tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62385113883061936192024-03-19T00:43:52.431-07:00Redwoods and RunningJennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.comBlogger216125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-85215165034708428512024-01-27T12:04:00.000-08:002024-01-27T12:04:16.388-08:00Driftwood<p> I have not surfed for several weeks. Aside from the size of the waves, beyond my ability, I might get clocked by a redwood tree.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY5idcSoVNfxCdSOeV8pTZ6JHaj5rpjHOUfsn0xfeJ1PCmy7fLNO4QBYROg2nOD1uC4_zF-1FiIvHzuSO7xwGonzAvwtNYP6bZ5V2kTCzExPqrW6T7OCDC6zgnhBuiEc4ycxGCzbruJFphG4mFoKvN0X-S99rA7PmBXHODcFQaBPXWLz-zxets5bBk8ohJ/s4032/IMG_8866.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY5idcSoVNfxCdSOeV8pTZ6JHaj5rpjHOUfsn0xfeJ1PCmy7fLNO4QBYROg2nOD1uC4_zF-1FiIvHzuSO7xwGonzAvwtNYP6bZ5V2kTCzExPqrW6T7OCDC6zgnhBuiEc4ycxGCzbruJFphG4mFoKvN0X-S99rA7PmBXHODcFQaBPXWLz-zxets5bBk8ohJ/s320/IMG_8866.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Humboldt style driftwood is not for the faint of heart. As with almost everything else in this far Northern California blend of the sublime and the ferocious. This ought to segue into a long discussion about Beethoven, but I shall spare you.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP4YOQb8xNDZAAfscR51gIiARqn-J-2goojF29UY9UihwXe9zWbkOeQSqXldUCTwP2pEhx7BYOycDOyYkwrnLqy4uyo4biuzcDCPAf4p5zq2swxoaLSGYUnZU4NG8acMAT96ANiceDog2d5-vk6zYEE6FN3UiX_W64M9b5iNfaY18qzTFnFZ5vZX1dZCh5/s4032/IMG_8867.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP4YOQb8xNDZAAfscR51gIiARqn-J-2goojF29UY9UihwXe9zWbkOeQSqXldUCTwP2pEhx7BYOycDOyYkwrnLqy4uyo4biuzcDCPAf4p5zq2swxoaLSGYUnZU4NG8acMAT96ANiceDog2d5-vk6zYEE6FN3UiX_W64M9b5iNfaY18qzTFnFZ5vZX1dZCh5/s320/IMG_8867.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Buster, the second dog love of my life (after childhood pal Brandy, named by my pastor father after his color, not as his porn name, no offense to Brandys everywhere as it is actually cool name), used to bring me beached trees, actual trees, dump them at my feet and say “you strong, capable woman shall now throw this tree and I will then fetch it for you.” Buster was bewildered by my declaration that I was not actually the princess warrior he was picturing.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaiP3ZyZiLOxv_ABYNZY5w0W3303tdC3e5nUuIQzumnsfkF8Hu4JI_8xsGTQZ5I-8G791yyoM_RWX2t4fC0uPwtiq4Ts0G1JGbrMIisWEqqh6OGNtyBvadVelT5GI-kH5bCXiJeIn7eL5vKJcKggJF7cvdj7n-tJYlgV9ldwny2ynzMMCYEoVZCxpR6JDz/s2592/IMG_0627.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1936" data-original-width="2592" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaiP3ZyZiLOxv_ABYNZY5w0W3303tdC3e5nUuIQzumnsfkF8Hu4JI_8xsGTQZ5I-8G791yyoM_RWX2t4fC0uPwtiq4Ts0G1JGbrMIisWEqqh6OGNtyBvadVelT5GI-kH5bCXiJeIn7eL5vKJcKggJF7cvdj7n-tJYlgV9ldwny2ynzMMCYEoVZCxpR6JDz/s320/IMG_0627.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>A few weeks ago Miles (current dog love, bless his 13 year old heart of gold) and I were on a beach walk when a sudden storm blew up. The wind was scary in that “is this a freaking cyclone?’ Sort of way and it did not rain, rather it hailed ice stones that actually hurt. Being exposed on the beach, the first place I dove for with dog in arms was a great big log. We huddled there, still getting pelted but less fearful of being blown into oblivion when there was a fantastical lightning strike and beach-shaking thunder. Miles, who is cachectic and relatively hairless after a grumpy groomer decided he needed to be stripped naked, was shaking and we locked eyes for a second, maybe both thinking it had been a nice life… </p><p>I scooped him up again and scrambled up a dune and God seemed to have deus ex machinaed a hole covered by a bush right over the peak of the dune where we rode out the rest of the storm. When we could finally walk back to our car, me pretty much blue lipped frozen at this point, a sassy rainbow appeared. Nice one Mother Nature! </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Before storm</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRicokUSGnKSZDzwmnJAtGIso1-x9mCJEVHCxJDjLM0UjARChjL8nMWXlS4yv-kmaeiqe43Pw4RbdLHzI8KhyphenhyphennfdtDaylfCpK9hXjoxsQGYMUPxXtg7_TdPXhmmH6AwcZkLOgBbIkoiRwq1K7WxRhhK2-mVi3T5KBy_zu4T0Kupcub40Hb2sthmVzaNB0v/s4032/IMG_8587.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRicokUSGnKSZDzwmnJAtGIso1-x9mCJEVHCxJDjLM0UjARChjL8nMWXlS4yv-kmaeiqe43Pw4RbdLHzI8KhyphenhyphennfdtDaylfCpK9hXjoxsQGYMUPxXtg7_TdPXhmmH6AwcZkLOgBbIkoiRwq1K7WxRhhK2-mVi3T5KBy_zu4T0Kupcub40Hb2sthmVzaNB0v/s320/IMG_8587.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> After storm</span><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYhOVGadNtwPJ9WvFSPImRekPckiDoa_zcBeVI8XXJKE85q_UT6fvebtAyiJr8FyvETX1W7tgwrdkrdPKyV12issrGEiGcGaWwgiIlKR-py64NTMeQx1zPZe235i9t3T0lbIrqko4S98eyXSMmtenqY1drT9wG3zgYcX44D23XKkRRpwqmqQOPMEBGoZwk/s4032/IMG_8790.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYhOVGadNtwPJ9WvFSPImRekPckiDoa_zcBeVI8XXJKE85q_UT6fvebtAyiJr8FyvETX1W7tgwrdkrdPKyV12issrGEiGcGaWwgiIlKR-py64NTMeQx1zPZe235i9t3T0lbIrqko4S98eyXSMmtenqY1drT9wG3zgYcX44D23XKkRRpwqmqQOPMEBGoZwk/s320/IMG_8790.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span>Today, as we walked among the wood drifted upon the beach, we managed to just miss the rain. January has been making up for our relatively dry winter. I was obsessed with the sky and the way the wind blew eddys of sand. Sneaker wave weather for sure so we hugged the cliff, always with an eye out for an escape route. Rip tides apparent. I miss being in the water, substituting the pool after long work days. Still healing but not the same.</span><p></p><p>Sky like a paint by number masterpiece, and the strong smell of cow dung. I kept checking my shoes but it was just the way the wind was blowing, exactly picking up the scent and spreading the news, or perhaps spreading the moos.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYF647caRu5Mz6XnjkCcfmOgcwfDxi8pr9r9680FO8DQDAHZJxX8tO3qJuUdzihMPLjjPWg3Ow_0lltXMstDOL8xvwf2jzCCvDVs9sLuFEZRt0B1DGNdglVnNx9oZ_ohZjkTBDZptqgD4_awh7v-Sv1Ix92tM37gbNrn29X83-SDw3MYRTwCUS5JoXPlgj/s4032/IMG_8873.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYF647caRu5Mz6XnjkCcfmOgcwfDxi8pr9r9680FO8DQDAHZJxX8tO3qJuUdzihMPLjjPWg3Ow_0lltXMstDOL8xvwf2jzCCvDVs9sLuFEZRt0B1DGNdglVnNx9oZ_ohZjkTBDZptqgD4_awh7v-Sv1Ix92tM37gbNrn29X83-SDw3MYRTwCUS5JoXPlgj/s320/IMG_8873.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Diagnostically speaking, it’s been a good week. Just when the dysfunction and drama of modern medicine has me down, I remember the joy of noticing something with my eyeballs—not needing a fancy scan or a blood test—-just seeing the malady and knowing. It’s especially great when there is something that can be done to heal, to help. Pondering the way my brain works, I seem to have a knack for patterns. Reading music, reading EKGs and seeing/feeling/noticing a subtle sign on physical exam. Just don’t ask me to remember a name, a part of my brain woefully underdeveloped, or to remember all the brand names of the millions of medications now available for type 2 diabetes mellitus.