Category: COVID-19

May 8, 2020

by drplasticpicker

To say that this month has been a bit off is an understatement. We finished two months of COVID-19 quarantine. We are undergoing this collective experience. It has been documented on social media, including this blog. I made a comment on one of the COVID-19 MD Facebook Groups for Pediatricians under my real name. It was just a simple uplifting post about a patient encounter, and I kid you not – it generated already 373 likes and 32 comments of others sharing their stories. I was initially very excited but my wise high school son warned me that putting value in the number of likes one gets on social media is harmful. He is right. But I am still happy that the post resonated with my fellow pediatricians. It made them feel good. I think the story was straight forward, simply written and described a heartfelt encounter that many of us have as pediatricians. I was my gift to my colleagues as we are going through this collective angst.

What made me happiest about that post is that it was quickly written, well written and I think the by-product of now having written over 180 blog posts! I have now had 3 blog posts also accepted onto KevinMD. That my writing generates emotions is the greatest compliment I could receive. I’m still not quite comfortable with this new role I have taken (blogger/instagrammer/writer) but I love it. My old mentor in clinic years ago several times would send me grammatical corrections to my work emails, and I remember being unreasonably angry at him. I was so mad! Some of it was that I felt overworked as a younger mother and middle manager, but now I realize perhaps criticism of my writing hurt more than other criticisms because I valued writing as an artform.

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May 6, 2020

by drplasticpicker

We are almost 2 months into COVID-19 quarantine, and there is positive news for the environment. Flamingos blanket the mudflats of Mumbai and turtles are nesting freely on empty beaches. Initially I thought these reports were overblown, but I’ve seen the increasing number of backyard birds and my sister describes deer and racoons taking over her Virginia neighborhood. Dr. Plastic Picker has to be careful with these posts, because hope for the environment has to be balanced with compassion for the human lives loss due to COVID-19 and repercussions of the downspiraling economy. So rather than celebrating the financial losses of the cruise and airline industries, I focus on the secondary environmental benefits of all of us living through a time of scarcity.

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April 24, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Our crazy black puppy was barking at 3am and woke us up. She once woke us up to lead us to Mr. Plastic Picker’s mother who was febrile to 105, vomiting and looked really really bad. Grandfather was later diagnosed with urosepsis after a dramatic ambulance ride to our hospital. The crazy black puppy saved grandma’s life that day, so we take her barking seriously. But this morning’s 3am barking, I am not sure what that was about. She barks when there is going to be thunder, and when there are minor earthquakes we don’t notice. We discovered the backyard barking is due to the neighbors who regularly walk the back alley way. The frontyard barking is due to the racoon that lives in a neighbor’s palm tree. But at 3am, I am not sure. I think it may have been because Mr. Plastic Picker’s father was up early downstairs. I think she barks at any ghosts as well. Do you believe in ghosts? Nonetheless I am up, and it felt like the right time to blog.

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April 23, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Yesterday was an odd day for me. I started it off semi-euphoric. We had solved a complex scheduling conundrum and it will likely improve the lives of all our department Post-Covid19, and that made me euphoric. I composed a third of a Hopeful Wednesday post early morning in that euphoric mood, but did not finish. I have learned with this blog to let the rhythms of life and nature lead me what to write, what to publish and when to just leave things. Since there is no other motive to this blog other than documenting plastic-picking adventures and really giving me an outlet to journal, it is very freeing. So I will leave that post and see if by next Wednesday it can be completed, or needs to go to the half-written blog post graveyard.

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April 19, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I did write one non-Covid 19 post this weekend about parrots, which was very fun https://drplasticpicker.com/parrots-of-pacific-beach/. But even that post was tangentially related to Covid 19 because I only noticed the parrots because the single-use plastic gloves were around our neighborhood. That got me thinking about all the things that I have done only because of this quarantine. It’s almost the 6th week of our self quarantine, although Mr. Plastic Picker and I are still going to work.

