Introducing Mt. Hood

Classmate Jess & her husband Tim and I soaked up the spring-like conditions as we trekked through the backcountry at the base of Mt. Hood. A spectacular day of God's creation.

 

Introducing Mt. Hood

This Saturday I was introduced to a new and beautiful Mountain. I come from the land of Mt. Rainier - pretty high standards. As you can see...The smaller more humble Hood was still able to take our breath away. 

Sacred Touch

It's been a pretty big week for us PA students. Particularly this student.
We've completed the majority of two classes, took several exams and geared down to slip quietly into a week of turkey, long lost friends, family dysfunction, the occasional assignment, uninterrupted guiltless sleep and perhaps most importantly -
giving thanks.

As I've shared previously, this fall has dramatically taken its toll and consumed our lives as individuals. I don't think I've been on such a rapid journey of ups and downs, victories and defeats as I have this fall. Each week is its own lifetime beginning with challenging Monday exams and ending with weekends full of studying at every local coffee shop we can find.
It's quite relentless.

Thanksgiving this year includes:
we have succeeded thus far.
we are alive, as are our patients
we are playing soccer, going to the beach, playing pick-up basketball and having baby showers - [short ones]
I still fit into my clothes
I'm still married to my husband
he still likes me
God is faithful - I am healthy
I have clean clothes most of the time
my friends mostly remember me
and...
I've actually learned a few things

I can share that last line with confidence because it was evidenced this Monday night.
Each month we volunteer at a free community clinic where low income migrants and local citizens can receive healthcare - from both STUDENTS and practitioners of all kinds. Upon arriving this week I was quickly ushered to join a Nurse Practitioner whom I'd worked with before. She's a very no-nonsense HANDS ON instructor.
So - she made me get my hands on.
And I don't just mean the basic 'open and say ahhh' - I mean the 'turn your head and cough'.
As amusing or scary or unbelievable it is - the truth is - I've seen my first few patients.
I know I'm not ready or competent or legal.
But for 2 hours the other night that didn't matter. From start to finish I questioned, listened and responded to patient's stories. I then performed exams, postulated, came to conclusions and elicited treatment.
And I performed it.
Under strict supervision of course.
But I did it.
I was allowed to place my hands on someone's body. It's the only precious thing each of us own - whom nobody else [sans God] lays claim - and as a stranger, I touched them.
Humbling isn't the word.
It was sacred.

As the Hippocratic oath implies, we're being taught an art. It's a beautiful, complex art of listening, processing, integrating, touching, testing, challenging - distilling and discerning - the state of your health. My hand will touch and assess you different than his hand, or her hand. It is connected to my brain, to my experience, to my faith and my very heart.
You are being touched by ME.
And those two unsuspecting gentlemen who came in Monday night, with garden variety complaints - painful this and frustrating that - have no idea what kind of impact they had on this young lady.

Their bodies
Their property
Their health
My brain
My heart
My being
Sacred

Mighty Masticators - Team 8

I seem to remember a post on this blog - not too long ago that thoughtfully ended with - "thank you for the rain...let it come".
Well it has come.
Both literally and figuratively.
I don't have any statistics for you regarding record rain fall in Porland Oregon this week or month or season. Or if there even IS record rain fall. All I know is it's raining and it's raining a lot. I thought Seattle was pretty wet or at least very damp - but I must be mistaken. The other night's weather segment involved a guy (in makeup and a bad blue suit) pointing at a picture of the 'low pressure' off the Oregon coast with clouds streaming straight into our state. Not streaming into Washington, not into California. Just us.
It literally looked like the water from a fire hose shooting straight for the big Port Land.
It has been hard to handle.

In addition to the actual H2O that flows from heaven there are dark clouds over the land of PA school. These pre-holiday weeks are dark days. The classes, the lectures, the drugs, the mechanisms, the systems, the tests, the examinations, the heartsounds, bowel sounds, lung sounds ... it's pouring. It's these days that they warned us about way back when - those days so long ago - June I think it was, where they said it would 'get bad'.
Don't get me wrong. I love it.... I hate it. I am schizophrenic, manic, paranoid. I have thoracic outlet syndrome, seasonal affect disorder, fibro myalgia from sitting, lordosis from standing, I have antiretrograde amnesia, crepitus joints, sciatica, hypochondria.....

okay.
I'm back now.

What I really wanted to share this time was my thankfulness for a team - my classmates who inspire me, instruct me and take me down on the soccer field each week. There is something so healthy about being in relationship, fellowship, worship and physically harmful sports with folks who are working toward the same goal as you. Struggling, succeeding, overcoming all hardships and doubt to become clinicians. Each with our school faces on each day, stethoscope around our necks, white coats and dress slacks to complete the 'professional' picture.
...and then on Fridays - get out the shin guards - because you'll need 'em with these hard kickers.

I can't begin to say how freeing and refreshing it is to kick and run and yell and sweat and take a hard kicked ball to the kidney. (don't worry - no hematuria here, kidney's fine) Or watch the otherwise quiet classmates take charge of the field and charge the goal running as fast as they can to score - possibly taking an opponent out in the process. Amazing!

It is medicine, the best medicine for learning the art of medicine.
addictive
therapeutic
exhilarating