</p><p>Though if you want to know my super secret memory device for this:</p><p>“Some guys are losers” =SGLT2 inhibitors (the -lozins)</p><p>“Good looking people surf”=GLP-1 agonist (the -tides)</p><p>Driftwood has been useful to humans over the ages, as a supply to build boats and other stuff. It has this lovely, twisty, water-polished surface that elevates it to almost-art. It isn’t unusual on our beaches to see driftwood forts, some elaborately designed. Driftwood is a place of refuge when surprised by a storm next to the not really all that Pacific Ocean. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeTEBcKW4LNl8_KBAT7nUVg7u96eZzfkqz0EAphsZJIz2bvssigLbAvt9kUaLffuVpZAo-agRtT9BlYcE9lXGgcX4MIi4QZ-eqvkyXphND59HJza5UH8ukj-d7lBKsH1xjjo_9JJrUPNOZ0jf00oIZtJTrCknv8z_0g5z2r261gPeVozlF-Tu4mojHXvCI/s4032/IMG_9550.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeTEBcKW4LNl8_KBAT7nUVg7u96eZzfkqz0EAphsZJIz2bvssigLbAvt9kUaLffuVpZAo-agRtT9BlYcE9lXGgcX4MIi4QZ-eqvkyXphND59HJza5UH8ukj-d7lBKsH1xjjo_9JJrUPNOZ0jf00oIZtJTrCknv8z_0g5z2r261gPeVozlF-Tu4mojHXvCI/s320/IMG_9550.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>And don’t even get me started on the magnificent fact that we are alive, all entangled in the wildness of a universe that produced Bach, the surfboard, Miles the dog, Miles Davis and the warm bath after the beach. Just at this very specific right now moment, things are ok.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMjeuckHhrgE7HGBTgFXQV5DATCzAI9Rc-HK4h2QjPTFI6l9JRc8-XJCznWcu_SSUjAynq9BA3NoYhe0u2edwYfiSsqiUISMl8QhOmhvq2yPMpLw3T0UjkGjRd1TcS6otUCoxk50yXt1wqk1LX0vbGYcG_ThkFHE-TmADbrksVkft-qPBO-8kIhhnSmRWe/s640/IMG_8860.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMjeuckHhrgE7HGBTgFXQV5DATCzAI9Rc-HK4h2QjPTFI6l9JRc8-XJCznWcu_SSUjAynq9BA3NoYhe0u2edwYfiSsqiUISMl8QhOmhvq2yPMpLw3T0UjkGjRd1TcS6otUCoxk50yXt1wqk1LX0vbGYcG_ThkFHE-TmADbrksVkft-qPBO-8kIhhnSmRWe/s320/IMG_8860.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-86311476897553854812023-10-29T20:40:00.000-07:002023-10-29T20:40:03.523-07:00Well Tempered<p> Johann Sebastian Bach probably wrote some of the well tempered clavier during his month in prison. He snubbed a royal who didn’t want him to go work somewhere else. </p><p>Some of the well tempered clavier was thus written in his head in likely miserable conditions. If you’ve never tried writing a fugue, under the best conditions it’s sort of like being asked to thread a needle seven different ways while blindfolded and standing on your head. </p><p>The well tempered clavier was written before there were pianos. Purists might play it on a harpsichord or clavichord. Glenn Gould plays it like an alien who was actually Bach on another planet.</p><p>The 48 pieces come in two book volumes, I’d say 6 eight track cassettes, 4 CDs, 8 LPs and just a blip on Itunes. Each piece has a prelude and fugue demonstrating, yes indeed, a well tempered keyboard. If you start on a C and do it in major and minor and climb up the scale by half notes till B (then back to C again), all those guys sound in tune. It’s math, it’s art, it’s engineering. It’s like that scene where the Von Trapp children sing about deer and sewing. Threading a needle.</p><p>When the world is falling apart, I usually rest in the well tempered clavier. Some call it the Old Testament of music. Like “in the beginning” there was Bach. But in the same way the well tempered circle has no beginning nor end, there was music encircling our ancestors. Maybe we sang before we grunted coarse words. </p><p>Bach just happens to tap into my own primordial goo, which seems to be located in the liminal electrical space between my atrium and ventricle and between my motor cortex and my fingers. If you notice I’m well tempered on any given day, thank Bach. </p><p>Prison Bach especially. The guy who threw him in prison was a monstrously rich megalomaniac-JSB actually got off easy compared to some other employees who didn’t wear the proverbial red hat for the Duke of Haters. It’s a good reminder that mean people in power is just a part of the human condition. They might win a little sometimes but in the sense that not a single soul can hold back the long arc of beauty and justice, it’s a hollow victory. A deep well tempers grief with compassionate waters. A well that welcomes all. Please notice who usually gathers at the wells of the world, to tend to the thirst of their children and their community.</p><p>Please notice the helpers.</p><p><a href="https://youtu.be/HZ_muo3BzI8?si=FNS-CCA2f2LALsYE">https://youtu.be/HZ_muo3BzI8?si=FNS-CCA2f2LALsYE</a><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-67213110251348267232023-05-13T21:48:00.000-07:002023-05-13T21:48:38.179-07:00The Other Mother<p><u>A Poem, or Something, About Mother's Day, Neil Gaiman and Carnivals</u></p><p>I want to shrink inside of myself. I walk slightly askew and my waist has thickened. I gave birth once and parented thrice, I doctored entirely too much. Let me give this advice. </p><p>Don't take me advice, but rather crawl into the hole in the wall leading to the Other Mother where you might find better, button eyes. You might find weird and wild and wise women in disguises. Women baking magic cookies. Aromatic bread rising. Enterprising</p><p>Women make poor mothers. Clara Schumann, for example, always had other things to do. The fact is your career and ovulation peak together. And even while neglecting their children, women physicians make two million dollars less than men over their time in the profession.</p><p>I will make the concession that being a doctor is not an excuse for prison kid. I did the best I could but it was never enough and Other Mother, the one I dream about, would've put the lid on the drugs and the drugs and the drugs pervading our child's beautiful body. Invading their heart.</p><p>Though they say it was not because of us, still we are broken apart. </p><p>Other Mother might have breast fed longer, not rounding on the wards or taking exams. Time off to tickle toes. This mother's mother died just shy of 4 months of first baby's new life. Breast fed at the side of Oma's hospital bed.</p><p>So I fled from grief. Running five steps in front of sorrow, its hot breath on the nape of my neck. Big love thrown to baby, baby and baby. Happily ever after in our house by the big trees.</p><p>Mighty Other Mother in her perfection, much better than I at protection, I paled in her reflection, my kids demanded an election. Unseat the one with the screaming pager! Real mother, Shoo!</p><p>But let's keep her chocolate chip cookies and that one song she sings is pretty good too. You know, "Müde bin ich, geh zur ruh..."She is less than we expected and more than we knew. She took us to see Beyonce. </p><p>And plays piano much too early and too often. Demands perfection but never asks enough. Too white, too worried, too hurried, too busy, too </p><p>Unlike Other Mother. The one with just the right stuff. Like the astronauts in that movie. Like s'mores or peanut butter cups. </p><p>Three points from mid-court, all net, no drama, Other Mama</p><p>And yet this is what you get, the one with a stenotic spine, a love of Beethoven, a wish for more and more compassion and kindness, naive and not ever influential in the way, say</p><p>The Pioneer Woman is. Or that Perfect Mother on Instagram. @OtherMotherIsBest #ButtonEyes</p><p>I would do it better if I could do it again, be the mother that the Other Mother could only dream of being. The mother my three would seal up the wall to magic for, just so they could sit in the solid world of us, made of real eyes, stinky dogs, loud pianos, parents dancing, redwood-fronded, scratched, quarter sawn oak floors for sock sliding. Like some kind of carnival ride of love. Like the Scrambler or Tilt-a-Whirl:- thrilling, nauseating, with your companions shoved up against you with the gravity of life. