I find it odd how seemingly disparate parts of my life tend to come into rhythm. I am Assistant Boss in our Department, and there are two other Assistant Bosses. I am also Co-Troop Leader for our Girl Scout Troop, and I also serve as the Troop Treasurer and Troop Cookie Manager. I am Co-Chair now of the American Academy of Pediatrics Climate Change and Health Local Chapter. I signed on to be on the Public Health Advisory Board of the Climate Action Campaigns, which is a very effective non-profit which has been moving our area closer to our climate goals. There are also the many responsibilities as part of my Assistant Boss role that I am responsible for. Plus I’m Dr. Plastic Picker, head litter-picker and sole-writer of my blog! Other than Dr. Plastic Picker, it is time for me to re-evaluate the leadership structure of our department, our Girl Scout Troop and the environmental advocacy groups.

I had taken most of Saturday off and did not think too much about work or leadership. I wrote a blog post and went litter picking in the morning. The rest of the day, I binge-watched the four Hunger Game movies with my daughter out of sequence. The binge-watching was mostly on Saturday, but we did watch the last movie last weekend and part of one of the movies Friday night after Sponge Bob the Musical. Our daughter has read the series at least three times, and she is now reading it aloud to herself or whoever will listen. She has the just published prequel ready as a treat to herself to read. I think she is delaying reading the book because she wants to savor it, just like she savors the last bit of food at dinner. She waits until everyone is done eating, and she always has the best bite to eat when everyone is done. Isn’t that interesting? I just realized the connection now.

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June 7, 2020

by drplasticpicker

We are living through a historic moment. Mass peaceful demonstrations for #blacklivesmatter dovetailing with the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our nephew, niece and brother-in-law in New York City participated in the demonstrations. They wore masks. I have already written my thoughts about the stain of racism on the health field as well https://drplasticpicker.com/blacklivesmatter-the-stain-of-slavery-colonialism-apartheid-extends-to-science/. The world has a lot of work to do. As America moves toward addressing the concerns of the #blacklivesmatter movement, #environmentaljustice should also be addressed because communities of color bear the greatest burden of climate change. Yet these same communities also bear the greatest burden of this pandemic. What a complex situation.

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June 6, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It was a heavier mood in clinic today. Mostly babies and a smattering of tweens-teens in for the well child checks and vaccines. I asked everyone through double masks and faceshield how they were doing. Most of our clinic families were staying home and avoiding the demonstrations. Since our clinic serves the diverse community of the South Bay, there was a sense of darkness that hung over us. We talked in quiet and sad voices about the state of racial politics in the United States, and one father who is black said these demonstrations are making his life more difficult. Another excuse he said for police to pull him over and harass him. But I was able to welcome a beautiful newborn baby boy to our practice, who is a beautiful amalgamation of many races including Apache. And in that beautiful baby boy I see hope. Like the half-Vulcan half-Human child of T’Pol and Trip in Star Trek Enterprise, we must celebrate IDIC – Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. T’Pol in one of the final episodes was confronted by Terra Prime, the xenophobic human terrorist movement. It’s leader asked T’Pol whether she was worried that interspecies breeding would destroy the Vulcan race. T’Pol with her elegant Vulcan poise replied fiercely that Vulcans were not what they were 1 million years ago, and the only constant in change. In her words, I find hope. The same hope I see in the face of the beautiful baby today that represents IDIC (infinite diversity in infinite combinations) in my clinic.

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June 4, 2020

by drplasticpicker

On Tuesday I had a mentally exhausting day. Sometimes the mental exhaustion from work is not proportional to the “importance of the project.” I will probably be able to help change the entire leadership structure of our department quicker than it took to finish this project. Thus is the frustrations of middle management.

