Normalcy and Dirt

I love most times of year but right now, I'm REALLY loving this time of year because, for the first time since June 2010, I feel normal. That is to say....I feel like a divorced middle-aged girl with a family and a home and a re-blossoming social life and the burning need for....

Dirt.

Ahem. Where is your mind? I'm talking about Mother Earth.

My Dad wasn't a farmer, but he was a Farmer. If you know what I mean. He loved digging in the soil, planting vegetables, and working in the woods surrounding the house. When I was twelve or thirteen he turned a section of our acre into a vegetable garden, and introduced us to the frustration and solid satisfaction of growing and eating our own vegetables. Somewhere in an album my Mom still has pictures of us huddled over little rows of yumminess, which hid the fact that my sisters and I apparently thought that gardening while wearing patchy flooded denim overalls was incredibly hot.

My Dad's love for all things outdoors strengthened as he aged and fought an unpredictable heart. Even in the year before his death he was determined to "work his acre" as he always did, so, he and I chopped wood and cleared brush, and stabbed ourselves while bolstering his beloved roses on their trellis. These jobs were earthy and predictable, and I think it made him feel normal, and in control his soul no matter what was going on in his body.

This Mother's Day weekend we joked how much a "hick" I am, like him. On Mother's Day my Mom and I visited Dad's grave. That sounds morbid but, I'm the first born and, he was really the one who made her a Mommy so, off she and I went. Each time I'm there I think it's perfect that he's buried on an enormous, lofty, scenic rounded Pennsylvania hill, with woods just beyond the gravesites. It feels natural, like home for him, which keeps us connected. So it's natural and right that on each visit my Mom fusses over the latest heartfelt grave marker she's brought, and we stand and chat with him, and that I weed his grave (and the Rices' next door even though Mrs. Rice is still alive. but I don't think she minds). When we leave, my nails are caked in soil and greens, and bits of dandelions. And Mom is smiling.

Today, I can't wait to get home from school to put on my 'farming' gear (NO overalls), and start working. It's May 9th and I know I'm late, and I know the stink bugs will destroy my tomatoes and peppers. Weeds will win, kids will accidently stomp on plants and dogs will deliberately poo BOATloads (which I will still hit myself with). And I don't care. Everything - even the poo in doses - smells hugely, heavenly. All smells and sights....I know trees and shrubbery and wildflowers and raptors, but I don't know a damn thing about song birds despite all the field guides in the den downstairs. So today the songs I hear from them are - and I am not making this up - "screw it screw it screw it", and "Murray Murray Murray". I don't remember "screw it/Murray" song birds hanging around my parent's house but, we just go with it. You don't mess with Mother Earth.

I love that the natural world fulfills it's God-appointed role perfectly and unapologetically, and doesn't care that I maybe slightly misinterpret what it's telling me from time to time. I've heard loons and tree frogs and migrating golden eagles, and mountaintop gusts and the Milky Way (heard it, yes) and no matter what I think I hear, it's right. Eventually I - all of us - get it.

Just like my Dad. Right, Murray?

Damn. That was Hard.

So about two years ago I decided it'd be a great idea to start over. With my career, not my gender or worse, my hair color (some people are adventurous about that, I am not one of them). So a year ago I started a graduate program in a completely new field, feeling like an absolute newbie at the age of 46. Especially since my classmates and I had a major league "1st Year Student" stamp on our foreheads. And when you're 20 years older than your classmates, that stamp? It oozes. It's a little heavenly and hellish, at the same time.

But, guess what. We all navigated through a little bit of heaven and hell over the last year and just became "2nd Year" students, stamp location TBD (uh, on the lower trap maybe?). Three other 35+ classmates and I hung with the kids, who don't seem to mind that their parents and we four old girls watched original Cosby Show episodes. My classmates are brilliant (I think) and funny and impressive. I'm not sure how often they had second, or tenth, thoughts about things. I'm old, and I say the curriculum is grueling.

