beautiful mornings, strange nights

this is my surfing buddy scotty on tuesday morning, and that's me below, a couple of photos by christian, who himself has a very cool blog; i'll link to it when i find out the address. it is the very best way to start a day i think: a cup of coffee, drive to the beach with a friend and the windows down, then see what happens! some days there are dolphins, some days great waves, some days not. you cannot force the hand of god, or some would say the hand of nature. but, as annie dillard says "the world is full of extravagance, the least we can do is show up."
you may not believe me, but i'm telling you that tonight when i poured the ravioli into the pot to boil it, it said "hi"! this isn't alphabet soup you know, it's just pasta, or so i thought.
i suppose wierder things have happened on this planet than pasta forming letters, but this is the only wierd thing that i have seen lately, so there you go. 

love and pain

Love, it's the wave I ride that won't ever reach the shore, overwhelmed by the tide and wanting nothing more, tonight, than to take this time and make it all mine. It's comin' around again. Every now and again sometimes I get lost on the wind of a dream, the air gets clean and the seas get wider and I can do anything. The pain it won't even cross my mind and it's a wonder, and everyday the rope gets loose and the chains unbind me and I can do anything.

Lyrics by M.A.E.
I'm up late reading about chest and abdominal pain, listening to mae(multisensory audio experience) and some other great music. i also love the songs "mistakes we knew we were making" and "painless". had an interesting case saturday morning of a woman with seizures and posterior dislocation of the shoulder... reminded me of the value of pain in terms of bringing people to the hospital. (i would never say this to a patient in pain!) there's a lot i could say about pain, it is one of the most interesting topics for me in medicine. i must say i feel underqualified to discuss it in a sense, not having experienced very significant physical pain myself. i've never had major surgery, trauma, appendicitis, i guess the most serious disease i've had would be asthma, for which i have never been hospitalized. there is a really good chapter called "the pain perplex" in a book called "complications: a surgeon's notes on an imperfect science" by atul gwande. i know some of my friends have read it, anyways it is a fascinating study.

anyways, how did i get from love and the ocean to pain?

 

mystery photo

if there are any EVMSers still reading this blog, this is a "name that place" photo, especially for those of you who have gone away and are missing norfolk. i can give up to 4 hints if you don't get it right away. anyone else is free to guess, but i don't think you'll know it unless you are in medicine. oh wait that was a hint. i'm off to another overnight shift at virginia beach general in the ED. i got to go surfing this a.m. after finishing my shift at 7, probably will go again tommorrow morn, if anyone is game, just be at first street around 730.