SXSW Film 2007, last two movies I saw

Zoo

The festival synopsis reads, “ZOO tells the story of a seemingly average businessman whose secret sexual life led to his shocking death.” The shocking death is bleeding caused by his colon being perforated by a giant horse cock. That is, an actual horse cock, not just a big human one. Yeah.

I was unconvinced about the desirability of seeing this film, but was assured by a staffer that it was “disturbing, but beautiful”. That description is entirely accurate. Showing influence from Errol Morris, Zoo features recorded interviews from people involved in the case (fellow horse “lovers”, an investigator) played over gorgeously-filmed reenacted scenes. The effect is meditative and far from exploitative. There’s only a tiny glimpse of actual explicit sex and many in the audience didn’t remember seeing it (and not because they’d gouged out their eyes and had tramautic amnesia). It really is a wonderful film; packed screening, audience rapt. Highly recommended.


Helvetica

A documentary about a typeface. I wanted to write this entry in Helvetica, but I don't know how to change the typeface for just one post. The doc is effective in showing how Helvetica was introduced and came to such dominance. The audience was absolutely in on the idea of this film so there was much enjoyment as various typeface experts give sloppy love, or vitriolic distaste, to Helvetica. Interspersed with the talking heads are numerous examples of Helvetica on signs everywhere. The film drags a little toward the end but all in all it's successful. Afterwards and for the next several days, Helvetica stood out like neon for me. Really quite amazing how ubiquitous it is. Recommended.

SXSW 2007 photos

I really need to go to sleep, but here's my photo set from SXSW 2007.

Donnie Davies at SXSW

I'll do a full SXSW wrap-up later, but I had to write about Donnie Davies' show. If you are not familiar with this internet phenomenon, Donnie purports to be an ex-gay Christian singer - he's not really any of those things. Read his thoughts here and be sure to watch the video for "The Bible Says."

A SXSW staffer told me that he'd shown the video to people in the office and one of the music guys was eager to book Donnie Davies. They slyly chose to put him on the same night as The Buzzcocks and Turbonegro, bands with more than a little homo-osity about them.



Donnie hit the stage to loud cheers and they immediately ripped into "Surrender" by Cheap Trip. On the "but don't give yourself away" line, Donnie would cover his crotch and shake his head. They actually pulled off the cover well and most of the audience was on board. Evening Service appeared to be the same band that's in "The Bible Says" video and the MTV interview, including bad wigs.



The next song served as proof that Donnie is totally not gay anymore, no sir. He grinded with the sexy lady dancers while performing a Timberlakian number.



At one point, Donnie asked the audience if there were any homosexuals among them who wanted to get saved. Having no desire to be saved, I nonetheless raised my hand as did several other people. Donnie pulled up a very obviously planted guy named Gary Bentler up on stage and had him demonstrate his limp wrist. In an attempt to "heal" him, Donnie lead us in the C.H.O.P.S. (Changing Homosexuals into Ordinary People) salute, while chanting "Heal Bentler." You can probably guess what the salute and chant devolved into.

Interestingly, in addition to not being an ex-gay (or probably gay at all) or Christian (at least of the scary variety), Donnie's not even a singer. He just lip-syncs while this guy sings off-stage:



Donnie and Evening Service closed with "The Bible Says" which was a rousing success with the audience, at least half of whom had never heard it before. All-in-all a wonderful palate cleanser before I headed off to more music elsewhere.

UPDATE: Due to financial constraints, I have to sell the Donnie Davies t-shirt I bought at the show. I listed it on eBay at the price I paid, $20.

Sun. SXSW Film

Diggers

My first narrative film so far. I generally avoid them at festivals because they're often disappointing and I could be seeing a good documentary instead. I went for this because of the talent involved. Written by Ken Marino (ex-The State, Veronica Mars), exec. produced by David Wain (ex-The State, Stella, Wet Hot American Summer), and starring Paul Rudd among others. It was competent. Kinda cliche indie ensemble film with all the strengths and weaknesses that implies. Great visuals though shooting digital but keeping the 70s film look.


King Corn

If you anywhere close to a typical American or Canadian, your body is rife with corn. Something like 90% of the carbon in your body was corn at one time. King Corn is full of scary/interesting facts like these. Two college grads move to Iowa to farm one acres worth of corn and fill us in on how ubiquitous corn is in our diet. I was dubious that they could keep it compelling over a feature-length documentary, but they pulled it off. I thought I was well-informed on how pervasive high fructose corn syrup is and its probable role in declining health. It's scarier than I knew. As one interviewee put it, it's a good thing that cows are slaughtered when they are, because they'd be dead in six months anyway from the massive corn diet. Apparently eating mostly corn gives them stomach ulcers an makes them acidotic, a supabad condition in people for sure. Im going to suggest that my nursing school buddies see this. Highly recommended.


The Devil Came on Horseback

A brutal, necessary experience. This doc is told through the eyes of Brian Steidle, an ex-Marine officer who gets a job with the African union monitoring the cease-fire between Northern and Southern Sudan. While there taking photos and collecting interviews, he becomes aware of the genocidal massacres happening in the Darfur region. Helpless to avert the killings, rapes, and destruction, Steidle leaves Sudan to return to the U.S. and get the word out. So far, despite the U.N. and the U.S. labeling it as genocide - a label that legally requires intervention - there have only been stern reprimands.

As I said, a brutal, necessary experience. The world needs to know that 13 years after Rwanda, it's happening again and history will judge us harshly if we do not act. Steidle was at the screening encouraging the audience to contact their legislators and come to the Capitol on Monday to register in favor of a bill to divest Texas investment in Sudanese-involved companies. I was moved to do just that. Happily, I saw strong support in the Senate and House for the bill so unless it gets pushed down the agenda it looks likely to pass.

Brian Steidle was at the Capitol as well and I made sure to thank him for his work. There's a sense of sadness and resolve about him that is inspiring and also heartbreaking. It's probably the former Catholic in me talking, but I wanted forgiveness from him for what I haven't done.

Sat. SXSW Film

Cat Dancers

I had no intention of seeing this film because of the aforementioned poster. Then I met up with some film buddies and they convinced me. This would continue to be a theme of the day and I will hereafter bow to their film-picking wisdom.

This doc tells the story of the first exotic animal act in the U.S. Joy and Ron Holiday were internationally-acclaimed dancers who thought ahead to the natural decline of their physical prowess and so transitioned into a touring act that incorporated dance, magic, and exotic cats. When the act grew too large for them to comfortably manage, they added Chuck Lizza to become a trio in more ways than one. From there the movie takes an almost inevitable tragic turn, which of course I will not spoil.

The filmmakers did a smart thing in the opening minutes of Cat Dancers. Ron Holiday is a bit of a comical figure. So, the filmmakers jump in and get it out of the way. Here's this guy who wears wigs and eyeliner. He's more than a bit nelly. And then they move on with the story. I really enjoyed this film. It's mostly interview footage intercut with photos and old 8mm films in a rather traditional manner, and yet the subject and the way it's handled is compelling. I believe it was picked up by HBO so should be showing there soon. Recommended.

Election Day

Election day 2004 from the perspective of voters. Simple idea really, but coordinating crews in 16 different cities must have been quite an undertaking. No revelations or big lessons learned. Just the experience of people voting all over the country: long lines, officials somewhat ignorant of election rules, idealism, apathy, etc. Not a stunning movie, but interesting throughout and a good document for history.

Big Rig

Great film. As with Cat Dancers, I was wary and then goaded into it by friends. Because it's a doc about truckers right? What convinced me was that the director, Doug Pray, also did Scratch and Hype! Glad I succumbed because I loved Big Rig. Turns out truckers are fascinating people who know how to tell a story. Pray and two crewmembers essentially hitchhiked across the country catching rides with truckers while interviewing them. The stories are often personal, but also touch on the commonalities of life as a trucker; long hours, rising gas prices, separation from family. Highly recommended.

Fun with fluids

You make the call!



How did he get urine on top of the urinal?

A) Very tall
B) On purpose, jerk
C) Barely subsided erection
D) That's not urine

1st day of SXSW, and a little blood

It's the first day of SXSW and so far I'm pleased. We're up and ready to go in Registration and I've already seen an amazing example of velveeta-ness. To whit:



Also, the Blood and Tissue Center called me this morning and requested that I come in for a blood donation, not just because they're low on my blood type, but specifically for me. Like the red blood cells, platelets, and plasma I make in my bone marrow. I didn't know whether to be flattered or surveiled (is that a feeling? One of being monitored?). They need fresh drawn blood tomorrow for someone who's having surgery and apparently I match them well as far as antibodies, etc. The impression I got was that I'll donate tomorrow morning while a courier waits to whisk it away. I hope the surgery goes well or else they might hunt me down at the convention center for more.

How to make money with only slight dairy-related regrets

Yesterday after the convention convened for the day, we waited 90 minutes to check in to our hotel (fun!) and then I went to the gym of a different hotel. A short nap and a can of Sparks later, I went with my schoolmates to dinner at a decent seafood restaurant. The blackened redfish and crab bisque I had were delicious. What I ended the meal with, not so much.

