Like, for real. How can it be so hot? I’m sweating by just sitting here and thinking. At nine in the morning.
For serious? In Sweden aka the north pole?
Please for someone to be sending a breeze or maybe shooting me in the head.
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Tags: Pesky Real Life
I don’t normally do these, but I found the picture pretty, plus a phoenix is always a bonus.
| What’s your inner spirit? |
  Phoenix You are free, loyal, and caring. You wish to help all those in need and heal all wounds of those you care about, no matter what the cost. |
| How do you compare? Take this test! | Tests from Testriffic |
Popularity: 43% [?]
While I was checking out participating blogs of Friday Fill-Ins I found a service called Entrecard.
Basically, you put their widget on your sidebar. You can rent the spot next to it to other blogs to earn credits. But mainly, you can go to other member blogs, click on their widget and “drop your card”, and others can drop their cards on your blog.
You get credits for dropping your card and other cards being dropped at your blog, from which you can e.g. buy an advertising space on another blog.
It makes it easier to find new blogs to read, and hopefully someone will find this blog and visit regularly.
Sadly, most of the link exchanges are made up mostly of people filling their blog with pay-per-post, or trying to sell their own products,
What I’m interested in are blogs that give me a view of someone’s life, a unique way to get to know the writer, to glean glimpses of what makes them tick. I do like some medical blogs, but otherwise I prefer personal blogs over themed ones.
I’ve tried to blog on Livejournal a few times, because I love the way communication there works via comments – but then I find most journals there are themed, but maybe that’s because I’ve mostly followed different fandoms on LJ.
I do want to use this blog however, and I love the new design 
So I have to find some other ways to find online friends I guess. Entrecard is nice in that I can click through blogs through the adverts, and I like that I can look at my inbox and drop cards for everyone who dropped their card on mine.
I definitely like it so far, and I’ve already found some great blogs through it.
Popularity: 46% [?]
Argh!
I remember this blog I really liked to read. It was of a young woman who immigrated to Sweden – originally with her husband, but they seperated in the end.
I was very well written and funny and she calls Migrationsverket the irritation office. Hehe 
It also has the typical traffic sign with the elk crossing the street as a header picture.
I want to follow it again and now I can’t find it. *kicks google*
Popularity: 45% [?]
I’m sitting on the train to Stockholm (well – yesterday. When I’m writing this. Which will be published tomorrow. Sometimes I think I might rip a hole into the space-time-continuum or something.)
Sadly because my tickets were booked from work, I’m travelling second class. Normally I take first, because I tend to book very early, and since internet is inclusive, it tends to be cheaper for me. I shall try to sneakily change the booking for the train home, if possible, but only if the fee isn’t too high.
Anyway! While researching yesterday how much internet-on-the-train would cost me, I couldn’t miss the giant proud advertisement in which the train company announced that, whoohoo! Their internet connections were now three times as fast!
And while I’m always impressed with how they just get internet on a really quite fast moving train, I have to say that if this is three times faster, it must have been static before. Honestly. I miss home already.
Why am I going to Stockholm, you ask? I managed to get a spot on a so-called SK-course. These courses are paid for by the government, and are offered in all medical specialties. They’re normally made for residents in order to get a deeper knowledge of certain parts of your specialty. They’re never sponsored by any kind of pharmaceutical company, which is what makes them different from most, if not all, other courses.
Normally there are always about 200 or 300 applications for 30 or so spots. Because of that, the shorter the remainder of your residency is, the better your chances to get a spot.
I’ll be finished after summer. That’s why I can now visit a course about psychiatric diagnostics. It’s just a bit silly, since that is a course that would be very valuable when you’ve just started out – now, naturally, I already know a lot about diagnostics. Of course not enough to not be able to learn things, which I love to do, but it is a flaw in the system that you can’t get a spot when you would really, really need one.
I’m glad I got this one though. I’ll be in Stockholm until next Friday, with about seven hours of lectures every day. Yay! It’s always awesome to meet other doctors and to be able to ball ideas and to see how things are done in other parts of the country.
Popularity: 45% [?]
So there’s something I always remember about dealing with people.
When I was an intern in my last year of med school, I did my voluntary assignment, naturally, in psychiatry. I was placed on an open unit dealing with patients with affective disorders.
There was a resident there, a woman called A – maybe in her mid-thirties or early fourties. She was specialising in Childrens’ psychiatry, and as such had to work a year in adult psychiatry.
I disliked her from the start. She was distanced and gave me the feeling I was stupid when I asked questions. At that point I was still seeing a therapist (who is also a psychiatrist) weekly while recovering from a severe depression I got about a year before.
I had two patients of my own. I still remember them, even though I can’t remember their names. (I’m bad with names. It’s annoying.) One was a depressive patient who was scared of being at home and later on of riding the bus. The other woman had what we thought might be bipolar disease and came in with a depressive episode.
Since she was bipolar and I always had the feeling I had to know things instead of asking on rounds with the chief attending, I I thought I’d try to find out what to do when someone had a manic eopisode, in case one of the other doctors would ask. Doc A was sitting in the conference room, and I asked her.
Lil Doc Fae: I was wondering, how would you treat a manic patient?
