i'm in the process of majorly editing my closet. my style's been so schizophrenic in the past so it's been hard to do. plus i'm hugely sentimental about my clothing. ie: all these Tshirts i've accumulated from going to concerts, and doing dance shows...i just cannot throw them away! if maybe i had other tokens to remember them by, like dvd's -- but i don't.
the rest of it, it's a little easier to do. chuck all the junior clothing; time to grow up. i've been reconstructing a lot of my tops into clinic-appropriate work-wear.
and i LOVE love love my issues of Thread magazine. with the recession and all i hope the magazine is still around. if i had the money i would buy a lifetime subscription. it has the best articles on how to drape, tailor, you name it. i understand now why the shirtdress i posted at the birth of this blog didn't look the way i wanted it to look. i love that WWII era full skirted shirtdress thing, and i realized that when sizing down from an XXL men's button down, you can't cut the thing in one piece and then try to shape it all with darts. you have to make two separate pieces and then join them at the waist in order to get that fitted top and a full skirt. tailoring is difficult! but i love it. i would go into surgery if it weren't for the fact that i totally do not have the stereotypical surgeon personality. yeah, they're stereotypes for a reason.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
happiness is a skirt you can carry keys in
i'm on a mission...
to put pockets into all my skirts.
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3
how i wish i had a sewing machine...or better yet, a serger....
to put pockets into all my skirts.
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3
how i wish i had a sewing machine...or better yet, a serger....
Monday, October 19, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
i'm getting pretty wistful about the most amazing labor day i spent in nyc. it's triple digits here in the inland empire, and it's cultural waste-land tendencies haven't changed a bit.
ugh. i was gonna post up a buncha cool pictures from the weekend, but so help me god i can't figure it out. blogger fail.
ugh. i was gonna post up a buncha cool pictures from the weekend, but so help me god i can't figure it out. blogger fail.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
two sides of the miracle of birth
Tuesday August 11
the nurse mid-wife i was shadowing today offered to allow me to assist in two births.
i watched her coach the patients for the most part, but then after the baby began crowning, she showed me how to apply anterior and posterior pressure to the tiny, fragile, jelly-like cranium of the baby to minimize trauma to the mother's vaginal canal.
after the first one, i was having a lot of trouble trying to blink back the tears of joy, astonishment, my body quivering in its attempt to physiologically scream Hallelujah. it was a difficult birth and the mother was torn up quite extensively and would need hours of stitching up afterwards. but to feel the head finally pass through, and then the rest of the body follow quicker than a blink of an eye, and then all of a sudden you have this steaming mass of human in your hands...
the first one came out with the cord around his neck, and immediately the room was swarming with Peds docs with baby gas masks and various suction devises to get air into this little blue body, which by the minute was turning pink and robust. there was tension in the air like a thunderstorm, but it thankfully passed.
the second birth was almost too easy - not nearly as much blood or pain. the tiny girl came out purple and crying. i wasn't so apt to begin crying this time around but was still wide-eyed with the gravity of what exactly i was doing. i still can't wrap my head around it now.
Wednesday August 12
scrubbed in to a repeat C-section today. got the low down on sterile technique in the OR. and also got an eyeful of the horrors of cutting through a woman's midsection to extract her baby. this lady had tons of adhesions from her last procedure, so there was a big use of the cautery tool. i was put on suction and retractor duty. it felt horrible to be pulling her flesh in ways it was never meant to be pulled, and i suppose it is a testament to the resiliency of the human body that you can pretty much rip through the fascia like it was the first day of anatomy and the patient will still be okay in the end. the smell of burning human i could take, the massive quantities of spurting blood i was fine with, the cutting and scissoring was okay -- but when the attending took her hand and shoved it up in into the abdominal cavity, the sound of ripping fascia was just too much. we treated our cadavers this way, for crying out loud. didn't help that this woman was half-consciously struggling with discomfort despite the anesthesia.
the baby was delivered and almost immediately began heartily crying. there was still joy and relief in the OR. however, something just wasn't the same. plus, they ultimately had to put the mom under general anesthesia so they could begin the long, long....long process of putting her back together again.
the nurse mid-wife i was shadowing today offered to allow me to assist in two births.
i watched her coach the patients for the most part, but then after the baby began crowning, she showed me how to apply anterior and posterior pressure to the tiny, fragile, jelly-like cranium of the baby to minimize trauma to the mother's vaginal canal.