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-75191288715175897752022-09-17T22:15:00.000-07:002022-09-17T22:15:06.960-07:00Viaduct Kiss<p> Recurring dream: a viaduct from my childhood town appears, I drive over it and something magical happens. One side of the viaduct is safe (the side that goes to my home). The other is some kind of slightly off Terabithia, magical but not always in a good way.</p><p>In real life, the viaduct bridges over railroad tracks. Under this viaduct I once kissed a self-identified dirtball. "Why are you hanging out with a dirtball?" said he. I was a practically invisible nerd with braces and hair I did not yet understand how to manage. It was actually a nice kiss, all clandestine. Have you ever been under a viaduct where the slope meets the underside of the bridge and you can tuck yourself in behind a pillar and hide? </p><p>At the beach today there were truck tire marks all over, by the water, on the dunes. THE truck in question was stuck in some impossible position in the sand, truly I do not think it will be able to be extricated unless a crane is involved. The hair on the back of my neck stood up when Dog and I passed by them, as they were doing some maneuver with a rope to try to, well, try to do something that indicates they slept through physics class. We went along our way and spent an hour by the ocean on this luscious day. September on a Northern California beach is a balmy, gentle time. Today was a good day for a beginner surfer, with small, organized sets of waves pealing in regularly. Dog is almost 12 years old and he cannot really run like he used to, but he enjoys this beach as much as anyone can ever enjoy anything. Like joy with a fluffy top knot and 4 stick legs. </p><p>We were passing by THE truck, still stuck ass backwards in the dune, and in that way that any woman on earth can understand, I took a wide berth around it with Dog on short leash. Still, I was surprised when the dog of THE truck rushed us and attacked my old boy. THE people of THE truck screamed at the attacking pup and finally pulled it off, and I just got the heck out of there as fast as I could, in self-preservation mode. I did not even realize till we were part way home that Dog was injured, and bleeding.</p><p>A vet visit, $300 and some antibiotics-Dog will be OK. </p><p>This past week a governor enticed some traumatized immigrants onto a plane and dumped them at Martha's Vineyard, then laughed and crowed about it to a rally of supporters who cheered out loud, in public. This is America. Grown ups take joy rides on a serene beach and have animals in their care they cannot handle. People taunt women and children and men who have literally walked hundreds of miles at risk of death to reach our country. Little girls are raped and forced to carry the subsequent baby to term. This is America.</p><p>I am nearly 53 years old. I was thinking by this point in life I would have a grasp on what's happening around me. That somehow it would all make sense. But I still do not understand why people are mean. What is the point? And why is it so often worn as a badge of honor? </p><p>When I was 8 or 9 years old, a man called our home and I answered. He said "I'm going to come and kill your Daddy!". Apparently this was related to Dad allowing a group of gay men to meet in the church where he served as pastor. In my dreams, the home where I grew up represents the safe side of the viaduct. But in reality, it was where 8 year old me was introduced to the way someone can assault your space with hate. My parents died long ago (of cancer, not wing nuts, though perhaps their cells mutated in response to the stress of trying to be kind in a fucked up world). The childhood home has had many other owners since. It is reported someone has even cooked meth in my mother's old kitchen. Where we used to eat our breakfast cereal, and bake cookies, and where you could stand at the window over the sink and watch the deer eating my father's garden. </p><p>In my dreams, the viaduct has led to Zion National Park, where I was trying to take a run and kept getting lost. Once it led to a VA clinic that I had to work at and for some reason deliver babies. In reality it still leads to the IGA and from the top you can see my old high school, just sitting there and still demoralizing new generations of teenagers. I never graduated from high school, so maybe the viaduct dreams are the deep anxiety that someone will pull me over on this road of life and require me to complete my PE classes. In my old uniform.</p><p>The Terabithia I seek probably doesn't require driving over the viaduct where a dirtball kissed an invisible nerd. Might be that all the magic I need is accessed by paying kind attention to the people around me. That's pretty much what my parents taught me. How we respond to the constant assault on serenity, otherwise known as being a human on earth, is a choice we make. You can cook meth in my Mom's kitchen, but you cannot diminish the lovingkindness she brought into this world. You can want to shoot a man of Christ for being kind to others, but it won't heal your own despicable despair. You can drive over the beach crabs and make a perfectly nice dog whimper in pain, but you cannot take away his pure joy that only seems to increase even though the beach trip has happened a million times before.</p><p>You can be mean. I wish you wouldn't be though.</p>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-16595126242619097982022-07-31T08:38:00.000-07:002022-07-31T08:38:28.964-07:00Invisibilidad<p> Había una vez, ella era invisible.</p><p>I was thinking about the pandemic. Women did the bulk of the child care when children suddenly found themselves at home for a year or more. Same women might also be trying to work. They might have had to stop working in order to support their children in zoom school. It was expected the women would be the ones to do this. Women also did and do the bulk of the nursing, tending to people dying horribly on ventilators in the ICU. Nursing those in the overfull emergency rooms that still cannot accommodate everyone on any given day. Nurses getting assaulted by patients as they do their essential function. A somewhat worn and tattered "Heroes Work Here" sign greeting them as they walk in for each shift. Women are doctors too and they are less invisible but the $2 million in wages missing over their 40 year career compared with the men doctors is yet to be found. </p><p>As my husband and I soon celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, I am thinking too about marriage. Why was I so fortunate to have a partner that makes me feel seen every day? If anything I worry he does not feel seen as he has inhabited the traditional role of stay at home parent during our life together. Marriage is interesting in its original purpose of subjugating women into a role where they need protecting by a man. Particularly white women who are currently being forcibly put back into their role of propagators of the race. It is no coincidence that Roe falls in this era of renewed energy around white supremacy as the creed of our nation.