Quote of the Day: F. Scott Fitzgerald Edition

In the course of packing, I found a bunch of old books today, and when I say "a bunch"  I mean boxes and boxes.  Way too many boxes.  (Friends of the Library, here I come!)  It's entirely contradictory to efficient packing but  I couldn't help but flip through a few of my old favorites and found this little gem highlighted in my copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise:

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.”

 

 

QotD: true story

I don't like studying.  I hate studying.  But I love learning, learning is beautiful. 

- Natalie Portman

 

Such a true story. 

Quote of Day: Art

Lately, the idea of uniting artistry with science has been my jam.  Not really in the arts in medicine kind of way where you stand in the hallways playing a lute and bringing colored pencils to the hospitalized masses; there's definite benefits to this but it's not what I'm all about. 

I've always been a liberal arts kind of girl but in recent years I've spent more time with science.  I love it exactly for it's science-y-ness but I can't help but see the art and beaty within it as well.  Probably why I love this quote so much...it's what's getting me through this week though, as a reminder of why I started down this path in the first place.

"Nursing is both scientific and artistic.  I seek to combine science with humanism…Nursing is a therapeutic interpersonal process…Nursing is a scientific discipline that derives…its practice base from scientific research”

Scars

A quote of the day donation from Mama K:

"It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars."

Garrison Keillor

 

Thanks Mama! 

Quote of the Day: It's Hard

"Getting where you're trying to go, it's bloody hard work and only one word really matters — and that's surviving."

- Richard Branson

 

 

 Amen brother.  

Quote of the Day: Belive in Dance

"I stand for honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you'd want to be treated and helping those in need.  To me, those are the traditional values.  That's what I stand for.  I also believe in dance."

- Ellen DeGeneres

Next Time

"Next time I'll be braver
I'll be my own savior
When the thunder calls for me

Next time I'll be braver
I'll be my own savior
Standing on my own two feet"

 - Adele "Turning Tables"

You'd better be running

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows that must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up.  It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle - when the sun comes up, you better be running."

- Roger Bannister

Rise and Shine!

"Almost nobody wakes up feeling like a million bucks ready to tackle the world. It is a conscious choice to decide how you want to feel and think each day."

And in accordance with this very positivie, go-get 'em attitude I bring you: a pot of braising kale!

March 20, 2012

This healthy dinner (and todays workout) was brought to you by Muffin-tops.  A delightful baked good to be sure but far less charming when hovering over the waistline of your jeans. 

These are the times

These are the times that try men's souls...what we obtain too cheap, we esteem to lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything it's value

                                                                                             - Thomas Pain

I find it comforting to see that someone, specifically Thomas Paine, has felt the way that I do now.  Granted, he was looking across bloodied fields, actual tyranny and carnage while I'm simply looking across what seems to me to be a depressingly base political scene where women's health, health care and sexuality are political fodder. Tomato, tom-ah-to; potato, pot-ah-to.  My soul feels tried and at times I'm tempted to give up and move to France.

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

                                                                                               - Walt Whitman



March 2, 2012

"It's about the whores who use contraceptiion"

"[It's not about contraception,] It is about the whores who use contraceptives!  And dancing. Its about dancing!  It ALWAYS begins with the dancing.  And the face paint. And culottes! Oh those culottes.  Oh garment of temptation, you are the devils pantaloon!" 

- Jon Stewart

I don't often re-post from other blogs, even when credit is given it seems a little bit like thievery.  However, with the misogynistic tactics (my words) that lawmakers across the country seem to be taking in the "debate" on birth control coverage and mandating additional medically unnecessary procedures before having a 100% legal abortion, I feel like it's important that other  voices be heard, even if it's just here on my little corner of the inter-web. 

Clearly, if you've been paying attention at all, and even if you just tuned in, you can probably guess where I stand on this.  Unfortunately, nobody is required to agree with me (as is evidenced by the fact that Rush Limbaugh is still on the air spewing hatred) so I'll just stick to the facts. 