after the first one, i was having a lot of trouble trying to blink back the tears of joy, astonishment, my body quivering in its attempt to physiologically scream Hallelujah. it was a difficult birth and the mother was torn up quite extensively and would need hours of stitching up afterwards. but to feel the head finally pass through, and then the rest of the body follow quicker than a blink of an eye, and then all of a sudden you have this steaming mass of human in your hands...
the first one came out with the cord around his neck, and immediately the room was swarming with Peds docs with baby gas masks and various suction devises to get air into this little blue body, which by the minute was turning pink and robust. there was tension in the air like a thunderstorm, but it thankfully passed.
the second birth was almost too easy - not nearly as much blood or pain. the tiny girl came out purple and crying. i wasn't so apt to begin crying this time around but was still wide-eyed with the gravity of what exactly i was doing. i still can't wrap my head around it now.
Wednesday August 12
scrubbed in to a repeat C-section today. got the low down on sterile technique in the OR. and also got an eyeful of the horrors of cutting through a woman's midsection to extract her baby. this lady had tons of adhesions from her last procedure, so there was a big use of the cautery tool. i was put on suction and retractor duty. it felt horrible to be pulling her flesh in ways it was never meant to be pulled, and i suppose it is a testament to the resiliency of the human body that you can pretty much rip through the fascia like it was the first day of anatomy and the patient will still be okay in the end. the smell of burning human i could take, the massive quantities of spurting blood i was fine with, the cutting and scissoring was okay -- but when the attending took her hand and shoved it up in into the abdominal cavity, the sound of ripping fascia was just too much. we treated our cadavers this way, for crying out loud. didn't help that this woman was half-consciously struggling with discomfort despite the anesthesia.
the baby was delivered and almost immediately began heartily crying. there was still joy and relief in the OR. however, something just wasn't the same. plus, they ultimately had to put the mom under general anesthesia so they could begin the long, long....long process of putting her back together again.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
summer of love
will update with photos later (as if people are even reading!) but just wanted to make a quick note for myself
this summer has been absolutely amazing
not necessarily fun, per se, but i feel like an entirely different person
taking the trip to india was really really difficult. physically and mentally. we saw so much poverty. so many people in need. and then you realize how fraught india is with corruption and bureaucracy, and you lose all hope for humanity. it was hard to stomach. but in the end we gave medicine to nearly 2000 people in just 5 days. there was joy in every tiny thing: running water. a ceiling fan. children singing. a man riding an elephant down the freeway :)
now, i'm in a women's health externship at sf general/ucsf and, like india, it's been exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. it makes me see first hand how stifled women's voices are not just in terms of healthcare but in society in general. it is hard to stomach. but there is joy in every tiny thing: holding a hand in the operating room. finding a heartbeat on an ultrasound. sharing laughter in the face of desperation.
i'm a million times more motivated to go back to pomona and try to make it through the rest of the infamously hellish 2nd year of medical school. everything i've seen in the past couple months could make anyone completely jaded and bitter. i'm trying so hard not to let it do that. trying to go through every day not with hate towards the evil in people, but with love for what we can hopefully be.
this summer has been absolutely amazing
not necessarily fun, per se, but i feel like an entirely different person
taking the trip to india was really really difficult. physically and mentally. we saw so much poverty. so many people in need. and then you realize how fraught india is with corruption and bureaucracy, and you lose all hope for humanity. it was hard to stomach. but in the end we gave medicine to nearly 2000 people in just 5 days. there was joy in every tiny thing: running water. a ceiling fan. children singing. a man riding an elephant down the freeway :)
now, i'm in a women's health externship at sf general/ucsf and, like india, it's been exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. it makes me see first hand how stifled women's voices are not just in terms of healthcare but in society in general. it is hard to stomach. but there is joy in every tiny thing: holding a hand in the operating room. finding a heartbeat on an ultrasound. sharing laughter in the face of desperation.
i'm a million times more motivated to go back to pomona and try to make it through the rest of the infamously hellish 2nd year of medical school. everything i've seen in the past couple months could make anyone completely jaded and bitter. i'm trying so hard not to let it do that. trying to go through every day not with hate towards the evil in people, but with love for what we can hopefully be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
