May 19th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Tips
5 Comments »
It was a beautiful day for a run today, 72 degrees, light
wind, clear blue sky and lush foliage… the trail was busier than usual, with
bikers passing me every few minutes. But
otherwise, it couldn’t have been a better day.
My running partner recently left DC to spend a couple of months working
in Morocco,
and I swore to myself that I wouldn’t completely go to pot while she was
gone. So I forced myself to get into my
gear and go for a solo run. Being alone
gave me the chance to reflect on 5 running lessons…
Don’t compare
yourself to others – there will always be someone better, faster, fitter,
stronger, smarter… It’s important to be
content with who you are, and do the best with what you’ve got. At least, this is what I told myself as I was
passed by the majority of joggers on the trail, dragging myself along to mile
4.
Appreciate the beauty
of nature – it’s so easy to take nature for granted. I ran by a patch of mushrooms, and one had
been broken off its stalk and flipped over so I could see its little
vents. How can a fungus know how to grow
into such a well organized structure?
How can the cells know to line up into soft, brown vents? I don’t know… it seems pretty amazing to me
that one little organism can be so delicate, complex, and completely
independent. It never asked anyone for
permission to be itself. Meditating on
the whimsy and creativity that is abundant in the life around us can put things
into perspective.
Take responsibility
– no one’s going to help you get in shape.
It’s up to you to take care of your body. I’m really bad at this – I don’t like to exercise
alone, and I sometimes put off getting in shape unless I have a partner for
accountability. It’s as if I prefer to
delegate responsibility about my health to others. I know that this is a common tendency in
medicine – where folks rely on their doctors, without taking responsibility for
applying their advice (for diet/exercise/medications) on a daily basis.
Exercise is a
life-long discipline – as I thought about how hard it was to run, and how
heavy my legs felt, and how much easier all of this was just a couple of years
ago… I realized that exercise is not something you do every other weekend. It really is best applied on a daily basis. And being in shape is the result of
consistent hard work – so we have to focus our minds on making exercise a part
of our regimen, just as we make time to eat each day!
Don’t psych yourself
out – part of your success or failure in exercising has to do with whether
or not you believe you can do it. When
you’re running, you have to believe that you can make it the whole way… or that
you can run farther than you did last time.
The temptation is to quit when you start feeling a little tired, but you
have to keep going – encouraging yourself along the way with a positive
attitude. Of course, if you really are
unable to make it (your heart rate is at its limit and you are breathing so
hard you can’t speak) then slow down.
But a lot of the time you’ll find that running an extra mile is a matter
of mindset, not physical capability.
Do you have running lessons to share?
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
May 14th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
2 Comments »
I was reading a touching post in Fat Doctor’s blog about her
son – how she wanted to protect him from mean kids who would inevitably hurt
him at some point along his school career.
She spoke about how painful child vs. child cruelty can be, and how some
of us carry those wounds and insecurities into adulthood.
I was a bookish little girl, pudgy with pale skin, freckles
and braces… unathletic but enthusiastic.
Our gym teacher liked to begin each class by appointing two team captains
and allowing them to choose teammates one after the other until everyone had
been assigned a team. So whether we were
going to play softball, floor hockey, basketball, or any other sport, it always
began the same way, two captains vying for the top athletes to build a team
that could crush the other.
The outcome was predictable.
The top “jocks” were usually selected as team captains, and they
proceeded to invite their favorite friends to their team, followed by the
mediocre kids, and finished with the chubby or clumsy kids at the end.
I was usually chosen second to last. But there was one little girl who finished
last every time – Tina Appleberry. She
was book smart like me, but although she wasn’t chubby, she had poor eyesight
and thick glasses and was rather uncoordinated and fearful of balls. Most kids didn’t like Tina because she was awkward
and unattractive. And I used to watch
her facial expression as she listened to the reticent team captain calling her
name last… because there was no one else to call.
Tina was a sad girl, and the years of being selected last
for sport teams had taken a toll on her.
She lacked self confidence, she was easily embarrassed, and she fully
believed that she wasn’t worth much at all.
I felt so badly for her… and shared her pain. Being second to last wasn’t that much easier
– and I loathed gym class. I would try
to get my parents to write as many excuses as I could think of to get out of
it, so I didn’t have to suffer the humiliation of my peers testifying in unison
that I was nearly the worst person in my grade at sports.
One day we had a substitute gym teacher. She clearly had no idea who the jocks were or
what the pecking order of kid selection was supposed to be. I was putting on my sneakers in the corner,
wishing that I could be invisible, when she walked up to me and announced that
I would be a team captain that day.