</p><p>I might be angry, and I realize that is not very ladylike of me. But I am thinking about feminine power and how it is the missing piece of <span>the healing arts in our country. The data are clear that while we have mad technology in our system of medical care, the outcomes are poor compared to other countries of similar wealth. We spend a lot more on it too. When I was pregnant in medical school the men were befuddled by my very presence. I pumped breast milk in the women's bathroom stall. I pretended not to be a mother so that I could be a resident that people respected. I worked and worked and worked. Privileged as I am, I can see this was not ideal, now, 27 years later. But perhaps more importantly on a societal basis is the parts of me I tried not to bring into my healing art, pushing down my tenderness and compassion for fear of not being seen. As recent as last week a male colleague was chiding me for the work I do, which is high intensity, low </span>productivity medicine that focuses on the goals and concerns of each human being for whom I serve as physician. I think his words were "what exactly is it you do all day?"</p><p>If I am invisible those I serve are invisible minus a million. Like some bullies on the playground the world screams this at them every minute. Like one hand clapping I know the self is a mirage. Like hands clasped I know we are more like the trees in a forest, where it appears they are all individuals but if you dig a bit underground you will see they are all connected to each other. My hands play Rachmaninoff and they can palpate a liver. For this I can thanks the many teachers in my life, my root system of people who shared their skills and believed in me. That saw me. </p><p>My anger too is not in isolation. There are whole communities of people and particularly people who identify as women and girls that are strengthening our connections. We sit with each other in silence as a warrior sangha, but since we have powerful presence we do not need words. I invite the 50% of white women who voted and continue to vote for fascism and self annihilation to consider that they could be a part of this sangha. Or congregation. Or root system. Or a girls night out that lasts well beyond the dancing and frivolity.</p><p>In medicine, in healthcare, in relationships of healing, the feminine is what we all need in order to see the outcomes improve. A heart transplant is cool. My dad had one, actually. But we also need to notice the women who are dying in pregnancy and childbirth, and now forced childbirth. Are women worthy of living? </p><p>Once upon a time she was invisible. </p>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-89017694903381962082022-03-27T15:01:00.000-07:002022-03-27T15:01:12.017-07:00Define Blue Eyes<p>Define fine. Is it pleasing, first-class, thin and wispy or what a teenager says when they are feeling snippy? "I'm <i>fine</i>." Maybe it is not being bombed or maybe it is being bombed and the world actually caring, versus living somewhere, say Syria, that does not lead to people posting supportive memes on social media. Fine is how I would describe a nice human being. Or the Steinway I recently decided to buy. Fine means okay, rare, mundane, or it is furious or it is grains of sand settling in the tight curls of my big, goofy poodle after a run at the beach. A fine speaker gives a solid speech. </p><p>Someone angry with blond hair and two X chromosomes demanded that Ketanji Brown Jackson define "woman." KBJ continued to smile, though I doubt she felt fine, and gently reminded angry XX that she is not vying for a seat on the Supreme Court of biology. But of course, biology is law and politics moreso than science these days, and nine justices get to decide what I do with my body and you do with yours and whether my transgender child should be allowed to live. What defines woman? When I was a tween and giving piano recitals, I wanted to wear tails but was told I could not because I am a girl. When I go to work now, my hair is too short or too long or my body too fat or too thin. It is hard to be comfortable in your skin. There, I defined "woman." I would rather be Circe than the sailors of Odysseus or Odysseus himself. Though it may also be fine to be a swine.</p><p>The best part of definitions is they are often wrong. Like the close-but-no-cigar way we all go through life, narrating the events as if we know and understand them. All of us walking about with thought-bubbles like cartoons. If our mind bubbles were readable, imagine the cacophony! Imagine how hard it would be to follow the billions of story lines. I would say to you "did you read what that guy just thought???" </p><p>Imagine having to read Ted Cruz' thought-bubbles.</p><p>A little bit ago I gathered with friends to watch the ashes of Dan be scattered by his wife and child. It is the third ash-scattering I have attended, the first two being my parents. Have you ever tasted human ash? Or felt it? It is so weird how they put it in a plastic bag, like someone's sandwich. I wonder if it is the whole person or just a sampling? Is it really that actual person or do they just mix everyone up and dole out a bit to each family? I have never tasted ash on purpose but it does blow in the wind and it is very sticky, and it clings like it is trying to stay around rather than be discarded and separated from other humans. My parents' ashes are buried in our old back yard and sometimes I fantasize about digging them up and reburying them somewhere closer so I can visit them but I suppose by now they have seeped into the soil and fed some blades of grass which a deer then ate, perhaps incorporating it into their milk with which they fed to their fawn who shat and helped a wildflower bloom into neon color. </p><p>My mother kept a very clean house. You couldn't put down a glass and walk into the other room for something without coming back and finding it washed and dried and back in the cupboard. My parent's house was the oldest house in our neighborhood in Wisconsin, very modest, with the best sledding hill in back. Rattlesnakes and rabbits and deer abounded, as did the bees you would accidentally step on while running barefoot in the summer, leading to a justified sting. The piano my parents got for me at age 16 to replace our little spinet was 40 years old when they bought it, and came from the local music store owner's home. It dominated the living room in our house. Now that house has other inhabitants. Turns out one of them over the years cooked methamphetamines in my mother's kitchen. Impermanence defined, and I doubt the ashes of Mom would mind.</p><p>The piano is much older than 40 now and me no longer 16. I hauled it everywhere over the years of my life, up 4 flights of a walk up flat in Minneapolis, across the country to California and back again and back again. It is, like all of us, not meant to last forever. Nor will the 1967 Steinway M I hope to bring home soon, but hopefully it will outlast me. I wonder, when human extinction takes place, about music. I think of all the grief around the real possibility of our species burning itself into oblivion, that for me this is the greatest grief of all, that the universe in general will lack Beethoven and Bach and John Coltrane. I am learning that attachment is a sure way to prolong suffering, but the late Beethoven Quartets are hard to release. I would rather not taste the ashes of art and music in my mouth, or have them cling to my skin to remind me about what can be lost.