Living the Cliché April 6, 2009

I think that one of the core values of my generation, or at least most of the people I grew up with, is originality. While we pretty much all want to belong, we also feel a strong need to be at least a little bit different. So I wouldn’t typically use phrases like “bundle of joy” without a noticeable dose of irony in my voice. Now, though, after I change Baby Ben’s diaper and swaddle him up real good, and he looks like a compact package of zen noticing and studying the world, I turn to Ania and say proudly, “Look at our little bundle of joy!”

There was an article in the Onion a long time ago – “Miracle of Birth Occurs for 83 Billionth Time“. When I first read it, I thought it was really funny and clever. Now, I’m a little offended, and find it kind of mean-spirited. Of course, it is 100% true and correct (and still funny), but to me it misses the point. The miracle isn’t so much that it happened generally, but that it happened to us. And for some reason, that feels incredibly special and unique. So maybe that is why I walk around, carrying Baby Ben like a football, telling people to “look at my little bundle of joy!” It just doesn’t feel like a cliché at all when it happens to you.

And so I’ve had all these moments where I am doing intensely mundane things but feeling really special and proud. Like the other day when I drove to Buy Buy Baby to buy a bunch of nipples for the bottles that came with the insanely expensive breast pump (you’d think they could throw in a few…). There I was, exhausted from sleeping the last three nights on the crappiest futon in the history of futons in the hospital room, trudging toward the check-out line with an arm-full of polymer nipples, and yet I felt like I was glowing. I stopped in front of a rack of bibs for 10 minutes, trying to decide which one best expressed the love and admiration my son must surely be reciprocating back to me (I settled on “MY DAD IS MY HERO” in camouflage, before snapping out of my trance and quickly moving along). I am no longer one of those people who is trying to fill up the baby registry with all manner of cute onesies and shock absorbing strollers. I am a dad who, even just a week in, has been in the trenches and feels like he now belongs to the club.

Will our baby be cuter than…. October 12, 2008

The Elusive “Glow” October 11, 2008

Pouring over my work schedule trying to switch out of tough rotations during my due date without arousing suspicion, I started getting nauseated. I am not queasy of stomach, never vomit. Had sea sickness once in Australia while scuba diving but while everyone was purging over the boat’s deck, I kept my eye on the horizon and dealt with the hour ride.

This was very different. “Morning sickness” was “all day with a preponderance of noon-4 sickness.” In fact, while writing this at week 17, I still have some and boy it is bad. I feel like I’ve been on a little boat in choppy waters for the last months, like we’re lost at sea, like the 3 hr tour gone bad but the island was never found.

It was terrible starting week 6-couldn’t eat anything. Anything except that “one thing” and that changed day-to-day. Egg salad sandwich (before I realized I can’t have mayo). The infamous fried chicken day when all i wanted was KFC. No other type of fried chicken, only KFC, like we used to have in 1986 when we first came to this country and all of my parents’ friends worked in the KFC in Kenvil, brining home delicious left-overs. Crispy, juicy, hot thigh. Tim still loves the fact that I bawled, not teared up, not cried, but bawled, when he took away the KFC website from me trying to find a still open at 11 pm fried chicken retailer. The next few days I ate so much poultry I still can’t look at birds. Polish dill pickles cut through nausea like a knife and explained why pregnant women cling to them for dear life. Everyday before work, I’d go to the fancy grocery store near us, Agata and Valentina, and get 4 different kinds of prepared foods, a desert-usually a cream puff, a drink. At work, I’d eat almost none of it, but would frequently run over to have a bite, just to kill the nauseating metallic taste in my mouth.

And the fatigue. It was unbearable. I went from being an active energetic person able to go to the gym at 6 am before my 12 hr ed shift, bike both ways, take out Rio, and organize some residency thing, to barely being able to make it up 3 flights of stairs. I usually had to rest for 10 minutes on the couch when getting upstairs.  We live in a old TB sanitarium and I actually used the little seats between floors designed to give bleeding lungs a break.