This first year was damn hard, and Pitt can be frigging frustrating, and some weeks completely sucked, but it's been worth it.

Honestly, who wouldn't want to spend 8 weeks picking apart cadavers? 16 weeks deciphering a mad doctor's clinical medicine hieroglyphics? Or managing 6-foot creepy Ken doll patients (who TALK, sweet Jesus!)? And listening to Biomechanic Gus's 8am "respect the deltoid" lectures? Or quietly freaking out about extrapyramidal lesion pathology or why cranial nerve signs opposite dorsal column signs are different from ipsilateral cranial nerve and dorsal column signs or how to diagnose an ischemic vs. a hemorrhagic stroke or determine if a spinal cord injury is complete or incomplete or understand the motor association cortices and the orbitofrontal cortex and cingulate cortex and dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia....(this'll take all night....) Basically everything, about neurobehavioral science freaked me out. Which is maybe why I've loved that class more than all the others. Even though the genius little professor is six years younger than me.

But best of all we began our fieldwork this spring term working with live, cranky, spunky, determined, gracious clients, for the first time. I was assigned to an adult day care center and though it's not the population I hope to work with, learned a lot from the wonderful staff and clients. Including how many dirty jokes are associated with Easter (approximately, 3) and an Italian song about fried fish. MUCH better, than Ken dolls controlled by evil doctoral candidates who probably have video-watching parties of 1st Year Students freaking out when Ken's vitals suddenly plummet because his butt is too rock-solid to handle. Bodacious.

So what's my point? That setting yourself up for extreme uncertainty and potential failure and financial risk is good? Well sometimes, it is. It's never too late to start, or to start over, as long as you're serving your soul. And you know when you are. As much as I hate some of the Pitt process and disagree with academia's tendency to stomp on what's logical and right, that soul thing? It's still there. Which makes this short-term "holy sh*t...I've sacrificed high income and family life and social life for.....?" panic worth it.

So pay attention mates. Your orbitofrontal cortex may be trying to tell you something. And that, you don't want to mess with. I know. I'm a 2nd Year Student. (smile)

Stanley Kubrick and the Lame Duck Oven

'Tis the season for many things, but who could've guessed that lame ducks would be such a part of it? I started to think about them (the ducks) in early November. A lame duck is, at least politically, "an elected official who is approaching the end of his or her tenure, whose successor has already been elected."

Ow. That sounds so deflating.

After the November elections, experts were quacking all over CNN and FOX, and I started to think about the life cycles of lame ducks. Then I began to see them everywhere (not hallucinogenically, smartypants). When you substitute other things for the "elected" language in the definition, we're wobbling.....on the brink of being overrun by lame ducks. They're everywhere! Either because the Constitution creates them, or pop culture. Or technological, scientific, and engineering advances, or market forces, or our own requirements. Or something else entirely. Lame duck hairstyles, fashions, wives, phones, diets, boyfriends, teen idols, extraterrestial life theories, relationships, causes, policies, best-in-show breeds, last season's Dancing with the Stars winner, curfews, values, cars, economic theories, Oreo flavors, CSI Miami/New York/LA/Akron?, global warming theories, more TV entertainment, heart disease treatments, Beyblades, disease prevention theories, Brangelina and Jen.....

Good Lord. How did this thought trail start? But it did, and it continues with...

Football. In this area we've been following the interactions of two local college football powerhouse head coaches (okay, Pitt is a powerHUT), and their soon-to-be successors. Awkward. The West Virginia University coach (Bill Stewart, who I met on the best first date ever....but that's a different story!), was asked to introduce the man who will take his place next season, and pin his own WVU logo onto his replacement's lapel. Very awkward...a little like what I imagine the wife and the mistress meeting would be, but without a ring exchange. The lapel is also a potentially dangerous area. There's a crucial artery right there, for crying out loud. The new WVU head coach's name is Dana, which might be a little confusing down there in Morgantown (kidding! love ya WV!) How Mr. Stewart's WVU pin didn't end up in Dana's pupil or common carotid might just be, a minor Christmas miracle.

