On fontanelles

Human beings are born with a "soft spot" (more medically deemed the fontanelle) on their head, where their skulls have not completely formed and hardened, leaving protection lacking for one of their most susceptible organs.

Of human design, symbolically I feel this is a sign of susceptibility of humans, of their potential to be devastatingly hurt. An infant, protected by a proper parent, will not be delivered such irreversible damage...yet as we grow, our outward fontanelles close but the susceptibilities of our souls stay wide open...these are our responsibilities to protect, to show, but to still live through having with the hurtling gleeful actions a baby takes as it effortfully tries more and more each hour of its life.

Short on time, as Grady cases call...I sum up:
Although outwardly "grown up" people with barriers of physical protection inherently accomplished in our bodies...we are not, in fact, entirely protected. Yet that is what makes us wonderful...that we will always be susceptible. To ignore this vulnerability and relinquish its careful protection is as neglectful and hazardous as ignoring the existence of a baby's fontanelle.

Beautiful, hermosa

To hear a voice after its absence...

feels so beautifully good.

Can it get any purer than that?

Yes!

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.  Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.  ~Mark Twain

Allow me to clarify...

Aside from the fact that propofol may turn your pee a darker-than-pea green, there is very little that is natural about anesthesia. The medicine we put into people's veins, muscles, GI tracts, you name it...ventures very far off of the natural-beaten path enough to shock the pants off of people interested into purely internal healing. However, people who hesitate even to take Advil when having a headache (or something menial suggesting an anti-inflammatory would tug one back into a perfectly non-painful state) when presented with the reasoning behind such shocking amounts of (what can be) completely unnatural medicine would very likely jump on the dump-medicine-in-me-because-I-like-living boat for the few perioperative hours (and likely those few following). And in this, my dear friends, lay the reason why yes, I can indeed be anti-medicine while I'm living a normal day and in fact simultaneously in the field of medicine which administers the most drugs the most frequently to the human body in a quite abnormal day for the recipient.

I rest (sedate, hypnotize further need to address) my case (operative and non-operative alike).

A little (a-)traumatic

First trauma shift last night.

Resuscitation is a (hard word to spell) wild thing.

But all yet so pulled together, so gracefully chaotic.  

Per the confidentiality of the agreement we call HIPAA, I shall not venture forward with details of the post-pedestrian car wreck cascade of events, but suffice it to say that it felt like moving gracefully under the startlingly cold water of a cascade of a different sort, as heart pounding and eyes wide, I got my first glimpse of something totally different.  

Yet simultaneously a-traumatic.

And so it occured to me...(this is all just a bit ridiculous sometimes)

Holy crap it is almost April. Fantastic (less school remains), scary (less school remains before I can practice anesthesia solo), liberating (closer to being able to travel until my feet have had their utter fill). In short, if you think that you triumphantly (ha) make it through tomorrow without being fooled, you’ve really likely been fooled on April Fool’s Day if you’ve (like many do so often) been suckered into thinking that life is more simple or cut-and-dry than it really is (which it is not). To me, life is ridiculously simple and blisteringly complicated at the same time. Quite out of control and lovely.

So today I got a little ticked at the bottle of cleaning wipes sitting on my bathroom counter. (Yes I am a clean borderline OCD person slowly becoming not so--maybe). They are called do everything wipes. A true american product eh? Born and raised in a land where people are wiped off the face of feel-good earth everyday because they realize that--oh shit--they really cannot do everything. gasp. Because at the end of the day, we can only do so much in a breadth of time and we go to sleep much like a wipe falls into the trash can after wiping wait-yes-only one counter, needingly neglecting a counter and floor and tub. No one gives that wipe any flak. Yet many people torture themselves daily if they don’t cover enough bases to be par for the perfection driven course. When is the U.S.A going to get over this idea. Seriously.
Analogies lay in very tiny things. This one may be week. But don’t forget that Bounty is strong. And is always the quicker picker upper.

A Start

And so it begins...to write of life as it is now, of what I would like it one day to be, of how it hits me or lays upon me as each day brings its own coins of beauty and courage. Leaving the mountains of the Andes and Sierras and the city of Cordoba behind for these remaining months of mastering the skill of anesthesia and medicine, I live each day with a drive to return to the country I have grown to love so profoundly and to then spread myself through others. For every country is like a secret waiting to be discovered by those willing to set their feet in its quarters, amongst its people and its customs, amid its relationship with the world. For now I have some things to write, and so I will write. Of what and how deep I have yet to know...as is always the case with what enters one’s mind and how one decides to express it in every moment of life.