As I posted on 2/22, I regularly bet friends money that they won’t do entertaining things. The bet last night was the rapid consumption of all the condiments that came with a baked potato: chives, a kind of Hollandaise sauce, sour cream. The person I bet wouldn't take it, but then the bet was turned back on me by others.

For $15, I did it.


Complete photo documentation can be found on my Flickr stream.

Nursing Student convention 2007

I’m at the Texas Nursing Student Association convention in Galveston for the next several days. The convention business itself is fairly dry, but it’s to fun go on a trip with my school friends where I’m only paying for food and entertainment. From the 2005 and 2006 conventions, I’ve developed a reputation for three things:

1. Taking unflattering photos of my schoolmates,
2. Offering money to my friends to do entertaining things,
3. Eviscerating poorly thought out, badly worded resolutions being considered by TNSA convention delegates

To illustrate:

1.


2. I have offered someone $10 to drink half a bottle of malt vinegar. For $20 plus costs, I encouraged a large guy to walk into Baby Gap and put something on forcibly overcoming the size issue.

3. I did not see it because I was walking up to the mic, but I’m told that whenever I did so, my schoolmates would freak a little because they were excited/concerned about the articulate smackdown coming. Seriously y’all, some of these resolutions were ridiculous and needed to be taken apart in an entirely rational manner. I have been accused of being mean by delegates from other schools, but that’s just an ad hominem attack because they had no counter-argument. So … shut up.

The common format for resolutions (sensible and otherwise) includes a
resolved statement stating that the resolution – if passed – be sent to a variety of different organizations. A sort of heads up on what we’re doing. I was thinking how great it would be if I wrote an absolutely serious, cogent resolution that then requested that it be sent to, multi-Olympic Gold medalist Bonnie Blair, Prince, and whoever turns out to be the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter.*

*thanks to Matt, the co-writer of this thought

Into the bone

Last week in our pediatric lecture class, the instructor showed us the equipment used for intraosseous access. Everyone knows about intravenous (IV) access, but IO is so much cooler. Rather than using a vein to infuse fluids, a bone is used instead. It seems bizarre to jab a needle into a femur or sternum, but bone is highly vascularized and fluids infused by that route rapidly enter the bloodstream. Also, bone doesn’t collapse or roll like veins can, and studies show that there is no increased risk of infection. Right now, IO access is used in critical cases where immediate fluid resuscitation is required.



I’ve seen a child come into the ICU by helicopter transport with an IO line that was started by the flight nurse. It works pretty much like an IV. The needle with attached catheter is inserted and the metal guide known as a stylus is removed. The tubing is hooked up and it’s ready to go.

Sunless exercise or Older folks are weird with the walking way early

It’s just a fact of nature I suppose that older people rise early and do things like go for walks. There are several such people in my neighborhood. Six in the awful, wicked, deplorable AM and they are out there with walking stick, golf club, or baseball bat (yes really, and no it’s not a crime-ridden area).

As I left for my Monday morning clinicals the past two semesters, I always saw at least one. I’d just wave and drive past, internally shaking my head at the folly of elders. To think they’ve lived this long and don’t yet know that one should be fast asleep in bed at 6 AM. Or at least slinking home after an ill-advised “sleepover”.

Weird wacky bunch all I said, until I saw the 5 AM walker. Yes, a small gentleman with a sweatband striding around the neighborhood at 5 AM happy as you please. A hearty “Good morning!” as I drove past on my way home (from work, not sex). Total mental case. Maybe military.

So then one night/morning I’m getting out of my car at 4:07 AM after an emergency trip to Whataburger, when I see it. A walker. I say “it” because no human could possibly be out getting some fresh air at 4 AM. Clearly this is an It. An It in the form an old man striding, striding I say, down the street. The only only only thing keeping me from running after him, I mean It, for a vigorous interrogation was my attire: non-descript grey shirt, pajama pants, bare feet. Perfectly fine when making an emergency trip for pancakes, distinctly unsuited for confronting a possible alien who – let’s face this gimmick is starting to get a bit thin – is really just an old guy walking around at an ridiculous time of night/morning.

I’ll post an update with more details when the stars align and I am up at 4 AM, outside my house, and reasonably dressed.

Live Earth

I want to go to the Live Earth concert in Antarctica. That would be cool right? Both literally and figuratively. Maybe a ice shelf would calve off at the climax of a particularly awesome song therefore highlighting the danger of global warming in a very pump-your-fist-and-shout-yeah kind of way.

Perusing the band list, it's obvious that Snow Patrol should play in Antarctica. Though I don't particularly care for them and I understand that it is often too cold to snow there.

Apples to Apples

I went to mybloodyself's house after work and joined in on a game of Apples to Apples. It's incredibly easy to learn and great fun, especially if you know your friends well.

I won a game and I'm most proud that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Joolie would pick my card to match with Glamorous. Because really what's more glamorous than a Festering Wound?

And thank your lucky stars that I didn't post a picture, though if you insist, go here.

Little babies with tubes

Today was my first day of pediatric clinical. As in previous semesters, I'll spend a day or two of the week at a hospital caring for a patient. My first patient was a month-old baby with a probable obstructed bowel. Adorable, even with the distended belly and nasogastric tube suctioning green bile into a canister.

Mom was ever-present and sweet, which was just annoying. I mean come on, let someone else hold your cute baby for a change. I'm only there for a limited time lady, I want to cuddle the bundle of precious too. Or am I only good for taking vital signs with the tiny, coo-inducing neonatal blood pressure cuff?

(Roughly 6" x 1.5")

Some people. Hrumf.

Honestly, it was a nice day. Children just aren't as complicated as adults it seems. I had a fairly easy patient though. Other students' kids spit out their meds, I just had to make sure the acetaminophen suppository stayed in long enough to melt.

I'm back

I have no good reason for going so long without posting. For a long time it was procrastination. Then it was the accumulated weight of experience unblogged; heavy indeed. Finally, it was the wistful mockery of my friends who launched a parasite blog in the comments. The posts so amused me that I let another week go by.

Speaking of parasites, a friend gave me a wonderful present Parasite Rex, a book all about parasites and the vile things they do. Great bedtime reading, if you want to dream of things squirming around inside your body.

You might have seen this clip already, but it's so frickin' cool (UPDATE: new version of the same video)

Who are these other guys?

Aside from my dad, I wonder who these other guys are?

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 15 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Beneficiary of kindness

Today started early. By 6:50 AM I stood waiting for a UT shuttle bus to take me to campus where I’d catch the Airport Flyer bus. A fellow male nursing student and I are attending the American Assembly of Men in Nursing 2006 Conference in Portland, OR. I was feeling a little stressed because the Cameron Road bus hadn’t arrived when a car pulled over. The driver rolled down the window asking, “Are you going to campus? Get in and I’ll drive you.”

Seeing as how she was an older woman, I wasn’t too worried about being kidnapped, robbed, and beaten. An offering of ribbon candy was possible, but as long as I demurred politely I figured I was safe. Throwing my bags in the back, I got in. Turns out she’s an English professor at UT and picks up students on her way to work all time. At roughly the same time every day, she drives along the Cameron Road route and offers a ride to whoever is waiting for a bus that early in the morning. Remarkable.

We chatted about my impending trip and she told me her great experience with the nurses that cared for her (several men among them) during a hospitalization. When we got close to campus, she asked me where I needed to go and I offered that she could drop me off where it was convenient for her. “I have a handicap permit dear, anything is convenient for me.” So I directed her to the bus stop. She wished me a good trip, I thanked her profusely, and that was that.

I’ve got to find a way to have her kindness recognized.

A great day as a nursing student

Yesterday afternoon I went to the hospital to pick my patient as I do every Sunday. This entails looking through patients' charts on the unit to which I'm assigned in search of one that would provide a good learning experience. I wanted this one patient I'll call Mr. B, but was told he'd be going to surgery in the morning and would be off the unit for hours. As my instructor would not appreciate me sitting on my ass for those hours, I moved on and picked another patient. I spent the requisite time recording all the patient's medications, abnormal labs, history, course of illness, etc into what we call a client database. It's a way of pulling information together in order to be ready to provide nursing care. Driving home, I was disappointed that I wasn't able to take Mr. B.

This morning I arrived to find that my patient had pulled his IV out of his hand the night before, refusing to allow a new one to be started, and was generally hostile to staff. Hmmm, maybe an opening here. I asked about Mr. B and found out that he hadn't gone down to surgery yet. I approached my instructor about switching patients and she was a little apprehensive in that I hadn't prepped to take care of him. In an effort to convince her, I quickly read through his chart, copied down his meds (most of which I knew), and made a case that Mr. B was a much better learning experience. I think it was probably my ebullience that won her over.

I quickly did a general assessment (listen to heart and lungs, take vitals, assess neuro status, etc.) right before transport came to take Mr. B down to surgery, with me in tow. We arrived in pre-op and the nurse started the pre-op questionnaire. When asked about allergies, Mr. B said he was allergic to some __________ drug he was on. The nurse went to answer the phone and I thought, "But he's not on a __________ med. I wonder if he means __________?" So I asked him and he said, "Yes, that's it." Then I did a little teaching about what that medication was used for and confirmed the reaction he experienced. When the nurse came back, I was able to show her in the chart where his negative reaction had been documented earlier. Whoo-hoo, mental hi-five.