Occasionally, the lame ducks don't just avoid homicide charges. They make good.

The 111th Lame Duck Congress just closed, and surprised most politico talking heads by being much more productive than 46 graduate students cramming Pamela's for breakfast on the last day of finals. There wasn't a lapel-pin transfer ceremony to be found. Not surprisingly, the only Congressional lame ducker in danger of being stabbed by anything was Nancy Pelosi, but she's now got Steven Spielberg to "re-brand" she and her Party. That might lead to a John Williams soundtrack and Pelosi-Reid bobblehead dolls, but omigosh, why not?

So are you really thinking at this point...hmmm, this is all vaguely interesting and a little weird, but what was your real point, Girl? That is.....

Uh,

Sorry, oh yes. Lame duck appliances. Potentially as lethal as Bill Stewart at a lapel-pin ceremony. Two unfortunate appliances both came with this home. The first is an archeologically significant microwave oven that almost fits a Volkswagen Mini (for those folks who like to microwave funky things, just because). The next is an equally ancient yellow Sears Kenmore electric range and oven. In its defense, two of its four burners have never worked, and it cooperated when I replaced the baking element a few years ago. These two workhorses have gotten us through 3,263 meals without sickening anyone, but recently they've gone above and beyond old and unpredictable to a level of malicious intent.

It's partly my fault. I openly spoke of their upcoming "rotation" with Dan the kitchen man, while leaning on the oven. Dan is steadily helping to update a few things, including replacing the decrepit appliances. So while planning, Dan and I should have either used sign language or texted each other when talking about the sexy new, stainless replacements, because the originals....

Have revolted. A little like menacing HAL 9000 in "2001: A Space Odyssey." This was fine, because you know what happened to HAL 9000. And as a feisty soul I was ready for a little battle in a "no major commercial appliance will get the better of me" kind of way. Especially during Christmas week. So bring it, crusty avocado yellow mid-century Sears domestic apparati!

And they have.

The old microwave was first (but last now....haha). A week or two before being disconnected it started to withhold, so the only way the buttons worked was to punch them repeatedly with an electric cake beater. Which was actually kind of therapeutic (....or naughty, in some quarters). But when the buttons worked the 'wave' randomly spewed and exploded various food items, painting the inside of the oven. Either way, anything I sent into that old thing came out looking the same - like curdled and rusted UPMC Shadyside tapioca. The microwave is sitting in the garage now after being ignored by the garbage-day treasure hunters, and BFI, the last two weeks. I'm convinced it's transmitting messages to the big oven upstairs.

Because the upstairs oven is heeding. And suiting its size and sheer ugliness, it is grossly, chemically reconstructing most of what's going into it. It's Christmas week. The cookies have taken the brunt of it. So FINE. Bring It. Someone gently suggested that it might not be the oven (ahem), but I own up to my culinary goofs, most of which involved experiments with oven bags and parchment paper during my first year marriage. This is different. I know roasting and broiling and baking. And the maimed baked goods I tried to rehab this week were oven prey, pure and simple.

So upstairs oven, come January 8th........."I'm afraid, Dave." Sorry, HAL-OVEN 1962. You may be the lame duck, but I'm no shrinking violet.

'Twas the week before Christmas, and the cards just went out

I'm a wee bit behind, yikes, of that there's no doubt

The cookies aren't eaten, 'cause they still need baked

The shopping's not done...who, has put on the brakes?

It was me, and I tell you, with a wee bit of shame

Christmas lept out of nowhere, with its jingles, and flames

My spirit for Christmas is abundant, and true

This pure season, has nourished family, and special friends, my life through

So, why's this year different? So why aren't I "done"?

Done wrapping gifts, done gingerbreading, done stuffing stockings...none, done

It could be the schooling, which I've been doing, it could be money is tight

But those few reasons, don't stop the season...and then the words of a sprite

Who said, "It's okay, it's all, alright! We made a snowman instead!"