Doc A: Why do you want to know?
Lil Doc Fae: I have this patient with bipolar disease and thought they might ask during rounds. I know what to do about depression, but I’ve never seen a manic patient before.
Doc A *points*: There’s a bookshelf over there. Read it up.
I was mortally embarrassed. I read it up.
I told my therapist the week after and she chuckled and said, “Honestly – she’s a childrens’ psychiatrist and won’t have seen much of bipolar disease or mania. Have you not had the thought yet that maybe she doesn’t know either?”
And I boggled. Honestly. The idea that someone could know as little or less than me had never crossed my mind. That’s how confident I was at that point, haha! And somehow, instinctively, I knew she had to be right.
I never talked to Doc A about it. I didn’t even think about it myself, at that point I just thought, oh! and that was about it.
What I will never forget though is how things changed from that point on. Because suddenly it was easy to work with her. We got along very well. We played to each other’s strengths, and at the end she was my favourite doc there.
And all of this because I thought differently. Because that was the only thing that had changed, the way I perceived her. My behaviour to her must have changed, and that made her change hers. I have no idea that I did anything differently, but I believe knowledge of any kind makes you behave differently automatically.
It taught me to a degree to question others’ motives, especially when I assign them negative ones. I think it also meant that I was born to love cognitive therapy
But, anyway. Another thing. I’ve always seen my mother as an incredibly disciplined and tidy person. She used to have everything tidied, and cleaned and whatnot. And I could never do it. Cue tons of teenager-mother-conflicts. I’ve always had problems keeping order, I’ve always had waaaay too much stuff, never been able to keep sensible routines. At the same time it’s always been a big thing for me. While I’ll never be a neatfreak, I don’t like it when it’s too cluttered. I somehow always cross the line between comfortable and cluttered without noticing. Honestly, it just happens!
I remember very well the only day I’ve been truly suicidal, about nine years ago now. I woke with the thought, “I will clean now. At least they won’t be able to say that the apartment was a mess.”
And I wondered what the hell was wrong with me when obviously my mother had it all down, and how could I not have learnt this from her?
When I was visiting last week I got my answer – she isn’t too good at it, either. She really hates it as much as I do. She could force herself when she was home with me and my brother, but now that she’s working part time again, stuff doesn’t get done the way it did before. She told me how she didn’t clean the bathroom because my brother was staying and would shower that day, so it wouldn’t pay off to clean the shower just before that – sheesh, I so recognise that line of reasoning.
It was good, to see that she isn’t perfect, so I’m not too imperfect either.
Popularity: 47% [?]
My first time! <3 This fun meme is found here: Click
1. Why do we have to sleep?
2. Stupid things I used to do occasionally are now habits.
3. I have been staying up for too long.
4. I had never heard the phrase “Tc-99m-sestamibi” and it’s pretty strange.
5. I’m daydreaming the way I always do.
6. How was I to know that there was so much backstitching in my new embroidery project?
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to sleeping, tomorrow my plans include watching SGA season 5 and stitching and Sunday, I want to have a nice trip to Stockholm!
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She’s well-dressed, her white hair a sporty short style, her make up well done. I’ve met her only once, almost two months ago during her stay on the psych ICU. She had just tried to kill herself the second time. We did rounds and called her in to talk to her, the attending, two interns and myself. I didn’t say a word.
She still remembers me, tells me where I sat during that conversation. I didn’t think she would, she seemed so closed off at the time, wrapped up in unhappiness, wishing she would have succeeded with taking her life.
She seems different now. Talkative, enthusiastic, open. We talk about a lot of things. She’s glad I’ll be able to see my grandmother on her birthday. She talks about her own grandchildren, and her eyes sparkle.
I ask her about what happened when she tried to take her life. “Oh, when I went to take a bath?” she giggles. She took pills and went to drown herself in the lake, in the middle of winter. Luckily, because otherwise her family wouldn’t have been able to find her. There wouldn’t have been any tracks, no snow.
I’m taken aback and I tell her. She becomes serious and tells me, I still sometimes wish it had worked. Being like this, it doesn’t mean I’m well. It doesn’t mean I want to live.
She has nightmares about promising her doctor not to hurt herself, the day before.
Popularity: 46% [?]
My grandmother is going down the same path. She has never been the same after my grandfather passed away. She’s depressed and extremely anxious, and I’m more than convinced that if her faith didn’t forbid it so adamantly, she would have taken her life long ago.
She’s grown to be forgetful, and while that is to be expected when one reaches 85, it has happened very quickly and the contrast to her very good somatic health is striking.
The family has a hard time with her because of her constant negativity. It’s the thing where she does everything in her power to stay miserable, and I really think she believes that she’s supposed to be miserable without my grandfather, forever.
So many people have offered help and advice, which she constantly throws back into everyone’s faces. My grandparents and parents have always been involved in Church and other voluntary work, and there is quite a lot going on which she could fill her days with. She doesn’t want to. She got flowers for her birthday, they’re too much work. She gets offers to go on trips, she doesn’t want to because it reminds her of my grandfather. She was gifted nice chocolates, she doesn’t want them because they could make her fat. (Honestly, grandma?! 85!!)