There was still some question as to whether I could observe the actual surgery. The patient couldn't take food and drink orally, so the surgeon would place a tube through his abdomen into his stomach to allow for what's called enteral tube feeding. Then liquid nutrition could be regularly pushed through the tube using a syringe. The operating room circulating nurse came by and said I could observe. I put on a cap and mask and off we went to the operating room. The scrub nurse was already laying out the various clamps, cloths, retractors, needle and thread, etc. that would be needed. The anesthesiologist and nurse anesthetist started an IV and got the meds going. Within three minutes, Mr. B was under. The circulating nurse asked me if I'd like to insert the Foley. Absolutely (not ironic in the least)!

At this point I'd like to say that I've already seen more than a few lame Rep. Mark Foley/Foley catheter jokes, and will not propagate more. OK then.

I'd put in a Foley once before, so I wasn't too nervous. Plus A) the nurse was walking me through it and B) the patient was unconscious. That done, I stepped back so she could finish prepping him. A few minutes later the surgeon arrived and in less than 30 minutes:
- Sliced down the center of Mr. B's abdomen through the skin and subcutaneous fat
- Cauterized the small blood vessels (it doesn't smell bad at all really)
- Made an incision in Mr. B's stomach and introduced the tube
- Made an exit incision in Mr. B's left abdomen and pulled the tube through
- Stitched and stapled Mr. B closed

Totally routine, but tremendously cool.

They woke up Mr. B and then off we went to Recovery. The recovery room was bustling - lots of surgeries today - and the nurses were busy hooking patients up to EKGs and oxygen saturation monitors, recording their vital signs, and administering pain medication. I pointed out to Mr. B's nurse that he had an IV medication that had been sent along with him that needed to be started. She told me to find the doctor's order in the chart (always necessary). I did and she started the IV thanking me for catching it. Mental hi-five again. Mr. B was doing great and so we disconnected him from monitoring and back we went to his room. Later in the day, I got to deliver his crushed medications and liquid nutrition through the tube.

I'm sure five years from now all this will seem mundane, but today it was awesome.

Meat Purveyors R.I.P.

They didn't actually die, but Friday night the Meat Purveyors played their last show in Austin. Sigh. Man they are/were so very entertaining.

The night started with Mybloody and I going to End of an Ear so I could exchange some CDs. A store employee (via a scrawled note on a LP sleeve) dared me, so I bought a Juice Newton Japanese import record for $1. Then posed for a photo holding it with a smile that said either "I've been looking for this rare import version with the airbrushed cover forever and now, at long last, I'm holding it!" or "I'm a total douche who buys shit like this just because store employees dare me to." In my defense, it was $1. And her version of "Angel of the Morning" is pure cheezy goodness.

We left and drove over to Joolie's house to pick her up. She showed us some printing she'd been working on. I need a pack of her "Eat a dick" notecards, as do you. Then we headed to Continental Club for the show.

The Weary Boys were meh and we spent most of their set outside talking and going for a slice of pizza down the block. Then Meat Purveyors started and it was glorious. Mybloody had never seen them do their Madonna trilogy ("Lucky Star", "Burnin' Up", and "Like a Virgin" played at breakneck pace) so he was happy when they opened with it. Later they tore through their wonderful version of Ratt's "Round and Round." It's a testament to Ratt's songwriting and the Meat Purveyor's talent that the song sounds so good with twang vocals and mandolin. In between the band energetically zipped through a swath of their own great, punkish, bluegrass originals with at least a few from every album. I really should have gone to see them more often.

We ended the night happy to have seen them one last time and went home to put up our sore feet (mine were from dancing, not from being old).

My fat scar

Since a couple people commented on it, I guess I should explain. My scar is rather noticeable and so for years whenever someone asked me about it, I told them about it.

When I was in sixth grade, I sat next to a boy who'd already failed twice. He was much bigger than all the other boys and even had that wispy, teen moustache. I did well in school, he did not. Very soon after the school year started, he let me know that he would be cheating off of me and that I was to let him. If I didn't, or squealed to the teacher, I'd get pounded.

I didn't care for this, so I came up with a plan. For the next multiple choice test I would circle the wrong answers. He'd copy me, then I'd subtly change them to the right answers. I'm sure at the time I thought it was brilliant. Of course, I hadn't thought it through to the logical conclusion. We got our tests back; he got a 0, I got a 100. That afternoon he intercepted me as I walked home from school, pulled out a knife, and slashed me across the stomach.

Except none of that really happened. The kid was real, but he never cheated off me. I just loved telling people that story and seeing their eyes get big.

The real story is more complicated.

When I was ten I started having abdominal pains often. One night it was bad enough that my mom took me to the emergency room. An ultrasound revealed that I had a multitude of small gallstones. Gallstones, deposits of cholesterol or calcium in the gall bladder, are usually a problem in older folks. It's uncommon for kids to have a problem with them. I only had one of the common risk factors: female, fat (obesity), fair (Caucasian), forty (middle-aged), fertile (multiple children).

After various doctors conferred, the recommendation was removal of my gall bladder. It's not a secretory organ itself, it just stores bile produced by the liver. So you really don't need it; the liver will just dump bile directly into the duodenum (first section of the small intestine). The idea was that if I had lots of small ones when I was ten, it was going to be a problem sooner rather than later. I wonder if part of it was also that I was to be the youngest person at the time to have a cholecystectomy - a badge for the doctors.

My roommate at the hospital scared me a little. He'd been accidentally shot in the jaw while hunting which shattered it, and so couldn't speak distinctly. He also drooled a lot. I got to like him after a day though. I imagine some of my distaste for guns came from seeing what happened to him.

The surgery itself wasn't an issue, though I wasn't awake at the time. When the anesthesiologist started the meds, he had me count back from ten. I recall getting to sev...

Recovery was annoying because I couldn't walk well or eat much. I hobbled down the hallways clutching the handrails on the wall; it felt like my thighs was sewn to my chest. I'd get full after a cup of broth. I steadily improved and was happy to go home with a stitched incision. A couple days later I was eating a hamburger (often fatty foods after cholecystectomy cause upset, but I never noticed it) when somebody wanted to see my incision. I pulled up my shirt and everyone saw the small purplish bump on the incision. Not so good.

The sequence of events is hazy, but I ended up back at the hospital being examined by a very concerned doctor. It was an infection for sure. The doctor was worried enough that he started working on it right there in the exam room. No time for anesthesia to take effect so I got the topical cold spray. I was swabbed with some sort of antiseptic and then the doctor popped my stitches.

The next part explains why I have a high pain threshold. The doctor inserted his gloved fingers into the incision and starting pulling out what I recall as pockets of pus. I distinctly remember looking down and seeing his fingers inside me to the knuckle. A nurse - the one who wasn't holding me down - was talking into my ear trying to get me to visualize something more pleasant. She was talking me through getting a good hit in a baseball game. I remember being annoyed because, though I played, imagining a baseball game wasn't all that wonderful for me. But then how was she to know that I'd rather have her talk me through Greek mythology or the plot to The Westing Game?

Now, when I assess patients' pain level ("What would you rate your pain on a scale of 0-10 with 0 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain you can imagine?"), I always remember the intensity of my level 10 pain.

I can't remember much after the fingers-in-the-incision part. I didn't pass out, I just don't recall. The next vivid memory is being in a hospital room with an IV full of antibiotics and the incision packed with gauze. There wasn't room on the infectious unit, so I had been given a room on what I used to call the "terminal kids" ward. Several bald cancer kids and two cystic fibrosis kids were on the same unit. It totally weirded me out when one of the cystic fibrosis kids came to my room and gave me his toys "because I won't need them soon." His mom came by later to get them, apologizing profusely.

I stayed in the hospital for quite a while getting antibiotic therapy and wound care. The wound care consisted of taking off the cover dressing, pulling out the gauze packing (with yellow-green goo), pouring in hydrogen peroxide, gritting my teeth as it foamed up and stung mightily, twitching in pain as silver nitrate sticks were applied to cauterize the wound, then repacking. Twice a day for a long time. Even after I got out of the hospital, my mom picked me up from school to perform the wound care. Because of the infection, I couldn't just be sewn back up again.

So 20 years later I still have a thickened scar running across my abdomen on the right side rather than a thin, white line. Presently, the standard procedure is to perform cholecystectomies laparoscopically eliminating the need to open the belly. Patients now end up with three white dots where the camera and instruments are inserted. Damnit. At least I got a good story out of it.

Emesis assessment

Here's the text of the Powerpoint slide we just went over in class. Fun stuff.

Emesis [also known as vomit] -- Look at it!

