Wednesday, July 30, 2008

great news!

I got good news today. My first published poem will be coming out within the next year! I submitted a poem to the journal Chaplaincy Today, and it will be published in the fall/winter or spring/summer issue!

Saturday, July 26, 2008

professional identity

I'm nearing the end of my CPE experience, and it's time to start consolidating my learning. One of the things I've been working on is professional identity. I've gone from very rigid, judgmental notions of professional masking to something more flexible and personal.

My supervisor calls it the flow between principles and narratives. And I've been to both extremes. I've been to the place of rigidity where principles hold above all else--but this leaves me an isolated shell. I don't show up with my own personality and experiences, and I end up holding colleagues and patients at an unhealthy distance. And I've been to a place where all that matters is story and feeling. It's a reaction, to defy principles with personal stories, where if someone feels uncomfortable or put out, trash the principles. This results in betrayal of internal values, too much information, and self-centeredness. This was my reaction against the church and society of my childhood--when personal experience and principles didn't match up, but the pressure to maintain the image of conformity created rot on the inside. Now I'm somewhere in the middle, trying to figure out my internal principles and values and how they interact with my professional self, which is not the same as my social and private selves, but not entirely distinct from them. It's about bringing my whole self to work without violating my own and others' boundaries.

This work in CPE has challenged me in that, because I have to develop skills in reading when to reveal aspects of my story and experience while maintaining focus on the job (or patient, as the case may be). My supervisor challenges me to consider this particularly around sexuality. There are times to reveal and times to hide my sexuality, and I need to maintain boundaries around how I talk about my intimate and romantic life. Yet I don't want to leave my sexuality behind--that amounts to closeting, and I've seen plenty of examples of the long-term damage that does. I am maintaining it better--I talk with colleagues about my relationship with my partner, but I don't share intimate details of course. I rarely do with patients, but there have been a few times when patients want to talk about relationships and it resonates to share select lessons and experiences. I do not hide my sexuality at work, even in a place where I am legally but not always socially protected (reminds me of Bishop Tutu quoting Martin Luther King Jr.: "I cannot legislate you to love me, but I can legislate you to not lynch me."), but I also don't discuss it with everyone. My identity at work is not primarily as a gay person, though it obviously contributes to my perspective and experience.

I also think about my sexual self in a broad sense--as relational and sensual. In my work, how do I notice, create, and maintain relationship? How do I notice the significance of bodily experiences and senses? And I would say that the most important way my sexuality shows up at work is in that dynamic I talked about--between narrative and principle. I have experienced the disconnect between social principles (girls are for dating and boys are for being friends with, for example, or families always stay together) and personal experience (I fell in love and made friends with both boys and girls, for example, and my family was decidedly not together, for very good reasons)--and so I have a sensitivity to when others experience that. It contributes to how I interact with principles and personal stories, as well as to how I form and maintain my own values about humanity.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

movie alert

I just found out that The Watchmen will be adapted into a movie, released March 6, 2009.
Here's the trailer on Apple.com:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/watchmen/high.html

I'm not into graphic novels as a rule, but I picked this one up after a newspaper article and some friends recommendations. It's a really interesting story, and I hope they make it well. The visuals look pretty faithful to the novel. If you don't know what it is, it's an alternate history that supposes there was a band of superheroes (without supernatural powers) in the 40s, and another group who took over from them in the 60s. Then a freak nuclear accident produced a truly supernatural hero who kind of put the others out of business. This guy won Vietnam (which gets Nixon re-elected multiple times) and is part of the US's Cold War plan against the Soviet Union, but then the public turned against crime-fighting superheroes, and they were outlawed. A few still remained practicing, but a lot more jaded. And then some stuff happens that brings some of them out of hiding again in the mid-80s. The backstories of the characters probably won't get a lot of attention, but it's really worth reading. It's also a pretty dark view of humanity and the world, but I'm not one to complain about that too much.
Anyway, I thought that was kind of exciting.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

healing

Yesterday I received my first visitor--my friend Emily came to keep me company while my partner was at work. It was nice to catch up, and I finally felt presentable enough to see people. The scrapes on my nose and forehead are almost healed. The upper lip and chin still look a little rough, by my beard has grown long enough to hide it, mostly. I seem to have some numbness on my lower lip and chin--probably nerve damage. I've also been seeing a chiropractor for my headaches, and he tells me that my top-most vertebrae (C1 and C2, which connect to my skull) are slightly knocked out of place. It's a big relief to get adjusted. I still don't sleep all that well at night, partly due to headaches and partly due to a bunch of canker sores in my mouth. Even my uvula has a canker sore on it, and it's swollen to double its size...yuck.
At any rate, I'm looking and feeling a lot better, but still sleeping a ton.
Thanks to everyone for the good thoughts and healing energy!

If you want to read a slightly gruesome account of my injuries, read below. Otherwise, don't read further.