Every year as an office we give two large gifts to our nurses which the doctors contribute. The first is our Holiday Party and the second is Nurses’ week gifts. Our organization does not give bonuses, and it’s been traditional for the doctors to organize these two events. Early on in my career I avoided being the young woman who was saddled with these “fluff” tasks (trust me older male colleagues quickly tried to dump it on me) as I was well aware from my medical school mentors that as an ambiitious woman, one should not become the cupcake leader. These tasks take up a disproportionate amount of time, and even though one gets “thank yous” – there is no benefit to your career. I remember one year doing most of the organizing for our office parties along with the actual middle managment work, and realized years later there was a bonus that was given and it was given to the older male colleague and not me. I did the work and he had the title. Dr. Plastic Picker knows my value, my father is an accountant, and I was furious. It wasn’t the amount but more of the symbolism and the deception by omission. I would have probably just donated it anyway. Now I am in middle management doing the work, with the title and the bonus (if there is one that particular year). I warn our young women from getting saddled with “fluff” tasks this early on in their career, and also to make sure they are farily compensated.

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June 3, 2020

by drplasticpicker

My paternal grandfather told me something toward the end of his life that I will never forget. I believe I was actually in medical school already and home for a brief visit. By then he was already older and weaker, and had suffered one or two strokes. He was intermittently lucid but even for a beginning medical student I knew that he had dementia. But during one of those early morning visits when he was lucid he told me that he had returned to his home village at some point in the Southeast Asian country he had left unwillingly because of political ubheaval. At this point he was no longer a strong man in his mid 40s but likely in his late 60s. He said someone from the village offered him something that was morally repugnant for money. He had returned to the village to give help build a school. And he told me, his oldest granddaughter, with fierce convinction, “Until the day you die, you do not know if you have lived a good life.”

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June 2, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It’s 617AM and this morning I will pick up my 200th bag of ocean bound plastic. I started this journey 10 months ago and the world today is a stark place. I began gathering the 200th bag yesterday and filled it with some mostly paper litter, but will need to finish it this morning. Dr. Plastic Picker is ambitious. For my 200th bag I chose a large kitchen garbage bag. I think everyone on Instagram will really like a big bag for the 200th one.

As I’ve mentioned to you, my patients in clinic and my own children, I do a lot of thinking when I’m picking up plastic. I started litter picking and ocean beach cleaning after emotional exhaustion from my work which is doctoring children. But nature healed me and the simple act of cleaning up our neighborhood helped me. When I pick up trash, I let my mind wander and I often think of you – my patients and my own children. Dr. Plastic Picker has been a pediatrician and a mother for too long. I found that rather than trying to escape work worries, I was able to think more clearly about all the forces that hurt children. And as a doctor, I naturally want to fight against those forces. One of those forces is Big Oil and Big Plastic that is trying to flood the environment with plastic waste.

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June 1, 2020

by drplasticpicker

The country is hurting so much right now. I posted about #blacklivesmatter to be on record that I support racial equality and equal representation. I had friends who had reminded us on social media that silence equals consent for the status quo. As someone who is trying to influence people to decrease their plastic use, I know that this is true. But I did not physcially go protest. We stayed home. Like everyone else, I worry about the increased spread of COVID-19. with the mass demonstrations. But the truth is, this was going to happen because COVID-19 presents a real danger as does institutional racism. People had had enough. How much racist rhetoric and brutality can people take? I will go to work today and I am sure it will come up in clinic.

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May 31, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I just posted on my personal facebook page what I thought was a moving post about #blacklivesmatter. For the record Dr. Plastic Picker supports racial equality and equal representation for underrepresented minorities. I won’t post it here because I try to focus this blog on plastic and the environment. But when I reorganized the categories yesterday and tried to give them snazier names like changing “Interviews” to “Pediatrician & Eco-Warrior (Interviews),” I realized I have written a lot blogposts. One of the Secondary Net Career Positives from picking up now 198 bags of plastic and writing almost 200 blogposts is I am able to communicate my thoughts more effectively at work. I had to write a few longer pieces for work recently, and it was easy to write and those pieces flowed nicely. This is a very important skill.