According to a recent study funded and supported by the CDC 98% of women in this country who have ever had intercourse have used contraceptives at some point in their lives. 82% of these women have used oral contraceptives.  Before 1980, only 43 percent of women (or their partner) used a method of birth control at their first premarital intercourse. By 1999–2002, the proportion using a method at first premarital intercourse had risen to 79 percent.  Do you suppose there's any coincidence that during this time the teen pregnancy rate also fell? 

I thought I could limit myself to facts but I can't. When politics and religion begin to intervene between a woman and her doctor, women will get hurt.  Whether it is physical injury, emotional injury or "just" the violation of their civil rights, it is injury all the same. To continue this discussion in support of these laws, knowing full well that women will be marginalized, degraded and injured, is misogyny.  Plain and simple.  


My favorite entries from Men Who Trust Women tumbler:


 "The idea that a pregnant woman choosing to terminate the pregnancy doesn’t know she’s got a fetus in her womb is just so infuriatingly insulting. And as a father of two girls, I feel invested in this issue in an extra-strong way, too. The idea that one of my girls could be forced into unnecessary medical procedures by the state government, because she’s a girl, is just so angering to me. My girls deserve better."


"In fact, the hard thing for me is to conceive of how anyone, male or female, can believe that they are in a better position to decide about any health care decisions than the patient in consultation with her doctor and friends/family.
So yes, I trust women to make their own decisions on health care, and anything else!"

"Trusting women is the bare minimum. Believing that women are human beings capable of making decisions about their own bodies makes you a decent human being. And being a decent human being is the bare goddamn minimum. You don’t get a cookie for being a decent human being...[but] this is not about cookies. This is about changing the conversation."

Oh the pretty things

Be not the slave of your own 

past. Plunge into the sublime 

seas, dive deep and swim far, 

so you shall come back with 

self-respect, with new power, 

with an advanced experience 

that shall explain and overlook the old.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

An unexpected ally

"The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is — and I mean this seriously — the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been,"

- Fidel Castro 

Of all the things in this world that I could never have imagined happening, that Fidel Castro would utter words that made me go "YES!! EXACTLY!" is near the top of that list and yet it happened.  Believe in the unbelievable folks, that's where the money's at. 

Found on:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/01/25/international/i083830S42.DTL#ixzz1kaCwI5Gs

If real politicians could talk like Aaron Sorkin

  "I want women to have help from the government. I want women to earn what men earn. I want everyone to earn enough so that everyone can make the right choice for their family, and after that, it's none of your business who stays home and who goes to work. You don't know more about raising a family than I do."

...then maybe I'd feel less discouraged about this upcoming election.

Do Your Best

"Do your best and your best will get better."

                                                - Emma Hart Willard

trying something new...

"To have something that you have never had, you have to do something that you have never done." 

There have been a lot of serious changes in my life this year, some have been happy but most of them have been...well, honestly a lot of them have been gut-wrenching and tearful.  I can't complain though because that's part of life, part of being a grown ass woman means that I have to participate in my own life even when I'd rather curl up and hibernate for several months.  But there's always sunshine after rain, even if you have to chase that sunshine down in car on the highway.  It was time for a change less serious in nature.  

My friend / hairdresser Nicole posted the following status on her Facebook a few weeks ago: 

"Looking for a haircutting model for this Sunday December 11th for our cutting class. Must be willing to have an avant garde cut and be free all day. This is free of charge, let me know!"

My gut said "yes please!" so, after confirming that mullets were off the table so far as style options went, I went for it.  

Before:

December 11, 2011

Best. Idea. Ever.  

Four hours and about...oh three pound of hair later, I have a new 'do. It's nothing I would have ever thought to ask for (or truth be told, even considered if it was presented to me as an option) but I like it! It's shorter than I've ever gone and I'm still not convinced that it doesn't accentuate my schnoozola but you know what?  It's hair, it's even (dare I say) good hair that will grow back over the next few months. It's different and different, it what I needed. 

After: 

December 11, 2011

StarWars has all the answers

"So Han's walking down the halls of Bespin with his old friend Lando.  Leia's there, and lookin' good.  Han thinks he's off to dinner - maybe some wine, a little flirting and then back to the ol' guest quarters with Her Hotness. 