</p><p>Define fine. I won't be running the Boston Marathon as planned, due to injury. But I took a nice walk in the woods today and the trillium are absolutely everywhere, so I guess I am fine. I might never run the way I used to, because I am aging and fatigued, yet I guess I am fine. I guess, in my estimation, it is fine to be alive and to feel the cold nose of my dog push against my hand while I scroll on my phone, him trying to bring me into his world and out of the bizarre virtual universe. He also pushes against my hands with his fuzzy face when I practice piano for too long, and I cannot discern whether this is out of the same frustration and disgust my siblings felt listening to me play endlessly in our very small childhood home or if he just really wants to go for a walk. Or wishes a scratch on the head, after which he will trot off contentedly. </p><p>Lately I have been asking people how they define compassion. </p><p>Compassion is a bag of worms feeding the soil that produces astounding flowers and trees that bear fruit that we eat and the sweetness explodes in our mouth and reminds us of Christmas morning. Compassion is open heart surgery with a grafted vessel infused with hope and bitter wine. Compassion is grasping a thorny mess and holding it tight like you might hold a child shaking in fear after a clap of thunder that shakes the foundations of your home. Compassion is letting your mind bubble pop without regrets. Compassion is being disarmed. Being alarmed but not paralyzed by fear, then rolling up your sleeves and rebuilding what is broken. Compassion is taking a walk when you wish you could run or taking your mother's ashes and thanking them the way you wished you had thanked her.</p><p>Fine is what you pay when you don't follow the rules. Love is what you use to counter fools. Piano is hard to play when your dog nudges your hand. Steinways are fabulous and grand. I will run again when I can. I remember well the last time I ran with Dan. Both of us carefree in the golden hills of Palo Alto, his early dementia not slowing him down, his blue eyes sparkling. </p><p>His fine blue eyes sparkling.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-60700615676301804202021-08-23T13:48:00.003-07:002021-08-23T13:50:19.711-07:00The First Noble Truth<p> The bird I am hearing sing these days is the Anna’s Hummingbird. High pitched, not biological sounding. Repetitive like a regularly irregular heart rhythm. They can be hard to spot, though have some favorite branches. Near the top of the spruce he must be king over the junkos and maybe even the blue jays. The thrush are silent. It just happened one day, just as suddenly as the first day they sang in spring. My hens sing the blues, especially at dawn, not full throated, just a moan or a pondering while pecking here and there. I cannot picture eating them. Today they got our past-ripe bananas, since none of us likes banana bread all that much. Bananas are eaten in phases in this house. Apparently this past week was not a pro-banana era. Grocery stores giving us fruit on demand makes it easier to ignore, I imagine, than it would be if we could only eat it in season and if it grows locally. People do line up at the Farmer’s market for early summer strawberries which bear no resemblance to the monsters shipped in, picked long ago and far away. Peaches probably create the longest queue. Masked produce-seeking neighbors, patient in their single file peachophilia. Yesterday on the way to the beach with my dog, a semi pulled into the street, stopping traffic in both directions. Forward, backward, into a fence, forward, backward. The man directing them had an infant in a sort of football hold on his forearm. Some behind me pulled out of line and turned around to seek another route. Dog and me just waited. We did not delude ourselves into thinking the truck driver was separate from us. When we are the truck driver, we can only keep reversing and pressing the gas until the damn thing can be extricated from a cul-de-sac it should never have entered. Today we went to the beach again. My dog smells like shit so after the beach I stopped at the pet supply store and purchased this $17 shampoo to deodorize “doggone” smells. The bath was warm and he was completely sudsed up. I trimmed nasty dreadlocks and scrubbed every canine nook and cranny. Now he is asleep in the sun and smells at least $17 dollars better. Has this been a productive day? Week? Month? Life? Prior life? Future life? I almost have Liszt memorized. I ran 20.8 miles on Sunday. I walked with Nancy and swept my front porch. I watched Schitt’s Creek and sat zazen. I hugged my husband and found myself aware we are both going to die. I seem to crave chocolate chips. Then tomorrow I step back into my patients’ suffering, which I never really left. The blue jay is screaming. I cannot decide if they are angry or the lead singer of a heavy metal band. Either way it is loud and difficult to dance to and I assume never once featured in a Disney musical. I doubt anyone has considered the suffering of unquiet avian minds. Or vice versa.</p>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-44661045648131611852021-07-19T21:32:00.000-07:002021-07-19T21:32:23.709-07:00I am-bic pentameter<p style="text-align: left;"> <span style="font-size: small;">I am the girl with braids the boys would pull. Perhaps they loved the power, my heart, my brain. The way I could outrun them after school. Skinned knees bled while my hair glowed in the sun.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am the girl who lied that I had horses. I tripped a boy in a second grade trust exercise. Stood up for fat girl the class would often torture. Both my parents got sick and almost died.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am the girl who never finished high school. I dreamt of wearing tails at Carnegie Hall. I got drunk in Spanish class held on Bascom Hill. My professor brought sangria for us all.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am the girl who has a child in prison. The methamphetamine, like Stephen King. I thought fierce love would be enough to save them. The monster in the book will always win.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am the girl who sees my letters in colors. A synesthete, afraid of missing gems. The bird, the fugue, the book, the unopened door. The Boston marathon. Achieving zen.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am the girl I am the girl, my father quipped on my forehead curl, I no longer am sure I know what matters. I am not even sure about iambic pentameter.