June 8, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

Savings the earth and picking up plastic is my hobby. I don’t get paid to plog (picking up plastic and jogging), and I don’t get paid to be a climate and health advocate. I get paid to take care of patients in clinic, and that is it. This blog is non-monetized and purposefully so. I remember back when this all started and Mr. Money Mustache’s blog people approached me about monetizing things, and I stuck with my origianl purpose. I’m an environmental hobbyist and I’m totally into it.

But like most hobbies, it cost money but I want to make sure it doesn’t break the bank. I try to mostly donate money to other environmental organizations like Rainforest Trust, Eden Projects, EDF and want to make it cost effective. The blog cost $25 a year for the domain name. Blogging is fun for me. It’s my environmental journal. But now my silliness is under brute force attack. Not sure what they are looking for on the blog? But it is, and I hadn’t realized it’s sometimes 800K attacks a day. There is an option for $110 a year to install a plug-in to protect this site. I’m not sure how much protection it will provide. I’m going to ask around, but it just brought up the issue of finances.

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June 7, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

I’m watching this current K-drama that I told my friend Dr. Sandra Gee about. She’s my green pediatric climate friend up in University of Rochester. It’s about an alien that arrived to Earth specifically Korean 400 years ago during the Joseon era. He stays for 400 years because he was stranded due to his fated love, who dies with arrows in her back as she sacrifices herself for him. Of course he is a very handsome alien of the Korean-persuasian. And now he is in our modern time, ready to leave earth 400 years later but waylaid by the reincarnation of his fated love who is now an A-list Korean actress.

The current K-drama is kind of silly, but I like it and I get to learn new korean words and rewatch scenes as I practice the conversations. This sillier K-drama works for me, because it’s not as addictive as the really excellent ones like “Descendents of the Sun” or “Reply 1988.” Those were really really good, just good story telling and better than anything I’ve seen in English. The non-addictive nature of the current K-drama is really good for me, because I went to bed on time and now I’m up blogging. The blog traffic is really going up. I’m not sure who is reading but it’s just me – Dr. Plastic Picker, former Assistant Boss and now just almost full time (technically 80% time) pediatrician doing volunteer climate work outside and showing up where I should.

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June 2, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

It’s 540AM and it’s been a few moments since I got up at what is my natural wakening time to blog. I’ve been binge-watching Kdramas for the last few months, in between my climate work and work work. I have enjoyed it immensely and my Korean is a lot better now. The longest Kdrama with “The Young Lady and Gentlemen” which was over 50 episodes. It was kind of getting ridiculous when the main male lead gets amneia for the 2nd time though! Let’s just say my family and Mr. Plastic Picker have been staging an intervention(s)! If anyone from work is reading, certain nursing friends of an Asian-persuasian are not helping the matter by encouraging my addiction LOL. It’s fun to talk about our latest show and current Kdrama boyfriends at work. This is the life of a middle-aged happily married litter-picking pediatrician.

But one of the things that awoke me this morning from my slumber having slept deeply and restfully, was the morning birdsong. The backyard birds were signing this morning. “Arise Dr. Plastic Picker. Arise!!! You have earth work to do!” And with that, this is absolutely true. I have earth work to do. Besides a half day clinic or work work, where I was happily chatting with patients and teaching my little patients how to be little doctors – I also had three phone conversations that were climate related. Those were important conversations with two of our premed interns, setting them on the right path on their various projects. And one with an MD/PhD student who works with us on one of our climate groups, and manages our new twitter account. I’m not on twitter, but I guess I need to be.

So the birds woke me up this morning, and I need to send a good number of climate emails this morning. Single-use plastic reduction project. AAP resolution on single-use plastics. Several emails to the San Diego Audubon Society. I’m also going to make Red Lobster biscuits for the kids’ breakfast. I need some cooking inspiration and I just grabbed one of their biscuit mix boxes at VONS. Red Lobster used to be the fancy fancy place to eat when we were young. I still think Red Lobster is really fancy.

Awoken by the morning birdsong this morning, and will spend another hour doing climate work before work work. I hope the birds were singing to you also this morning. If not, likely we need to add some green space and native shrubs to the built environment around your house.

May 30, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

Good morning dear readers! I’m back from an epic few days up in Oregon. I don’t fly lightly but it was a combined brief vacation and working trip to try to figure out our Oregon farm. Stay tuned as try to figure out what I’m labeling CPR Cow’s Creek Professional Rescue. I’m forming a board of directors, and working with a friend on curriculum right now. It’s a fun dream and we are making this dream a reality. Mowed a few acres of pastureland. Roamed around the forested lots on the Polaris, and saw how much nature is in these timber forests. Family of deer, temporary wetlands with water fowl. We know there are bears and cougars and foxes. That large predators are on this land is to me heart-warming. So I’m trying to preserve this land but make it cashflow in our capitalistic society. I believe in responsible capitalism and democracy, and I think I can make this work.

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May 22, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

It’s 820AM and Sunday morning. The two teenagers are fast asleep. Mr. Plastic Picker had worked 3 extra overtime shifts Saturday, and then within the last 20 minutes of his shift (which he did telemedicine from home) was called into the hospital to do an urgent procedure. This kind of put a wrench into our plans as a family to have dinner. He was slightly annoyed and had to throw on scrubs and leave the house. We were planning on going to UTC in La Jolla for some window-shopping and dinner. The teenagers watched another English period drama episode they are watching together, and I waved him off standing in the front yard as he drove off in his old trusty Prius. When you are a young doctor newly getting paid to save people’s lives, the paging and the immediacy and the hero-worship can be thrilling and addictive. But for us well into middle-age and having been doing this competently for over 15 some would say 20 years, it gets old. It gets old – really fast.