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April 16, 2020

drplasticpicker

Twenty-five years ago this month, I was seventeen and would lie on a hammock in our back yard that overlooked the winding road that led to our mailbox. My father always complained about that road because it was asphalt and technically private, so all the neighbors had to agree and contribute money anytime the road needed repairs. It’s a windy road that is shaded by a canopy of non-native eucalyptus trees. I remember seeing those same trees in Austalia with koalas. I saw these same trees in Peru last year up high in the Andes during a medical mission trip. They are non-native to Peru, encouraged by the government in the 1970s as a fast growing cheap source of fuel-wood. Those trees have contributed to the disruption of the water cycle there. In Australia and Peru, I oddly felt at home because I knew those trees despite their invasive nature.

Twenty-five years ago the teenage me was laying on the backyard hammock with one foot slowly pushing off to power the rhythmic motions. I would just quietly watch the windy road below . I loved hammocks as a child. As a mother, a few years ago I had this moment of determination and marched to Home Depot with my skeptcal non-hammock- loving husband. That weekend, I taught my half-grown children how to correctly use one. Seeing them try to sit and subsequently fall onto the ground, dazed and laughing as the hammock continually flipped over was wonderful. Laying correctly on a hammock is an artform that I mastered as a child. When you lay on a hammock you have to move with it, and somewhat let go of control which is difficult for uptight people.

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It is the 5th week of essential lock-down for our family. We started social distancing prior to the general order in California and our city. I had been following the COVID-19 MD Facebook groups closely. Before most were social distancing, we had cancelled our early March vacation and cancelled Mr. Plastic Picker’s parents trip to New York. Thank goodness, as New York is now the epicenter of COVID-19. California has done remarkably well, but even with hundres of thousands of cases averted and thousands of deaths prevented – we have many dissenters. Probably there are not many, but they are taking up a sizeable share of the blogsphere. I had a high school friend post on facebook COVID-19 misinformation. I replied but didn’t have the energy to have a prolonged facebook discussion. I ended it with let’s just be grateful that we in California are doing okay.

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April 5, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Chris was my anatomy lab partner during our first year of medical school. We had the right side of the cadaver of a 90-something-year-old woman, and across from us was Felipe and Andrew. Felipe was the son of a Nobel Prize winning chemist. He was always a more morose soul, and would disappear after class. He made it through and I believe is an internist in New York. Andrew was very slim and handsome, and dated a fellow student who was beautiful and smart. They broke up before the Residency Match as they were applying in very competitive fields. I believe the beautiful girlfriend is an ophthalmologist now. Andrew stayed at one of the teaching hospitals as an academic specialist. It is ironic because he used to talk about the stock market and money a lot.

Even before medical school, Mr. Plastic Picker and I were already together and had been dating for 3 years in college. We were planning our lives together. I studied harder in the last few years of college so I could attend the same medical school as Mr. Plastic Picker. Life worked out. He was initially a year ahead of me at school, and when I was starting my first year of medical school – he purposefully took an extra year of research so that we could be in sync during our training. He was having a relatively relaxed time driving around putting on event monitors on volunteer study subjects with varying Bostonian accents. His lab was studying the effects of air pollution on cardiovascular events. He was there to support me, and talk me through the first year.

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March 31, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Dr. Plastic Picker knows a lot more about cortisol than the average outpatient pediatrician. I did two years of pediatric endocrine fellowship, and here is the blogpost that explains why I left in good standing https://drplasticpicker.com/covid-19-social-distancing-is-like-bedrest-dr-plastic-picker-understands-but-this-time-you-stay-home-and-i-get-to-do-something/. Cortisol is a stress hormone and is often referred to as almost how doctors in the 1700s would speak about “humours” that would float in the body. This is before we knew about germ theory. It’s somewhat accurate though, because we refer to cortisol in general but to actually get an accurate cortisol level is very difficult. It fluctuates through the day, and to really get an accurate level of one’s cortisol level one has to admit a patient short-term to do an ACTH stimulation test. The cortisol or “stress humors” are running rampant in your body right now if you are in healthcare. In the end of the day, Dr. Plastic Picker is still a middle manager and I’m hearing all about it. I’m calling in the Great Freak Out. Yes, you are all freaking out about COVID-19.

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