But the door opens, and there's Darth Vader.

Han doesn't look incredulously at Lando; he doesn't duck or run away. 

What does Han do? 

He starts shooting at the motherfucker. He just starts shooting. 

Be like Han."

Star Wars.  It might, in fact, have ALL of the answers.

A reason to be grateful

I feel like I should knock on wood before I say this but it is the season for gratitude and so here I go: I love what I do.  I don't always love my job and there are certainly days that playing hookie and going to the beach sounds uhh-mazing but at the end of the day, I love what I my job lets me do.  I fell blindly into it over four years ago, just short of kicking and screaming, yet it seems to have fallen on the "disproportionately fortuitous accidents" life list.  The people that I have met, the opportunities that I've been given and the things that I've learned have exceeded every expectation that I had when I got here. 

It's not your average job (and by average, I mean one the people tell you about when you're in school: lawyer, doctor, teacher etc.)  and there's nothing in my education or life before coming here that would logically lead to this job, so I shouldn't be surprised when people really don't know what I do. I certainly didn't know what it was all about even when I took the job, and yet I am surprised.  I am surprised that people so close to me, who know so much about me, don't know or understand this part of my life that is so important and such a huge part of who I am.  The only explanation that I can think of for this is that I haven't told them.  I don't know where along the way I decided that my vague "clinical research" answer to the question of what do do would result in people understanding what I do each day but I guess I did. I also don't often blog about it very often, partially because there's a lot of confidentiality issues to be careful of and mostly because while getting fired for her blog worked out pretty well for Dooce, I suspect that it might not be quite so propitious for me.

Still, if I want people to know what I do and (more importantly) why it's important to me, I'm going to have to start talking / typing.  While getting fired isn't on my list of things to do, I think the following story is  relatively safe and, at least to me, speaks to the heart of what I do.  Seems like a good a place as any to start. 


 .....

I was standing in a patient room the other day with one of my favorite attending physicians (since our office has already nicknamed him thus, we shall call him Pinky) and the patient asked him why he got into the research side of cancer treatment.  His answer:

"I think how we treat these diseases is barbaric and I wanted to find a better way."

Now, that's NOT why I got into this area (I  really just needed a job) but it IS why I've stayed.  

Since I took this job, I've heard many times over, from people both close to me and not so close at all, that they disapprove of clinical research.  They disapprove of the pharmaceutical companies and somehow by association, the role that I play in helping them to develop their drugs.  I've been told that what I do it paramount to torturing people, that these companies hold the cures for cancer in the labs but don't use them because there's no money in a cure.  I've been told that clinical research is "crap."  I respectfully disagree. 

While I can't speak for the huge pharmaceutical conglomerates and the thousands upon thousands of people they employ,  I can say that the people that I've met: the physicians heading the trials, the study teams who put together the thousands of little pieces necessary to make a large scale trial run efficiently and meaningfully, the coordinators who pull it all together at the patient level and the patients who so generously enroll, we're all here in the hopes of finding a better way. And we're not doing it by turning our Facebook pictures pink, green or orange for a day.  We're not spamming our friends and family with chain emails about how many lives cancer took last year and isn't a shame. We show up every day and we work. We work on some exciting things, we work on many mundane things, we work on ideas made reality by people  far smarter than ourselves.   I'm not a doctor and I'm not a nurse but my piece of the puzzle is important, it has value and it's worth doing.

So as I stood in this patients room listening to Pinky all I could think was "yeah...yeah, that IS what I'm a part of and I'm proud of it dammit!"

How cool is it that I get to do this?  That I get to be part of finding the better way?  Damn cool and damn lucky if I can say so myself. :-)

The nail in my quarter-life crisis

Quite a bit more vehement than I actually feel, but some strong words to make the single and childless among us giggle.

"This is the nail in the coffin for my quarter-life crisis.  A small part of me dies inside every time a baby in conceived.  The weddings I could take...open bar, good food...but the babies. It's too much. Babies turn normal people into bumper sticker, fold out wallet photo album, breast feeding weirdos."

-- A friend of friend