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></p>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-61650502071105515832021-05-31T20:45:00.000-07:002021-05-31T20:45:55.541-07:00The Probability of Impermanence<div style="text-align: left;">Panic due to unfamiliar birdsong</div><div style="text-align: left;">Time is running out</div><div style="text-align: left;">May never know the species </div><div style="text-align: left;">Or learned and forgotten </div><div style="text-align: left;">Among neurofibrillary tangles</div><div style="text-align: left;">A plaque in the birdsong storage site</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Synapses devoted to well tempered Bach</div><div style="text-align: left;">Knowing every note </div><div style="text-align: left;">Memorizing came easy </div><div style="text-align: left;">When sleep was less vital</div><div style="text-align: left;">Now fugues slip away sulking</div><div style="text-align: left;">Downcast by my lack of devotion</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">That child skip-running toward me</div><div style="text-align: left;">Might have been real</div><div style="text-align: left;">Or time lapsed me </div><div style="text-align: left;">Message! Message from the past!</div><div style="text-align: left;">Do you not recall</div><div style="text-align: left;">That this is why we run?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Frantic at the bookstore</div><div style="text-align: left;">Northtown which is</div><div style="text-align: left;">North Star in my night sky</div><div style="text-align: left;">Outside of a dog</div><div style="text-align: left;">Too dark inside and</div><div style="text-align: left;">Cannot read fast enough before I die</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When he snores a light touch </div><div style="text-align: left;">Prompts position change without waking</div><div style="text-align: left;">Then deep silence</div><div style="text-align: left;">So must I reach out </div><div style="text-align: left;">Verifying breath</div><div style="text-align: left;">Palm to ribs slowly expanding</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">All of which is</div><div style="text-align: left;">To say holding tighter</div><div style="text-align: left;">Holding tighter to say</div><div style="text-align: left;">Each breath is </div><div style="text-align: left;">One closer to a last exhale or inhale</div><div style="text-align: left;">Oxygen bound to no destination</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-76387938300638648212021-02-13T15:46:00.000-08:002021-02-13T15:46:00.532-08:00Pocketful of Rocks<p> This raven upon the tree that used to look like a grandmother in an old style of dress but has weathered into an artistic rendition of a pitchfork </p><p>Will hover in the air when dog approaches</p><p>And dog looks up and they appear to be yelling at each other</p><p>Raven dips down and up and down further but always out of reach</p><p>*</p><p>Then this runner feels the packed sand or molasses sand or silky sinking sand up Achilles to gastrocnemius </p><p>Hamstring to glutes to core</p><p>Breathe with beating waves retreating, heart meeting fish and salt’s smell and taste of nostalgia </p><p>One mile ago is never happening again </p><p>*</p><p>Phone rings most times regarding my role as physician and reminds </p><p>Me not to think I have my own life </p><p>*</p><p>This stone calls also</p><p>So I stoop to gather it </p><p>Pocket full of rocks </p><p>*</p><p>Dog twirls in air arriving fresh having fully known this was going to be the best day of his life so far</p><p>No last time or next time compares</p><p>*</p><p>I can run from this factually literally sensationally until the parts that ache forget their sorrow and the parts that sit idle remember their purpose and</p><p>While a powerful man who brags about pussy grabbing- as my transgender child with addiction and mental health problems serves thirteen years for a crime committed at age eighteen while high -is acquitted despite trying to kill our so-called democracy</p><p>This anger upon me dissolves into just being a mother and a doctor and my dog’s companion</p><p>Taking stones to my garden</p><p>Never quite able to get all the sand out of my running shoes or my dog’s tight curls </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-457176468544744002020-12-12T13:39:00.004-08:002020-12-12T13:44:25.817-08:00Testaments<p>For a year now, I have been trying to learn and memorize the 48 preludes and fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach. These are the old testament of piano. Stepwise, Bach takes us through the keys, the well-tempered tuning presented in <a href="https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Fortspinnung">fortspinnung</a>. Fanny Mendelssohn, the lesser known but equally precocious sister of Felix, memorized 24 preludes in a week at age 13. I am not jealous. I am not jealous. I am not jealous.</p><p>If I was Fanny Mendelssohn and 13 years old, I would have gotten the Well Tempered Clavier memorized by now. But I am 3.9 x 13 and fatally distracted by the world around me. </p><p>Memorizing music came naturally to me once. Actually scratch that, it was always hard work, but maybe I used to have better focus. Back in the days when I was not on call 24/7 and did not have this pocket-sized computer sitting next to me, making little chirps and rings and silently beckoning me away from any other task at hand. In music school, the practice rooms were in the basement of a building built to withstand a bomb (literally), and once in the little room with the door closed, you could be alone for hours. No phones in those days, except the ones connected to the wall. You could emerge from hours of practice into a dark world and realize your fingers were still tapping out phrases on your thighs which ached from sitting on a wooden bench. Once at midnight I came out of the music school to a large pack of raccoons. They all stopped their garbage can raid and swiveled their heads to me, two dozen glowing eye-dots between me and the parking lot.</p><p>I have been trying to memorize opus 109 of Ludwig Van Beethoven. The 32 piano sonatas he composed are the new testament of piano. Herein lies the gospel of theme, exposition, recapitulation and rondo. The deafer he got, the more laser-focused these pieces of music. No chaff, only wheat. Blessed are the piece makers, for they will be called the children of God.</p><p>When I sit and play piano, I think about coronavirus. I look out the window where the redwoods just sit there, unconcerned. So nice to have a day at home, but I worry about my friends on the hospital wards. I stop and scroll through my phone in case something has happened I need to know about instantly. I think about the fact that it might be better not to know.</p><p>Montel wrote an email to us today to let us know our child in prison is in good hands. New cellie, always some fear there. I worry about that too. But thanks for the reassurance, Montel.</p><p>Seems like the only time I do not worry is when I run. If I could run all day every day, I would never worry. The mask fogs my glasses and I take them off and run somewhat blind but at least not fog-blind. My brain turns off on a tangent with each new trail. On single track, if a runner comes from the opposite direction, we both pull back into the woods, diving away from shared air particles. I cannot hug friends. Our dogs still intermingle though.</p><p>That is not actually true, as my dog is on high alert regarding any other dog stepping paws on the same planet. How dare you enter my woods, my beach, my neighborhood! I fear my dog would be a Trump supporter if human, but then I see how he has a pure joy and realize there is no joy in Trumpland. Only hate and greed and mistrust of science. My dog digs science. He plays fetch with the discipline of a randomized controlled trial. He loves me best but <a href="https://13wham.com/news/local/donuts-delite-pays-tribute-to-dr-anthony-fauci-with-new-doughnut">Dr Fauci</a> would be a close second, I am pretty sure.