"And we played Star Wars, and swung on hammocks, when there wasn't snow for the sled."

And so it hit me, this Christmas worry, was only just in my head

Since to my loved ones, it doesn't matter, that I'm not quite ahead

So I'm humbled, and happy, to be let off the hook

And can stop planning, each ticking second, and maybe sit and read a book

But I'll still be baking, lighting, gifting...just with a little more in mind

Than being perfect-ly ready, or perfectly on time

Because these chances come often, these great prospects to do

Simple things, and pay attention, to each other year thru

I'm not soapboxing, or giving speeches, and I hope I'm not trite

I'm just relaxing, and doing some laughing....that wise sprite is, always, right

~Merry Christmas, Friends~

That's no dummy. That's my patient.

Have you ever seen a ventriloquist? For real I mean, not on TV. I only have once, at the after-prom party my junior year of high school. Or maybe it was at the Improv in Chicago. They're so similar I don't remember which it was. Either way, after watching the ventriloquist manhandle his dummy and do a preTTy bad job of giving it a voice, anything kind of resembling a fake human being has given me the creeps. Haunted houses are no problem - they're fake (hmm?) ghouls and I love that - but I usually pick up the pace if I have to walk past a department store dummy (only to run into the dummies chasing people with perfume spritzers. which is one reason I haven't been inside a mall in almost four years. uh-huh). Avoiding those has been pretty manageable so far.

And then I decided that changing careers was the best idea, ever (and, it still is). When I chose this graduate program I knew that classmates and I would be spending lots of time with cadavers, at the beginning. Which was just fine. But no one told me we'd also be practicing patient care skills on hospital dummies. I should call them mannequins, but I can't. Mannequins wear bad prom dresses each spring. Hospital dummies wear nothing but drafty little gowns and skid-resistant socks. And a Giada-like grin. Plus many, many, vital sign monitoring devices.

So today, after years of successfully avoiding these things, I was sent to a virtual acute care simulation hospital full of "medically fragile" patients. Dummies. Patients. Both. Dummies. Damn.

We were told that this virtual experience was one of three available in the world, which is a true privilege. It's actually amazingly cool......allowing virgin healthcare clinicians to practice in a real-world setting that won't kill anybody. I respect that a great deal, and am thankful for the access to it. Except.....

Today we were to perform patient transfers from hospital bed to wheelchair, and all the pre-post stuff that comes with that. We were warned that in this high-tech simulation environment our "patients" would breath, react to what we were doing to them, maybe say a little something (oh. Sweet. Jesus.) So I was ready for real-life, squishy dummy-patients that look like Grandpa Joe.

You wanna know what happened?

My colleagues and I high-fived at the chance to be out of the lecture-world and into the ultimate lab. Then we hyperventilated. Then we divided to go solo, from room to room, with 10 minutes to complete the tasks for each dummy. But they were patients, with cardiac issues, and internal trauma, and oxygen tanks. And not one looked like Grandpa Joe. Instead, we manhandled 6-foot Ken dolls. I know you're wondering - they were not anatomically accurate.

So I washed my hands 39 times in 45 minutes, recorded vital signs, successfully switched Ken 3's oxygen from wall to portable oxygen but choked him on his heart rate monitor line, catapaulted Ken 2 to the point his heart rate plummeted to a concerning level (but, I maintained proper body mechanics), exposed the private parts (such as they are) of Ken 1 when I lost his Pulse-sock in his groin area. I didn't drop anyone, though, and Igot a thumbs-up from the professor after Ken 1. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure the observers for the other two Kens giggled the same way that the 911 operators did the day I got stuck in a remote Port-a-John. And, it was all videotaped for 'feedback' purposes (the dummies, not the port-a-john escape).

But weirdly, the last thing I wanted to do was run away from the creepy medically-fragile giant Ken dolls. I talked - okay, rambled - to them the whole time. I'm not sure why, but being in someone's very personal space at a very uncertain personal time feels better with a familiar soundtrack, even if it's your own not-so-certain voice.