Working was horrific. I’d get out of my cab and get to my shift ready for a nap. I had given up caffeine which was a rough adjustment. My productivity was pathetic. My concentration poor. I just wanted to sleep. Instead of the pregnant glow, I had the pregnant hauling ass look. I never went out with friends. People asked me if I was OK, if there was something wrong, told me I looked tired. And I couldn’t tell anyone the cause.

I might have been more keen on sharing my good news on the early side except our OB told us that our yolk sac, at 5 mm, was too big and that the baby might die. She softened this with a miracle story about a friend whose messed up yolk sac produced a healthy child who is now going to kindergarden. Not comforting. So we were terrified to tell anyone about our little nauseating munchkin, even our parents. “Let’s just wait it out and see if the baby catches up with it’s yolk sac and continues to have a heartbeat.” Incidentally, the upper limit of a normal yolk sac seems to be 6 mm, as I later discovered, but by this time Tim was freaked out and the idea of sickly embryo was planted. The first of scary baby health issues (see “Is Larry Retarded” entry).

This is how my first trimester was spent. Sounds awful, but I purposefully left out the great stuff so you’d feel both awe and pity for me. There were the good times. Tim and I were ecstatic, thinking up weird baby names, “Moe, Loretta, Larry…”, planning the baby’s educational career which inevitably ends with a Harvard degree (ok, that’s more me), imagining family vacations in Maine and Poland, looking online for “Big Sister” T shirts for Rio. I ultrasounded myself weekly every Wednesday to check on the yolk sac and fetal heart, see the baby moving, recording the videos for Tim. Every Sunday, we look at the week-by-week pregnancy calendar to see how the baby is developing. “size of a pea” “size of a peach pit and has fingers.” We had our own little secret and it made us so happy. The anticipation of what our families would say and how we would tell them (see Birthday Brunch Entry). The thoughts that a baby would soon be a part of our lives forever. The hot maternity clothes I would wear. As soon as I got out of my funk.

The Things We Give Up October 11, 2008

As a pregnant woman, you expect to make sacrifices for the baby. I’ve always been OK with giving up hard drugs like heroin, cocaine, crack, preventing fetal alcohol syndrome, increasing birth weight by quitting smoking. It just seemed like a good time to make a few key life changes.

But soft cheese? (look how good it looks)

I mean really, is that necessary? Deli meats? Sushi? Hot dogs? Lox? Mayo? Rare steak? Kielbasa? What is a snobby Polish NYer to eat? What do women in Paris, Krakow, and Oslo do? I’d like to see the numbers on how many babies died of Lox poisoning or EColi or over-saturation with nitrates from bologna (what I wouldn’t give right now for one slice of bologna). But still I forgo all this deliciousness and have added my own vices to the verboten list- the most significant and career inhibiting-caffeine, even though it’s apparently allowed. Don’t ask me why a performance enhancing drug is OK but a slab of $20 Brie is considered Listeria infested.

Other sacrifices I’ve made that are not necessary. Running. Seems like it’s not contraindicated but I just don’t feel right doing it. With every step, I imagine the baby falling through the cervix. Tennis. Bleaching my teeth. Highlights. Manicures (although I am flexible with that one). Taking care of Rio (for no health reason, just laziness, see blog about intense fatigue). Taking care of Tim (as much).

The hardest thing to give up has definitely been my long-planned research trip to the border of Burma. October was supposed to have been spent on the border of Burma and Thailand, training Burmese refugees in basic medical care through Columbia’s International Emergency Medicine Fellowship-an amazing experience that I had been putting together for months. Unfortunately, that part of Burma is “resistant malaria falciparum endemic” meaning that the baby would almost definitely contract a horrible and resistant malaria during the crucial organogenesis phase, esp since pregnant women are apparently mosquito magnets (is it the glow?). So no international research, even though I still considered it…how bad can a little malaria be?

Things I plan on giving up still:

My body. Right now I’ll be the first to say I look amazing. My boobs got so big it makes me wonder how I ever did with anything less voluptuous. My tummy is still small, my hair is thick. Ok, so the acne is as much a problem as it was for Jim Butler in the 7^th grade, but makeup has gotten a lot better. Overall, I’m a knockout. However, I realize and anticipate the stretching of the belly so big that the skin cannot but sag, hips widen and potentially create a “mom ass,” nipple areolas so big they seem to be the cause of the low hung bust. These I can deal with. Nothing compares with the ultimate carnal sacrifice… (sorry parents and kids) …The Vagasshole.

