Dude, WTF?

Cloverstupid

Watching Cloverfield is a lot like watching Deal or No Deal. Just a bunch of annoying people making really stupid, illogical decisions.

Epiphany & Co.

When I was nearly 8 years old I fell off the monkey bars on the "upper playground" of the "old" Uintah Elementary while chasing Chandler Bello in a game of tag.  I landed on my two outstretched arms (that's called a "FOOSH") and, subsequently, my face.  If memory serves, I briefly lost consciousness and awoke to rolling over on to my back and revealing that classic shot of kids in a circle peering down upon their fallen comrade.  I then did something which seems like a massive liability: I walked home without reporting to anyone at school.  My nose was bloodied and my arms seemed to weigh 100 pounds each and be twice as long as normal.  My mom just happened to be driving somewhere and picked me up halfway home and drove me to the "old" Primary Children's Hospital (sheesh, is nothing from this memory still around?).  A couple of x-rays later revealed 3 broken bones.  One side was both the ulna and radius, and the other was only one of those.  I don't remember which bone, and which arm was which.  Now, it just so happens that my grandfather was an orthopedic surgeon.  My mom wanted him to fix any broken bones in the family.  Unfortunately we waited 3 or 4 days to drive the 313 miles from SLC to Bloomington, UT and in that time my bones had "set" in their skeewampus new configuration.  My grandfather then informed me that he would need to "rebreak" my arms in order to re-reset them in their proper alignment.  Now here comes the part that has remained a mystery to me for more than 20 years.  (I'm so old that I can even make that comment)  My grandfather told me that the reason he was about to break my arms WITHOUT ANY ANESTHETIC was to avoid "shots."  At the time, this was brilliant rhetoric.  There is nothing quite so fearful to a 7-year old as the threat of somebody shoving a needle into you.  Especially to one who has never had their arm purposefully broken in cold blood.  He then proceeded, with the help of one or more uncles to hold me down, to break my arm with his bare (bear!) hands.  I practically have PTSD from this moment as I can still recall that moment of sheer, unadulterated pain.  Ever since then, I have thought that my grandfather had tricked me.  I thought that he meant to imply that rather than facing 30 seconds of excruciating bone-breaking, I could have had a series of shots that would somehow magically heal my broken arm.  I believed this all through a modern high school and college education, through medical school, and even most of the way through internship.  That is, until last weekend.  While helping to set a young boy's broken leg in the ER, we took mercy on the poor kid and gave him a whiff of propofol in his IV, a.k.a. conscious sedation.  We knocked the poor kid out, and then torqued on his leg like a couple of awkward tweens during a band-camp tug-o-war.  It hit me like a ton of anything (a ton of feathers and a ton of bricks both weigh the same amount, thank you very much!).  That's what my grandfather meant!  He wasn't deluding me!   Well, not entirely!  He meant that my options were to get a shot full of medicine to make the bone breaking less painful, or to just get on with the party.  EUREKA!!!  What a great feeling to make such a discovery.  I know how Columbus must have felt. 

 

Now if I could only figure out why I always played fullback in little league soccer...

The science of sleep

I still haven't seen that film. I've been told that I would really like it.

I was at the hospital from 5:40 a.m. Friday until 8:00 a.m. Saturday for my new orthopedics rotation. I was warned that this month would be intense. Friday night ortho call was precisely that. But there is something fulfilling in fixing something as obvious as a broken bone. There is less trust required on the part of the patient when their bone is sticking out out of their arm or when their ankle is bent at 90 degrees. Apart from 30 minutes sitting on a chair with my feet up, I didn't sleep all night. I came home and did the usual to avoid getting the much needed sleep. I watched Juno...finally. A great movie. I really enjoyed it. I would say more about it, except that I just finished Into the Wild, and it seems blasphemous to complement any other film. ITW was truly amazing. It made me feel like less of a person for spending my whole life indoors. It's an overwhelming picture. Sweeping, endearing, perspective-giving. Everyone should see it. End Coda. So, I had that crazy experience, after finally going to sleep post-Juno at 11:00 a.m., of accidentally sleeping through the rest of the day. I woke up at 1 a.m. with no real desire to stay sleeping, but for fear of getting into a really strange sleep schedule I caved, and went back to sleep. I finally got out of bed at 8:00 a.m. Sunday. That makes 21 hours of nearly uninterrupted sleep. I hurried to church without eating, which made for 26 hours without food, except for a morsel of bread and sip of water. True hunger helps to make the sacrament truly a sacrament. All that sleeping does things to my state of mind. Oh, and if you ever want to have lots of dreams, try sleeping for nearly a day. You will be compensated. I didn't dream anything truly meaningful, but I did have some wacky adventures.

