I highly recommend this for all stressed out residents.

Brad and I took a little camping trip out to the coast. We sat and stared at the ocean, read some books, grille some fish....and best of all....THE CELL PHONES DIDN'T WORK.





Yes, that's me. I hadn't showered in two days, so it's just as well noone can see my face.




The place was called Salt point State Park, and it's about 3 hours from San Francisco up Highway One. Highway One is a 2 lane narrow winding road that sits on the edge of the cliffs, and is the only highway that reaches the coast.



Yup, this is one of the reasons I had to move back to California.

The Cat Showdown

I don't encourage this behavior, truly, I don't.

Death is the only guarantee.

I just came home from dinner with an old friend of mine; I knew him from junior high all the way to college and now lo and behold, we're both at at the same Medical Center.

He just told me that another really good mutual friend of ours from high school, well, his dad just died.

All of a sudden, his dad just...collapsed.

I stared into my ramen for the rest of dinner, just saying over and over, "Adam's dad died? He did?"

Because Adam's dad was only 65? And because Albert and I and Adam are only 30? And we are too young to have our parents die?

Because even as a doctor, no matter how much death we face everyday, there's a certain protective element in our psyche that makes us believe that we will NOT be the next body on slab. Because otherwise, the fear of living would make it much too hard to go on.

Life is fragile.

My first stalker!!!

I get this page from the family medicine admin room earlier this week so I page them back thinking it's a refill problem or something like that.

No. It's a "pt" who earlier had come to the office asking to talk to me. According to the admin lady, this patient was very jittery, talking rapidly and impatiently (is everyone thinking MANIC?) and asked for me by name. The patient appearently said he "knew" me previously, insisted on seeing me, named my high school, and gave a list of phone numbers for me to call him back at.

I think I have my first stalker.

UPDATE: so uh, did a little investigation, and this guy has schizoaffective disorder and I seem to remember taking a late night phone call in psych triage a few months ago where this patient was screaming into the phone that he was GOING TO FUCKING BLOW HIS BRAINS OUT. lovely. guess he never blew his brains out.