Posts (page 2)
This is my puppy, Gus. He had to have his tail amputated last week, but as you can see, he's doing fine.
What are your favorite Thanksgiving traditions? Anything you're not so fond of?
We eat Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt Ruth's house every year. Another family comes in from near Kansas City, Juanita and Stanley, and their children, Daniel and Carrie. There has not been a kids' table for several years now, but when we were younger, all of the kids used to eat downstairs in the "Rathskeller."
When I was much younger, I used to think that Aunt Ruth was insanely wealthy. As I got older, I figured out that it was more about her combined love for nice things and entertaining. She used to have "the ladies" over for pinochle and serve the fancy finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off. There are curios and cabinets full of china and silver, spread out all over the house. There is a formal living room on the entry level that has a huge mirror and lots of pretty furniture and glass things; when we were growing up, we were told that the living room was off-limits until we were 21 or married, whichever came first. There are four floors in her house: upstairs (where the bedrooms are), the entry level (where the kitchen and the formal living room are), downstairs (where the "informal" sitting room and the utility room - which contains another full kitchen - are), and the rathskeller.
The rathskeller is her finished basement, and the only tornado-safe space in the whole house. There is a whole separate sitting area, some tables and chairs, and a full, built-in bar. Back in the day, it was entertainment-central. In more recent years, it was also where the toys lived, and where the kids' table was. There were Tinker Toys and crayons and all sorts of other stuff. There was a globe diorama - it looked like a jungle, with tiny little glass animals. We'd all sit and make up stories about the animals. It was quite the time.
As far as things I'm less fond of... it might not have happened for a few years - maybe they've finally forgotten - but it used to be that someone would inevitably bring up my rather unceremonious initiation into adulthood, which happened on Thanksgiving morning, oh, about eleven years ago.
...yeah.
My favorite person in my extended family was my Auntie Butch, a name given to her by my father in his childhood. The story, I think, goes that he could not pronounce her given name, Beulah. She was my great aunt, my paternal grandmother's sister. Her husband died long before I was born. She lived in Centralia, Illinois, and we would drive on Sunday afternoons to see her, for fried chicken dinners, and to pick apples and peaches in small town orchards, where you bought your fruit by the bushel.
So many of my best childhood memories are tied up in her house, with her. She had a calendar with the months of the year in French. Under the coffee table in the living room, she had a basket of wood chips that had been carved into and smelled like apple slices. In the back bedroom, in the dresser, was a collection of old Viewfinder films that Stephanie and I spent hours poring over. Every year, we got to pick out what we wanted for our birthday dinner - I always wanted fried chicken and peach cobbler. We stayed with her when my parents went to Chicago, went to church with her, met her friends, and walked to the grocery store. She went to California and Disneyland with us when I was nine. My first plane ride, spending time with the cousins, and so many memories of that trip. She never got any older to me - her hair never greyed, and it felt like she was always happy. I don't know if she was always happy - maybe she was just glad to see us - but I don't have a single memory of her being unhappy.
When I was eleven, we picked her up at the airport after a long trip to Colorado (where her daughter lived at the time). She stayed the night at our house, we did a little shopping the next day, and then made the drive back to Centralia. We didn't stay long. She offered to make us dinner, before her brother stopped by, but it was getting late and it was a school night. Shortly after we got to St. Louis, we got a phone call, either from her brother or her daughter, telling us that her brother went into the house after she didn't answer, and found her unconscious, on the floor. She was taken to St. Mary's, and then flown into Barnes, in St. Louis. She was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. Over the next few days, her daughter came to St. Louis (and stayed with us for weeks), and she had surgery. We spent our weeknights in the ICU for a long time, and were allowed to see her in a step-down unit a few weeks later. Even as young as I was, I realized that, even if she was still alive, my Auntie Butch was gone.
I struggled with what happened for a long time. I felt guilty for years about leaving right before this happened, for her being alone when it happened. I felt badly for the way that her wishes were being denied; that day, on the drive back to Centralia, she and my mother had a long discussion on her end-of-life wishes - not to be kept alive for longer than she was meant to be here, she said. I dont' remember how long it took for me to stop crying at night. It was a time in my life that still weighs very heavily upon me. It probably has no small role in my decision to become a physician, and I know that it is why the importance of a "good death" and hospice and end-of-life care are a significant portion of my ethical dialogue.
