It was never about the food

 It only took almost 2 more years since my last post to circle back to this. I've been spending most of my time analog journaling instead, with fountain pens and everything. Don't ask my bank account how much I've spent on it. Enough to buy a new laptop I'm sure. 

I've spent the last several years thinking my issues, especially my post Newfoundland issues, all boiled down (pun intended) to the food. The sushi buffets I missed, the drinks on the patio, the poke bowls, the Italian pizzeria, the kimchi hotpot etc. It was never about the food that I missed. If I think about it hard enough (and I did tonight with the aid of some mild hallucinogens) I can't remember half the food I ate, and I can't remember the taste of them. What I do remember and what I do miss is the warm glow of people. The friends I ate sushi with, the colleagues I drank with, my dearest friends eating poke together in Hamilton and in Hawaii. Sharing pizza with my romantic partner on the balcony. I was the one who earmarked it all with food, but my memory only stored the people, the food was just goalposting. 

When I was at my lowest in Newfoundland I blamed it on food because it's a easy, solid thing to grab on to - or the lack of it. The harder thing to realize and one I wasn't ready to admit to is the loss of my intangible friendships and love and companionship. That I'm a much more social person than I've ever realized or was ready to admit to. That I can't get through life without other people being there. 

Death, taxes, and a fried egg

 They say only death and taxes are certainties in this life. I agree. I experienced a heft dose of both recently.

While recovering from COVID I was scheduled for call. I thought it'd be fine. My last call I had a not busy after hours clinic and no calls overnight. This time it was a disaster from the get go. This "COVID only kills old people!" thing. People must not have grandparents or parents or anything. "Less than 5 resident deaths". 4 is technically less than 5 so the report is not incorrect, but what an unsettling way to declare that 4 people died in discomfort and gasping for breath when they should have had timely, peaceful deaths. 

The resident and I palliated 2 patients, told 2 families that their loved one was gone due to COVID, and wrote death sentences for 2 more patients who got COVID but couldn't take the COVID medication because of nursing shortage and resource shortages. Not because they don't qualify, because I don't have nurses who can give IV meds. Is this what it has come to. 

I had less patients die on palliative care than on a single call shift. COVID isn't over. Not by a long shot. 

On a marginally less gruntled note, I paid taxes for the first time. I've always had tuition credits and other benefits/lower income that the government gave me money back. This time I paid them. In enough of an amount that I couldn't actually pay it all at once because the website doesn't allow it. (C'mon CRA don't you want my money?) But they made it very hard. The website just wouldn't take my money! 

The egg has nothing to do with anything. I'm still cooking my way through the Stardew Valley recipes and couldn't figure out what a pink melon is so a fried an egg. I don't think a watermelon cake would taste good but I have 4 of them thanks to my mom so maybe I'll try it. 

The COVID got me

 Mild my ass. I've been bed bound for 2 days. I have cough, sore throat, headache, chest tightness, fatigue, muscle aches, GI upset, sinus congestion, the works. I'm off work for at least this week and had to cancel my anniversary trip to Montreal with my partner which was supposed to be this weekend. Boo.

Oh well, I'm sure it's not the first trip to be cancelled due to COVID. Plus it's cold and snowy this weekend anyways. I won't complain about it being April and cold. Newfoundland stays like this until June/July so I'll take what I can get. 

Thank god for doordash delivering drugs. So many lozenges and cold/flu meds. At least isolation gives me an excuse to order as much takeout as I care to. Pass the fries. 

The weather is being a tease

So it's 13C out right now. Pause for reaction. It's only first week of March. Shouldn't it still be snowed under? I know it will be, so despite it being sunny and the snow is melty, I feel a little ill at ease. I enjoyed a lovely morning of coffee, croissants and shopping (don't look at my bank statements this month) but I'm waiting for the other shoe of winter to drop. 

It feels like the weather version of a tease - just warm enough to make you want more, to be followed by sleet and icy rain later this week. 

On more Stardew recipes (thought I'd forgotten? Me too, I've been living on takeout this week while housesitting for a friend), I made some a few weeks ago. 