She doesn’t have any hobbies. She has stopped knitting and watching tv. She doesn’t read. She doesn’t listen to music. All she does at home is either solve crossword puzzles or stare at the wall. Honestly, she sits in her livingroom and does nothing. She says she goes to bed at 8 pm sometimes because she’s bored.
It makes me incredibly sad. It can also be a tad annoying, because she has this ideal in her head that she isn’t supposed to be alone, and at the same time she shouldn’t have to have to do anything to be in contact with people. “If I didn’t go for a walk today, no one would come here to see me all day.” Her ideal is the way my greatgrandmother lived out her days, in my grandparents’ apartment on a chair next to the heater in the kitchen. “She was never alone, you know.” she says very often, because she forgets she’s already said it a hundred times. “Me and your grandfather, we did our duty.”
Which of course is a backstab at my mother especially, and I hate when she does that. My mom and dad live only two houses down the street, and they have an incredible difficult time dealing with her constant negative attitude.
There’s also my grandmother’s unhealthy behaviour towards alcohol. She just doesn’t seem to get that she doesnt tolerate the same amounts she did twenty years ago. She drinks, and it has happened that she falls and vomits, and can’t remember a thing the next morning. My parents basically had to prime the entire family not to give her any hard liqueur.
It makes me so sad. I love her incredible much, and I feel so sorry for her, and at the same time I sometimes want to hit her over the head for being so stubborn and not giving things a chance to get better. It’s such a horrible waste. I’m thinking about writing a letter to her doctor, but I didn’t ask her if that was okay, so I’m in two minds about it. She’s a horribly good actress, she has dominated the yearly sketch show of the town’s Catholic Women’s Association for years. She’s made for comedy, brilliant at it. Many people thought my mom was an evil witch for having problems with her, until they saw the way she is when she’s drunk and went “Wow, I didn’t know she was that mean to you.”
Sad. Even I feel a good amount of dread when I go to see her. It’s hard to bear when she’s telling me over and over again, because she forgot she already did, how she doesn’t want to live anymore. I wish there was something I could do to make her get back the spark she once had, but I feel like all of us lost that fight from the start, when my grandfather died. It honestly makes me wonder if I ever want to find that special person, if it isn’t better to live alone and not that attached, and be self sufficient. Which is kind of sad all on its own.
Popularity: 47% [?]
I’ve always been close to my grandmother. I think I was closer to my grandfather when I was very small, but as soon as I came into my teens, I grew closer to her.
This is difficult, because I had to write a post like this about my grandfather once, and I remember what happened afterwards.
My grandpa was a proud man. He fought in WWII, not because he agreed with the government, but because he wanted to protect his country. When his regiment was taken to a new assignment by plane, he talked to one of the commanding officers or a pilot, I don’t quite remember – they recognised each other’s dialects and talked about home. He was offered to fly with that man on the plane that was going to fly in the middle, escorted by a number of other planes. The weapons and other materials were in the centre plane, surrounded by planes carrying soldiers. The soldiers were more expendable. The centre plane was the only one that got through.
He was taken prisoner in Africa, where he and his comrades were kept under barbed wire in the blazing sun. It was fastened so low they couldn’t sit up. There are pictures of him plucking cotton in the USA, where he spent five years as a PoW.
He married my grandmother and took care of her mother until she died at 97. He was a weaver, and was so involved in the union that he became the president of the country’s textil union in the end. My mom describes him as very conservative and correct, but also generous.
He was a great grandfather anyway. My favourite thing to remember is Saturday mornings during elementary school. Mine was about the last grade that had school every other Saturday. On the Saturdays I was free, often my grandfather would come over during breakfast. He’d sit on the corner of the bench, where he’s always been sitting when he was at our place. After breakfast, he would take me somewhere cool, on the back of his bicycle or in the car. The small airport was only used privately then, and the main attraction was a big (or so it seemed at six years old ) playground. There was a carousel, I remember, and swings, and a little wooden house one climbed up to, to sit on a plastic seat that was connected to a horizontal rope, so one could glide over the entire playground.
That’s how I choose to remember him. He wasn’t doing well when he was around 70 years old, but he blazed through bypass-surgery – the surgeons said they hadn’t seen anyone his age recover this quickly before – and had some very good years after that. He and my grandmother travelled a lot. They hadn’t been able to go away for many years since my great grandmother couldn’t be left alone, and now they finally did. We used to joke that it’d be less work to note in the calendar when they were actually home.
When he was around 80 years old, he started to dwindle away. There was less of him every time I spoke to him or saw him. He died of pneumonia caused by his dementia. The worst for me was when I Talked to my godmother a few months afterwards, and she told me how abysmal the care he received towards the end was, how she was laughed at when she asked for painkillers for him, how this man, whose pain threshold was so high it was non-existant (he didn’t need any anesthetic for root canals, he said he didn’t have any pain after the bypass surgery – not to act the hero, but because he honestly didn’t) – he was screaming to the Virgin Mary and begging to die. For months afterwards, I wasn’t able to talk about this to anyone, it is just too awful to think about.
Popularity: 48% [?]