</p><p>I have not been able to creatively write for a long while. Mainly due to the aforementioned fatal distraction and a heavy dose of consternation. My piano may be well-tempered, but I am not. I tilt at betrayers of democracy. I foam at the mouth on the inside while smiling sweetly on the outside. I get on my knees and pray for clarity. I usually am tying my running shoes during this maneuver, and the prayer works almost every time. I write now as a testament to the dis-ease I fight daily. My face shield gives me superpowers. My hands are washed of any malarkey.</p><p>I wish everyone had the courtesy of Montel. Just to tell us we got each other's back, not to worry, not to despair. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. </p><p>Blessed are those sharing their music with us during this lockdown, including the current Queen of Bach. I am not jealous. I am not jealous. I am not jealous.</p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oOnyRWqmiWI" width="560"></iframe>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-46487720357090720132020-09-09T20:22:00.001-07:002020-09-09T20:23:59.213-07:00Apocalyptic MeditationsThe albuterol inhaler my doctor ordered was not the one my insurance covers so I did not pick it up.<div><br /><div>The orange sky is not, I hope, some kind of electoral omen.</div><div><br /></div><div>When short of breath I cannot work because it could be COVID-19.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nobody really likes masks.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I could do one thing over from my parenting years it would be taking a full year off from work for each new child.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Daniela reminded me the Bach Preludes and Fugues are the Old Testament, the Beethoven Sonatas the New Testament. Of piano.</div><div><br /></div><div>Reading the Bible cover to cover makes all the world seem unnerving, especially if you are a woman, not white, not straight, and not big on smite. But did any right-leaning Christian ever read even one word ascribed to the Christ? </div><div><br /></div><div>If it was to become COVID, will it involve cardiomyopathy? The tightness in my chest might just be anxiety about </div><div><br /></div><div>What can be controlled and what cannot?</div><div><br /></div><div>My child Zoomed a math exam today even though the world is on fire and that gave me hope. </div><div><br /></div><div>It can be 120 degrees where my other child is imprisoned. Sometimes they pour water from the toilet on the floor and lay in it for relief.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even though I believe in God I find </div><div><br /></div><div>No judgement</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway my tax dollars will be used to help the department of justice defend the reputation of our rapist in chief.</div><div><br /></div><div>I earned that money carrying for all kinds of people, many not well-off, in a rural place that some might describe as a shithole county</div><div><br /></div><div>If just based on statistics of wealth, life expectancy, drug use and other public health measures of interest.</div><div><br /></div><div>Others might be shocked by the beauty and in fact flock here to escape to the cooling breezes and redwood mist.</div><div><br /></div><div>Whales stop by often. As do seals, mountain lions, elk and foxes. We also have a rat in our yard. </div><div><br /></div><div>Templeton, I think, or a descendant thereof. He likes the snacks our chickens receive and the detritus from the bird feeder which is still my all time favorite housewarming gift from 18 years past.</div><div><br /></div><div>Coffee every morning, while junkos and hummingbirds feast, probably annoyed I watch them so intently.</div><div><br /></div><div>Or once a deer wound it’s astounding tongue up into the conical bird feeder and drained it in 3 minutes flat. </div><div><br /></div><div>In an ideal society a mother would not have to choose career versus children. My own Mom puked her chemotherapy guts out before she went to work after making my lunch for my day at fifth grade.</div><div><br /></div><div>America cares about children except for the child care aspect, the paid maternity/adoption leave, the healthcare coverage, the feeding of hungry mouths.</div><div><br /></div><div>People should not be hungry.</div><div><br /></div><div>I wanted to get some albuterol today because I am having trouble breathing. </div><div><br /></div><div>In my country, you can only breathe if you have enough clout. The right hue. The right insurance blue, shielding </div><div><br /></div><div>You from worry</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-23306718020978251312020-07-25T15:18:00.002-07:002020-07-25T15:18:46.941-07:00A Bird Whispered in My Ear and Other Pandemic PonderingsWhen I walked on a sidewalk in another country<br />
Somebody's hope<br />
Floated by on the river's edge<br />
Smelling like sewage and fish markets.<br />
<br />
The river, not their hope.<br />
<br />
It left me breathless (their hope, not the river).<br />
<br />
It felt like that when I saw Neowise, that comet. My stomach twisted around itself, settled only by the hot cocoa and small paper bags of popcorn we brought with us to Berry Summit. Sixty-eight hundred years from now it will come by again.<br />
<br />
My children swear like sailors, though if I am honest I have never actually met a sailor who swears. I sit down in front of my piano and try to learn music. I stand six feet apart from my neighbors at the farmer's Market on Saturdays. I shave my hair short. I do a three thousand piece puzzle my brother sent, like he is continuing the tradition of torturing his little sister. My dog ate some pieces of the puzzle. I post on Facebook about fake vacations. I can't remember how my mother sounded or her smell. I get a weekly swab for SARS-COV2. The skin on my hands is rough from so much hand-washing.<br />
<br />
When I walked in another country, I flashed on the collective burden of humanity on this Earth, which made me shift my bag of souvenirs, suddenly awkward in my grasp. We stopped at a villager's home, where an elder weaved on her dirt floor. The sewage draining by path reminded me that civil engineers outclass doctors every time, when it comes to the health of communities. When I walked my daughters through the red light district in the still light, almost-midnight sky, it was not on purpose, we just ended up there. Women in windows, like so much merchandise.<br />
<br />
A professor of history, a mother, a specialist in the rise of fascism, was gassed and shot by the feds in Portland. Rubber bullets bounce off skulls there as an experiment in what we will tolerate. I am indignant, then spend my day gardening and listening to my book on Audible.com.<br />
<br />
When I walked in another country, I marveled at how the women gathered around my child who lost their kite in the Yangtze River. I had lost my child, in a city of some millions, and it just turned out to be they were in the middle of a circle of cooing mother-types. Later the Maoist driver untangled the kite string, silently. He was always silent except that time he guffawed at my child saying in perfect Mandarin, "who farted?"<br />