Another Secondary Net Health Positive (I love being able to coin my own random phrases here), is that we have been eating more plant based, vegan, vegetarian meals and the entire family is healthier. The blog started off after I became frustrated paying weight watchers $29.99 a month. I had lost weight but I felt horrible. I would rush to Vons to buy a rotissiere chicken and put so much salt on it because it was 0 points on weight watchers. I do not even like meat that much, but following that program made me obsess over food like I’ve never done before. I realized something was wrong and I had to rethink wellness. Now I concentrate on picking up bags of plastic either #litterpicking or #beachcleanups and reducing the plastic packaging in our food. Trying to eat more sustainable has led us to a more #vegan #vegetarian diet. Above is yesterday’s simple dinner, which was Beyond Meat, store-brand pasta, and fresh tomatoes from our garden. It doesn’t look that special but it was delicious, easy to make and filling. We ate at about 3pm yesterday, and in the evening I snacked on some left overs and chia seed pudding https://drplasticpicker.com/five-high-fiber-plastic-free-breakfast-ideas-for-toddlers/. I feel so much better and Mr. Plastic Picker has noticed. LOL.

But let us get back to this series’ category and away from my random tangents. Here are the Secondary Environmental Net Positives for May 2020. I have really come to love this series because it prompts me to make small changes for the environment. I knew I wanted to get to fifteen changes for the post, so I finished lining the kitchen shelves yesterday with reused plastic coated science poster on asthma that had been sitting in my office for five years! Now my office is cleaner and I’ve protected our nice custom built shelves from the spices and sauces.

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May 30, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It is the last day of May and I think I’ve come to the natural conclusion of my time with Trip and T’pol in Star Trek Enterprise. I wrote a blogpost close to my heart regarding how being immersed in their romance helped me get through the last three months of COVID-19 quarantine https://drplasticpicker.com/the-star-trek-enterprise-romance-of-tpol-and-trip-im-going-to-give-them-the-ending-they-deserve/. I watched some of the fan montage videos and read more fanfiction that was on-line yesterday. I rewatched some of the key scenes from the first three seasons, and rewatched my favorite scene several times yesterday. The series helped me get through the last three months but at some point it is time to end this chapter. Sometimes the second or third time around you are experiencing just echos of the intense first moments, feelings.

Is this why people have extramarital affairs, sometimes without reasons continue to have many many children, or ask to change offices again? Are we always trying to recapture that intense first moment?

I am bag 196 today of ocean bound plastic gathered https://drplasticpicker.com/plastic-picking-round-up/. There is an entire litter picking/beach clean up Instagram world, about 800 that I am connected with, who “follow” each other. One of the beach cleaners just north of me found a set of dentures, and it was on her bucket list of things to find. Another person in LA mentioned that I was so close to 200. It’s an off-kilter group which I’ve come to enjoy being part of.

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May 27, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It is almost the end of May and the third calendar month that we have been #shelteringinplace and #stay(ing)home. I talked to my sister yesterday and as a nonmedical person she gets frustrated that her neighbors are slowly breaking down those physical barriers, and may increase the spread of COVID-19. A friend traveling to a vacation area. Families now meeting in the backyard. While she holds the line because she has to make sure some important people remain protected. I’m the older sister who is a pediatrician, and I advised her to do what she knows is right. The world will do what it is doing, and we can’t stop the world from going what is it going through – but we should not accelerate it.

CNN and the major news outlets do not stress me out as much anymore. What is happening now in California is what we expected. We closed down early, and our rate of infections was slow. But now sandwhiched between the crazies in Orange County that are going to beaches without masks and our less medically equipped Southern neighbor Tijuana, of course our community will see an uptick in cases. We had thought through various prediction models and I think the Pediatric Infecitous Disease head had said also during one of the weekly lectures, that we should expect things to peak mid June. So here we are, rising slowly and peaking but slowly. We are not the travesty of New York City. But then people will get together like they did undoubtably like this last Memorial Day weekend, and there will be another peak. The second wave will come, and we are all just playing our bit parts.

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