an adult's understanding, but a child's pain.

Good Times

I've forgotten how good friends can be.

Last night, I hung out with my 7 girls for the first time this summer. And even though I thoroughly enjoyed it, part of me was wondering what the hell happened to my summer--it's already mid-August! Have I really just been wasting my time away?

And I've been thinking about my behavior through this entire situation...it's weird but my actions align with what my body does naturally.

I have an auto-immune disorder--I don't have a particular disease, but I have an unusually low blood platelet count. The count is supposed to be between 150,000 and 500,000, and mine usually hovers between 50,000-80,000.

What happens is: my immune system is a CHAMP. I hardly ever get sick because I have such good defenses. The way the hematologist explained it to me is my immune system gets so bored with its job (since it's so good at protecting me) that it starts attacking my own platelets.

I think that's what I'm doing in my life.

I've grown up having to have my defenses on nearly my entire life. I've become so accustomed to doing so because it keeps me strong. But in doing so, I don't protect myself against myself.

If that makes sense. At all.

I think I'm talking crazy.

please don't let me fool you.

because sometimes deep down there's still a scared little girl struggling to figure things out.

mini vacation

I decided I needed to get out of my little hermit hole and went to the Smokey mountains/Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge with 7 other people.

So the trip is supposed to take about 5-6 hours. We left Cincinnati at 3pm, expecting to get to our cabin around 8pm. Lucky for us, a semi-truck flipped on 75 South right as we were going into the boonies of Kentucky. We sat in bumper to bumper traffic for 1 hour, and then had to get off the highway and take a 1 lane road that wound through rural Kentucky...slower than a snail could ooze its way along. The procession of cars was probably the most activity the town had seen since it was founded. We passed four or five houses where the residents pulled out lawn chairs and watched the parade of cars inching by.

After two hours of country music (no other radio stations), we finally reached the open highway heading to Tennessee. We rolled off the Gatlinburg exit around 11pm, excited that we finally made it and anxious to get to our cabin.

Then our car broke down.

And we had to push it 3/4 of a mile to a gas station, with a cop who looked like he stepped right off of Super Troopers.

We finally made it to our cabin at 1am. An epic adventure..but it was so so worth it.
http://yourcabin.com/717ARoomWithAView.aspx
isn't it a beauty?


Anyhow, good weekend. Long ass week of work (overtime every day!).

I wonder when it'll hit...

i'm perpetuating the stereotype.

whoops.

I was rushing out of my house this morning and I took out my side mirror while backing out of the garage.

I cried in church on Sunday. It was the first I had gone since Father's Day. The mass on Father's Day was absolutely torturous to sit through: new fathers were carrying their toddlers in their laps, old men were holding hands with their wives, and my mom and I were alone, still processessing my father's long standing affair and decision to leave our family. I think that experience called my body and mind to action, activating my defense mechanisms. I had to block out everything--images of families, fathers and their children, and the priest's homily, praise and tribute to a father's love.

I cried not because of some religious experience, but because I was so overwhelmed while embracing my former piano teacher during the Sign of Peace (a part of the Catholic mass where parishioners reach out to other parishioners with a handshake, hug, etc as a sign of peace). Her hug was so full of love and compassion that tears welled up in my eyes. Immediately after the embrace, I quickly walked outside trying my hardest to hold back tears. Once I stepped outside, everything came pouring out--it was one of those cries that I hate. It was the kind that tries to be silent, but gasps of a subtle noise caused by feelings in the heart escape from the mouth, revealing a deep, unresolved pain. It was the kind that reveals everything, no matter how hard the person tries to hide it or how strong the person pretends to be.

I think I'm starting to realize that I am absolutely devastated. I immediately went into "parenting mode" by taking care of my mom and making sure she was okay. Although I subconsciously knew that this affected my life as well, I was so focused on making sure my mother was okay that I almost tricked myself to believe that my dad's departure affected her only.

That illusion was working for awhile.

Unfortunately not anymore.