The Vagasshole was coined by Tim after I explained to him that with 4^th degree tears from childbirth, you can actually damage so much of your perineum that the anus and vagina become one. A gyn consult on a patient in Urgent Care actually stated “cannot locate anus.” It may be funny to many of you, but I’m not laughing.

I couldn’t even wait 6 weeks for a West Elm couch October 11, 2008

What do you do after you find out you’re having a baby in 9 months. On the one hand, it’s a long time away. I’ve never had to wait 9 months for anything. A couch comes in at most 6 weeks, and that is even infuriatingly too long. On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be enough time to change your entire life around in preparation.

I spent hours looking around our 350sq ft 3rd floor walk-up that we adore trying to imagine how it would work, “if we loft the bed and put in a futon, get rid of the dining room table and open up the balcony, a baby bouncer just might fit.” We’d need a bigger place, a full-time (or a live-in?) nanny, baby equipment. Oh, the baby equipment.

There was what I call “Baby Gear” Magazine, full of new strollers, breast pumps, baby carriers, and pregnant mom outfits. Unfortunately, there are not as many versions and issues as “Modern Bride,” my last era of magazine obsession, as pregnancy products don’t really vary month-to-month. There’s only so many ways to change a boob suction device and make it hot. Same category as the “Tough Titties” nipple cream. Yikes. A lot of “Dear Abby, my vaginal discharge has been thicker and fuller than before I got pregnant, should I be worried?” type of columns.

And speaking of couches, we needed a new couch. I imagined a sexy West Elm brown leather modern sectional but could accept a Jennifer Convertibles pull out. And a new rug. Curtains. A metal mesh chair. To match the metallic blue walls. Our entire life was going to change, including our dining room table which I planned on painting a rusty red to match the Communist propaganda posters we have on display. Yes, we would be the cool NY young family, with modern ( imposter overstock) furniture and edgy baby décor. Our place would be a model of cleanliness and organization, mostly because of “Contain Yourself” approach I would take on in the next few months.

See picture below of how I imagine our next apartment; feel free to place a baby bouncer where ever you feel it won’t interfere with the feng shui.

So we thought we were sterile… we were wrong… October 11, 2008

Why would 2 young healthy people think they were sterile you might wonder. It has to do with the fact that as a physician, I am a terrible pill-taker. Hate pills. Hate to take them. Hate to remember to take them. I have taken Advil maybe 5 times this year (only when forced by non-medical people). Would probably die of sepsis before I took a long course of antibiotics. Even now, the most awful part of pregnancy are the huge horse pills that taste like rock and scratch the throat on the way down then make me nauseated and give me reflux. It’s Tim’s job to get them ready for me and make sure our kid doesn’t have neurological deficits. So as you can imagine, birth control pills were never a favorite with me. Sure I took them, but I would miss a day here, a couple days there, forget them altogether.

This lack of consistency coupled with my poor understanding of my menstrual cycles led to many a wasted dollar on pregnancy tests. I had bought so many over the years that Tim issued an official ban. No pregnancy tests until I show baby belly. Still, I snuck in one here and there. Of course, they were always negative and sadly, I would report to Tim, “we’re not pregnant.” Tim would often accuse me of having a barren womb. Not that we were trying. Between my residency and Tim’s Ibanking my maternal instincts were easily crushed by overnight shifts and Rio’s humble needs (poop, pee, occasional exercise). We could not even handle doing laundry and got a Polish housekeeper.

Around April, we decided birth control was a waste of money, we are sterile. If we started trying now, it would take about 2 years before the denial wore off and we went to invitro. We were ready to start trying for family, no matter how long it took. I started learning about menstruation cycles and figuring out ovulation. May and June were fun.

