"Why do People Have To Die?"
"So that life is more important."
Very true. And let's face it, when we are torn apart due to a death, it is for ourselves that we cry. Mostly. Sometimes I cry thinking of the sunsets that this person won't see; the baby s/he won't hold in her/his arms... things like that. But mostly I am thinking of how my life will have a hole in it without that person.
This is going to be a broad, topicless posting, so beware.
Anyway, there are holes still in my life from people who have left it. My grandfather, Talon, Steve, Lee, others who came into my life either at conception or later on and left it in a very permanent fashion. A lot of times, I will dream about that person shortly after s/he has died and then it is as though I have an opportunity to say goodbye. It's nice. It may be entirely manufactured by my mind. Or maybe it really is that person reaching out to say goodbye. Who knows. I'll take it. I'm not stupid enough to look that gift horse in the mouth, no matter what its origin.
A lot of this cogitating has to do with my mother having been in the hospital (she was released today and ate at her favourite restaurant right after - all is right with the world again!) and some of it to do with listening a lot to both soundtracks to "Six Feet Under", a show that really made one think about death. So did "Dead Like Me" (and Showtime should be slapped for taking that off the air and in mid-season, no less) but I still don't have those songs; Luis' computer took a virtual header right after we downloaded those songs and so I never did get to transfer them to my Rio Carbon (it's a better i-Pod)... rats.
I do think about death. I mostly have no issue with it either. People die. This is not a separate thing; it is part of life. I see plenty of dead people (I sound like that eerie kid in "The Sixth Sense" but I don't see their ghosts - at least not yet. Maybe if I kill one of my patients s/he'll be pissed enough to come back and haunt me...). It is not a big deal. I always find dealing with the survivors the hard part.
So. Those are my thoughts on death. At the moment... maybe they will change.
On Tuesday I was just behind an accident involving a motorcycle and an SUV with a hole in its back window that was exactly the size of the motorcycle driver's head (with the very good headgear he had)... hmmm. I didn't have a chance to think about that until after the incident was over. I parked the car and ran over to help Danny, who had just gotten onscene. We were the only medical people there. This kid on the bike was (and likely still is) a moron. He was screaming down Vail Road popping wheelies. Now, no one is going to quickly accuse of 18-year-olds of being brain surgeons or aware of their mortality, but this kid was particularly stupid. I mean abysmally so. And here is the fun part. The brother of this winner was behind him taking pictures of this unbelievable stupidity. Here's hoping the police confiscated the camera and use the photos to make their case! The kid is still a moron due to the fact that he lived... however, his compound fracture of the leg meant an amputation. How's that for a life-long reminder of stupid can one be? I sound totally unsympathetic but... well... hard to feel any sympathy for someone who did this to themselves.
It has been the week from Hell. Forgetting Ma being in the hospital, which really caused me a huge amount of stress, there was the food poisoning that struck me yesterday around 1330 or so. It was rather mild at that point but by 1600 I was feeling quite awful and left work around 1700. I did get home quickly (35 minutes, which at 1700 on a Friday is really nothing short of a miracle) but it was easily one of the most torturous rides home - I was sure I was going to need to pull over to vomit.
It continued well into this morning. Had I allowed myself to vomit at 2200 last night, I'd've likely saved myself a lot of agony. However, I really hate throwing up, so I did everything to not do it. Well. It of course ended up as severe diarrhea and nausea... and at 0500, during one of numerous trips to the bathroom, I could not stave it off any longer. It was coming up whether I liked it or not. I grabbed the trash pail (which fortuitously had a plastic bag in it) and threw up. More than I thought I could. It was almost all bile. There was little that was solid in it. Good thing - the first round (naturally) made it through mouth and nose. No one likes the feeling of chunks in the nasal passages...
Too gross for you? Me, too. I'll leave it at that. Suffice to say, things improved dramatically after I managed to empty the belly. I still feel generally icky, but not nauseous the way I did prior to the event. Another day of Sprite and crackers and I will right again.