On the bright side--cabining in Gatlinberg this weekend with some of my HS friends. And new computer will be here :).

Surgeon J

:).

I went in the operating room yesterday and performed VATS (Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery) and Open Thoracic Surgery on a porcine model (living, breathing 5 foot ish pig..under anesthesia of course).

IT WAS SO COOL!!

EES gives its employees the amazing opportunity to work with our surgical devices and actually get hands on experience using these devices in surgery. We have a large sales force that trains surgeons how to use our products, and for our sales training, sales reps practice by teaching employees. So a win-win situation.

I suited up in scrubs, and then the surgical scrubs, gloves and goggles. I had sales reps (in training) and one facilitator (actual surgeon) with me and another intern. First, I used a scalpel to make three inch-long incisions so I could insert my three trocars, which create ports through which I can insert my minimally invasive surgical tools like EnSeal . The other intern and I split duties on performing a bullectomy, a wedge resection (segmentectomy), and a lobectomy with the instructions/guidance of my two sales reps.

Then we opened up the pig, the facillitator took out some of her ribs so we would have more space to operate in. We did another lobectomy, then a pneumonectomy, pericardial window surgery, and a sympathectomy. We discovered that we accidentally punctured through the pig's lung during VATS, and so her lung was leaking air..which we were breathing in...which was bad since she was under anesthesia we were all starting to get headaches. Then the facillitator came in to save her because her heartrate was going down--in the process he accidentally cut her pulmonary vein and blood splurted out everywhere so the situation got worse. But we did some old fashioned sutres, and saved her.

Very cool experience--surgery for 4 hours!!

On a side note..

This morning was absolutely beautiful. I got up around 6am to run, and it was slightly foggy and the sun was a deep orange/red. The only thing that ruined my run was the fact that it's garbage day. I wanted to take a deep breath of the fresh morning air, and got a whiff of ickyness instead. I ended up cutting my usual 5mi down to 2.5mi (1 loop), because the stench was terrible and I seemed to be playing catch up with the garbage truck.

molding the fog

This summer, I landed an internship at Ethicon-Endo Surgery in the worldwide business development and strategy department. Ethicon-Endo is an operating company under Johnson and Johnson and makes medical devices for minimally invasive surgery. For the first two-three weeks, I had no idea what my department did...or what I was supposed to do. My boss affectionately called her role"molding the fog." Aka, things we do are so vague that there's no solid, definite description or job. A lot of the projects are top secret because we're thinking 4-7 years and 8+ years down the road. Now halfway through the summer, I think I can somewhat accurately describe what BD (Business Development does). We're separated into three categories: strategic planning, strategic marketing, and licensing&acquisition. These three groups work together to identify "white space," or areas that EES doesn't play in yet. We try to predict the future of healthcare and create Ethicon-Endo's strategic plan accordingly.

Part of my job is to develop a tool that helps EES envision the future and draw out implications for our industry and business. The environmental scan helps BD identify key trends in world that may impact healthcare, and specifically surgery. I won't bore anyone with the specifics of the environmental scan--I only brought it up because I think has significance in our everyday lives.

I wish we all had this sort of radar that monitors the our external environment to guide us through our future. Sure we have subjective feelings, but oftentimes we dismiss them because they're "hunches" or "feelings" with no quantitative data to back them up. However, the human brain and human body are incredibly complex machines, and that alone should validate our subjective feelings. I've suspected my dad's affair since the 3rd grade. One day, I was drawing in his office when he received a phone call--I didn't know what an "affair" was back then, but I knew something wasn't right. Since then, that uncomfortableness has been in the back of my mind, I just never thought I could trust my instincts.

We need to learn to trust our brains and our bodies more. They're absolutely amazing machines that work so hard to protect us and keep us alive--if they can fight off disease and repair bones, they can definitely help us "mold the fog" and guide us in our human experiences, emotions and interactions.

On a side note: I've been playing tennis again albeit terribly. I think I jammed/sprained my pinkie while doing so. Ouch.