In July, I started wondering about my period, thinking that I really have to start paying attention to when I am due. It seemed that it had been over a month since the last one, but I had no idea how long my cylces were. Told Tim I was getting a pregnancy test with one answer “don’t.” He quickly forgot we ever had the conversation. At the Duane Reade, I stood in front of the aisle and almost bought the “sperm counter” instead. It was more expensive but might yield more information. Went for the pregnancy test, giving my man the benefit of the doubt. You can imagine my reaction when I saw 2 faint red lines. Ecstatic. Pure joy.

Had to figure out a way to tell Tim. Cleaned up, got dressed up, ordered Afghani food, got a bottle of nonalcoholic champagne. Somehow the pee sticks had to make it into the announcement, although I wasn’t sure how this was going to happen. They were, afterall, sticks I peed on so even in a ziplock baggie they were a bit on the icky side. I wanted to somehow attach them to the sparkling wine which was in the fridge. Last minute I almost pinned them to Rio’s collar so Tim would find them when she greeted him downstairs and decided against it lest Tim though Rio had been a bit too loose at doggie day care. Finally I stuck the baggie in an envelope and taped it to the nonalcoholic champagne. Tim thought it was just another romantic night and as he reached into the fridge for “the wine” he was a little perturbed that I bought the wrong kind of alcohol, “hey, this doesn’t have any alcohol in it.” He still didn’t get it when he saw the pee sticks. I always bring weird leftover stuff from the hospital. Finding pee sticks in the fridge was not that different than pulling out a gonorrhea culture tube from my pocket at one of Bartek’s friends’ parties. Finally, I had to just say it flat out. “You’re going to be a daddy.”

4th of July in the Emergency Room July 5, 2008

A word of advice to those of you who are not medical, a well-known truth to those of us who are.  Avoid the hospital 4th of July weekend.  Your doctors have exactly 3 days of experience (July 1st is the first day of school) and nothing medical happens till next week.

All year I feared July would be chaos…a time during which newbies could make my life a mess, not knowing what they were doing.  I was quite wrong.  It turns out, I have all of a sudden become a senior(ish) resident with a depth of knowledge that is only apparent via relativity.  All those new people have no idea what they are doing.  I spent half my day supervising 1/3 the emergency room with junior residents and the other half taking difficult patients, putting in central lines, intubating.  So what did I see?

A woman who came in after a seizure who had a massive bleed in her head.  A guy with stroke vs endocarditis vs sepsis (no one had any idea). Not much really besides that.  A guy with brain injury who has low body salt and was about to seize.  The rest were people with arm pains, fluttering chest pains, weird abdominal complaints that all panned out to nothing.

Got out an hr late as usual and met up with Tim, Bartek, and his friends at an Upper West Side party.  Apparently, they were all looking forward to some awesome stories about people who blew off their fingers with fireworks.  Gun shots.  Car crashes.  I disappointed. Intubating and central lines are interesting only to other residents.

July 4th, 2008 July 4, 2008

Just an announcement.  In celebration of our nation’s independence, Tim and Ania are blogging again.  Stay tuned.