After awhile, Susie moved Auntie Butch to a nursing home in Centralia, so that her friends would be able to visit. We went to see her as frequently as we could, even taking her apple picking one year. Eventually, she went on a feeding tube, and eventually, she became confused. I don't know how much she knew the last time we went to visit. I don't know if she knew me, or Stephanie. I'm sure she knew my father. Susie went back to Colorado, and then to Missouri, coming for visits and to take care of the business end. The house was sold, and we came together to pick over her things and take what we wanted. The Viewfinder had already been snatched, but my favorite picture and some of the blankets she made came with us. I snuck a wooden apple chip into my pocket, and put it somewhere safe, where it stayed for years.
Four years ago, sometime in the night, my Auntie Butch passed away in the nursing home. Nobody who loved her was there to see her go. We got the news in the morning and shifted our plans for the week. She died on a Sunday morning, the funeral was on a Tuesday. It was, as funerals go, full of people I am related to, but have never met before in my life, and whom I will probably never see again. It was stressful and sad, but it was over. She had, in truth, died years before, when she was no longer the vivid, smiling, always-a-brunette woman, active in her church and her community, the nicest person you could ever hope to meet anywhere.
I'm mostly fine with this thought. I have a lot of "happy" to go to when I think about her. The afghan that sits on my bed even now still smells faintly of her house. The apple chip still lives "somewhere safe" at my parents' house - they found it a while back and asked me when I took it. Nobody ever took the trouble to make her write down her peach pie recipe, and I've never really liked fried chicken because it doesn't taste like hers.
Today was a hard day, where I didn't feel like I could do or say the right things for people. I felt like I was hurting or breaking whatever I touched. And I didn't know why - something just felt amiss. I can't blame this on that, but the realization that today was the day that it was really didn't help things very much.
I haven't been back to Centralia since the funeral. But things happen, sometimes unexpectedly, that bring me back - I'll be in an old house and I'll catch a whiff of the smell of her house, or I'll have dinner at a friend's house and eat off their mom's old Desert Rose china. I caught myself wishing that she had been at my graduation from Mizzou, or wondering what she would have thought of me being in medical school. I know that she would have aged enough - she would have been in her mid 80s by now - that I wouldn't be spending any weekends off at her house if all of this hadn't happened. I wonder if she'd be proud of who I've become, the person and the life.
I don't know. I just miss her so much right now.
I have a friend whose facebook status right now is "...figures that if Obama says that protecting abortion will be the very first thing he supports as president, then it's a big enough issue to base a vote on."
She's right. Even if she's on the other side of it. Reproductive health care availability IS a big issue.
I would love to leave a message under her status saying the following:
"You're damn right, it's an important enough issue to base your vote on. I'm sick and tired of the Republican party telling me that I'm not sovereign over my own body. You let the government run all over your rights if you want to, but I'll be voting for Obama in large part *because* he thinks that protecting my right to abortion is a legislative priority."
/rant
Cross-posted at http://demockracy.com
It looks like the McCain-Palin camp has a new enemy in her war on science: fruit flies.
In Pittsburgh on Friday, Governor
Palin, in trying to play the role of “super maverick earmark destroyer,”
accidentally tapped into a few of my wedge issues. In a speech to a
small crowd, she talked about her son, Trig, born with Down syndrome,
discussing him in relation to private school vouchers and earmarks for
research which she claims draw funding away from educating children
with special needs.
I am about as pro-choice as they
come. I generally stand against any policy or legislation that seeks
to restrict the right to abortion for any woman, anywhere. I believe
in a choice movement whose goal is to educate men and women on safe
sex choices, help to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and as such, to reduce
the number of unwanted pregnancies and subsequent abortions. It is never
the goal to encourage abortion, but rather, to encourage women (and
ideally, their partners) to make the decision that is right for them.
I respect Palin for making the choice
to carry her child to term. She was given a choice, and she made the
best decision for herself and her family. Yet, her policies as mayor
and governor have made clear her desire to rescind the ability of other
women to make those choices - in her ardent support of pro-life politics
and requiring victims of sexual assault to find the funds to pay for
their own rape kits. It’s no great secret that Governor Palin is anti-choice
in an extremist capacity.