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May 19, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

It’s 454 AM and my body is coming along. I was in this daze of binge-watching some really good Kdramas and not getting enough sleep. The broca wernike area of my brain is so enjoying the Korean-language dump, and also the heart-wrenching story lines – that it was getting kind of ridiculous. If you know me in real life, any of my clinic friends will tell you – it was kind of getting obsessive. But I’m an adult and generally healed, so I turned it off to get some good sleep yesterday.

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by Dr. Plastic Picker

I just have a few minutes before we start off for the Rewild Mission Bay site. It’s been months in organizing, but we are bringing together an interesting group to the Kendall Frost Reserve for a nature-based session on education, land-restoration and wellness. I’m hoping that moves the needle locally to help build organic support to Rewild Mission Bay. I just submitted an article to Sketches, the San Diego Audubon quarterly journal, and my perspective as a pediatrician on the Rewild efforts. I spent a good amount of time on the article, and the response for the editors was gratifying. They have accepted it and will need just minor revisions.

But here at Dr. Plastic Picker, I understand the math. I understand the climate change math, and it doesn’t add up unless we divest from fossil fuels. Yes I pick up plastic but I know that divestment, even if it’s a pie in the sky effort, is something we need to do. SB 1173 is coming up and the environmental forces are mobilizing. The AAP California State Government Affairs Committe on Environmental Health and Climate Change has already signed on. But the vote will come up soon, and I’m trying to do my part in the state to activate lobbying on the grassroots level.

I’ve already forwarded the toolkit to folks, and organizing health care voices. After we return from the wetlands today, I’m going to leverage all the environmental connections I’ve made to try to make this happen. I never thought I’d be one of those that knew about bills and committees and an expert in lobbying. But I’m at that point now. I’ve done it enough, and I’m proud to lead the effort.

If not me? Who? If not now? When? Adults and pediatricians, we need to take a stance. It’s now or never. Here we go. SB 1173. Time to go for the most impactful actions. Divest from fossil fuels. Our HMO pension and also the CalPERS and CALSTERS.

May 12, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

I am so proud of this kid. A blurred image of him from our time in DC. I was a research fellow back them at the National Institutes of Health Intramural Research Program. I was working in an endocrine lab, but really just looking at surveys and spreadsheets all day. It was a magical year where I was getting a very small stipend that hardly paid for his preschool. We were hemorrhaging money that year, as Mr. Plastic Picker was finishing Musculoskeletal Radiology fellowship up in Boston, and was commuting to DC weekends to see us. We had a small apartment behind NIH, that was the shabbiness place that we had ever lived in. You could hear the neighbors running the bath. We think they were running a laundry service out of their apartment. It was furnished with IKEA furniture that didn’t withstand our young family. The apartment was semi-subsidized by NIH – but not really. It wasn’t that affordable either especially on my research stipend, but I could walk right into work as the back entrance of NIH abutted the grounds.

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May 11, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

It’s 608AM and our oldest will be getting up soon to take his AP Spanish Exam. He is such a good boy, a good son and a wonderful older brother. One thing I want to do different from my children is not to foster a sense of competition among them. For some reason and I was the worse at it, there was always a sense of competition among my siblings. Friendly and in good nature, but still there. I don’t want that for them. There are two of them, and when I am gone from this earth that is hopefully habitable – they will only really have each other. I want them to love each other and to support each other.

That is what I’m trying to do for our climate and health community in San Diego. My mentor Dr. Bruce Bekkar led his last meeting as Chair of the Public Health Advisory Council of Climate Actions Campaign, and I’m next up. Those are big shoes to fill, but I think I’ve figured out the role I’m meant to play. I’m meant to be everyone’s cheerleader, supporter and just to keep us connected and going. That’s the most important role I can play right now. It’s a very non-Crimson University skill. In fact it’s probably the one trait that Crimson University is horrible at. But I’m glad that trait remained nascent in my psyche and has been able to grow.

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May 10, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

It’s Tuesday morning and it looks like the middle management meeting was cancelled today. I don’t worry too much about office politics anymore, am I purposefully being left off emails? How are things running? It’s probably my overactive imagination anyway. Many people can be thoughtless, and I don’t think I’m that important to be the target of any political machinations. You have to care about someone to let them hurt you, and honestly thinking of everyone as just part of nature has helped me. You don’t get mad at compost nor at the carnivorous insects that devour a carcass? It’s part of the cycle of life, right? And I honestly think that is true for many human relationships as well. I met a young new doctor yesterday in the program that I used to run, and things were not going smoothly. I had written my workflow out many times when I was asked. It’s funny that I had written out step by step my workflow, and even those that had asked for it – I don’t think ever read it? I found it in my files when I was trying to get the new young doctor settled in. I was there and provided her supports and checked in on her, but it’s not my job anymore. I decided to let that part of life go and I’m forever grateful I did. It’s not anyone’s fault just the system is not running smoothly. The system will sort itself out. It’s not my job anymore.

With that, I’m so lucky to have meaningful work – both my work work and my volunteer climate work. I was a doctor yesterday and saw many patients. Lots of kids with fever and lots of my own patients. With each interaction, I felt I left each family a bit better. I addressed parents concerns, and sometimes I just listened. I shared their burdens. It’s funny how that simple thing can be very hard in the cacophany of our modern world, but it’s sometimes the most important. If I as a doctor don’t acknowledge their illness and their symptoms, than did it happen? I need to acknowledge. I need to witness. I need to be present.

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