Penetrating Trinity’s Crevice October 13, 2007

To celebrate my first day as a certified diver, I headed over to the fancy Hyatt next door (cameoed in the filming of The Firm with Tom Cruise) to sign up for a diving trip with Red Sail Diving company.  Can’t say the staff looked too comfortable when I told them that I did not have my diving card yet, as I had just finished by 2 1/2 day training yesterday and was not given a card.  Training usually takes about 5 days of class time and 2-3 days of open water, so my schedule was a bit unconventional/dangerous/stupid.  However, it being low, low season the manager didn’t give swiping my card any more thought after a verbal verification from ”Paul” at Eden Rock, a man I had never met and who I’m fairly certain never met me either.  I was a bit concerned about not having “a buddy,” a fellow diver who I swim with and who makes sure I live if I encounter problems in my underwater explorations.  Again, this being low, low season, I worried in naught.  I was one of only 4 people on the boat; my sudden absence would be noticed.  Leading the trip was Gerard, a “Southie,” a new term I learned meaning a South African, and Sara who was English until England lost a Rugby game in the current Rugby World Cup, she then became Welsh.  Didn’t talk to Gerard much, but Sara, a self-proclaimed 30-year-old, has been working around the world for the last few years.  My ears perked up to this, as being close to 30 makes me feel like those days of working as a SCUBA instructor in Thailand are behind me (obviously, her past, not mine).   Sara reminded me that I can be 30 and cool, or as Tim will say on my birthday, 30 and sexy (horrible).  An older couple from Indianapolis with all their own gear was welcomed back, the lady had a speech impediment from her braces.  As she was somewhere between 65 and 70, I found her zest for self-improvement at such an age inspriring in preparation for my 30th birthday.  A 40-or-so-year-old Aussie from Sydney, also with his own gear and underwater camera, sat on my side of the boat.  With a predominance of those from the far corners of the British empire, conversation quickly turned to the Rugby World Cup-apparently things are awry.  The New Zealand All Blacks, the strongest team in the world (see Tim’s post from NZ), were astonishingly beaten by France (!) and Australia by England.  Both southern hemisphere nations are stunned and mortified.  The Welsh are turning English and the Southies are standing by amazed (apparently they had been defeated earlier on).   The folks from Indianapolis were unimpressed by these developments.  They, in turn, had to describe that Indianapolis is in Indiana, and that is in the middle of the continent, that it does have seasons, but no mountains.  No one on the boat with the exception of me had heard of Indianapolis; nor did they seem to need to know more.   

All these people had been on dozens if not hundreds of dives, so I tried to gather as much future vacation planning information as I could.  Bahamas-great for sharks and wrecks.  Belize-great coral.  Some island off of Thailand.  Nothing beats the Maldives.  And of course, Vanuatu.  Everyone looked a bit confused when I asked about the Persian Gulf.  I think other than oil tankers, it does not have much of a connotation.  As I am determined to live a few odd years in the Middle East, I always ask possible Middle East vacations, which are as uncommon with Westerners as might be imagined.  Anyway, apparently Red Sea off of Dubai isn’t bad. 

We traveled about 20 minutes from shore to an area called Trinity’s Caves which are not so much caves as massive corral structures that produce a great deal of crevices and cave-like enclosures.   They joked that they should call them Trinity’s Crevice but that the name would be offensive.  The surface was really choppy so I was initially pretty nervous- the large white buoy we were supposed to stay close to kept knocking me in the head.  When the whole group was in the water, we descended.  Gerard and Sara were afraid I was going to be dive-retarded and kept asking me if I was OK.  Visibility was not great, maybe 30 feet or so, but the caves were spectacular.  Maybe 80 meters or so high in some places (the total depth was 100 ft), they really did create numerous tunnels we slowly meandered through.  On exiting one of these crevices, an enormous eel swam in front of us.  It looked just like it did on the Little Mermaid cartoon, which I know I saw about 15 years ago when babysitting a 3 year old devil named Amanda, but I never really knew that I remembered what the eels looked like.  Large, narrow and tall, greenish/blac, with an evil, evil look.  Scared me way more than the shark in Australia. 

The next dive was a wreck called Doc Polson’s.  It was a cable liner sunk 10 years ago in commemoration of an MD who brought the island’s first hyperbaric chamber.  In the pre-dive pep talk, Gerard described the coral around the area and a bit of the wreck itself.  First, it can be penetrated.  Second, it has a toilet on the roof of the captain’s cabin on which divers sit and get their pics taken.  If that Aussie is true to his word, this blog will be accompanied by exactly such a photo.  Officially, I think you have to be certified to “penetrate a wreck” (sounds so dirty), but this law was relaxed and I followed Gerard into the ship’s bowels.  AMAZING.  I think it was the aspect of an obstacle course I loved, finally realizing why tetanus is one of the 2 vaccines the book emphasizes.  Second, even a 10 yr old cable liner exuded a sense of history and exploration.  I think Tim would have really loved it, can’t wait to go diving with him again, maybe Bahamas for the sharks and wrecks.   

Making the Caymans better for farmers October 11, 2007

I recently read an article in The Economist describing the Australia’s current drought (lasting the last few months) as the worst in a century.  Apparently, the drought is so bad that the country can only produce 1/3 of its crops and the number of livestock has plummeted.  There is a a picture of cracked land and sad looking farms next to the text.  It said that farmers are committing suicide.  