Assessment
- preceded by nausea, precipitating or relieving factors, frequency, is it sudden, projectile, or persistent

-Note color and volume
Clear or greenish vomitus with undigested food-stomach
Bright yellow- bile or upper intestinal
Dark brown with feculent odor- prolonged bowel obstruction
“Coffee-ground” or BRB (bright red blood) - bleeding

The Pumpkin-ing of Yogurt

I just finished a container Lucerne Limited Edition Pumpkin Pie yogurt. As an avid consumer of pumpkin-flavored items (see very first first blog post), I was excited but wary. Turned out to be kinda gross. Oh well. Guess I'll be heading over to 7-11 sometime this weekend to see if they've got the Pumpkin Spice Latte back.

Update: In a pleasant turn of events, the Lucerne Limited Edition Cranberry Orange yogurt is wonderful.

Stoopid medical humor

Today in Skills lab we learned how to operate IV pumps. The instructor demonstrated at the front of the lab so we could all see, but since there wasn't a bed and a dummy right there she let the end of the IV hang down into the trash can. Immediately I thought/said, "This trashcan is hypovolemic. Hang a bag of saline before it gets shocky." See, this is what has happened to my sense of humor. Sad really.

Later, the instructor was explaining that it was important when learning how to use unfamiliar equipment to read the manufacturer instructions or watch the training video that is usually available. Relying on co-workers can result in a game of telephone where proper procedure is transmuted into bad habits through a steady accretion of errors or shortcuts. I turned to a friend and before I could even open my mouth he got there first, "Make sure the cartridge lever is pushed down. Purple monkey dishwasher."

Oh Simpsons, is there any situation for which you don't have a relevant quote?

Anatomical art

Mybloodyself hosted a craft night on Saturday. I'm not particularly crafty, but I do enjoy making shrinky-dinks. Here's a couple:



I just had a test about heart attacks on Friday (96%, whoo!) so it was fresh in my mind. The black part is dead tissue.




This is a salute to an organ I haven't had for more than a couple decades now. The sister of a school friend of mine had to have her's removed this weekend. She'll have three tiny white dots from the laparoscopic surgery while I have a fat 10 cm scar. Ahh medical progress.

Three bloody patients

Don't worry, there won't be any pictures. Unless you really want to look at bloody things. I saw all these people when I was working in the ER.

Patient #1: Gored by a bull

Brought in by helicopter from out in the country, this guy had a scalp laceration and a punctured cheek. He wasn't even in a rodeo, just going about the work of raising cattle.


Patient #2: Open leg laceration

Poor guy was helping a friend with some roof work when a piece of metal sheeting gashed his calf almost down to the bone. You could plainly see the different layers of skin and muscle, fascinating really. Luckily for him, compensating mechanisms had kicked in and he wasn't in any pain. He said it just itched.


Patient #3: Mulitple shallow razor cuts to the face, self-inflicted

I knew what she'd done when I took the paperwork in for her to sign, but I had to make an effort to make eye-contact and stay composed while looking at her face streaked with dried blood. Even though this was the least serious physically, it was the worse of the three. The other two were accidents, this was intentional and indicative of some profound problems. I can't imagine what it will be like to live with fine white scars all over your forehead and cheeks. I hope she got the help she needed. Since then I've seen more than a few girls who cut and the scars on their arms and thighs depress me terribly.

Dang. Didn't mean this to end this under a dark cloud.

On the comedy of trauma, death, and burns

One of my instructors this semester has a great, morbid sense of humor. I often bust out laughing at some of the odd things she says. For instance, “People coming in to the ER are scared because it’s probably the first time that they’ve felt like they were dying. And they’re right, it might happen.” It’s funny to me at least.

Another time she was talking about people who drive themselves or a family member to the hospital instead of calling 911. “I can’t tell you how many people have died of a heart attack at corner of 38th & Lamar [one block away from Seton Main Hospital].” All I could think was, “The corner of 38th & Lamar is haunted! Restless souls at Subway and Relax the Back store!”

During a lecture on shock, our instructor had just said “If that happens, call the rapid response team,” when the phone in the classroom started ringing. She pulled off a great double-take. It was unexpected, perfectly timed, and therefore really funny. It does beg the question of why we have a phone in the classroom. Incoming calls are always wrong numbers.

Just last week she was lecturing about how percentage of burns are estimated and she said that genital burns count for 9%. The class quickly pointed out that her slide said 1%. “I was just trying to wake y’all up. Y'all don’t have a sense of humor.” Cause genital burns are hilarious. In fact, I’m going to show up at open mic night at Velveeta Room and do five minutes on genital burns. It’ll kill.

More odd comedy as it occurs.

"Yay! I like to like stuff I don't like."

- Joolie, after I told her I'd loan her my Sports Night DVDs so she could enjoy a TV show about coworkers putting on a ESPN-like sports news show.

A long Saturday

I worked a 13-hour shift today. Scheduled for 8, but they needed someone to do a transport to a medical hospital for imaging so I volunteered. Transporting is easy money. I accompany the patient to the hospital, sit in the waiting room while they do their thing, and accompany them back to the psych facility. Patients who are cleared to leave the facility are always easy-going, so it's usually a calm trip. We mostly chit-chat about the weather or what the procedure will be/was like, stuff like that.

Afterwards, I went to a friend's place and we watched The Wire on DVD. Didn't get any schoolwork done like I had planned, but I made some money and had a nice evening.

R.I.P. Don Walser

I don't remember when I first heard Don Walser, probably when I was at DJing at KVRX while getting my first degree. I do remember the shiver I felt when I heard his incredibly beautiful yodel. At KVRX there are requirements that DJs exhibit some genre diversity and a Texas component. I played Don Walser's "Cowpoke" regularly partly because he met two requirements at once, but mostly because the power and clarity of the yodeling gave me goosebumps.

I saw him a half-dozen times in the mid-'90s. He was great live with a tight backing band. My favorite time was when he played with Kronos Quartet at Bass Concert Hall. The Quartet was a fan of his and put togther some string arrangements for two of his songs. That arrangement of "Rose Marie" was then recorded for his next album. When they finished playing at Bass, there was a long standing ovation. Knowing they had to give an encore but having prepared nothing else, Walser et al. just played the two songs again. It was wonderful.

Walser stopped performing some time ago due to his declining health. I'm sad to say that I forgot about him until I heard the news of his death yesterday. I pulled out Rolling Stone from Texas and "Cowpoke" thrilled me all over again.

Cowpoke (from the album Rolling Stone from Texas)
Rose Marie (from the album Down at the Sky-Vue Drive-In)

Austin City Limits Festival 2006

I've been late in posting because I was sick during and right after ACL. Note to self: if you don't sleep enough, you always get sick. Right. Moving on.

I skipped Friday in an attempt to generic Nyquil myself to sleep and therefore wellness. I slept about 17 hours on and off from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon. It kinda of worked. No more fever, but still with the chest congestion and general malaise. Wait, wasn't I going to move on from the sick talk?

SATURDAY

I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness
I like you but you are less-than-compelling today and as a local band I can see you within the next month and there's a big crowd over by the Heineken stage so I've chosen Ghostland Observatory.

Ghostland Observatory

Local band that I have been extrememly remiss in not seeing. Wow. A guy twiddling knobs and playing keyboards (in a floor-length cape mind you), while another guy cavorts about singing in a brash falsetto. Sure, I like that kind of thing, but these guys were pulling people in from all over the place. I'll chalk it up to things sorely lacking from some ACL acts (I'm looking at you Iron & Wine), to whit energy and charisma. Keyboard guy just stood there, but managed to still get across a sense of competence and "Whee! This is fun!". I'm sure the cape helped. Singer dude was a firecracker. Dancin' and singin' and jumpin' and worked it like nobody else I saw all weekend. Bravo Ghostland Observatory, I'll see you again as soon as possible.

The Secret Machines
Meh.

TV on the Radio
Bad sound mix and I wanted to see The Shins more so...

The Shins

Generally good. Since touring after their first record, The Shins have become a more muscular, tight band. Unfortunately, they've also smoothed out some of the odd angles that made me love them. Sure Marty (keyboards/guitar) is still hilarious and the songs are punchier, but my brain doesn't melt with joy over them anymore. Maybe's it's my problem. Hard to say. Still, good show, looking forward to their new album out in January. Oh, they asked people to video record them on cameras and cell phones during one song for a video they were making. 1st problem: most people don't have enough room on their devices for an almost four minute song. 2nd problem: the upload site sucked and couldn't handle my large file.

Calexico
Reliably great, but I was less enthused than during previous shows. Maybe being sick? No, I took that into account when evaluating performances. Well, when you seen a band like 12 times in five years every show can't be fantastic. Surprisingly, they didn't play anything from the EP they did in collaboration with Iron & Wine.

The Raconteurs
Just heard them from across the way. Unremarkable. "Steady As She Goes" was great, but nothing else made an impression as I read about various anemias (yes I studied during the festival, nursing school doesn't stop for culture breaks).

Iron & Wine

Snore. Wanted to like it, but couldn't.

Explosions in the Sky
So great to lie back on the grass as darkness descended and have this band take me away. Lovely. I really should go see them more often.