More on this subject: it might have been for lack of energy from little to no nourishment, but after sleeping for so long, I still felt tired. I felt like I could lay back down and sleep the rest of the day away. There's that sleep inertia again. When I snuck those 30 minutes of snoozing during call, I had that horrible sensation of absolutely desperate fatigue upon being awakened by the ER to come down and see some dude who mangled his hand. That feeling is so incredibly overwhelming. I have it at about 60% strength just about every morning when my alarm goes off before 7:00 a.m. All I can think of is when I will next be able to sleep. While I'm in the shower I plot out the part of my day when I might be able to find a quiet corner and nod off. Of course, by the time I've been at work for 20 minutes I've forgotten how tired I felt. Fortunately the feeling is fleeting. Hell might be that sensation but of eternal duration. And maybe with a 15" tv that only gets Lifetime and Oxygen. And nothing but half-cooked chicken to eat.

Melissa and Lucie are back east for the final work trip. I eagerly await their return. "Happiness is only real when shared." So says Alexander Supertramp.

How about a selection of pics that have long deserved promotion to the blog. (Watch for one of Rob and I in front of an arcade game. During our inaugural spring break trip >10 years ago we won hundreds of tickets off this game which we named something juvenile and obscene. We then spent those tickets on 101 little green army men and proceeded to disperse them across the deserts of Nevada and Utah, some launched from the windshield wipers of a plym$&*% Voyagruven.) If I have enough energy left I just might change the shblog logo. You will know by now if I mustered up the strength.

Andy Rooney's Voice Talents:

D'ya ever notice how annoying everyone is?

Blank Monster

My sister's sweet new company, Geela. Check it out:

Buy it here.
Read about it here.

Remember when I was this cool?

"It's not habit forming!!!"

Wow, was this movie funny. But I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone who is sensitive to that whole MPAA ratings machine. And those of you who feel confident enough to select which rated R movies are "okay" to watch because they "only have violence" or whatever, good luck justifying this movie. Basically, what I'm saying is, wait for the CleanFlix version. Which will be 19 minutes long and not funny.

In other news, we had a second (already?!?) ultrasound yesterday. Apparently at our hospital there's this new protocol and everybody gets 9 million ultrasounds and blood tests. Whatever. It was wild to see the little living human in Melissa's tummy. He or she was not all that cooperative and didn't feel like displaying his or her gender. We love him or her still the same. I can't bring myself to say "it." Because it wouldn't move (there, I did it) we got an extra long ultrasound while she tried to inspire movement and the sonographer showed us the heart, brain, eyes, spine, bladder, kidneys, stomach, legs, arms, placenta, etc. It was pretty sweet. This has been happening since, well...forever; but it is still so nuts. Those of you without kids, you just wait till you or your sig-oth gets prego and see if it doesn't alter your universe to see a baby growing inside of you or your sig-oth. NUTS!

Lastly, the other day I was driving with Melissa and we saw a car up on the grass all skeewampus and multiple people scrambling around but no police or firetrucks yet. After some gentle prodding I pulled over to go "help." The dude was being yanked from the vehicle when I arrived and my cries of "don't move him!" went entirely ignored as I ran over. Fortunately I would soon find out that there was no collision and thus moving him probably wasn't the end of the world. Apparently he was seen slumped over and his car swerved into oncoming traffic, miraculously missing everyone, and coming to a gentle stop on the grass. I got up close and said "I'm a doctor," which was answered with "well this guys is a medic, so..." I immediately regretted my decision to stop. Then I did a little medical magic (felt his pulse) and after my thorough evaluation (eyeballed him) I professed, "he may have had a seizure." This was met with incredulity from my fellow rescuer who exclaimed, "No, he didn't swallow his tongue or nothin'." I debated within myself for a moment whether it was worth launching into a dissertation on old wives' tales, but thought better of it. Finally the firemen showed up and told us idiots to get out of the way so they could treat this poor man we were trying to harm. I make one heck of a good Samaritan, don't I?

T.P.M.S.

No idea where she learned this behavior

For your viewing pleasure

Click here.

pet peeves

In no particular order.

#1) when people put a picture on their desktop that was originally 7 x 9 pixels but blow it up huge and are seemingly not bothered by the pixelated lameness. Example:
Before:

After:


more to follow.

So Long, Chuck

I didn't necessarily agree with his politics, but Charlton Heston will always be Moses to me.

Coming soon:

Garth Brooks: the 'Til Death Tour!!!


Dudes: I am so proud and excited. I will be there with bells on.

Future Gum Commercial Revenues

It's TWINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Heaven help us.