Sydney just fell asleep on my chest after spending about thirty minutes looking out our dark hotel room window, watching the waves roll in on the Oregon coast.  If only every day ended that way.

I've been reading Harlan Coben thrillers lately.  He has an amazing way of tapping into and expressing human hopes and fears, especially about parenthood and family.  If you enjoy thrillers, try him out.  I even have Sherrie addicted now.  There is a recent French film version of his book "Tell No One" that I am eager to see.  Anyhow, he often discusses the intense protectiveness parents feel and how if we are really honest with ourselves, we will admit that we would sacrifice a thousand strangers for our children.  It has nothing to do with justice or deservedness, it is just how things are.  

In Mountains Beyond Mountains, there is a discussion between the author and Paul Farmer about Farmer's views of humanity and his views of his own daughter.  I haven't read the book in a while, but if I remember correctly, Farmer is ashamed to admit, that yes, he does care more about his daughter's life, health, safety than the children he cares for in Haiti.  He views it as a moral failing.  

Of course, as a father, all of this resonates with me.  I think it is a moral failing, but it is one that defines us as human.  All of us, even the Paul Farmers of the world, are unable to escape it.  Thinking about this has given me new appreciation for the gospel and the language God uses.  Not a new thought, it just hit me in a different way.   

Perspective

A couple of months ago, I admitted a guy to the hospital with a severe infection.  He was a very unfortunate soul who had a stroke to his spinal cord in his neck, leaving him a quadriplegic.  He was fairly young, maybe early 70s, and very healthy prior to this.  After his stroke, he was put in a nursing home and he was admitted to the hospital every few months for some complication due to his spinal cord injury.  As everyone in medicine knows, this often means a urinary tract infection because of the presence of a chronic catheter in his bladder. 

I got called by the ER about ten minutes before he would have been the night doctor's responsibility and it had been a long and busy day.  My friend Seth is an ER doc and he asks me why I don't just ignore the page for ten minutes when this happens.  I hadn't thought of this brilliant trick at the time so I went down to the ER quickly to get him admitted for presumed sepsis due to urinary tract infection.  When I went in the room, he was alone and looked quite ill.  He was delirious, which is very common in older folks with infections, and unable to give me much history so I pretty quickly got to examining him.  When I pushed on the back of his head, his neck didn't flex at all and he yelped in pain.  Uh oh.  Fever, confusion, and neck stiffness= meningitis until proven otherwise.  I finished my exam and called his wife and his nursing home RN thinking that maybe his neck is always stiff now because he is bedridden or due to his stroke.  Both said nope.  Shoot.  I knew that this was probably just a urinary tract infection, but you can't afford to miss meningitis so I knew he needed a spinal tap.  This was going to add another couple hours to my day so I sighed and sent him up to the ICU and began trying to find the correct equipment.

I'm almost to the point of the story so bear with me.  It is now about 8:30 and I'm gloved up and poking a four inch needle into this guys back.  I use lots of numbing medicine but it still can't feel good when I'm trying to find a little gap in his not-so-flexible spine.  By now, he has received a bunch of IV fluids and is talking and making sense and not acting confused at all.  In fact, he is moving his neck just fine whenever the needle pokes the bone and he feels some pain.  Before I even get any fluid back, I'm realizing that this is definitely going to be just a bad UTI.  

I eventually get the fluid and I start to clean up all the equipment when the patient starts a very pleasant conversation, asking me about my family, etc.  He is now completely lucid.  He starts to shiver so I go to get him a blanket from our warmer.  I'm laying out the blanket over his body when he looks up at me and says "I feel like the luckiest man in the whole world."  I must have stood there for twenty seconds just staring at him.  Are you kidding me?  This guy is a quadriplegic, living away from his family in a nursing home, sick in the hospital, and I've just finished torturing him with a needle in his spine.  My life is embarrassingly comfortable by almost anyone's standards and I still whine more than this guy.  I vowed to be thankful and gracious and not to whine for at least one day.  Instead, I told the gentleman goodnight and then went to find the night hospitalist and complain about all my admits.

Here goes...

I just finished a long work-week and I caught a cold.  I should have gone to bed at eight when I felt tired, but I didn't, and now it is midnight and I can't sleep.  So I might as well start a blog. 

I've thought about it for a while now.  I don't have anything great to say and I have no writing aspirations, but I do have thoughts that tend to bounce around in my head for too long.  Maybe writing about them will get them out and lead to some interesting conversations with friends.  

Most of the ideas that have inspired thoughts of blogging have come from my work in medicine.  At the same time, I don't really want to write about medicine.  A med school classmate writes a blog about science, medicine, and society that is very good.  I, however, tend to get stuck on the more personal stories I encounter and how they change my view of the big picture.  I don't even really know what that means so maybe I should just get started.