What is amazing about this phenomena is that while Tim and I were there for 3 1/2 weeks, IT RAINED NEARLY EVERYDAY.  Sydney had just gotten over floods when we arrived and was gray, cold, and rainy.  Brisbane was the same, as was the usually very warm and sunny Fraser Island.  Similar experiences in the last few years call to mind 1)Salobrena-the south of Spain, usually hot and dry but cold and rainy when we were there, 2)our long weekend in Maine in the middle of an otherwise sunny summer month, and 3)our Costa Rican honeymoon (although, to be fair, it was rain season down there).  Don’t ever go on vacation with me. 

So I was not surprised to find a gray and rainy Cayman Islands and locals saying things like, “Hm..this is very unusual, at this time of year, it’s almost always perfect.”  The minute we landed, it started to rain.  Then thunder.  What makes the weather less of a problem is the warm air temperature at 85 degrees, occasional sun, and most importantly, …..the water is 85 degress.  That makes the entire point of this trip, SCUBA certification, quite pleasant, despite all else.  While diving in Australia was amazing, the water was 75 degrees.  A big no no, I dreaded slapping on that cold, wet, wetsuit, and shivered during most of my snorkeling.  Turns out my minimum temp I am willing to do is 84.  This may limit Tim’s diving a bit, but I refuse to budge now that I know how sweet it is.

A little more on how I got here:  In the middle of an ED block, I got off a few days in a row and decided to go to the Cayman Islands to get SCUBA certified (I will be “SNORKLER” no longer- see Australia posts).  Cayman are some of the best places in the world for diving and supposedly beautiful islands, so it seemed like a good idea.   I convinced my mom to accompany me, although obviously, she wouldn’t be diving.  We booked the cheapest hotel on expedia, a scary 2 star, bc we’re immigrants and we don’t care. 

I’m a bit “spontaneous” about travel plans, so I didn’t really arrange for a SCUBA course ahead of time.  I figured, in the islands, everyone is so relaxed, it wouldn’t matter, I’d find something.  So I just found some names of schools on Tripadvisor and thought I’d get the details later.  I bet you are thinking that I’m setting up this paragraph to show how wrong I was.  Well, on the contrary.  As usual, my travel spontaneity worked out perfectly and I am currently done with 2 out of 2 1/2 days of SCUBA.  My school is called Eden Rock, named after the large coral about 100 ft away from shore that is used as the deep dive site.  My teacher is a guy named Steve, a corporate finance laywer turned SCUBA instructor who happened to live on 24th and 3rd until 7 months ago when he and his wife quit their jobs to move down here and dive.  Almost a cliche of carpe diem.  It turns out that I am the only student, hence getting private lessons. 

I am doing my SCUBA training not so much from a deep love of all things marine or a strong desire to wreck dive, but bc I don’t want to be left behind as Tim goes on diving adventures.  He LOVES it and could do it night and day.  I’m happy with snorkeling, although today I found out that what I do has a different name, “skin diving,” which sounds much cooler.  It’s still snorkeling but includes diving down to look at stuff.  I hate all that SCUBA equipment.  Now that I stop and think, I’m not a huge fan of most sports with a lot of equipment, like hockey and skiing.  Maybe for the same reason, I loved ju jutsu and running.   

All day, everyone keeps reiterating how unusual this weather is.  How usually, the water is like glass and the skies blue.  When I do my dives, lightening is usually striking the metal barges about a 1/4 mile down the shore.  The waves are quite angry, beating against the rocks on shore.  Getting my flippers on near the ladder is a life-threatening experience, as one large wave would be enough to knock me over and smash my head into the rocks.  Today, after my dives, I went over the the outside shower to rinse off the salt when the skies opened up and started pummeling me..”a natural shower” everyone inside the safetey of the school laughed.  I am sure seeing my pathetic little head bopping around the angry ocean as I perform skills such as “take off the SCUBA vest and sit on the oxygen tank, then put it back on” is quite a scene.   

I can only imagine how nice it must be during what is considered “average weather.” Tim and I will have to come back someday when my curse is over.