I think I landed first just below my nose, which pushed it up and dragged my top lip down, creating a tear running across the bottom of my nose and down almost to my lip. It didn't completely sever my lip. My lower lip was dragged down and back, tearing it away from the gumline down to a nerve that runs along the bottom of my chin. This was kind of cool: the surgeon said he had just finished sewing up a surgical incision that looked really similar...so in other words, I effectively ripped my lip--with surgical precision--down to expose a nerve, without actually damaging that nerve! I also managed to pack that incision with large amounts of sand, gravel, and dirt. I also tore my chin open in about an inch-long upside-down U-shape. I scraped most of the skin off the center of my nose, running up to my forehead, and one of the nosepieces twisted up and gouged a chunk out of between my eyebrows.
I also got a variety of scrapes on my elbows and knees, and a fair amount of gravel embedded in my right hand.
And--remarkably--for going 15-20 mph (I think), that's really all that happened.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

faceplant fix-up recipes

Since so many people have been sweet to me with my injuries, I wanted to post a couple recipes that were helpful for me. So if you get face injuries and have to drink through a straw, here are some helpful recipes. Or even if you decide to go on a liquid diet, they work too!

Ensure-type drinks make great stomach-fillers for when you have to get up to take vicodin and antibiotics in the middle of the night.
Matt & Claire bought some really great smoothies, including one that had some kind of fancy probiotic stuff that was really tasty.
Kefir is also really good for straw drinking.

Sport bottles (like the kind you use on your bike) make great alternatives for drinking when your lips are too swollen to fit together and suck on a straw.

Here are two house-made recipes that are pretty marvelous:

Potato-Leek Soup:
4 leeks, rinsed well -- cut the dark green off the top, then cut lengthwise into quarters and chop into bits
2 shallots peeled and chopped
4 russet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
3 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 Tablespoon unbleached all-purpose flour
4 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
1 bay leaf
1 cup (or more) milk
salt and pepper

- In a big pot over medium heat, melt the butter and sautee the leeks and shallots until tender, about 15 minutes.
- Sprinkle flour over it and cook until flour is absorbed, about 2 minutes
- Increase to high heat and gradually whisk in the broth. Add potatoes and bay leaf, cover, and bring to a boil
- Decrease heat to medium-low and simmer until the potatoes are tender and mushy.
- Let it sit and cool for a bit, then remove the bay leaf and blend it all (use a hand blender in the pot or use your kitchen blender, but be careful because it's hot and it splatters). Add salt, pepper, and milk until it's tasty, smooth, and easy to drink through a straw.


Mama's fruit shake
1/2 avocado (peeled)
handful of blueberries (washed well)
2 apricots (washed well, unpeeled)
1 mango (washed well, unpeeled)
rice milk

- Blend it all together until it's smooth. Add protein powder for more nutrition.


Fix-Me-Up Fresh Juice
15 carrots, washed well
3 beets washed and peeled
5 celeries washed well
2 apples, cored

- Get a juicer, or find a friend with one
- Chop them into pieces small enough to fit in your juicer
- Juice it together and mix it up.


Those are a few of the foods that are speeding me on the road to recovery.
Enjoy!

Saturday, July 5, 2008

ouch

This has been a bit of a crazy weekend.
To start with, I gave a ride to a rather crazy woman whom I thought was friends with my mother-in-law. The flagged us down as I drove Mama home, and they knew each other from riding the bus. The lady said she needed to get to Jack London Square and her father just called to say he was visiting her. As we were driving, it became apparent that the father was flying in at midnight (and I didn't get to make the connection between that and her need to go to Jack London Square before she got out to, apparently, try to find a friend while I waited--and then disappeared. I don't know what I almost got messed up in, but it was strange.
Then yesterday morning I was biking with a group of friends, trying out a friend's road bike. I was approaching an uphill and having trouble shifting the gears when I hit some sandy gravel, panic-braked, and tossed myself over the handlebars. I landed on my face. Fortunately I was wearing a helmet and I landed in the gravel and not on the pavement or the very nearby curb. Luckily a police officer was driving by just afterward, and there were other friends around to help. My partner was able to ride in the ambulance and be with me for the grueling 5-hour ER procedures that involved lots of local anesthetic shots on my face, lengthy rinsing of the sand & gravel out of my mouth and wounds, and the 4 sets of stitches in and around my mouth. The doctors and nurses were very friendly, and I was grateful that he was rightfully included as my partner. I am so lucky to have my fiance around, to take care of me, rub my feet, make smoothies and soup and fetch me water. I'm not able to talk well yet, and I'm quite swollen and crusty. It remains to be seen if my nose is fractured, and my jaw seems a little lopsided. We'll see.
If you want to see a photo of us after the ER, let me know.
I also want to thank our friends Matt & Claire, who went out of their way to make sure the bikes and cars got sorted out, and who made a special grocery run for smoothies and foods to keep my strength and healing. Send some special energy to Matt, also, who probably saw the whole thing go down--and I know it wasn't pretty.

So that's the update.
My partner was so brave, sitting with me as I bled out of my mouth, watching the cleaning and stitching (it wasn't pretty, I'm sure), and holding my hand and rubbing my feet while I dealt with the pain.
And even with my ugly, scraped up, oozing face, he still looks at me with love...it's beautiful.