Massive Attack

Daddy G (original member) was off with his wife and brand-new baby so it was up to 3D (original member), the vocalists, and the backing brand to bring it. And they did. And it was so very good. Despite being a band based in DJing and samples, the live version went far above standing on stage and pushing a button every now and then while the light show does all the work. Granted, the light show was fantastic, but the band (two drummers!) was bombastic and coiled and sinuous and noisy. Seriously y'all, I was in heaven even though I think my fever had returned. While it was great that long-time vocalist Horace Andy was there, it blew my mind that Elizabeth Fraser (ex-Cocteau Twins) was there to sing as well. "Teardrop" was gorgeous. Never thought I'd ever hear her do that song live. Anyway, best band of the festival by far.

SUNDAY

José González

I don't think an outdoor festival is the best venue for José. The crowd was respectful, but a solo acoustic guitar-playing singer just doesn't work in the middle of a humid day with thousands of people milling around or rocking out to other, louder bands not too far away. Not nearly as good as when I saw him at SXSW 2006, but still decent. Did an interesting cover of Massive Attack's "Teardrop". Did not do his cover of Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy", maybe when he comes back later then Fall. Why do I like this acoustic-guitar singer/songwriter when so many others bore me? To (mis)quote comedian Zak Galifianakis, "The way you play music makes me feel good inside."

Ween
Practically a parody of themselves now. Have gone over to the dark side, by which I mean that they've become a jam band. Wanky guitar work all over the place. I walked up when they'd started "Spinal Meningitis" (yay!) and walked away at minute two of the wank solo (boo).

White Ghost Shivers

They were probably a new band for a lot of the crowd, hence the almost immediate aggregation of more and more audience and the big smiles. They are very good at showmanship. Look at the outfits and the instruments, you know where there at musically. Naughtier than you might expect though.

New Pornographers

Reliably great. Why isn't this band huge? Big hooks, great singing, what else do you need? I guess Neko isn't dressed sluttily enough. Snerk. I was bouncing around throughout. "Laws Have Changed" makes my endorphins skyrocket. Also, Neko is funny.
Soon after taking the stage, “I can’t peform in these freezing conditions. Stage manager, fetch me my parka.” Later she acknowledged Ween playing across the way and quoted some song that expressed the sentiment "I'd give a blowjob for a joint," which she quickly followed with, “Not really. Well, you’d have to catch me in the right mood.” Hee.

Flaming Lips

Packed audience, they really should have been a headliner. Their theatrics still worked in the daylight though. Streamers everywhere, confetti blowers, dancing girl aliens, dancing Santas (girls & boys), superheroes (or if you prefer, underwear perverts), Wayne in a giant hamster ball rolling around on top of the crowd; it was a show. They really have their visuals honed, I wish they’d play more songs though. As much as the crowd really enjoyed it, I can't help but do that annoying "you should have seen them back in the day." They still play "She Don't Use Jelly," but I miss "Halloween", "You Can’t Stop the Spring", "Bad Day". I tell you, it was incredible to see them in 1994 wrapped in Christmas lights at Liberty Lunch. Still, it's great that they're popular now and so many more people know and love them.

BoDeans
I generally like the BoDeans, but I'm in love with "Fadeaway". It's definitely a loop song for me, I'll listen to it for 20 minutes at a time. While waiting for Tom Petty, I wandered over figuring they'd play it at some point. They did and I got all gooey with joy. Sure it was waaay too long with multiple solos, but I love it so. After some song, they broke into The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated". Nice.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Knowing that I had to be up for clinical at 5:45 the next morning, I told myself I could only stay for three songs of Tom Petty. I walked out the gate while the third dong was fading away. Good thing too, because it started to rain just before I got on the shuttle bus. Apparently the band stopped playing after the fourth song.

Generally a good year. Not as good as last year or The Pixies year or the REM year, but Massive Attack bumped it up for me.

Ann Richards didn't like me

Like some other people I know, I voted for Ann Richards in 1994. She was so very entertaining. Yay Ann! Sadly, Dubya defeated her. Boo Dubya. Then she went to work for a lobbying firm and while she herself did not lobby for tobacco companies, the firm did. Boo Ann.

I had two run-ins with Ann Richards. The first was in 1999 when I lived near Clarksville. I was walking down West Lynn when I saw her getting out of her car in front of the dry cleaners. For seemingly no good reason, she looked at me disapprovingly. I'm quite certain my hair was my normal color. OK then.

The second time was in the summer of 2001 when I was petitioning outside of Bookpeople for a campaign finance reform measure. Knowing that she was not a supporter, I approached her anyway,
"M'am, can I get you to sign to support campaign finance reform in Austin?"
She stared daggers at me and said, "You cannot. It's a terrible idea."
She marched past me and into the store. Whoo-hoo, Ann Richards chastised me.

So that's my Ann Richards stories. Oh, also just a few months ago I saw Anna Deavere Smith workshopping a new theatre piece about the body and illness in which Smith performed as Ann Richards in addition to many other real people as she's done before. It was great, Smith really captured the voice and presence of our former Governor. See it if it comes back around.

Rectum, reptile, whatever

Tonight I was reminded of a patient that was seen in the ER last summer when I worked there. A quick check of the blog confirmed that I inexplicably hadn't shared this story yet. I heard it second-hand, but I believe it to be accurate.

A frequent flyer (patient that comes in often) strode up to the triage desk and when he wasn't tended to immediately begain knocking on the desk,
"Uh excuse me, excuse me, I need to be seen."
"What brings you in today?" asked the triage nurse.

The patient matter-of-factly stated that his ass was bleeding, probably due to anal sex (I guess he wasn't doing it right). The triage nurse misheard him, but being an ER triage nurse who's seen it all, nonchalantly asked,
"What kind of animal?"
"Animal?!" the patient exclaimed.
"Didn't you say animal sex?"
"Uh-uh. A-NAL sex. Janeesha does not do animals."

When the patients start assessing the staff

Sometimes patients who have prior experience with hospitalization turn it around on staff. After answering several questions from a nurse, once a psychotic woman started asking questions herself like, "What month is it? What year is it?" These are orientation questions to assess mental status. The questions cover orientation to person, place, time, and situation. So staff would ask a patient, "Can you tell me your name? Can you tell me where you are? What's the date (or break it down if the patient knows the year and season, but not the month or day)? Can you tell me why you're here?" Sometimes staff throw in a "Can you tell me who the President is," but these days that might instigate a round of name-calling (can you blame them?).

The psychotic patient continued questioning the nurse, "Do you hear voices?"
"Yes," responded the nurse.
"Who's?"
"Your's, right now."
Patient, slyly, "Hmm, you're a smart one."

Unexpected poetry

"Simple nails, simple tales" - patient

I took care of a patient recently that was psychotic with thought disorder. Psychotic in general use conjures images of a maniac killer. Actual psychosis is severely impaired thought processes and/or perception. It may manifest as hallucinations, delusions (fixed false belief, "There's a microchip in my brain"), paranoia, thought disorders, and/or lack of insight (unaware that thoughts and behavior are bizarre).

This young woman had profound thought disorder. April* spoke constantly, quickly ("pressure of speech" and yes I know this describes me as well), and without coherence. The syntax of her speech was correct, there was just no meaning. It was just a stream of phrases with constant rhyming. I've been told that rhyming is unusual. Regardless, it's remarkable to witness. It would be unethical to record patients but I wish you could have heard her when she was really going. Further, she would incorporate words she heard around her into her utterances. Fascinating, and awfully sad. It's like she had something terribly important to tell you, but couldn't pull it together.

“Suddenly, suddenly this sickness”

In the midst of a stream of nonsense, April said that phrase. It stuck out. Was this a coherent statement? An awareness of what was occuring? Or is that just me imposing order on a virtual white noise of words? I suspect the latter and hope against the former. It would be kinder if she was consciously unaware of what was going on with her and wouldn't have memories of it, particularly given one facet of her behavior.

“Come here so I can taste it. I promise I won’t waste it.”

The staff joked that April had a crush on me. That's putting it lightly. She was very sexually inappropriate, mostly with me. I quickly became very good at flinching away from her grabs at my crotch and eschewing her offers of sexual favors. Sometimes she'd just lean against the wall or straddle a chair, stick out her butt, and somewhat wearily suggest we get started. It wasn't embarrassing for me - she's clearly out of it and I strive to be professional - but it was a tad frustrating.

During shift change when I was giving report to a staffperson coming on, April tried to sit on a table. I gently dissuaded her, "Let's not sit on the table. It's not stable." My co-worker and I shared a rueful laugh, apparently April was a powerful influence.

I think about April's stream of words often. Is it at all connected to the bursts of inspiration that artists experience when they write a great song in 10 minutes? The way freestyle rappers flow? How can we "unhinge" ourselves temporarily while maintaining self-awareness?

* Fake name. As always, I often change details of patients' sex, age, etc. to protect their identity.

Blood Sugar Death Magic

As a nursing student, I like to think I bring a little more to the table while I'm working as a clinical assistant at the psych facility. For instance, I'm constantly trying to educate patients on good food choices. When it comes to the diabetic patients, I'm quite stern. "No, you cannot have ice cream. You have diabetes. Let's think of something that will be a more appropriate snack for you."

