Like gravity, karma is so basic we often don't even notice it.

Yesterday

Patient: "You know, I haven't been sick yet this winter."
Me: "I haven't either! We must be very lucky, there's been a stomach flu going around."
Patient and I both knock on the wooden desk for good luck.

Today, 4am
The stomach flu strikes.

#$%@! Can't I get a break?

Weekly Update: January

• Current Scholastic Pursuits
• I apologize for the belated update. I drove back from the North to the Tropical Tundra last night and it was a rough drive. I left at 4 pm and didn't get in until nearly 11pm on account of some terrible accidents that caused the highway to close in 2 different locations. When I finally got home, I discovered that I had no TP or family cloths AND no toothpaste. Plus, it was -28 and it took me 4 trips to empty all the essential stuff out of the car. Brrr!!!
• On the plus side, the detour we had to take on the highway allowed me to drive through Sparkle City (seriously, it's a real town!) once again. And, it is lovely to be home and see my tree again. I missed Fig.
• Over the weekend, we were up at the cottage burning brush. Initially, there were 4 of us to do the work (my aunt and uncle came to visit from BC). However, 5 minutes after getting there, my uncle poked his eye with a stick and we sent him to the hospital to get it checked out. By the time my aunt and uncle got back, Penguin and I had the whole brush pile out on the ice and ready to burn. It was absolutely breath-takingly beautiful up there. After the flames were out, we headed back to town. Penguin and I were so exhausted by the time we got home that we just showered and went straight to bed. Penguin was particularly tired (he drove home through the mild snow storm while the rest of us slept in the car) and he forgot to rinse the soap out of his hair before exiting the shower. It was actually pretty cute to see him realize this and scamper back in to finish the job. Hahaha.
• Back in the Tropical Tundra, today was my first day of nephrology and I'll be doing this for the next 2 weeks until the XCanada Tour begins for interviews. I'll keep you updated on how it goes.
• Hope you're all having a great week!

• Recipe I've Been Drooling Over
• Chocolate Cupcakes with Flaming Strawberries (thanks for the recipe nod, brother!!)
• 

• Favourite Thing on Etsy this Week
• In The Trees, by Roadside
• 

• What I'm Reading Right Now
• I didn't get a lot of reading done over the past little bit because school has been so busy but with any luck, I'll polish these 2 off in the next week or so.
• I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley (continues!)
• The Unconscious Civilization by John Ralston Saul (continues!)

• TED Talk I Watched This Week
• Naomi Klein: Addicted to Risk

• Song of the Week
• Ok Go remains my favourite music video band. They're just so awesome. Check out more of their work on YouTube.
• Did you notice the goat?? Hehehe.

• Thing I'm Most Grateful for This Week
• Penguin. Leaving on Sunday night to come back to the Tropical Tundra was the hardest separation yet. Over the last month, Penguin has spoiled, pampered, supported, laughed, beaten (at the gym), fed, and loved me to a greater degree than I could ever have imagined. I am so profoundly grateful for the magnitude of blessings he represents in my life.

• Thing I'm Most Looking Forward to This Week
• The Ice Wine Festival is on this weekend! Penguin and some of his dear friends are coming down to enjoy it with us. Yay!!

• Bunny Photo of the Week

• 
  

The OR Cat.

Whenever we remove tissue from someone's body in the OR, it ends up in one of three places:

• stitched back inside again
• off to pathology for testing
• the incinerator for burning

Very rarely do we remove something entirely and the stitch it back in (in fact, I can only think of grafts and organ transplants as examples). Most often, the tissue gets sent to pathology for testing, in which case, the surgeon always hands the tissue to the scrub nurse and tells them exactly what it is (ie. "Distal ileum and proximal cecum, short stitch anterior, long stitch lateral"). They know that this means they should preserve the tissue in formaldehyde and label it accordingly. Then there's the tissue we take out and don't need to analyze. That tissue also gets handed to the scrub nurse. However, it seems a bit rude to refer to a piece of someone's body as "garbage" so instead we tell the scrub nurse that it's "for the cat". I'm not really sure if this is any better. The imagery refers to a hypothetical stray cat that lives around the OR and survives off the scraps of human parts we throw out. In actual fact, this tissue gets incinerated but for some reason, the cat saying has stuck. Creepy or cute? You decide. I vote cute with a hint of creepy.

This week at Grand Rounds, however, I learned that "for the OR cat" is not just an expression. A resident did a presentation their recent trip to The Gambia, entitled, "International Surgery - A Resident's Perspective". It was a great talk, with loads of pictures. One picture was of a turkey vulture sitting in the hospital's courtyard. The resident had put a caption on the picture stating "Africa's OR Cat". And, in earnest, she reported that since no pathology was available where they worked, all specimens from 'garbage tissue' to 'specimen tissue' were simply chucked into the hospital courtyard after each case and eaten by the vultures (or, if left until after dark, the hyenas). I have to admit, this seemed to me like a remarkably efficient, low-waste system. I felt significantly less creeped out by the physical evidence of real-life scavengers than I did about some fuzzy toothsome ghost cat lurking in the hallways of my local OR.

Oddly enough, the resident didn't mention if the hand-off phrase in The Gambia was "for the OR Vulture" rather than 'the Cat'. I'm rather curious to know...

Weekly Update: Delayed

I'm sorry to report that I won't be able to do a complete blog update this week. I'm currently rotating through my 1st choice school on elective and things are CRAZY HECTIC -- also, I'm sleep deprived in a semi-post-call state.

In the meantime, here's a nice life-affirming TED talk to keep you going... enjoy!

(PS: I totally guessed what the 3 A's would be before Neil introduced them... can you?)