So. What else? Well, you know it has been a truly horrendous week when my trips to the dentist were the high points of it. I love my dentist (Dr. Berdj Feredjian in Montville) and he is really very, very good. He determined that I needed a route canal on Monday; this morning at 0820 I had step one of three done. It was fine. I felt it in a very distant way in the back roots but it was not enough to even consider requesting more novacaine. He was wonderful and gave me a running monologue of what he was doing and why; allowed me to hold a mirror so I could watch it and was very thorough in explaining the future steps. It is a $1200 procedure but it needs to be done. That is life. And my fault, really. I know that. Hopefully this will be the first and last one.
He did also show me a piece of the root. I have never seen one of my nerves so I really wanted a good look at this! It was really interesting - a tiny piece but still interesting. It looked like sinew or maybe a piece of chicken - sort of tan and a little ripped at the ends. Stupidly, I thought erroneously that it would be green - every poster you see of the human nervous system shows nerves as green! OK, OK, I know better, but if you see the same thing over and over again as one way, you are trained to think that this is what it looks like.
Work was really quite good this week. The work itself is always good, in this, I mean my coworkers and their reactions to my issue of Ma being in the hospital. Everyone was so patient and understanding and nice! I don't mean to sound surprised but in other companies, the understanding sort of went this far and no further... in my current place of employment, I was very much touched and moved by the across the board reaction of everyone. I really love this place and every day, I love it more.
On Monday I will stand outside (despite the 100+F/34+C degrees that it is expected to be outside) and breathe in the air and look at the lovely courses and the gorgeous building I work in and breathe it all in - I am too lucky for words.
Right now it is 28 degrees C outside... not bad in and of itself but the humidity is just awful. It reads 71% relative humidity but I'm not buying... it feels far more wet than that.
My fingers are feeling sore from somuch sudden typing after a week that was short on typing and long on waiting and sitting...
Oddly enough, I lost 15lbs/7.5kg. I suppose that would be the bright side to this. I don't consider a weight loss of 15lbs/7.5kg in a week and a half particularly healthy, but it is nice. If I could just stay on that road...
We'll see...
Very true. And let's face it, when we are torn apart due to a death, it is for ourselves that we cry. Mostly. Sometimes I cry thinking of the sunsets that this person won't see; the baby s/he won't hold in her/his arms... things like that. But mostly I am thinking of how my life will have a hole in it without that person.
This is going to be a broad, topicless posting, so beware.
Anyway, there are holes still in my life from people who have left it. My grandfather, Talon, Steve, Lee, others who came into my life either at conception or later on and left it in a very permanent fashion. A lot of times, I will dream about that person shortly after s/he has died and then it is as though I have an opportunity to say goodbye. It's nice. It may be entirely manufactured by my mind. Or maybe it really is that person reaching out to say goodbye. Who knows. I'll take it. I'm not stupid enough to look that gift horse in the mouth, no matter what its origin.
A lot of this cogitating has to do with my mother having been in the hospital (she was released today and ate at her favourite restaurant right after - all is right with the world again!) and some of it to do with listening a lot to both soundtracks to "Six Feet Under", a show that really made one think about death. So did "Dead Like Me" (and Showtime should be slapped for taking that off the air and in mid-season, no less) but I still don't have those songs; Luis' computer took a virtual header right after we downloaded those songs and so I never did get to transfer them to my Rio Carbon (it's a better i-Pod)... rats.
I do think about death. I mostly have no issue with it either. People die. This is not a separate thing; it is part of life. I see plenty of dead people (I sound like that eerie kid in "The Sixth Sense" but I don't see their ghosts - at least not yet. Maybe if I kill one of my patients s/he'll be pissed enough to come back and haunt me...). It is not a big deal. I always find dealing with the survivors the hard part.
So. Those are my thoughts on death. At the moment... maybe they will change.