I do this work only to see it disastrously undone by patient's families. A patient will have already eaten their facility-provided meal which is physician order for an 1800 or 2100 calorie per day diet, and then patients' families come in for visiting hours with pizza and non-diet soft drinks or big bags of Taco Bell. A meal like that can easily top their ordered calorie intake for an entire day. It's not true in every case, but I've seen it plenty of times and it mystifies me. It's not like the patient was just diagnosed with diabetes. Diagnosing doctors and nurses usually do a comprehensive job of educating patients and their families on food intake, blood glucose monitoring, etc.

"Are you trying to kill your [loved one]?" I'm tempted to say, "Why not just roll a stick of butter in sugar and batter, freeze it, then deep fry it?" Usually I just pull them aside and point out that we're trying to encourage good eating habits and that while food often plays a part in comfort and they of course want to help their loved one feel better, an entire medium pizza or eight tacos will make them feel worse in the long run.

I'm generally not a fan of scare tactics, but sometimes I just want to hand them a photo of diabetic foot ulcers.

Recent events

Whew I'm getting really lazy with the posting. Or maybe it's not having a computer at home (why did you crap out on me iBook and after all the nice things I've been saying about you). Now that school is starting, I'll likely be more dutiful.

Some high- & lowlights from the past few weeks:

- Went skiing again and got up on the wakeboard immediately. Something clicked and I just got it, that happened to two other guys too. More fun than skis, but harder to cross the wake. I really need to bring a videocamera with me next time so I can document the spectacular wipeouts while tubing.

- Drove to Arlington to enjoy Six Flags only to find that it was closed. They changed their operating hours only a few days before we went. Hateful. More on that trip here.

- Saw When in Rome, Psychedelic Furs, & DEVO(!!!) in San Antonio. When in Rome were better than expected. I expected utterly awful and it turned out rather cheezy. When When in Rome (ha! fun sentence construction) broke it down during their one hit "The Promise" so the singer could introduce the band I turned to mybloodyself and said, "I'm getting goosebumps. Of revulsion." Psych Furs were good, three original members and all their hits. I was surprised and pleased that they played "Dumbwaiters", an abrasive (well, abrasive for Psych Furs, I mean it wasn't Merzbow or anything) and punky song from their first album. Of course Devo were magnificent. It wasn't all that different from the show I saw in New York last year and yet it was better because I was crammed up against the stage (my choice, there was plenty of room) and spazz-dancing throughout. Three young guys near me had driven 14 hours from Memphis to see the show and I was impressed by both their committment and that Devo still inspires such devotion in dorkish college boys. Thank goodness I had a shirt to change into because I completely soaked the one I was wearing. Wheee!

- Scaling way back on my work hours now that school has begun. The shift I had last Sunday was miserable. Understaffed with some fairly sick patients. I've said it before, I'd rather have 10 depressed people than one manic. You think I talk a lot. I almost offered the manic patient $500 to stop talking for 10 minutes knowing she wouldn't be able to do it, but good judgement won out. At least I further endeared myself to the nursing staff by keeping order.

- School started today. Just a review of assessment, vital signs, blood glucose checks (me and my partner bled all over the place, damn defective clotting mechanisms), drawing up and delivering injections, that sort of thing.

UPDATE: Mybloody posted photos of Devo, Psych Furs, & When in Rome.

When it comes to poetry, I'm a callous meany

National Poetry Slam 2006 is happening this week here in Austin. I've been a slam fan since 1998 when it was last in Austin. I even went to Nationals in '99 and '00 just as a fan. After that lack of money and vacation precluded further trips and I fell away from slam aside from watching Def Poetry on HBO.

I was cancelled from work last night so I went to see a couple bouts. Even though they were free last night (and will be tonight), there wasn't much of an audience. In fact, 15 minutes before the start of the 7 PM bout, I was the only audience member not connected to a team or working on crew. In other words, an automatic judge. They rounded up four more and we got started.

The idea of "judging" poetry is admittedly kinda odd. I recommend reading the Wikipedia entry on Slam Poetry to get a sense of the whys and wherefores.

I'll post more about individual poets and teams later, but this post is mainly to record what a demanding asshole of a judge I am apparently. Throughout the evening I was almost always the lowest scorer, and since the high and low scores are thrown out, all I did was set the low-end point. I'll admit I'm demanding. Having been to three Nationals before, my expectations are high. Yelling continously, painfully bad confessionals, and political speeches that just list terrible US military actions do not impress me. In fact, they kinda piss me off because it's been done and by far better poets.

Scoring ranges from 0.0 to 10.0 with 0.0 being, I don't know running off stage after one line I guess, to 10.0 being a perfect poem. PERFECT. I don't tend to give below a 5 unless the poet messes up badly. Basically a 5 for memorizing and performing it. Everything above that is quality of the text and performance. My scores average around 7.2. I've given a 10 before, twice I think. Both times the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I recall twitching with energy. Last night I have a lot of scores in the 6s and 7s; highest score of the night from me was an 8.8.

At one point after a loud, "emotional" poem that I found cliche and derivative, an audience member saw my score (you hold them up high), turned to me and said, "What do you want?!" To which I responded, "I know it when I hear it," which was really a joke reference to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous line about obscenity in relation to pornography, "I know it when I see it."

What I really wanted to say was I want innovation, flow, truth, beauty, to laugh or get goosebumps. I want my pulse to race. I want tears in my eyes. I want to hear something I've never heard before. I want poetry, not a directionless rant, a catalog of ills, a demonstration of singing skill, an artless plea for tolerance, or a humorless brag. I want to hear/see/feel great poems.

People who haven't ever seen to a slam before tend to be easily impressed; especially when they politically agree with the poets (there are few to no right-wing slammers) or empathize with a poets sad personal history. I was like that too once upon a time. Now, I've seen far too many great performers to be impressed with just energy, volume, and hand gestures.

So, I'll continue to be a judge (I tend to get picked by the bout managers when there aren't that many neutral audience members), suffer the "boo"s of the audience (picking on judges is allowed and expected), and glare at other judges who give four 10s in one night (whatthefuck?!).

Junior Senior totally dissed me, sorta. Well no, not really.

Several months ago, a friend of a friend put out a call for people to join her in a fun endeavor. The band Junior Senior had requested that fans shoot footage of themselves lipsynching to the song "Can I Get Get Get". The footage would be edited into a video for the song. Junior Senior wanted to get submissions from all over the world and noted that they'd like to get a sense of the city/country the fans hailed from. Also, the presence of yo-yos was suggested as they were to be a recurring theme on the album.

So one Saturday I reported to Niki's house to find that I was the first person to arrive. She taught me the song while we waited for the others. Who never came. So the two of us (with a cameraman in tow) danced and sang "Can I get get get to know know know you better better baby" a ridiculous amount of times outside the Guadalupe I Love Video, in front of the giant Austin postcard mural, and while cavorting around the huge star in front of the Texas History Museum. A giant inflatable crab was attached (mounting? humping?) the star. We shook its claw and waved balloons about while tourists gawked at us. I provided yo-yo action as well. At the end of the day we agreed that we were very much rockstars. Niki sent off the footage.

The video is now out and I'm massively disappointed. Either many Junior Senior fans are somewhat cute but rather boring or the video editor is untalented and/or vision-impaired. Almost no one shows off where they are from by say, dancing with the Eiffel Tower in the background or atop a Mexican pyramid. And only one clip of yo-yoing, tragic.

What it really all comes down to is this, I'm not in the video. Laaame. Niki has two brief shots, one lipsynching in front of the Austin mural (not that you can read it in close-up), and the other showing her dancing legs (there was much, much better dancing leg footage). I'm not jealous of Niki, what I'm saying is that we should have constituted at least 25% of the video. Watch it for yourself, I guess. Grumble sourgrapes grumble.

More fun with Spanish

Today we were going over food vocabulary. We had to go around the classroom and find fellow students who liked and didn't like various foods. A girl came to me and asked me about vegetables. What I was supposed to say was, "Me gusta calabaza," or "I like squash." What I actually said was, "Me gusta cabeza," or "I like head," which is true, but not really appropriate to say in Spanish class. I think I blushed.

How would you behave?

A multiple choice question:

You want me to pay attention to you. How would go about it?

A) Ostentaciously clear your throat
B) Broadly gesticulate
C) Say, "Excuse me. Might I have a moment of your time?"
D) Break the plastic cover of a ceiling-mounted fluorescent light, then hold a piece of it to your neck

If you answered D, than you are very much like a patient I took care of recently. I admit the question was vague, what I should have asked is:

I've spent the day mostly looking after just you. It's getting close to bedtime and you are resisting the fact that the communal dayroom closes at night. After a sequence of pleading, bargaining, and threats from you, I conclude that this behavior is attention-seeking and inappropriate. I tell you, "You don't have to go to sleep, but you need to go to your room and be respectful of the other patients trying to get to bed." Then I disengage and walk away. How will you get me to pay attention to you?

Put that way, what other answer could it possibly be but D? Such is the logic of the troubled I guess.

