Home

I am home, and home is good.

I didn't get a lot of time to settle back in*, as my first day back at work was a Cardiology call shift.  Anyone who has had the experience of carrying their personal pager, the Cardiology consult team pager, and the Coronary Care Unit pager for 28 consecutive hours can empathize that this is not even remotely fun.  My Thursday night call shift got the award for my worst Cardiology call yet, with its highlights of emergency room attendings yelling at me for not seeing their patients fast enough, a middle of the night family meeting about palliating a patient who was scheduled to go home the following day, and two patients coding simultaneously, five stories apart from each other.  The awesomeness of it all just never stopped.

My program's Spring Retreat was scheduled for the afternoon of my post-call day, but despite my intention of fueling myself with coffee so I could go, I fell into a deep post-call coma from which my alarm barely roused me in time to make it to the fancy dinner.  I suspect there were a few people who could've done without my presence even at the dinner, as my main conversational point for the evening was "I don't know what I'm going to do with my life...(whine whine)...but it WON"T BE CARDIOLOGY."  Fortunately I felt much better after a good night's sleep, although Cardiology is still and will forever be off the table as a possible career choice.

I had plans to accomplish many things today, but then I was awakened this morning by a phone call from my six-year-old niece saying "Do you want.  To come.  To NANA'S?   For pancakes!  And SAUSAGES!"  An offer that no one can refuse.  This led to a very unproductive but delightful day sitting in my Mom's sun room cuddling with my nieces and indulging their endless requests to make origami animals**. 

After the nieces headed out, my Mom and I went to a greenhouse, where I picked up basil, oregano, mint, Italian parsley, oregano, and cat mint for my balcony garden.  While I should've headed home and gotten some work done at that point, I instead spent a bit more time in the sun room with my Mom, sorting through old childhood items of mine that my Mom is trying to purge from her basement in preparation for selling her house.  Although I am not a sentimental person, I did give my old Cabbage Patch Kid a very long hug when I unearthed her from the box.

Many hours later than originally intended, I made my way home in time to plant my small garden in the almost-complete dark.  While I could've just left the plants til the morning, it was such a perfectly beautiful day that I wanted to stretch every moment out of it as long as I could, even if that meant digging holes and burying plants in only the tiniest bit of light coming from my kitchen.

Today reminded me of just how simple happiness can be.  Family, good food, and a bit of soil.  Everything in the world that I need.  This thought is at the front of my mind as I go forward with my decisions about fellowship.  As much as I want to be in a career that I love, I also want to have time to fold paper with kids and dig my fingers deep into the dirt.  I want to be able to take days for myself without perpetually worrying about the damage it's doing to my career or about all the "shoulds".  The question now - the million dollar question - is how best to make that happen.

*  There are, I am ashamed to admit, still two unpacked suitcases and one giant unpacked box sitting in my front hallway.  I keep hoping I'll come home one of these days to discover the cats have unpacked for me.

**  To the people who write instructions in origami books:  You are evil.  No, your dotted lines and squiggly arrows do not make sense, nor do they help me turn a square piece of paper into a jumping frog.  Grrrr.

Homeward Bound

Thanks to one very large box and lots of packing tape, I've somehow managed to find space for all of my newly acquired souvenirs*.  I'm now left with just an hour and a half until my cab arrives and I start my trip back home.  Home!  Where my cats and my friends and my family and my kitchen (oh, my kitchen!) and my tree-shaded running trails await me.

Although I am admittedly eager to get home, it's been a good month here.  From a career perspective, I've met with a lot of key people, made (presumably) a good impression, and been offered a reference letter for the upcoming fellowship applications**.  My knowledge of what a career as an oncologist entails has grown substantially, putting me in a much better position to make that dreaded oncology vs hepatology vs unemployed couch surfer career decision.  And I've enjoyed the region, from exploring the nearby park to visiting Niagara-On-The-Lake to hiking in the Bruce Peninsula (post to come).

Of everything that's come out of the past month, I think two things are most important.  First is some level of excitement about possibly moving away next year.  A huge part of me has been dreading the thought of leaving my city, as I've been focused on all of the beloved things and people that I'd be leaving behind.  Being here and being exposed to different work and recreational opportunities has reminded me that there's also a huge gain to living somewhere else.  And I'm still young and independent enough that perhaps I should be striving for the exciting life experience of moving away, rather than trying to dig my roots deeper and more permanently into my home town.

Even more importantly, I've come to appreciate that the options that are open to me right now are really, really good.  I'm not stuck in a position of choosing between two crappy alternatives, but rather between two careers that would both be satisfying in their own way.  I love the patients in oncology, love being the go-to person for patients during times of great need, and I could see myself being satisfied in that role for many years.  Regardless of which career I end up choosing, it's encouraging to know that I'm picking between two good options, rather than trying to identify the lesser of two evils.  It's something for me to remember during my pissy moments when I'm lamenting how difficult it is to arrange electives or how hard a decision it is to make.

*  Mostly wine.  And some maple syrup and maple syrup-derived food stuffs. 
**  A major prize in the game of medicine.

Long Weekend Travels - Part Two

I am quickly approaching the end of my away elective, and I've accumulated a large number of photos I want to share, so I thought I'd finish up my story of the Victoria Day Long Weekend instead of going for a run in the miserable heat.  (I miss home where the temperature is less than 30 C and the humidity is measured using only two digits.)

