There's nothing like an 8-month old Aussie puppy house-guest to make you realize what good dogs you have in your everyday life. :-)




Such a good boy! He learns like a little sponge. He's a bit of a live-wire, and loses his grip on sanity from time to time, but he's going to mature into a fantastic dog. Handsome, too. He ended up with a super-cute, super-floofy curly coat, much to everyone's surprise. Neither of his parents were curly.

Riley liked him, but sternly taught him that obnoxious humpy-intact-puppies shouldn't be so pushy. Jodah had mixed feelings. A slow introduction was making good progress, but Jodah went into pseudo-intact pushy-obnoxiousness, sniffing and chittering and strutting about at all times. Hormones, ugh.

I'm so happy to have my house to myself this morning, though. My family is fantastic, and I'm lucky to have them all still, but my gods can they drive me insane. My father obsessively buys garden tools every time he visits, and the last thing on earth I need is more stuff in my garage. Anyone know a non-profit that will accept donations of garden tools? Because I'd be most happy if I could just donate them. Maybe that will be my goal this holiday season. My father also has OPINIONS about how I should manage all my home repairs, and when I disagree, he just assumes I didn't understand what he was saying, and explains to me over and over in more and more simplistic language, like I am 4. *sigh*

But, it was good to see them, and their visit spurred some much-needed work on getting my bathroom put together. Ikea furniture hanging party! Now it just needs a real door. You know, people are a little funny about a bathroom door that doesn't latch closed. *grin*

I took the dogs on an overnight trip with the new setup this weekend. I learned several things:

1) there's a bunch of equipment that's more trouble than it's worth: the big camp chair, the zipper bags for gear I thought were so cool, etc.

2) the bed I created is SUPER comfortable, even though I ended up sleeping the opposite of the way I thought I would.

3) Riley is still the best camping companion dog I've ever had. She's just chill, she loves it, she could sit outside and hang out with me for hours.

4) Jodah is still one of the most miserable camping dogs I've had. He constantly just wants to get back in his crate in the car, and during the short little trips out, he sometimes managed to get horrible, horrible burrs so embedded in his pants and tail that I had to cut a bunch off, and his tail looks all weird and stubby now. He also got at least one tick, I'm still looking, but haven't found more (yet). Maybe I'll just shave him down to prepare for my big trip this summer.

5) The habitent will attract a lot of attention, which is a little weird for this introvert camping alone. People just stopped by to chat and ask about it. (www.habitent.com)

6) The Kelty tarp is still most excellent. Best camping purchase I've made.

7) Closing the hatch while you're lying in the back of the car to test out how comfortable it is with the ventlock/tail-gate lock in place (actually really comfortable!) is maybe a bad idea if you don't know how to open the hatch from the inside. Some contortionist crawling to the doors was involved.

8) you CAN actually open the hatch from the inside, but it's not obvious until you've googled it.

9) you should never leave shade-cloth outside if there's a possibility of rain. That stuff is like a sponge.

Slowly, slowly, I'm organizing thoughts about my job, what is hard, what is rewarding.

I work as a neurodiagnostic technologist, which is a fancy way of saying I'm in the class of techs that do EEGs, nerve conduction testing, intra-operative monitoring, etc. Much of the work I do is routine, testing of children with a history of seizures, but otherwise healthy.

I also work in the epilepsy surgery program, for kids with intractable seizures that can be treated by removing the epileptic focus, or starting point, if their seizures meet that criteria, or children who benefit by a surgical separation of the hemispheres of the brain. Many of these children go through a two-stage procedure - a surgery to open the skull and place arrays of sensors directly on the brain surface, followed by several days of intensive monitoring and mapping, and then a second surgery to remove the unhealthy brain tissue. A mother recently asked me how I could do this work, how hard it must be to see kids like this, and I replied that really, it wasn't. The recovery kids make from these procedures is jaw-dropping and amazing, and it makes me feel we are doing GOOD.

But I don't talk so much about what is hard about my job. Because my hospital is a major pediatric facility, we get children transferred from hospitals throughout the state (and some from Canada, if their trip would be shorter than the trip to Toronto), along with local children from Detroit. I do quite a bit of work in the critical care units, as neurophysiology is used both diagnostically and for prognostication in critically injured or ill children.

Shaken baby syndrome is terrifyingly common.

Babies are born daily who will live out their short lives in the NICU, never to leave.

It is horrifying that each time a child affected by gun violence makes the news, I wonder if that child will end up being my patient (often: yes)

Tragedies strike without warning and to anyone, and tragedies cluster: drownings Memorial day weekend after the pools are opened, car accident victims in snowstorms, deadly disease during flu season, and so on.

Because the procedures I do are not quick, I spend usually over an hour with each patient and their families, and I hear so much: the heartbreaking conversations as stunned parents try to make sense of what happened to their child, detailed reconstructions of the last day before (whatever) happened, how little sense it makes that just a few hours ago, they were talking, or fighting, or being bratty, or joyful, and now they're unconscious surrounded by equipment. Or I get to hear the kind, but horribly painful conversations between a physician and a mother about end of life for her terminally ill child ("when we decide, next time, that we're not going to intubate her and put her on a ventilator, it doesn't mean we're giving up on HER. It means we're giving up on ventilators...."). I get to see the different ways race and class affect how my colleagues treat a family dealing with tragedy, and that's heartbreaking in its way too.

Of course, not every day is like this. Like I said, the majority of kids I see are relatively healthy, for routine testing, and that's a joyful thing. But there isn't a lot of space to process the pain I see: sharing it with my colleagues, since they've been there too, but because we're at work, there's generally not a lot of time, or emotional space there. It doesn't feel like sharing it lessens the impact, and in fact the opposite, hearing what others have seen just spreads that pain further. And I can't generally process with people outside of work, they either really don't get it, or I can't eliminate enough details to preserve the patient's privacy and still have the conversation be meaningful (because when tragedy affects children, it so often makes the news).

So I guess, I write it. I keep notes at work. I process slowly. I try not to store things up. And I try not to keep so much emotional distance that it affects my compassion to the parents and children I interact with, too.

I didn't see it happen, it was during or after the 2nd round of frisbee after work. He's very reluctantly bearing weight, I can't tell yet whether it's a pulled muscle (psosas?) or what. My initial thought was his knee, but it seems like he'd just pick up and carry a bum leg. I'll let him chill out for a bit tonight then see if I can see what's going on.

*sigh* Rest will be so fun with him. If it's not better with some rest for a day or so, it's off to the vet we go.