. He calms fears and basically toes the religious line p. 253.

The private conversation he has with God later that night is perfection.

A bank meeting about people panicking and taking all their money out is next. It is revealed that the bank has modeled the end of the world. But, hey, the bank still has to make money. The plan is that they will introduce a zero interest rate $40,000 limit credit card with no repayment due for 2 years. The bank model also says that the consumer confidence will end after the planned last Christmas. After all, people hold it together for Christmas. Thought for this is that yes, yes, they do.

The last major character is a gifted and talented girl child who only wants to be a writer. Her entire life is pointed in this direction. Until she gets caught in the writing group trap after the third chapter and gives up. Until there isn’t enough time because, hey, the end of the world is upon us. Her husband says who cares if there isn’t enough time to get published, she should write for herself and because he wants to read it. My thought for this part is that she has the uncomfortable realizing that gifted kids can’t give up when it gets hard. You have to work that much harder to succeed.

Really the entirety of Chapter 23 spoke to me, the former gifted and talented kid. And has inspired me to write my dissertation chair and get this train back on its tracks. The world will still be a dumpster fire.

The most hopeful tidbit of this entire book is that “American Democracy has survived worse than the end of the world.” p. 302. Well, I needed to hear that.

The hardest tidbit of this entire books is that when you know that it is going to be the last of a thing (because, you know, part of the moon will be crashing into the earth and killing everyone), that knowledge weighs on you.

There will always be the last Christmas, the last birthday, the last day at a job you love. The thing is to keep going anyway.

After all, it might not be the last thing.

I will not address how the book ends.

Just know that my take aways are flip off might be the energy we need.

And do the hard things.

Medical fiction review 6/8/25- The Surgeon By Tess Gerritsen

The medical fiction book The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen.

This is another reread. I read it for the first time shortly after its publication in 2001.

I was deep in a murder mystery kick.

Here was an amazing, kick ass, take no shit heroine, Jane Rizzoli. She is on the hunt of a copy-cat serial killer in Boston.

This book series, 13 in all, that introduced Jane Rizzoli police detective to Maura Isles coroner.

They solve crimes together. And were the headliners in a cop and medicine show, a la CSI, NCIS, Crossing Jordan, and a slew of others. This aired from 2010-2016 and had seven seasons in total. I severely curtailed my television viewing in 2010 and I missed this one entirely.

But this is the book that spawned all of that.

I remember at the time that I enjoyed it. Nothing like a good mystery with high stakes and bodies all around. The serial killer this copycat was well copy-catting is a trauma surgeon (Dr. Catherine Cordell) in a Boston hospital who killed the original serial killer. Who happened to be a fellow surgical resident in Georgia.

It sounds more convoluted than it is.

Dr. Cordell is the pre-Isles, I guess. She is traumatized by surviving the original serial killer and had to have the mental fortitude to help find the copy-cat.

Jane is a good all around detective with a chip on her shoulder. She is the only girl in a rough and tumble Boston family. Her fellow detectives treated her poorly, beside her fellow detective Frost. One of them left a tampon in a bottle of water on her desk, hoping for a rise out of her. There is another detective who will be instrumental to the case. And to healing Dr. Cordell.

Misogyny aside this was a solid book.

I thought it would be a stand alone book. I was wrong. Maura Isles is introduced in the next book, The Apprentice. And she and Rizzoli unite against the haters.

Dr. Cordell is off having her happily ever after with Detective Moore.

I give this book a solid B. My first reading was an A. But points off for misogyny that the detectives display and the in poor taste practical jokes they pull on one of their own. It isn’t her fault that she is more observant than them and has a set of breasts. This was before the backlash to the “boys will be boys” pervasive attitude that we’ve been trying to kill for YEARS.

I still have The Surgeon and the second book The Apprentice on my bookshelves.

Post-it Sunday medical non-fiction series 5/25/25- When Breath Becomes Air

This was another book I read pre-BSN. I was a working nurse and had been for 13 and a half years When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Karanthi was published January 12, 2016.

Admittedly this was mid-BSN course work but I just had to read it. I love neurosurgeon medical non-fiction, I always have. From the first one I read in 1997- When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery by Frank Vertosick Jr., MD. This goes along with the ditty that I learned in nursing school- when the air hits your brain you are never the same.

This is the story of a neurosurgeon resident before and after he is diagnosed with lung cancer in the final years of his training.

Neurosurgeon training is a loooonnnnggggg haul. The google results vary. Some call it 15 years after high school (includes a bachelors of some sort and medical school, internship and residency) and other programs clock it at 7 years (which is minus the bachelors years). In a simpler format, it is seven years after the undergraduate degree and the medical degree. Of course, type-A personalities that 100% of them are, there may be additional fellowship after the end of residency.