Starting from where I left off, after arriving back at the bed and breakfast from the vineyard tour on Sunday evening, I decided to make an evening trip to Niagara Falls so as to leave more time on Monday for other things.  It was a wise decision indeed, as making my way through the traffic/finding parking/walking to the falls from my distant parking spot took much longer than I had anticipated.  While the falls themselves are spectacular and absolutely worth seeing, the city of Niagara Falls is a horrible place for anyone like me who hates crowds and chaos.  Cars, children, street vendors, tacky souvenirs - all of the things that I abhor about tourist traps.

But these were pretty (recycled photo from previous post, as all of my Niagara Falls pics look exactly the same):

These were pretty too (American falls):

It is really impossible to grasp the enormity of the falls from still pictures.  Standing at the mouth of the falls, virtually all you can hear is the sound of the water cascading over the side.  I experienced a bit of panic just looking at it.

I found the following sign kinda funny, because really - do people need to be told not to climb over the railing at Niagara Falls?

Of course, the very next day someone tried to commit suicide by jumping over the side...

Anyway...on to happier thoughts.  My visit to Niagara Falls marked the end of a long day, and I was very happy to make my way through the traffic back to the bed and breakfast to sleep.  The next morning, I had my second lovely breakfast that I didn't have to make for myself, and then I headed out to explore Niagara-On-The-Lake.  It's a really beautiful village filled with historical homes and beautiful gardens, but for some reason I went shopping instead of photographing much of it.  Here are some of the few pics I did take.

One place where I did take a lot of pictures was the Apothecary Museum, which was my last stop in Niagara-On-The-Lake.  The descriptions were not nearly as informative or well-developed as those at the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, but the displays were interesting enough to make it worthwhile

After the museum tour, I headed back to my home base, stopping on the way to visit an old friend whom I hadn't seen in eleven years.  She has two adorable kids, one of whom (the five-year-old) was very suspicious of the strange person in her house, and the other of whom (the two-year-old) fell in love with me after only a few minutes of playing with Play-Doh with her.  Apparently for days afterwards she kept asking "Momma?  When is that girly friend of yours going to come play with me again?"

It was a lovely, lovely weekend.

Room for One

In re-reading my previous post, I realize that it was a bit harsh, and I really hope that I didn't offend anyone with it.  It was my late-night attempt to purge some unhappy thoughts from my mind so that I could fall asleep, rather than stare at the ceiling reliving a day of sad brain tumour cases.  It was really not intended to be disrespectful of anyone else's beliefs, no matter how different from my own they may be.

Now that that's out of the way, it brings me to my current situation, which is nestled into a cheap motel in the Georgian Bay, anticipating a day filled with steep cliffs and falling water.  As I've been traveling these last few weeks, I've noticed once again that I seem to be the only person around who is traveling by herself.  The only person renting a hotel room solo, the only person sitting alone in restaurants, the only person hiking trails alone while hoping not to get eaten by a bear/attacked by a rapist/hopelessly lost a la Blaire Witch Project.  And it leaves me wondering if other single people simply don't travel, or if they always find a friend/sibling/parent with whom to travel.  Or if maybe their numbers are just so small that they get lost amongst the seemingly endless crowds of smiley happy couples.

For all of the solo people out there, including those who are in relationships but sometimes find themselves apart from their significant other, what do you do about travel?  Do you ever travel alone, and if so, do you feel as much of an anomaly as I sometimes do?

Moments of Doubt

Despite having recently declared myself an atheist, there are still moments that leave me questioning whether there may in fact be a god.

On Thursday morning, as I sat in my hotel room eating Mini Wheats before work, I read a blog post about sunrises written by a missionary and physician in Uganda.  It spoke of how each sunrise is unique, the work of an artist, and about how this is evidence for the existence of god.  While I appreciated the point about the beauty of sunrises, I dismissed the idea that there was a higher power behind them.  In my typical atheist fashion, I credited their existence to physics rather than divinity, an interaction between waves of light and the Earth's atmosphere.  Something easily explained by science and book learning.

And then, less than an hour later, as I walked through the hospital on my way to early morning tumour board, a set of paintings that I had passed by daily but never before noticed caught my attention.  The subject?  Sunrises.  A whole series of them, all from the same vantage point, painted to illustrate the uniqueness and beauty of each sunrise.  While my rational mind attributed this to coincidence, the deeper and more mysterious parts of my mind couldn't help but flash to the thought that maybe this was something more, a sign perhaps.

A small part of me held on to that idea for a few more hours, until my first new consult of the day.  As I read through the patient's chart, reviewing yet another story of another previously healthy person who was found to have an incurable and rapidly fatal tumour, I was reminded of why I lost any shred of belief that I ever had.  While I would love to be a person of faith, to believe in something greater than me that is compassionate and kind, I still can't reconcile that concept with the patients I see in front of me.  I can't grasp how a being that is supposedly all-powerful would afflict people with such horrible diseases and then provide them with only fallible human beings such as myself to fight them.  While I commend people of faith for being able to believe in spite of this, the cognitive dissonance is simply too much for me to handle.

So despite brief glimpses of something bigger, I continue to cling to my non-belief.  My belief that all of this is random, that cancer is just an unlucky ticket in the great cosmic lottery, is the only thing that allows me to do my work without being in a constant state of rage.