The lucky lunch is weird. It's starfruits and eel. I don't think those would taste well together, but I've done my best. I've subbed proscuitto (a friend calls it pros-cue-etto, anyone else?) in for eel. It goes well with tangy fruits. It was...fine. Edible. I don't love starfruits other than how cute they look cut up. 

I also made muffins for the first time. Muffins were good! My boyfriend ate almost all of them in a single sitting. I had some leftover blueberries that prompted the experiment. Me and baking don't go along well. I make mistakes that, in regular cooking course, can be corrected. Mess up during baking and you're tossing out the whole batter...or you realize the mistake after it comes out of the oven. Eek. It's not poppyseed though so it doesn't count for the recipe list. 

 

February blahs, Ukraine, women's health and all that jazz

 So it's March 1st, being hailed in with a snowstorm. It's fine. It's Canada. I should be used to snow in March. Especially after getting snow in July for the last 3yrs. But it doesn't mean I'm happy about it. 

At least it's not dark at 3PM anymore? Hasn't stopped me from sleeping around the clock though. 

Not that I miss summer that much - 35 with humidity is possibly worse than snow and -20. At least I can put clothes on, I can't strip skin off. I still long for the ocean and its breeze if I so much as think about this past summer's heat. Who knows, maybe I'll be making a glorious return (or haphazard retreat) to St. John's sooner than expected. There's something about that outcrop on the ocean that has permanently grafted itself onto my psyche. It's always taunting me to come back to it. 

There are enough people voicing their opinions about Ukraine. I'll keep mine to myself and this post. I get there are a lot a lot of geopolitical factors at play, but goddamn do people hate living the good life or something? We're just poking our heads out of the pandemic and Russia wants to put the threat of nuclear war over our heads? I can't imagine the average Russian person really wants war. Show me someone who prefers to live on rations, live with daily threat to lives and livelihoods, over someone who wants to live a stable peaceful life with food and a solid place to live. C'mon. The world cannot revert back to WWII era. A country's populace can no longer be controlled solely by controlling media. The information age is truly that. Information is everywhere. You cannot lock it out. So stop trying? No amount of propaganda will convince the world at large that it's right for Russia to invade Ukraine. Give it up. Suck it up. Join in on the capitalism fun and let your people have a piece of the American pie - that is, a slice of stable housing, good food, soccer games for your kids whatever. 

That's all. I say nothing on social media because I limit my media sphere to just my friends and colleagues, who of course share my similar opinions. I don't see the point of projecting it out to an echo chamber, fun as that might be sometimes. I will say any and all of these wanna be leftover freedom convoy slugs should all be delivered personally to Ukraine. Land them on the Polish border, give them a rifle and shove them over. If they want to fight for freedom so badly then feel free to go to Ukraine and fight for actual freedom. They can use every body they can get, at least go volunteer as something useful. If people are so keen to maintain democracy (or their idea of self-serving democracy) then please go to the very frontlines where people are fighting for their very freedom to survive; are in the fight of their lives. Go, shoo, be gone, you won't be missed. 

On a very unrelated topic, I had a stupid encounter with a patient. A pregnant patient with whom I spent over an hour explaining such things as what a cervix is, and what a speculum is. I feel like it's things that one should know prior to planning a pregnancy, particularly with an HCP for a partner but whatever. Just now I have to find room in a clinic booked 6weeks out to see them back for the actual pregnancy visit. 

Stories from training

 My learners seem to get a kick out of my misadventures in training, and as I age I forget more stories. Maybe it's time to start writing them down.

You know how they tell you to make patients show you how they use their puffers? Precovid world? 

Yeah. Do. A patient admitted for recurrent COPD with a significant language barrier showed us - his very confused care team (his treatment is maximized! Why is he flaring?) - how he uses his puffers.

Spritz spritz x3 into the air in front of him. Then he leaned forward and took a deep inhale through his nose. Maybe one step above people who are satirized to use puffers like perfume.

Us: "..........oh" 

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Speaking of language barriers: I once saw a lovely Chinese patient who spoke a little Mandarin, a lot of Cantonese. Her friend/interpreter spoke a little of English and a lot of Cantonese. I speak a little of Mandarin and a lot of English. So it went in a 3 way circle of me saying something in Mandarin or English, the two of them translating for each other, then each giving me half a sentence. 