On Tuesday I was just behind an accident involving a motorcycle and an SUV with a hole in its back window that was exactly the size of the motorcycle driver's head (with the very good headgear he had)... hmmm. I didn't have a chance to think about that until after the incident was over. I parked the car and ran over to help Danny, who had just gotten onscene. We were the only medical people there. This kid on the bike was (and likely still is) a moron. He was screaming down Vail Road popping wheelies. Now, no one is going to quickly accuse of 18-year-olds of being brain surgeons or aware of their mortality, but this kid was particularly stupid. I mean abysmally so. And here is the fun part. The brother of this winner was behind him taking pictures of this unbelievable stupidity. Here's hoping the police confiscated the camera and use the photos to make their case! The kid is still a moron due to the fact that he lived... however, his compound fracture of the leg meant an amputation. How's that for a life-long reminder of stupid can one be? I sound totally unsympathetic but... well... hard to feel any sympathy for someone who did this to themselves.
It has been the week from Hell. Forgetting Ma being in the hospital, which really caused me a huge amount of stress, there was the food poisoning that struck me yesterday around 1330 or so. It was rather mild at that point but by 1600 I was feeling quite awful and left work around 1700. I did get home quickly (35 minutes, which at 1700 on a Friday is really nothing short of a miracle) but it was easily one of the most torturous rides home - I was sure I was going to need to pull over to vomit.
It continued well into this morning. Had I allowed myself to vomit at 2200 last night, I'd've likely saved myself a lot of agony. However, I really hate throwing up, so I did everything to not do it. Well. It of course ended up as severe diarrhea and nausea... and at 0500, during one of numerous trips to the bathroom, I could not stave it off any longer. It was coming up whether I liked it or not. I grabbed the trash pail (which fortuitously had a plastic bag in it) and threw up. More than I thought I could. It was almost all bile. There was little that was solid in it. Good thing - the first round (naturally) made it through mouth and nose. No one likes the feeling of chunks in the nasal passages...
Too gross for you? Me, too. I'll leave it at that. Suffice to say, things improved dramatically after I managed to empty the belly. I still feel generally icky, but not nauseous the way I did prior to the event. Another day of Sprite and crackers and I will right again.
So. What else? Well, you know it has been a truly horrendous week when my trips to the dentist were the high points of it. I love my dentist (Dr. Berdj Feredjian in Montville) and he is really very, very good. He determined that I needed a route canal on Monday; this morning at 0820 I had step one of three done. It was fine. I felt it in a very distant way in the back roots but it was not enough to even consider requesting more novacaine. He was wonderful and gave me a running monologue of what he was doing and why; allowed me to hold a mirror so I could watch it and was very thorough in explaining the future steps. It is a $1200 procedure but it needs to be done. That is life. And my fault, really. I know that. Hopefully this will be the first and last one.
He did also show me a piece of the root. I have never seen one of my nerves so I really wanted a good look at this! It was really interesting - a tiny piece but still interesting. It looked like sinew or maybe a piece of chicken - sort of tan and a little ripped at the ends. Stupidly, I thought erroneously that it would be green - every poster you see of the human nervous system shows nerves as green! OK, OK, I know better, but if you see the same thing over and over again as one way, you are trained to think that this is what it looks like.
Work was really quite good this week. The work itself is always good, in this, I mean my coworkers and their reactions to my issue of Ma being in the hospital. Everyone was so patient and understanding and nice! I don't mean to sound surprised but in other companies, the understanding sort of went this far and no further... in my current place of employment, I was very much touched and moved by the across the board reaction of everyone. I really love this place and every day, I love it more.
On Monday I will stand outside (despite the 100+F/34+C degrees that it is expected to be outside) and breathe in the air and look at the lovely courses and the gorgeous building I work in and breathe it all in - I am too lucky for words.
Right now it is 28 degrees C outside... not bad in and of itself but the humidity is just awful. It reads 71% relative humidity but I'm not buying... it feels far more wet than that.
My fingers are feeling sore from somuch sudden typing after a week that was short on typing and long on waiting and sitting...
Oddly enough, I lost 15lbs/7.5kg. I suppose that would be the bright side to this. I don't consider a weight loss of 15lbs/7.5kg in a week and a half particularly healthy, but it is nice. If I could just stay on that road...
We'll see...
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