Doctors and Nurses

It's the most beautiful fall day.

School started three weeks ago. I went back to graduate school. I have discovered that the best way to be at peace about my messy house is simply not to be in it.

This works on 2 levels: 1)If you're not in it, you don't see the fuzz and cat hair on the rugs or smell the dogs. Since you're not in it, you can't do anything with your precious study time--like vacuum or do laundry. 2)If you're not in it, you also can't mess it up.

We'll see how this works. I don't know. I've been getting up early in the morning and running while the kids are getting ready for school. Lilly is making peanut butter and yogurt and fruit smoothies (these are a lot better than they sound) for breakfast. Then, if we're running early, we take the bus into town and Lilly goes to school and I go to the library. All day. If there's a yoga class in the middle of the day, I hit that, but pretty much I'm just parking myself there for 8-9 hours. So far, I'm not behind on anything...but I don't really feel on top of anything either. After school, I belong to the family and the schoolwork can just go hang itself. Except for Tuesday. Tuesday, my instructor has scheduled some god damn mandatory class chat, which is a huge fucking pain in the ass. There was also no help from the school in finding preceptors, so I've spent a lot of precious study time cold calling--something I thought I left behind when I went from PR/sales to nursing.

Don't tell me we're all salespeople. Sales culture sucks. It's so desperate and grinning and anti-intellectual. Sales culture has ruined this country. It's dulled our senses and veiled our hearts. There's a place for the market--sure--but the market shouldn't be in your heart or psyche.

I finally found two preceptors. One is my doctor. She's from Belize. Her name is Dr. Pitney. The other is Elizabeth Crane, a nurse practitioner. You can't imagine two more different women...doing basically the same tasks.

Dr. Pitney is small, black, with a British accent, and a little bit of a lisp. (Thywoid for thyroid, for example). She is absolutely correct, all the time. Correct in the social sense--she doesn't always have to be right. The limits of our relationship are very clearly delineated. I arrive in her waiting room and she comes and gets me when she's ready. When she has paperwork, that is my tacit signal to go someplace out of the way and study. I can only come during the morning one day a week. If a medical student needs her, they will have priority. She doesn't talk very much to me, and she seems unsure of my training. For example, she taught me about bowel sounds today. I felt like laughing. I mean, I'm a trauma nurse. I assess patients all the time. That's okay. She was kind enough to give me clinical hours. She never talks about the patients outside the room to either her staff or to me unless it's to discuss their clinical picture. That's it. No judgement. Bad or good. She's also imperturbable. While she was assessing a two year-old today, his four year-old brother kept hitting her leg with his coloring book. She utterly ignored it. She listens impassively, stays clinically focused. Lets the patient talk. Doesn't interrupt. Dresses conservatively, but with a little "african" touch--she always has something--today she wore a black and white skirt with a tribal print. Last week she had hair extension dreds. A cowrie shell necklass with a St. John suit. It's interesting--it's her only sort of personal touch. I like it. No make-up. Why don't female doctors wear make-up?
Elizabeth Crane, on the other hand, is a whole different story. She's my age, maybe a year older, and she's pretty but she's really let the sun do a number on her skin. She looks like Kim Basinger, only 40 pounds heavier and with bad feet. She's a little stooped (because, Christ, she's been laboring as a nurse all these years) and she has short frosted hair--frosted the way we all frosted our hair in 1983. She wears scrubs--the pants and the jacket--not the tunic top--generally over a grey ribbed tank top that shows her slightly leathered, but still generous and attractive cleavage. Like most nurses (like me) she's got a saint's medal resting there. Her mascara's a little clotted and she talks and moves non-stop. Fast. She tells me every part of her reasoning process, pulling things out from patient's charts at a dizzying speed--("See? back in July, she had another UTI--and there was blood in the urine, but it was her period--so big whoop--oh christ. Delbert's out in the waiting room? Tell him he needs to make an appointment like everybody else--so now she's back UTI blood in the pee--way bigger deal--find a lot of bladder tumors that way--No, Claire! I'm not coming out! Jesus Christ....) Dr. Pitney saw 8 patients. Elizabeth saw 15. Elizabeth let me eat lunch--called me ahead of time and told me not to bother bringing it ("pharmaceutical reps bring us lunch almost every day") There was lunch at Dr. Pitney's office, but I was very firmly dismissed to my own reconnaissance.

Interesting.

Well, that's my 1/2 hour.