There were sighs and snickers as I followed her to the middle of the gym
floor and stood next to the class’s top jock, Johnny Tanner. The rest of the class lined up in single file
in front of us so we could see our range of choices.
The teacher told me to choose first. I surveyed the children lined up against the
wall, eyes fixed on me, eager to see who I’d pick first. I paused.
“I call Tina Appleberry,” I said. And you could have heard a pin drop. Tina almost fell over in astonishment. She slowly walked towards me to stand by my
side, lopsided pigtails and all. I
smiled at her, she smiled back. The
other kids didn’t know what to make of my choice – some thought I was stupid,
others thought I didn’t understand the rules (that you choose your favorite kid
first). But that day I knew that I had
won a small victory – a victory that outweighed the sum of all gym game
outcomes in grade school. And I can only
hope that Tina remembers that she was not always chosen last –and that her childhood
wounds are a little less deep because of that day.
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
May 12th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
5 Comments »
Panda Bear, MD (a feisty young blogger) gives some advice to
new medical interns in his recent post.
Internship, for those of you who may not know, is the first year of
residency training. It is the first time
that a doctor, fresh out of medical school, has responsibility for patient
care. The intern prescribes medications,
performs procedures, writes notes that are part of the medical record, and
generally learns the art of medicine under the careful watch of more senior
physicians.
Internship is a frightening time for all of us. We’ve studied medicine for 4 years, memorized
ungodly amounts of largely irrelevant material, played “doctor” in third and
fourth year clerkships, but never before have lives actually been put in our hands. We know the expression, “never get sick in
July” because that’s when all the well-intentioned, but generally incompetent
new interns start caring for patients. And so, as Panda describes the experience,
we tremble as we begin the new stage in our careers – applying our medical knowledge
to real life situations, and praying that we don’t kill anybody.
I’ll never forget my first day of internship. I must have drawn the short straw, because
not only was I assigned to the busiest, sickest ward in my hospital (the HIV
and infectious disease unit), but I was on call that day (so I’d be working for
24 hours straight) with the most hated resident in the program (he had a
reputation for treating interns poorly and being arrogant to the nurses). As I reviewed my patient list, I noticed that
the sign out sheet (the paper “baton” of information handed to you by the last
intern who cared for the patients – meant to give you a synopsis of what they
needed) was supremely unhelpful. Chicken
scratch with diagnoses and little check boxes of “to do’s” for me. I was really nervous.
So I began to round on my patients – introducing myself to
each of them, letting them know that I was their new doctor. I figured that even if I couldn’t completely
understand the sign out notes, at least by eye-balling them I’d have an idea of
whether or not they were in imminent danger of coding or some other awful thing
that I figured they’d be trying to do.
My third patient (of 15) was a thin, elderly Hispanic man,
Mr. Santos. He smiled at me when I came
in the door – the kind of lecherous smile that a certain type of man gives to
all women of child bearing age. I
ignored it and introduced myself in a professional manner and began to check
his vital signs. I was listening to his
heart, and I honestly couldn’t hear much of anything. There was a weird very distant beat –
something I wouldn’t expect for such a thin chest. The man himself looked awful, but I really
wasn’t sure why – he just seemed really, really ill.
My pager was going off mercilessly all night. I wondered if this was how the nurses got to
know the characters of their new interns – to test them by paging them for
anything under the sun, tempting us to tip our hand if we had tendencies to be
impatient or disrespectful. But in the
midst of all the “we need you to sign this Tylenol order” pages, there came a
concerning one: “Hey, Mr. Santos doesn’t look good. Better get up here.”
My heart raced as I rushed to his bedside. Yup, he sure didn’t look too good. He was breathing heavily, and had some kind
of fearful expression on his face. I
didn’t really know what to do, so I decided to call the resident in charge
(much as I was loathe to do so, since I knew he would humiliate me for bothering
him).
The resident appeared in a froth – “why are you paging
me? What’s wrong with the patient? Why do you need me here? This better be good!”
“Um… Mr. Santos doesn’t look too good.” I said, frightened
to death.
“What do you mean ‘he doesn’t look too good?’ Can you be a little bit more specific” he
said, sarcasm dripping from his tongue.
“Well, I can’t hear his heart and he’s breathing hard.”
“I see,” said the resident, rolling his eyes. He marched off towards the patient’s room,
certain to make an example of me and this case.
I trotted along behind him, hoping I hadn’t been wrong in
paging him – trying to remember the ACLS
protocol from 2 weeks prior.
