A Sunday Night PSA

This picture is the new ad campaign for Milwaukee's fight against infant co-sleeping. The campaign's purpose is to make people aware of the dangers of co-sleeping and in effect, reduce Milwaukee's infant mortality rate by 10%. As I looked into the reason behind the campaign, I was shocked to learn that certain zip codes in Milwaukee have an infant mortality rate higher than many 3rd world countries. In fact, they are neck and neck with Albania for rates of infant deaths. The rate is even higher for African-American babies.

As unsettling as this ad is, once you get past the shock and confusion (I wondered how sleeping with a baby could be more dangerous for me than sleeping with a meat cleaver....then I got it) you might just understand how something as innocent as sharing a bed with your baby can have a tragic ending. Because the facts speak so much louder than I ever could, please visit this website for more information. A little dose of perspective seems fitting to wrap up this Thanksgiving weekend.

Life Lessons From Swayze

My dog Swayze loves walks. Let me rephrase that, lives for walks. The only thing she loves more is my husband. I come in a distant third. I try to take her on long walks around the neighborhood at least a few times a week. Swayze likes to play dumb but she is actually pretty perceptive. Case in point...No matter how long we walk, whether 5 minutes or 50, she slows down considerably on the way home. It's embarrassing really. She'll lag so far behind me that I'm practically dragging her down the street towards home. I'm sure people drive by and think "Look at that poor exhausted dog being dragged down the street by that awful woman." At first I was concerned that she was out of shape and was truly exhausted. Then I took her to the dog park and proceeded to spend a good 20 minutes laughing at her greyhound-chasing-a-rabbit impression. No, the dog does not get tired. Ever. So why does she do this?

Swayze understands what so many of us choose not to remember. Time is fleeting. Especially when that time is spent doing something you truly love. When was the last time you stopped and looked around you? Looked at things the way they were at that very moment and saw them? I recently spent an awesome weekend in Chicago with my husband, just because. I lived there for 4 years before moving to Madison and I thought I had my fill of the big city life. I spent a good portion of my time there waiting to be able to leave. I wanted so badly to get on with the next phase of my life, to find a job I loved. I am so lucky to have that now.

Over the weekend, I went for a run around downtown Chicago. Everywhere I looked, I was inundated with memories. The restaurant I went to by myself and was asked out by a waiter, the first time I ran from my apartment all the way to the Hancock building, my all time favorite cupcake place, the building where I met my husband, the boutique where I bought my wedding dress, the hotel where we had our wedding reception. As much as I love my life now, I yearned to go back in time if only to stop and look and smell and taste and be in those moments again. Because unlike Swayze, I didn't slow down to enjoy where I was. Instead, I focused on where I was going and tried to get there as fast as I could. I wish I knew then what Swayze has always known: Take time to enjoy the journey because home will wait for your return, but time will not.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

This week, as I was sitting down to teach my team on the wards, one of my residents decided to spill her emotional garbage out on the table. She was tired and stressed and not in the mood to stop working and learn. I sat and listened with a polite smile on my face but on the inside I was burning. How dare she question the value of an attending wanting to teach their team! When I was a resident (there I said it, I'm officially old) I would never think about expressing a lack of interest in learning to an attending. At least not out loud. In front of the entire team. After this incident I found another one of my hospitalist colleagues to vent. She was appropriately incensed at that resident's behavior. "I'm not taking it personally" I said. And she said "of course you are." Yes, she was right. I took it as a personal attack. I took it to mean that I wasn't interesting enough. That what I had to say had a diminished value in the grand scheme of getting the work done and getting home in time for dinner. How fragile my ego is that a stressed resident can make me question my worth as a teacher!

I've thought about this a lot this week. About how I let her get under my skin. How I let her dampen my enthusiasm for teaching. How I let someone else's baggage become my own. There's a word for that you know. It's codependency. Codependency is defined in broad terms as: a psychological condition or a relationship in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is affected with a pathological condition; dependence on the needs of or control by another. I know this sounds dramatic, but in the most basic sense I let her dysfunction (pathological condition) manipulate me into thinking that I had my own dysfunction. How many times in the past week have you been codependent? Probably more than you think. It takes an enlightened person to stay focused on abiding by their own values in the face of dissent. But it can be done with awareness and discipline. Eleanor Roosevelt said "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent." You always have control of your own feelings, no one else's.

That resident has since taken me aside and apologized for her actions. I empathize with her, I really do. I remember how hard residency was. But I stressed to her the need for professionalism at all times in our line of work and to remember that we are mentoring impressionable learners. What I didn't tell her was that she made my day with her apology. And that she forced me to come to terms with my own path towards interdependence and away from codependence.