24-Napoleon who?

The post-it reads “The shortest surgeons are the biggest assholes.”

That could be the complete post right there. It is truth. If we have all decided that this is truth, we have to unpack it a bit.

The question remains what level of asshole.

Because, yes Virginia, there are levels to asshole. It is nearly Christmas and that IS a Christmas reference. It refers to the 1897 editorial where Virginia’s question is answered.

There is the instrument-throwing asshole. These are the ones who decide that the instruments are not up to snuff and they are tired of complaining about it. Hence, the throwing of the instruments. This is also one of the angrier assholes.

There is the globe-trotting asshole. These are the ones who absolutely, positively need to add on a case and the case has to be done as soon as possible because they have a plane to catch. Do they really? Or is that a handy excuse.

There is the gotta make dinner with the spouse asshole. These are the ones who swan up an hour late and try to get finished with surgery in time to meet their spouse at a restaurant. This is a close cousin to the globe-trotting asshole.

There is the deity’s gift to surgery. These are the ones who decided that the rules do not apply to them and they can absolutely jump the add-on line. After all, do you not know who they are?

There is the my father will hear about this asshole. These are the ones who followed in daddy’s footsteps and became a surgeon. They are a short step away from deity’s gift to surgery type but there are enough of them I decided they needed their own subcategory.

There is the operate on holidays because they are a miserable bastard asshole. Yes, I’ve worked with one of these. They were not religious and called us out on every, single holiday, especially Christmas. And 4th of July. And Memorial Day. And Labor Day. And President’s Day (this is a real holiday in California). And Thanksgiving. And New Year’s Eve. And New Year’s Day. Why they were on call every danged holiday, I don’t know. At least we were guaranteed call-back pay.

There is the too smart for this room asshole. These are the ones who are convinced that they are the smartest one in the room. We’ve all worked with this one. They delight in the “Well, actually” put down and mansplain or womansplain or theysplain the ENTIRE case.

Of course, there are exceptions to every one of these categories. Sometimes a short surgeon isn’t an asshole, sometimes a surgeon really does need to catch that flight, sometimes the spouse will leave them if they are late one more time because they have been taking care of patients, but sometimes they are just assholes. No matter their height.

Post-it Sunday 9/29/24- the in crowd

The gown card reads “Drs are a collegial bunch. As if having an MD gets you into a special club.”

My sister is a doctor. A pathologist, in fact. I know all about the years of schooling, the internship year, and the resident years, and the fellowship years (if they do that).

I get it.

I also understand why there is a special handshake doctor club.

I get it.

No one else can possibly understand but another doctor.

However, there is also a hierarchy among doctors. The general surgeons generally look down on the ob-gyns, the orthopedists look down on the podiatrists, and the neurologists and cardiothoracic surgeons look down on everyone.

Bullying between doctor groups is not okay.

It smacks of high school. And all the doctors I know have at least 10 years of post-high school education.

There is also a rivalry between the PhD nurse and the DNP (doctor of nursing practice), for no good reason. The PhD nurse does the research, and the DNP puts it into practice.

Stop acting like a bunch of teenagers!

Did you not learn in high school that bullying and snobbish behavior are not how to treat a colleague?

I was gonna write act your wage, but I don’t think so.

Definitely act your age.

Bullying is not on.

*** As an aside, reading the rest of the notes on the card I wonder if this was not a note about healthcare. The rest of the gown card is about a serial killer mystery I plotted out. And the main characters. The age of the gown card definitely bears this out. But the message is still the same, fictional doctors or non-fictional doctors need to stop acting like a bunch of teenagers and act your age.

Post-it Sunday 9/22/24- how the hospital speaks and tells time

The post-it reads “Military time primer. Alphanumeric.”

I am aware that these are two entirely different things.

However, they are how every hospital that I’ve ever worked at communicates. All five of them. Plus the nursing home.

Military time is used so that there is no question as to what is meant by 2 o’clock. Is that morning or afternoon? And do I know that you think it is morning or afternoon?

Well, in military time, that would be 0200 for the morning. And 1400 for the afternoon.

Times in the hospital are mostly for important things like drug administration times. Or surgery times. Or visiting hours. It is important that we mean the same thing.

The best and easiest way to learn military time is to know that it is based on a 24-hour clock. Just like hours in a day. Midnight is 0000, and noon is 1200. What confuses people is anything after noon. All of a sudden we are adding 12 to the hour. 1 pm becomes 1300, 2 pm becomes 1400, 3 pm becomes 1500, and so forth.

The way I’ve taught many people to remember military time is that if it is after noon, just subtract 12 from the number and get the number they are most likely used to seeing. 13=12 is 1 in the afternoon, and 1600-12 is 4 in the afternoon.

I’ve used military time as far back as I can remember. It is second nature to me and how all of my clocks tell time.

Alphanumeric on the other hand is to ensure that a message is not misconstrued.

For example, if you are on the phone with a doctor and they tell you this important heart medication is TID and you heard BID, that can make a patient sick. TID means three times a day and BID means 2 times a day. How often does the patient need the med you begin to ask the doctor. And they’ve already hung up and will yell if you call them back.

The proper way to convey this information is three times a day versus two times a day.

Alphanumeric also is useful when spelling out names of medications or even names of staff or anyone for that matter. M and N sound a lot alike when you are mumbling them into a phone. As do B and T and D. Mike and November sound markedly different. As do Bravo, Tango, and Delta.

It is all about the easiest way to communicate with others in the hospital. Without the possibility of error.