Talking to a dummy. Who smiled at me. I swear.

Coping with Cadavers

For the last two months I've spent almost all my time with the same few dozen people, and, a few dead ones. The alive and kicking group are my graduate school classmates. They're fabulous. I've been trying to downplay our age difference, mainly so they don't ask what it was like to watch original episodes of Seinfeld. Lord knows I would never mention that I sat in the front yard with my Dad a few minutes after watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, so we could wave at him and ask if he had had enough to eat that night. I was a babe, but I remember it.

Just so you know this might get lengthy......but I can't help it.

So, since June 7th I've spent most of my time with young men and women who may have studied high school history about when Reagan was shot.....not JFK. And I couldn't have enjoyed it more. They're vibrant, incredibly smart, big-hearted, laugh easily, and have minds that instantaneously process complex bits of information (which is both admirable, and makes me a little pissy). A few may have married too young, as I did, and a few probably like to party too much for their own good, but all of them, I am really fortunate to be with. And it's a good thing. We're stuck with each other for two years.

"Stuck" isn't really the right word. That's more for unusual Uncle Al. "Interested" is one, better word. My classmates are diverse, and it's incredibly cool to learn what they did before landing in this graduate program, and how they got here. "Humbled" is another, better word. My mates seem to be in a perpetual mind-in-full-sponge-mode groove, and I feel like a clanky "uh, but wait..." screech owl. I was always one of the annoying straight-A students at any grade level, and the top-tier performers in my corporate life. I sailed through last fall's prerequisite courses (which feels like a decade ago at the moment). But the adjustment from that track record to this full-time adult student/life performance, has been humbling. Both my mentor and academic advisor - who are each also 30/40-something career-change-with children people - shared how their adjustment to this program was as funky as mine has been so far. No excuses....these young men and women are intellectual studs, and I hope they're contagious.

Now, there's another whole category to describe these guys. "Fighters"? "Huge-hearted"? "Vocational soulmates"? "How's their lunch box so much cooler than mine"? I can't put my finger on it, but there's a deep, alive, love-of-live-and-others vibe across this group. For example.....I hope he doesn't mind but one classmate - let's call him the "Resilient as Hell K", is getting brain cancer treatments. He was getting chemo every two weeks throughout this intense summer agenda, and knocking it (all of it) out of the park. He still owes me a Five Guys burger (WITH, fries), but I think I owe him a little more. Other classmates, they're also managing families and paying mortgages. And others are still in that starting-to-build-a-grownup-life phase....which is hard to do. And while the under 30-somethings way outnumber the overs....the unders don't seem to care about age, and don't seem to care that some of us tend to look like soccer moms. But they do care about being in this program, and the patients they'll help soon. We all have that in common.....the need to help people grab back some of the most meaningful parts of their lives.

If that's not cool, I don't know what is.

Now the other group? The dead ones? They were, are, were, are....sigh....the cadaver donors in our anatomy lab. Which is where we spent 5-6 days a week, and a good part of each of those days. I've been married, I've had an intensely close relationship with someone I thought would be husband #2. I've changed diapers and survived toddler vomit and wiped poo-ey butts and blown clogged noses. I helped my Dad with, "ahem", in the months before he died. But I've never been as physically intimate with a human body as I have the last two months.....and with more than one (gasp), and, one was female (gasp).

It's hard to explain the cadaver lab. And it might be just as hard to explain how people cope with it. The first day was terrifying. Really, it was probably the 20 minutes before punching the secret lab code for the first time, that was terrifying. Pre-initiation visit things, and smells, build in your mind...scary, gory, horror movie special effect kinds of things and smells. But within a few minutes after meeting our dead instructors - I don't know what else to call them - and realizing that they wouldn't rise up from the gurney to grab and strangle us, it was KIND of, okay. The groovy music in the background didn't hurt. But not one of us really touched on that first day. A few maybe - me included - did on day 2. By the third day we were able to joke a little, and had acclimated to that singular smell, and had our hands pretty well covered in lab goop.