I misplaced the word for "bladder" in Mandarin. As if I ever knew it. I told her the problem was her "plastic bag that holds urine". She was understandably confused. 

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One would like to think those who are multilingual sympathize with others who speak English as a second language. A preceptor and excellent physician who is of Brazilian origin turned to me and asked if I could speak to a patient who only spoke Vietnamese.

"I speak as much Vietnamese as you do?"

"Oh you don't speak 'Asian'?"

"...do you speak 'South American'?" 

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A delightful preceptor, probably in his young 40s at the time (he seemed so old then! Now I think he's pretty young) called me into his office one day. His office is very small, holds two people, and has no window. He closed and locked the door as I went in, and I thought for sure he was going to rip me apart for a patient or chew me out on a case and fail me on the rotation. 

He looked gravelly at me then asked, "so what exactly is a Dank Meme?"

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Adult friendships and loneliness

 Unrelated first, I'm getting back to cooking Stardew after spending Christmas as a hermit at my parents'. Also known as I didn't have to cook since my mom is an excellent cook. 

I made "omelet" today. It's in quotation marks because I cheated a bit and made Japanese rolled eggs. Tamagoyaki. Sweet, savoury, delicious. It was fun to make - although the rectangular shape of the pan meant that my hands were getting a bit toasty with my circular shaped stove top. 

I still plan to cook regular omelets since I've never successfully made one of them - a lot of "intentional" scrambled eggs were served instead. I don't even order them in restaurants often - I've usually gone in for steak or some other meats instead. The lactose intolerance has a lot to do with it but really it's because I like meats for breakfast and omelet doesn't come with enough meats in it. 

For my rolled omelet I wanted to use the rest of the Japanese cooking tools for some kicks. So I made some onigiri - loosely termed because really I just made triangles of left over rice. They weren't holding together since it's just rice of the fridge, so I fried it and made a bastardization on the level of Jaime Oliver's fried rice of yakigiri. 

On the actual title, it's really hard to make friends as an adult. Or is that just me? I almost wish to have a child so I can have a way of meeting friends. I feel like the last time I had ready made opportunities to make friends was residency. I certainly met some great people during that, but the majority of people around me were not from the same planet as me. I don't know if it's them or me that's weird, but that's a trauma for another day. 

Let's break this down, and let's do point forms like a SOAP note. 

1) Work

- difficult because of the power hierarchy

- this was much less pronounced on the island and rurally, but here there are clear distinctions based on the letters behind our names 

- I get along well with several of the nurses, who are absolutely lovely humans, and wish to get to know them better 

- unfortunately they only call me "Dr." and our interactions are fairly well limited to the clinic 

- I get along great with the residents, they're right around my age, me being freshly out, but that's an iffy boundary to cross

- I consider several of my preceptors from Newfoundland friendly, but even there they were my preceptors, let alone here 

- other physicians? I've gotten to know a few of them, and another locum and I have made decent acquittances 

- COVID has limited our ability to meet on any regular basis or indoors unfortunately 

- if this was a a relationship and dating, we'd only be on the third date, still trying to figure each other out bit 

- other physicians that I do well with all have kids and families and lives of their own

- they're all a few more years out than me and usually leave work to be with families 

- I guess I can say I have more freedom and free time but no one to share it with 

2) Clubs/hobbies 

- COVID LOL 

3) Friends of friends 

- would you believe the cruel twist of fate that as I moved to this city my good friend who was here moved to Vancouver, and other good friend moved to the east coast on an island? 

- my partner's friends are all in Halifax, and while I enjoy their company Halifax is a long ways away 

- the rest of my friends are on the other side of Toronto (also known as the black hole of traffic) and COVID LOL

4) Cafes/bars/restaurants 

- COVID LOL

Okay so a lot of it is COVID. I feel like I need to ask people for a rapid antigen test just to let them in the door these days (as if you can even get one) but without children and as people around my age start to have children, and as old friends start to move away and drift away, what's left? I feel like I never had as many close friends as when I was in high school. The numbers just kept shrinking from there. So I guess I peaked at 15?