Fun with Spanish

Yesterday in my Spanish for Healthcare Workers class I cracked myself up by composing this sentence:

El bebe el bebé.

Translates as "He drinks the baby." From the perspective of today I realize that I'm stoopid, but dang it was funny yesterday.

Alpha male alert

A little while ago I encountered a new kind of patient. I've seen the incredibly depressed and disheveled, the haunted schizophrenic, the mile-a-minute manic, but this was my first bipolar young turk. The testosterone coming off this guy could stun a rhino (and Barry Bonds). Shirtless push-ups in the dayroom? Sure, why not. Hitting on every female under the age of 50? Of course. Ostentaciously adjusting his package? All in a day's work. Yeesh. I had to have the "it's not appropriate to discuss your sexual conquests here" conversation with him twice.

The kicker was he's tremendously hot. Seriously, best-looking psych patient I've ever seen. How annoying is that? At least he wasn't hot and even-tempered without a trace of grandiose delusions.

Odd psych drug ads

Thanks to BoingBoing, I stared in head-shaking wonder at this collection of Japanese psychiatric drug ads. Some of my favorites:

Serenace® (haloperidol)


"Do you hallucinate that a giant bird-of-prey is after you? Serenace® can help." This and the rest of the Serenace ads are not what I would call soothing.

Rivotril® (clonazepam)


It's not uncommon for me to ask patients where I work if they're feeling anxious. Now I know that my follow-up question should be, "Would you rather feel like a naked child sitting in a field of flowers while a large umbrella protects you from the metaphorical storm? Great, let's see if you've got clonazepam prescribed."

Doral® (quazepam)


I don't know about you, but if just the ad is soothing my insomnia imagine how well the drug works. Ridiculously adorable.

These ads reminded me of a previous posting, this collection of American psychiatric drug ads. Faves:



Not sure how a child slumped over on a swing represents a Stabilized Epileptic, but then I never studied advertising in school aside from a brief analysis of its ever-refined means of manipulating people.



"See? You can poke her in the eye and she doesn't even flinch. Sweet!"



Mom: Umm, I'm a little concerned that Timmy's pupils are freaking huge.
Nurse: Don't worry, Nembutal is the "gentle" barbituate. If he stops breathing, call us.

The hits keep coming

I added a site meter to the blog awhile ago. Every once in a while I'll check the referrals to see how people found me. Mostly it's Google searches where the searcher never even came to the blog. People search for some weird things. Weird ungrammatical things. I'm the 8th return on Google for "picture of opening ladies urethra." 4th for "boy nipple sting dermatology."

Doesn't "boy nipple sting dermatology" kinda maybe sound like a Belle & Sebastian song that was written while drunk and never recorded?

Sounds of the psych unit at night

A/C
snoring
ring binders of med charts snapping open and closed
muttering
jangling keys of the staff
shuffling feet of the patients

I came up with the title of a mongraph, but I don't want to write it. I just like the title: On decreased muscle tone in the lower extremities of psychiatric patients, or Why the mentally ill shuffle when they walk

Reading material...Part II

I went with Douglas Adams, specifically Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. It's odd that I hadn't read it before being a fan of Adams. It was great. I love comic time machine stories, Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog is a big favorite of mine. After I finished Dirk Gently's, I polished off that memoir of a guy in a psych ward that I started last week on a graveyard, Nervous System by Jan Lars Jensen. It wasn't great, but interesting and provides good insight on the thought process of psychotics.

Around 6 AM I started in on Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could By Your Life. I'm not much of a fan of Black Flag, Big Black, Mission of Burma, and several of the other bands it profiles. Azerrad's such a compelling writer though that I enjoy just learning more of the history of these bands and the American underground scene of the '80s. Thanks go out to Choo for selling this at Dan's garage sale last year.

Thanks also to jlowe for the Vonnegut suggestions. I've been eyeing Player Piano lately. I'll bring it along tonight, though I'll be reading the Dirk Gently sequel The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul first.

Reading material for monitoring the suicidal

I worked another 16-hour shift last night/this morning. I wasn't scheduled for it, but when asked I thought, "Well I'm up already, it's good money, and I mostly have to just sit here, read, and make sure this guy who is sleeping doesn't try to kill himself. I'm in!" About 4 AM I was regretting it. Mostly because I was very tired (I'd been up since 7 AM the day before), but also because I was reading a crappy play called Bus Stop written by William Inge that was later turned into a movie starring Marilyn Monroe. Just cliche as all get out, though since it was produced in the '50s maybe Inge was the first to write them. Wait, is that better or worse?

By 5 AM I was slightly more alert and reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible which almost made me cry is was so good and relevant. I'm working graveyards for the next couple nights and I'm thinking of reading Douglas Adams or Kurt Vonnegut. Funny science fiction or rabidly satirical science fiction?

A proposition

Tonight a female patient told me I had pretty eyes and that we should have a baby together. I'd have been flattered, but she'd already tried that line on a male patient and a female staffer.

Dragged around on a rope all day

I was all set to write an amusing account of my day at the lake with friends last Saturday, and then I saw that Joolie beat me to it. Read it, it's funny. If I was talented, or even had the program, I would have photoshopped a picture of Joolie with fins and gills cause she was totally amphibious, if by amphibious you mean "able to get up on skis and wakeboard immediately despite not having practiced in many years."

My two best wipeouts of the day were off the tubes, no surprise if you read Joolie's account. One crash had me barrel-rolling off the side of the tube for two full revolutions. On the second, I ended up skidding backwards on my back so forcefully that I created my own wake at least a foot high and my swimtrunks were yanked below my ass.

Next time we go out, I'm going to record video of the tube wipeouts.

3 PM to 7 AM

My night and early morning was divided into 15 minute increments. Every quarter-hour I would leave the nurses station and walk the unit checking the patients on precautions. Suicide precautions, assault precautions, elopement, fall risk, self-injurious behavior, sexual behavior. Poking my head in to see the patients sleeping or more objectively, to see their eyes closed, respirations deep and slow. Poking my head in to make sure they weren't cutting themselves or going into other patients' rooms or trying to strangle themselves with an improvised ligature. Then I returned to the nurses station to make notes, add paperwork to charts, and resume reading a memoir about a writer who was hospitalized in a psych ward.

I worked 16 hours straight yesterday/today. I'm tired.

White plastic knives

These are plastic knives I had to remove from the meal trays of certain patients at the psych facility. Looking at them now makes me a little sad.

Sticks and stones may break my bones

I’ve worked the last several evenings on a unit for high risk psychiatric patients. This is not to say that they are necessarily violent, though they might be, but rather that they are higher risk for hurting themselves or others, need to be watched for sexual behavior, or just have greater medical needs. They could be depressed, delusional, paranoid, borderline, psychotic, schizophrenic, any number of things really.

Besides my actual name, here’s what I’ve been called by patients on this unit:

doctor
nurse
a puppet
yes man
demon
rapist
nice man
patient (the adjective, not the noun)
motherfucker
cocksucker
dick
The Spanish Inquisition
toilet water
a good guy
nerd

Most of the patients are polite and appreciative, or they just stare blankly at me when I address them. The majority of the negative terms for me came from one person in particular. Today when she called me a nerd, I almost laughed. “Geez lady,” I thought, “that’s so tame compared to all the other things you’ve called me. It’s practically a compliment.”

What do I do to earn her scorn? Oh just things like: checking on her every 15 minutes as required by policy, asking her to keep her voice down when she’s shouting in the dayroom, telling her that it’s inappropriate for her to leer at another patient and say, “I’m licking this chocolate pudding like I want to lick your body.” I know, I’m such an asshole. Oh yeah, she called me that too. Well, she mouthed it. Could have been mouthing “Ice gnoll.”

I see that you are lunging at others with a sharpened chunk of plastic. Are you angry?

A couple weeks back I had containment training. It is sometimes colloquially known as takedown training, but I really do have too much respect for it to call it that any more. The program we use at our facility is called SAMA (Satori Alternatives to Managing Aggression) and was developed by this zen-calm guy who developed the old method used by the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. I strongly suspect he's a badass in a Tai Chi kind of way. And as my friend Carole will tell you (and maybe show you too), Tai Chi has awesomely-named moves like Repulse Monkeys. How cool is that?!

Anyway, SAMA begins with verbal interaction; trying to de-escalate the situation before it becomed physical by conversing with the aggressive patient and guiding them to productive thoughts and actions. The practice exercises were pretty hokey, but I've already used the technique twice with good results. I can absolutely see the applicability anywhere, not just in a psych/medical setting.

If that's not working, we might have to move on to protection and containment. I feel fairly confident that I could prevent myself from being strangled, extricate myself from a grip, and/or retrieve an object, say a board with a nail through it (shoutout to Kang and Kodos!), if need be. A couple Sundays ago I put Joolie down on the floor in my excitement when I really shouldn't have. Sorry Joolie! You were such a sport to fake strangle me, and then look what I did. Thankfully I didn't go full out and "guide" you down the hall to a seclusion room (straight-jackets and padded rooms are soooo passé).