However, her constant denial of scientific
fact and her willingness to disregard the need for greater scientific
inquiry are perhaps even scarier, and even more confusing than the
“VOTE!” scarf with the donkeys plastered all over it, worn at a
rally last week. It’s one thing when she takes the party-line stance
against embryonic stem cell research or the disregard that global warming
really exists. It’s another thing when she makes the outrageous claim
that funding research - particularly on fruit flies - draws money away
from special needs education, an issue that she actually has a direct
stake in.
For the unfamiliar, Drosophila
melanogaster, more commonly known as the fruit fly, are commonly
used as a tool to study genetics. They an ideal tool for such research
because they are easily cultured, reproduce prodigiously, have readily
available mutants for study, and because much is known about their genome.
We use them to study gene transmission patterns and disease processes,
and last year, to build a link between a specific protein and autism.
This protein, neurexin, is needed to create functioning neural connections;
when defective in humans, it can be a genetic risk factor for autism.
This is a clear-cut example in which
Palin’s anti-science rhetoric counteracts the causes she claims to
fight for. It also emphasizes further her resistance toward policies
that will provide solutions to problems that afflict Americans. We fund
research in this country by grants. The process is slow, time-consuming,
and often frustrating, but it is also often the only way to obtain funding
without being forced to seek aid from the private sector.
Cutting earmark funding of research
would be disastrous to the forces of scientific innovation, and could
prove devastating to an economy that desperately needs to locate “the
next big industry.” How do we find the best solution for alternative
fuel if the only scientists who can afford to do the research work for
Exxon-Mobile and BP? In the mean time, who is going to work out better,
cleaner ways of extracting materials that we need to use while we roll
out green technology? Who will make sure that medical research is creating
new solutions to problems we can’t answer yet? Who will make sure
that scientists can perform research that, while not ultimately profitable,
will benefit society more than another new pill that can provide relief
against erectile dysfunction? Earmarks in research provide a way to
ensure that funding is provided to study very specific questions that
might otherwise not be addressed.
Just for fun, I downloaded the “Big
Kahuna” list of 2008 Congressional earmarks. I read the whole thing
- less fun. I won’t deny that some of our money is being used for
some pretty strange, and perhaps inappropriate things. More than a few
items, though, have goals oriented at treating chronic conditions and
serious problems. For example, finding ways to measure blood glucose
without a needle stick could lead to greater compliance in millions
of patients with poorly-controlled diabetes, which could save billions
of dollars in health care costs. Aquaculture research helps
us better understand how to achieve sustainable, safe seafood supplies.
Plenty of the earmarks that Palin rallies so hard against - dear
Drosophila notwithstanding, provide funding for projects that aim
to help the disabled, through the funding of educational initiatives
and building renovations.
I won’t pretend to think that the system is perfect where it stands now. But I don’t think that the solution is as simple as Governor Palin would like for it to be, and I don’t think that science is the enemy in budget earmarks, when there are still so many Bridges to Nowhere that account for much greater percentages of earmark spending. And while I agree fundamentally with Palin that more needs to be done to ensure the well-being of disabled Americans, her anti-science sensibilities prevent her from understanding that funding science can be a tool to carry us forward, by allowing scientists to seek innovative answers to the problems we face.
I am bothered by the problems that I see and cannot fix.
I know that there is nothing I could possibly do, except perhaps what I am already doing.
But, what I am already doing is not enough.
How can I do more? How can I make it better?
I find myself wishing that I was less of a "fixer."
I want my world to be better. I want my world to be better on a global scale. I want my world to be better on a local scale. I want my friends to hate each other less. I want for things to make sense again. I want to remember what it feels like to be in love with a place. I want to have someone here that I feel safe crying in front of.
I want things to be better.
"There is a way to be good again."
It's taken a good, long time for it to happen, but I think I've finally found my pre-exam niche... where I need to be and what I need to be doing, to do well. I hope.. grades don't start coming out for a few days yet, so I have yet to see. But I felt like this set went pretty well.