Daily, we learned more about our donors' lives what they had suffered with, and what ultimately killed them. Which was fine, if we didn't get too cozy. So we gave them nicknames. And then picked and probed and marveled, and learned. Muscles, bones, nerves, ligaments and tendons, organs, nerves, joints, arteries and veins, hearts and lungs, vertebrae, brains, more damn NERVES. Big Bert the Bricklayer and his descending aorta, and the "triple-A" that had sent him to the lab. Bert had been over 300 pounds while alive, and it wasn't hard to see the strain that had put on his body. Butt Guy was in telephone sales and had great musculature. I hope people told him that when he was alive. Skinny Minnie grandma had been an administrative assistant all the years she battled heart procedures, and cancer. She had petite everything, but something tells me that she was a top-notch professional and someone to contend with. And Juicy Jim....he was.....'enough said.

Other than that they were in Chris's lab, the one thing they all had in common was their human body. I can tell you, after having spent the better part of two months learning every part and relationship and function, that it's the most impossibly, beautifully-designed instrument. Ever. Without a bit of waste. Everything should be put together this fabulously and efficiently. Whatever your spiritual inclinations are, I wouldn't be a bit shocked if someone entered the lab a God/Higher Being/Intelligent Designer skeptic, and left it convinced otherwise. You want high-tech high-end sexy beautiful machinery designed by Man (uh, or Woman)? Go buy a Maserati. You want a high-tech high-end sexy beautiful instrument designed by God/Higher Being/Intelligent Designer? Look down. Or in the mirror. We are amazing. Value it.

So this summer, and these classmates, and this lab, became a weirdly intimate and kind of reverent place. And I started to become a different kind of professional.

Thanks Guys. Thanks, Chris.

Off Schedule is Onto Something

As a Girl With a Twist I'm a little off the schedule, that everyone else seems to be on. I was the tallest kid in class, until the boys finally caught up in 10th grade (apart from Mr. Robert Stonewall Mitchell, that is). I bought a Hyundai nine years ago. My first real, lip-on-lip kiss was from another six-year-old (the very cute and happenin' David Tokas) while we rode bikes. My bosom is just blossoming, now. At 46. At this rate my menopausal years will probably kick in just as I'm recovering from my retirement party.

So of course, it's a personal law that I go back to school a third time. At 46. In June, which is either 9 months behind or 3 months ahead of everyone else, depending on your mood. It's not really my choice. The graduate program I'm about to begin just happens to have a very Girl With a Twist-like schedule.

I'm not complaining one bit. I'm fortunate and thankful beyond belief, for this career-change chance. Especially since the new career is just about one of the most gratifying vocations I can imagine being a part of. It's occupational therapy, which isn't the workplace occupation it sounds like (I'm not certain who was in charge of naming, but I wouldn't be surprised if their dogs were named Fluffy and Meowy .) "Occupation" here, are the purposeful activities that are motivating to someone and in a therapy setting, "occupation" will help someone recover physical and cognitive function that's been impaired because of injury, or illness, or disability.

How really amazing, is that? I haven't quite begun yet but I already know that I would do this, for free.

I won't have to, which my Mom and others are happy to know. I could recite data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources about the job stability and growth outlook for occupational therapists (OTs). It's good (very). I could also repeat the colossally positive OT job satisfaction polls I've read, and later heard from the OTs I worked with last fall. And, OTs are well-paid regardless of where they practice. So, all of these things kind of could make someone think, that I was really really strategic about making this choice.

But in twist-like tradition, I wasn't. Not a bit. What I was, was (is), a sucker for a job that's as close to being a professional volunteer as there might be. And, to being a lifelong student. Which you don't have to pay tuition to be.

So, take a chance. Give your rational, externally-influenced mind a break and do what serves your soul. Then you'll really be onto something, even if it throws you off schedule.

Thanks, Mr.Tokas.