November 19, 2019

by drplasticpicker

One of my patients who is now about 10 years old always amazed me. He had a set of loving parents who both worked quite a bit, and was cared for from birth to about 4 by both sets of grandparents. His grandmothers fed this child the way their family has been eating for generations, and I watched them mold an amazing human-being and also an amazing vegetable-eating. I would argue that the two are correlated! This young boy ate bittermelon as a toddler, and still eats it to this day! It has taken me 40 years to be able to eat this very healthy, yet very bitter gourd vegetable (bitter melon 1/2 cup, 1.3 g of fiber).

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November 19, 2019

An original poem by drplasticpicker

i am long legged and elegant, my bill straight like a needle pin ever slightly upward tilting and then ends in black

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November 18, 2019

by drplasticpicker

I want to introduce you to my first in a series of interviews with Pediatricians who are either “drplasticpickers” or more importantly defenders of our environment. Pediatricians are natural allies to the children fighting for the environment, as the American Academy of Pediatrics has stated children will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change.

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November 17, 2019

by drplasticpicker

Last Friday the topic of conversation in the pediatric office lunchroom was persimmons. My blogpost on Squeasy Gear https://squeasygear.com/ and the Pediatric Fiber Deficit https://drplasticpicker.com/squeasy-gear-1-tackling-the-pediatric-fiber-deficit-with-real-fruit-and-not-plastic/ led to many interesting conversations in clinic about the benefits of persimmons. Then we heard from one of our lead nurses that his sister was considering chopping down this tree that is flourishing in the middle of Long Beach, California.

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November 17, 2019

by drplasticpicker

This update post is 2 weeks late. Usually I’m able to churn out posts pretty quick (Mr. Plastic Picker thinks too quick). I think it is because I have 40+ years of writing pent up that needs to get out. This blog post took longer because it involved many people who mean a lot to me and I wanted to do this right. If you are reading this and you are part of our community, thank you for spending your precious weekend morning with drplasticpicker and Mr. Plastic Picker for our first Office Beach Clean Up. As I was planning the beach clean up https://drplasticpicker.com/how-to-plan-an-office-beach-clean-up-together/, I was not sure what would happen and how many would come. I figured worse case scenario, it would be just Mr. Plastic Picker and myself and we would at least collect two bags of ocean plastic.

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November 16, 2019

An original poem by drplasticpicker

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November 16, 2019

by drplasticpicker

Drplasticpicker, the blog and the persona, has helped me tremendously. If the blog stopped here with my 40 odd posts, 70 bags of ocean bound plastic picked up, almost 400 items salvaged, and $500 donated to environmental causes – than it will have been an endeavor well worth my efforts https://drplasticpicker.com/donation-round-up/ .

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November 15, 2019

by drplasticpicker

Today there was another school shooting in Santa Clarita, California. From the stretch of beach I take care of, one would have to walk 150 miles to reach that high school. There are children who have fired guns at children today, because we adults have not gotten our act together to pass comprehensive common sense gun control.

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November 14, 2019

by drplasticpicker

It is 5am, and my body is awake and time for a bit of coffee and blogging. When the earth awakens and the sun begins to rise, I will head off on my morning walk. But before then I wanted to share with you how drplasticpicker gained attention from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography!

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November 13, 2019

by drplasticpicker

I was born and raised in this town. But it has taken me 40 years to fully appreciate how lucky I am. When I applied to pediatric residency, I wrote my personal statement about “Gathering Places. ” I vaguely remember drawing parallels with a well that was in the center of my family’s ancestral village in Southeast Asia and a pediatrician’s office. I wrote of my desire of becoming a pediatrician in the community that I would live. I called both the village well and the medical office – “Gathering Places.” Now I chuckle, because even then I was drawing random connections between disparate places and experiences.

Indeed, I did become a general pediatrician and my office is a “Gathering Place” for the families I serve. And I have realized that the Pacific Coast and this stretch of beach I transverse so frequently is a “Gathering Place” for many people.

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