I learned alphanumeric spelling in the Air Force. Because it is how to military communicates as well. Although they love their acronyms as an additional ease in communication too.

As does the hospital.

Tuesday Top of Mind 7/30/24- childless cat lady here, reporting from the front line

There is a furor of JD Vance denouncing the country as being run by childless cat ladies. There is a lot to unpack here and is my Tuesday top of mind.

It goes beyond the regret that he says that the U.S. is being run “by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

Point number 1- I feel this is a call back to the spinster horror from the Victorian era and before where a woman needed a man. Otherwise, they would be “on the shelf” and unmarriageable by 23. She was forced to care for her parents until their deaths and after they died forced to live in misery, unwanted. (frowny face here) This is definitely the underpinning of this idea. It is a well-known trope that it was best to be widowed because the widowed woman was thought to be independent and beholden to no man.

Point number 2- I feel this is a projection of the miserableness of those who have children. They see those of us who do not have children as selfish and having all the fun they can’t have themselves. You know, because of the kids. I think this is especially poignant because some people with children want to make the world as miserable as them, mainly when it comes to book bans and drag queen bans. I get it, when you have children they are vulnerable and everything looks like a threat. But is it, though? Or is the threat coming, as it often does, from inside the house?

Point number 3- Who says those of us who don’t have children are miserable? Kind of goes back to point number 2. Projection much?

Point number 4- This lumps all women and men who don’t have kids into the bucket of not having kids because we don’t want them. This might or might not be far from the truth. What about those of us who couldn’t have kids? We are apparently the same as those who don’t want them. One of these things is not like the other.

Point number 5- I think this is about transphobia as well. Trans women do not have the plumbing to create or carry a child. This is through no fault of their own. But why not twist the knife? It says nothing about their willingness to carry a child, if it was physically possible.

Point number 6- Men like this and others who embrace what he is saying are afraid. Afraid of the woman who is not under a man’s thumb. Afraid of a woman who doesn’t need a man. Afraid of a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it.

Much like the abortion bans and the book bans, it is all about control.

They can’t control us.

And they fear what they can’t control.

Therefore, we childless cat ladies, married or not, women who are unable to bear children or not, are to be squeezed into a teeny tiny box of their making. Because they fear what they can’t control.

Fuck that.

My cats and my uterus and my husband would like a word.

I have also seen the childless dog women coming to our defense and that of Kamala Harris, who the slur was originally against. And it is glorious.

You bet I bought that tee shirt.

School Me Saturday 2/17/24-the more we learn, the less we know

The more we learn, the less we know.

This is a stark statement and it can also feel a bit disheartening.

What do you mean I have more to learn? When can I be done?

We can break down the phrase. The more we learn. Yes, there is always something to learn. It is impossible to know everything about everything. Learning is a privilege, some people do not have that luxury. We’re not going to unpack that; that’s a Tuesday top-of-mind topic.

If you have the opportunity to learn, absolutely do it! No matter how you learn, what you learn. It is always important to stretch those brain muscles.

The second part of the saying is no less important than the first part. The less we know, to me this means there is an opportunity to examine what we know and what there is still to learn in whatever realm you want to learn.

If you are a current adult learner you are already engaging with learning more. The key is always to be learning more and expanding your knowledge. You have to be content with the learning because it is not about learning all the things. Because that is impossible because no one has the time to learn all the things, not in a human’s life span. Even AI doesn’t know everything. Because there is always knowledge being generated in every minute, in every day.

Albert Einstein said that the brain is a muscle. In growing older the idiom if you don’t use it, you lose it really becomes clear. Your brain, your muscles, the foreign language you took in high school. All of it has to be augmented; there is always something to learn.

That fact that there is always something to learn is the takeaway from today. As is the idea of additional education in whatever realm that you want to learn.

Learning will never be done.

There is always something new. Being willing to learn is half the battle.

School Me Saturday 1/27/24-Procrastination, part 1 the mental load

According to the Oxford English dictionary, procrastination is the action of delaying or postponing something.

It will surprise no one that I have often been accused of procrastinatory tendencies. I freely admit it. What some people see as me just putting something off is the action of me in my creative process. While I am not doing the assignment/cleaning/item on the to-do list, my brain is thinking about the assignment.

I would caution against this. It can cause a lot of anxiety.

And students don’t need to be adding to their anxiety about school.

I have had many thoughts and plans and “fixes” to being a procrastinator. These have either been given to me, or I was told about them, or I found them on my own.

Because no one likes to be a procrastinator. No one wakes up one day and says to themselves well, that paper/assignment/dissertation isn’t due for 10 days, I’ve got plenty of time. Only to wake up the day before it is due thinking “oh no!” and pulling an all-nighter to get it submitted on time.

For example, I have a 5-page paper due next Friday night. At 2359.

I know what it is to be about. I have been considering it since I learned about the paper. I have started the mental process of thinking about it. Thinking through each of the asks. Thinking how I am going to keep it to ONLY 6 pages.

Yes, I am in a PhD program and still struggling with this. I KNOW I am not alone. I’ve been like this since I first started writing my papers on the family computer and printing them in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

I have 2 things due in the next two weeks. My goal is to finish the paper and submit by Wednesday 1/31. My second goal is to finish and submit the Measurement homework assignment that is due on 2/8 by Tuesday 2/7.

You do what works for your schedule and your brain. My goal for the semester is to submit assignments 2 days before they are due. Wish me luck!

When I do a 2nd procrastination post, I will bring up some of the common fixes.

Let’s work on this together.