I was politely informed by the instructor that since I am a guy and didn't flabbily perform the maneuvers like some of my fellow trainees, I would surely be recruited to the on-call security team which responds to Code Grays (abusive/assaultive behavior). Good thing I'm already going to the gym. Sure I've been told my short hair, goatee, and forehead wrinkles can be interpreted as menacing, I'd like some shoulders to go along with the deadeye stare. I've already seen two situtations where an aggressive patient completely backed down at just the sight of the security team down the hall.

And so I issue a guarded invitation to my friends to behave aggressively next time we meet so I can practice.

An emergency

I haven’t posted in awhile for a couple reasons.

A) I’m working full-time all over the schedule. Bouncing around from days (7 AM – 3 PM), to evenings (3 PM – 11 PM), to graveyard (11 PM – 7 AM), while throwing in a few 12-hour shifts really screws up my sleep schedule.

B) I was unsure how to write about the psych facility and the patients there. I feel very protective of the patient’s privacy and recognize the unjustified stigma that mental illness bears in our culture. Unlike the ER last summer, there just aren’t many patients culpable in their illness and the environment doesn’t lend itself to shaking my head while thinking, “These crazy people.” You know, cause the place is actually for crazy people. Not that we use that word.

On the way home tonight, I finally worked out how I was going to write about work and was keen to get home and start typing. That’ll have to be in the next post though because as I turned onto my street, my headlights swept across a man lying facedown in the gutter. “Oh shit. This is not good. Okay, he’s probably passed out drunk, but what if he’s not, or he’s got alcohol poisoning?” I debated getting out of the car to check his pulse and breathing for about three seconds before deciding that it was better to call EMS first, then run back to him.

It was only a few hundred feet to my house, so I drove home and rushed to my phone to call 911. There’s an EMS station less than a minute away and I surmised that they’d likely arrive on scene before I returned. Still, I was eager to get back to him just in case. Nothing doing, the 911 dispatchers have questions to ask. I understood, so I made myself breathe slower and just get through it. No I don’t know his condition, didn’t even see if he was breathing. I’d say early 30s. Blue jeans and a grey t-shirt. After summoning EMS, the dispatcher patched me in to the police and they took down my name and what I was wearing (stop it pervs, it was so they could identify me at the scene if necessary).

I hung up and ran back to him. I called out to him, then shouted. Concluding that he really was unconscious, I felt for a pulse and watched his back for breathing. Thankfully, his pulse was RRR (regular rate and rhythm) and breaths were deep and regular. Just then, the fire truck showed up. I’m fairly certain that all firepersons in Austin are EMT-certified and they are regularly summoned to medical emergencies, probably because their response time is exemplary. True in this case at least as they arrived before the paramedics even though the fire station is twice as far as the EMS station.

After reporting my assessment to one of them, they rolled him over, concluded he was drunk and waited in a circle for the paramedics. They police showed up and shined flashlights at Drunk Guy for around 90 seconds until EMS arrived, loaded him on a gurney, and trucked him off to the hospital. Police said I wasn’t needed for a report, so I walked back to me house. Whew. When it was first happening, I was thinking of that nursing instructor at our school who was on her way home from work when she drove by a man lying on the ground, stopped to render aid, and had to start CPR. Thankfully it wasn’t necessary in this case, but you better believe I was running through chest compressions and all that as I trotted down the street to Drunk Guy.

Just to head off some friends, yes, if I had a cell phone I could have stayed with him and assessed his condition while on the phone with 911. That is a very good reason to have a cell phone. Good enough to cave in and get one? Meh.

Lastly, it’s been noted by others before me, but dang Austin has hot firemen. Sure the whole hero thing helps, but handsomeness was in plentiful supply tonight. The cops were pretty smokin’ too. EMS not so much.

Oh What a Night

Late December back in '63... Um, sorry. Got a little carried away there.

I got home a little while ago from my first evening shift at the psych facility. I'll just say this, I'm glad that I'm getting defensive and patient take-down training on Wednesday and Thursday. Could have used it during the events of this evening, but things worked out all right.

It's a good thing that I'm confident and not easily riled by patient behavior, cause there was button-pushing tonight! Insert lyrics to The Facts of Life theme song here. Wait, here's the actual song. Hmm, now that I've listened to it, only the first stanza makes sense in this context. Oh well, "C'est La Vie".

A pig roast

Inspired by Joolie's run-in with a roast pig, I decided to share a roast pig story of my own.

A few years ago, I was invited to a pig roast by my friend. Said friend's brother is a Park Ranger in some Southwestern state and had occasion to shoot a wild pig that was menacing the park. Figuring it would be a shame for it to go to waste and thinking ahead to when his brother would be visiting, he froze it solid and had it waiting as a present. My friend was delighted by not only the present, but also the creative-thinking that would required in getting the pig carcass back home to Austin.

They decided the direct route was best and so they double wrapped it in game bags, then put it in a sturdy canvas duffel. At the airport, my friend checked it as luggage. He half-expected security to take him aside when the pig skeleton showed up on the x-ray machine, but he and the pig arrived in Austin unhampered.

He quickly let all his friends know that there would be a roasting the next weekend. Then the question of how to thaw the thing came up. If just left out, the outside of it would surely begin to warm to unsafe temperatures while the core was still frozen. So he and his wife emptied their refrigerator of everything, including shelves, and bungie-corded the pig into it. The door barely closed.

Five or so days later, the pig was thawed, a fire pit was dug, a spit was erected, and everything was ready to go. An intrepid team of BBQ experts assembled at 6 AM to begin the roasting. When guests begin arriving around 11, the pig was still not cooked through. Never one to panic, my friend ran to a hardware store and purchased two sheets of corrugated metal which the roasting team then used to construct a lean-to over the fire pit. It worked magnificently and just a few hours later, the pig was done. It tasted okay. Sweet, though rather gamey.

I wish I had pictures. The process was much more fun than the result.

TV makes me happy, then sad

When I started writing tonight I turned on the TV just for some background noise. Turns out the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee was on live. I love spelling kids ever since I saw the glorious documentary Spellbound, so I watched the Bee out of the corner of my eye while typing. As it went on and more kids were eliminated, I watched it with increasing attention. When it was down to the final three (all girls), I was on tenterhooks [In a state of uneasiness, suspense, or anxiety].

Word after word went by, the majority of which I've never even heard of. Apparently, the way to do well is to not just obsessively study word lists, but learn the patterns of spelling in French, German, and Hawaiian. There were an awful lot of words of those origins. Here's some fun stuff from the final rounds:

poiesis - production, creation, formation. I actually knew this one because of nursing school. Hematopoiesis is the production of blood cells. Hooray, a word I actually know.

aubade - a poem or song greeting the dawn. It's of French origin and now that I know the word, I want to write one.

weltschmerz - mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state; sentimental pessimism. Ha! I knew the word, a great example of the hilarious specificity in German compound words concerning mood, but "sentimental pessimism?" Genius!

The penultimate championship word:

kundalini - the yogic life force that is held to lie coiled at the base of the spine until it is aroused and sent to the head to trigger enlightenment. I'm more familiar with the sexual aspect of this word and was mildly surprised that the word came up. Shame on me I guess.

Championship word:

ursprache - language that is the recorded or hypothetical ancestor of another language or group of languages.

Congrats to 2006 Champion Katharine Close!

So, spelling bee yay! And then I kept the TV on as Diane Sawyer introduced a Primetime special, A Call to Action: Saving Our Children, about foster care children. One and a half minutes into it and I was already in tears. Sure it was mildly exploitative - giving a mother who's child was taken away from her because of neglect and sexual abuse a chance to "tell her story"? Blech - and yet, it was captivating. Diane Sawyer, you are good with kids, at least on camera.

And then the show closed with a bit about the kid who made me cry at the beginning. He was adopted by two dads and doing well. To which I say, "Right-wing nutballs? Fuck right off."

My new job at a psych facility

Today was my second day of work at my new job. I'm a Clinical Assistant at a psychiatric facility. If I was working at a hospital on, say a post-surgery floor, Clinical Assistant (CA) would mean I'd be taking samples of various bodily fluids, vital signs, and probably making beds. At the psychiatric facility, the work I'll do doesn't have much of a physical component. I take vital signs once a day, but other than that, most of the chart notes I'll make concern behavior and clients' adherence to the program and rules.

I'm not getting paid as much as my job last summer, but it is easier and I like that I have therapeutic contact with clients. I doubt I'll end up going into psych nursing, but it's always nice to get exposure to different aspects of nursing and I'll have a leg up on my fellow students when we have our mental health clinical in the Fall.

I was explaining the work to my roommate when I mentioned some of the items that I have to search clients' bags for as they aren't allowed, for instance shoe laces, aluminum cans, and aerosol containers. She looked at me quizzically and I explained they weren't allowed because:

Shoelaces - can be used to attempt suicide by hanging
Aluminum cans - can be torn apart and used to cut themselves or others
Aerosol cans - contents can be inhaled for a cheap high

She was horrified, which I absolutely understand. It all makes perfect sense if you consider it from the right perspective, but most people don't automatically think of the violent uses of everyday things. Which is precisely why some of the clients are in the psych facility in the first place.