The resident drew back the curtain around the man’s bed with
one grand sweep of the arm. “Mr. Santos,
how are you doing?” he shouted, as if the man were deaf.
The man was staring at the wall, taking in deep, labored
breaths of air. I saw that the resident
immediately realized that this was serious, and he placed his stethoscope on
the man’s chest.
I approached on the other side of the bed and held his
hand. “Mr. Santos, I’m back, remember
me?” He smiled and looked me straight in
the eye.
He replied, “Angel.” (in Spanish) Then he let out a deep breath and all was
silent.
The resident shook the man, “Mr. Santos? Mr. Santos?!”
There was no response.
“Should I call a code?” I asked sheepishly.
“Nope, he’s DNR,” said the resident.
I was flabbergasted.
“Yep, you just killed your first patient. Welcome to intern year.”
As I thought about his cruel accusation, I was comforted by
the fact that at least, as Mr. Santos released his final breath, he thought he
had seen an angel. Maybe my presence
with him that night did something good… even though I was only a lowly intern.
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
April 30th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
1 Comment »
There are cherry trees just outside my patio and 2 days ago
they decided to drop the majority of their pink petals on the ground. It created a luxurious, 2 inch deep floral
carpet that surrounded my home. It was so
beautiful and soft in appearance that I couldn’t resist scooping up fist fulls
of the flower bits and holding them out to my husband. It was a sunny blue day and I giggled as I
asked him to join me in my child like glee.
“I’m not touching them,” he said, “It will make my nose
itch.”
“Aw, come on honey,” I cajoled him, “these petals won’t be
here like this again for another year!
Touch them, they’re so soft!”
He glanced at me sideways.
“No, I don’t want to touch them.
They’re dirty.”
I was crest fallen at first, but then I started thinking
about how something so beautiful to one person, can look entirely different to
someone with allergies. What a sad thing
to have taken away – the ability to truly stop and smell the flowers. I count my blessings that I have no allergies
to anything.This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
April 22nd, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in Announcements
2 Comments »
Alright so now you know I love cookies. But this is just a small part of my culinary
weakness – I actually like all food, and the less healthy it is, the better it
tastes (in my opinion). Of course I try
to eat lots of green leafy veggies, lean meats, and citrus fruits… but how can
one resist hazelnut gelato or Camembert cheese?
Or who would turn up his nose at Kobe
beef with truffle oil-drizzled mashed potatoes and butter? Or what about hot scones and clotted cream
with strawberry jam?
Sigh. I must admit
that my extreme enjoyment of all things gastronomical has landed me in quite a
position on the exercise side of the calorie balance equation. I’ve never been a natural athlete though I do
like getting out into nature.
In fact, I’ve been jogging (one could not describe my
efforts as running) since I was a pre-teen.
I like the minimal hand-eye coordination required for the sport, the
virtual inability to let teammates down (running by yourself has a low risk of
disappointing others), and the freedom of being able to go wherever you like –
breathing in the fresh air, taking in the landscape, and letting the mind
wander.
And so I’ve been trying to get back into jogging as this
winter has been the most sedentary of my life.
I am now experiencing what my profession calls “deconditioning” and have
been in near awe at my body’s ability to lose its capacity to perform something
it’s been doing for decades – all within the span of <6 months.
I was recently amazed by how difficult jogging had
become. My legs felt heavy, my heart was
pounding, everyone was passing me on the trail… I was becoming quite
discouraged, when I suddenly happened upon a brilliant idea: rope someone else
into my suffering!
I approached an unsuspecting friend of mine with a proposal:
“would you like to jog with me 3 times a week in the early mornings?” I tried to make that sound as appealing as
possible, putting on my best hopeful grin while sizing her up and wondering if
she could tolerate my slow pace. Much to
my surprise, she responded with an enthusiastic “yes!” She said that she was “not any good at
running” but was trying to get back in shape and would welcome some
accountability.
And so the two of us have been trundling along a running
trail each Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning for the past month. We’ve had a lot of fun catching up on each
other’s lives, and somehow the exercise has become less arduous and more
enjoyable.
So what’s the moral of this rambling post? Exercise is hard – it’s not always fun, and
if you haven’t done it in a while, you’re guaranteed to feel fairly embarrassed
by your inabilities at first. But don’t
give up! Find a nice exercise buddy and make
time to do it regularly. That way you’ll
be healthier, happier, and able to eat occasional rich food with less guilt! Anyone out there been struggling to get more active?
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