In short, you have to REALLY like cutting into people’s heads.

Or the aforementioned type-A personality.

Or just want to care for people who are sick and have no where else to turn.

Sit down.

I’m going to hold your hands and gently explain that I didn’t enjoy this book.

Like, at all.

Take your fingers off your pearls. It isn’t personal.

I get that Dr. Paul Kalanithi wrote this while he was actively fighting lung cancer and actively dying. And that his wife, Dr. Lucy Kalanithi wrote the final chapter explaining his death.

I understand.

I just don’t think it is that great a book.

Seriously.

I re-read it this past week to make sure that I still felt that way. Also I re-read it with the knowledge that I had finished two whole nursing degrees and am most of the way through the third in the intervening years.

There are entire passages of brilliance. I marked 11 pages of them.

This book is this man’s journey to coming to grips with a fatal disease. I can understand that.

I can also appreciate how they let his voice drive most of the way through the book. It starts off strong when he was a boy and stronger when he is in medical school, before petering out over the course of his illness. If this was intentional this is masterful editing. If this is not, it is still masterful storytelling.

My biggest pet peeve with this book is that it is over-confident in its own brilliance and the author is a huge name dropper. Granted most of the names dropped were author’s names but nurses were not named. Not once. His surgical nurses were only mentioned a handful of times, including the conversation about his long hours at the hospital that apparently the nurse didn’t understand? I bet she did. Oh, and they were always women, nameless women who didn’t understand the pressures on a rising neurosurgeon resident. My feminist heart didn’t like this one bit.

I appreciated how he let his patient’s be fully realized people in his mind. I find that is the best way to approach a patient. As if they are people too, not just a problem for him to do surgery on. This I liked.

But I kept thinking how one note the nurses were. In fact the only named women are his co-resident, his wife, and his oncologist. Otherwise they were referred to as the relation to him and his wife and his family. No, thank you.

I stand by my first impression of the book as a memoir of residency. That there were better instances out there. Even as a memoir of his death I give it an 8/10.

Would I read it again? Yes, and I have.

Would I shelve it on my bookshelves? Yes, and I have.

Would I recommend it? Yes, as a book on dying.

May the Fourth be with you 2025

It is Star Wars Day!

This is an unofficial geek holiday where we celebrate all that was, is, and will be Star Wars.

It is a pun that became mainstream popular after Margaret Thatcher won in 1979. But you know that fans were using it unironically before that, right?

Geeks of all kinds will wear fandom tee shirts, quaffs blue milk (not really) and speak in the particular Yoda cadence.

Even if I am watching a Marvel movie today, I will be representing Star Wars. Myself, I am wearing an R2D2 tee shirt that is R2 yelling as he tries to stop himself in one of the episodes. He is yelling EeYOOOOOW!! It was that or the polite D-0 droid.

But R2 is my favorite. Well, one of them. It is more correct to say that he was my first droid. My favorite is the AT-AT.

All good geeks know the story. Yes, all of it, including the 1978 Christmas Special. Yes, even that.

The story, at its heart like the best fiction, is the triumph of good versus evil. Of the scrappy rebellion against the much more impressively armored and supplied Empire. An asymmetric warfare if you were.

But it is so much more than that.

It is a love story.

It is lost family found.

It is found family comprised of friends.

It is the triumph of a moisture farmer against an itty bitty thermal exhaust port.

It is the recognition that the story continues after the rebellion wins.

It is a sprawling masterpiece of story telling, and a hat tip to the story never really ending.

It is a juggernaut that has launched toys and games and fan fiction and books and television shows and an entire universe that sparks recognition in us all.

Because it is as close as we get to a universal story.

I like to say that I am an all-purpose geek. In other words I am a non-denominational geek. I like it all, practical effects, CGI, no effects.

But you never forget your first fandom do you?

International Womens Day March 8th

Much like declining to wish people a “Happy Veterans Day”, I will also be declining to wish women a “Happy International Women’s Day”. This is for many of the same reasons.

There is nothing happy about this.

Google and Apple took it off of their calendars.

In an obvious sop to more than half of the country, Google did incorporate 5 images into its search page. An atom, a double helix strand of DNA, an Erlenmeyer flask, a dinosaur skull, and an astronaut in full gear.

And that’s it.

It is up to us to decipher which scientist or woman matches up with each image.

The atom is a bit of a head thumper to start us off. I imagine that it is supposed to represent Marie Curie. I guess. One of her TWO Nobel prizes is in physics.

The double helix of DNA is much easier to parse. Rosalind Franklin was the woman who took Photo 51, the first x-ray picture that clearly showed the double strands. Her work was stolen by the heralded discoverers of DNA, without her permission. She was robbed of the Nobel prize when the two men who had taken her data did not credit her. Worse, they tried to cover up this fact by saying that she couldn’t grasp the concept of DNA.

Bitch, please.

The Erlenmeyer flask is meant to be the contributions of all women in chemistry? I guess. It’s not really clear. There have been a lot of women in chemistry, after all.

The dinosaur skull could represent Dorothy Garrod. She was the one who first explained that the First Mesozoic era encompassed the history of man. Or perhaps it is representing the first woman archeologist, Margaret Murray, who worked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There have also been a lot of women in archeology.

The astronaut could be any number of women. The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova. She orbited the Earth for 3 days in June 1963.

If you click through the Google doodle, it is just a celebration of women in STEM. No woman is named specifically by name.

But we know or can guess at the inspiration for each doodle image.

Women in science and STEM is an international effort.

One that we have to give all respect for and homage to.

But it isn’t enough. What other woman has had her data stolen or was forced to give her work to a man for recognition? There remains a lot of work to do.

One thing that must be acknowledged is the contributions that are not STEM related. Because the entire world and all of its discoveries are not solely STEM related. To act as if it is devalues the woman writers and thinkers and philosophers who have fought and bled and died and were forgotten for their contribution to the current world.

Despite the men. Not because of them.

But we still have to recognize that all these women were once girls. And these girls had books.

Dispatches from the Evening Shift end of semester impromptu vacation

The end of the semester can bring up many feelings.

Too often the weeks and days leading up to the end of the semester are busy, busy, busy.

Final projects.

Final papers.

Final presentations.

Yeah.

All of those.

I was gonna contradict myself and say that there were no presentations. But there was one.

I would say the majority of my feelings are exhaustion.

I don’t want to read for school, I want to read for pleasure.

I don’t want to write for school, I want to write for pleasure.

In the past few days, I’ve mostly been reading.

A lot.

Like a lot a lot.

The Women by Kristin Hannah was the first book I read. It is about the forgotten women in Vietnam, the nurses. Oh, so good.

Maddening and tear-jerking all at the same time.

This country did those women dirty.

Oh, and I worked a few shifts in there too.

After my last 10 hours as an RA.

And it occurred just now that I didn’t turn in my last time card.

Oh, dear.

Okay, that isn’t what I said. But drat!

And it was due today.

Bother.

I’ve got to get that in.

Oh, and I’m on my fourth and fifth antibiotic of the Spring. Can I use that as an excuse?

Too late, because I’m gonna.

Tomorrow I will write another Dispatch from Wonderland regarding school life.

I can’t wait to find out what I’m going to write about.

Time card first!

School Me Saturday 4/27/24-Off with her head!

Reminder- this series is roughly based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In this series, Alice is the student and the other characters are actors in the student’s life.

Nope. It isn’t Alice’s head that needs to be lopped off. It is the Queen of Hearts.

In this post, we are going to pretend that the Queen of Hearts is the little whisper of self-doubt that all students have. Regardless of where they are in the college/university/degree journey.

ALL students have that little voice that whispers to them that they are not good enough.

That they are only in the program they are in because of pity.

That the next test/essay/research paper will be their last.

Because how can they last?

Do they really think they can finish?

Do they really think no one is laughing at them and their audacity for thinking they are on par with their classmates?

And, if they finish by the grace of the teachers, how do they think they will pass the next test? In nursing, this is the NCLEX, the national boards that assess a nurse’s readiness to practice safely.

It is insidious, that little voice in all students’ heads.

In the book, Alice draws the Vorpal sword, which allows her to defeat the Jabberwocky by cutting off its head and defeating the Jabberwocky allows her to defeat the Queen of Hearts.

The key to defeating the student’s Queen of Hearts little voice is to draw their own Vorpal sword.

This is gonna get a little metaphysical but bear with me.

The Queen of Hearts yells constant threats. Off with his head, off with her head. But no heads are actually lopped off except the Jabberwocky. She is all bluster and vim, but in the end, Alice proves her to be thin and unsubstantial. Because the Queen of Hearts is only a playing card. In naming her to be inconsequential Alice defeats her.

The little voice in students’ heads (and I am not immune) can be defeated in such a manner. It is about recognizing the voice and knowing that the voice is not telling the truth which allows the student to defeat the voice.

This is not an easy battle, (see me in my fourth degree program and still struggling at times with the voice), but naming the voice and recognizing that it is self-doubt at its heart allows us to ignore the voice. Ignoring the voice leads to its defeat, just like paying a lot of attention to the voice allows it to grow.

My best advice is to talk to other students and have conversations about defeating self-doubt. There is safety in numbers and when one student is having a bad day, the others can serve as a support system to buoy them up.

Above all, give yourself grace.

This is new. This is difficult. But there have been others before you.

Talk to them. Talk to your classmates. Find the voice and squash it like a little bug!

This is where I put in a mantra- the only way out is through.