<br />
If everyone wore a mask, we could venture out more safely. If we could venture out more safely, less people would die. If less people die, it would be less sad and frightening.<br />
<br />
When I sit next to my husband of almost twenty-eight years, I understand why people insist on going to the intensive care unit even when it makes no physiological sense.<br />
<br />
There is something reassuring about leaning against someone you have known for so long, who sees the beauty and funny in the same instant you do, and who can sit through the same piece of piano music countless times without batting an eyelash.<br />
<br />
Though often this ends in snoring on the couch. I mean I look over like "did you hear that sublime thing I just did with that passage of Bach?" and he is open-mouthed sleeping. If you play Bach to the open mouth of a sleeping person, do the notes float down their windpipes and come out later as a musical eructation? Can you burp a fugue?<br />
<br />
As I walk down the sidewalk in another country, I eat up the antiquities with my reluctantly American eyeballs. They taste like fresh fruit that might have ancestors in the Garden of Eden.<br />
They smell like some ancient army pounding drums on a dusty road. They look like bones, all catacombed yet humming with stories of all the shitty empires of yore. They feel like music written in modes I never dreamed existed.<br />
<br />
The antiquities, not my eyeballs.<br />
<br />
Fresh bread and a Miyazaki flick. The dog leaning against you, all trust and fluffiness. The sudden realization you have to do more before it is too late. And by doing more I mean to say loving more.<br />
A small bird whispered in my ear that of all the places it ever flew, straight into the heart of compassion was the absolute fucking bomb.<br />
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<br />Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-34773315277284415652020-05-25T21:13:00.000-07:002020-05-25T21:13:06.779-07:00The Smell of Home Baked Bread<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOS4V25z_xQhKdmm-lSNQHkkSccwaYlO4T5CnT9Gnu9owVUUnDWrB-U_mcwjfrnOng9m2hfYejZ1LYOP08fiPakwZKm_1vudj7WjjeYM1NC1wlrvih1iiJDHjlpDIfwxfOW93cYmVibFLB/s1600/IMG_2855.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOS4V25z_xQhKdmm-lSNQHkkSccwaYlO4T5CnT9Gnu9owVUUnDWrB-U_mcwjfrnOng9m2hfYejZ1LYOP08fiPakwZKm_1vudj7WjjeYM1NC1wlrvih1iiJDHjlpDIfwxfOW93cYmVibFLB/s400/IMG_2855.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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komorebi 5/24/20</div>
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Apparently a murderer was walking in my woods the other day. Right now I am honestly more worried about the people having parties without social distance then showing up in my woods and spitting hello at me with their maskless faces. I am pretty sure I can outrun a meth head, but I've heard that SARS-COV-2 does track repeats.</div>
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When I run the birds have things to say. Not that I think this has anything to do with me and this is why it makes me so happy. The birds are perfectly content to sing. The suns rays are split by redwoods and banana slugs linger on the path like some kind of cartoon drawn by a five year old. When I run, the mud splatters from late spring rains and fading purple irises sit path side. </div>
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Every time my husband sneezes, I shout "CORONAVIRUS". I am fairly certain he is tired of this. Nonetheless he keeps baking bread, making pies, shaping Choux. I shelter in a bistro in Paris or what I imagine a bistro in Paris to be since I have never been to Paris and at this point such travels are seeming unlikely, unwise, unnecessary.</div>
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As a world class worrier, I lose sleep over, and over.</div>
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Yo-Yo Ma played all of the Bach cello suites in a live performance this weekend. Live in the sense that he sat down with his cello and his magnificent brain and played them, all six of them, for anyone who was able to tune in. There must've been a sound guy there too, at least to set it up. It was incredibly intimate, this man playing Bach alone in a studio, to thousands or maybe millions of viewers. Maybe trillions. Should've been trillions. Solace, comfort, skill, and words and music to remind us we are bound together. Music 300 years old and yet sounding shockingly modern at moments. </div>
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Today (ironically, Memorial Day) a lot of people seemed to decide the virus isn't really a thing anymore. Gosh, gee I hope they are right. </div>
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I mean it isn't really a thing as long as you are not famous</div>
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Unless you are <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/07/750894794/john-prine-obituary">John Prine</a> or <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/01/824683454/fountains-of-waynes-adam-schlesinger-dies-at-52-after-contracting-covid-19">Adam Schlesinger</a> or <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/02/825717204/ellis-marsalis-patriarch-of-new-orleans-most-famous-musical-family-has-died">Ellis Marsalis.</a><br />
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I mean it isn't really a thing as long as you are not old.<br />
Unless you <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/children/mis-c.html">have a child who gets sick and maybe dies.</a><br />
<br />
I mean it isn't really a thing as long as you believe in freedom and God.<br />
Unless <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6920e2.htm">someone at church is sick and might not even know it yet.</a><br />
<br />
I do feel for people who are truly stuck at home. I "get" to go to work every day. Where I tend to sick people and lose sleep over, and over again.<br />
<br />
When I run I notice the Ravens click-clacking, croaking, gurgling. The thrush whistles once or spins up a wild scale. Woodpeckers tap-tap-tap on trees, they have a secret knock and someone lets them in maybe for a worm and beetle party or something. Top secret. Forget-Me-Nots never sing but they whisper and make you look at them when they could otherwise so easily be missed. "Psst, running lady, down here. Watch out for that murder guy."<br />
<br />
Komorebi makes my heart ache for something it misses but cannot quite remember in so much detail. A feeling also evoked by the smell of home baked bread. A feeling also evoked by my practically grown child's laughter while watching her favorite Korean drama. A feeling also evoked when sitting on a kitchen stool watching Yo-Yo Ma play Bach on youtube. A feeling also evoked by the way I want to hug my friends but just at the moment I cannot.<br />
<br />
Because, science.<br />
The truth, it is murder.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tEDr0O1Nnrg" width="560"></iframe>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-64376741948519004282020-04-03T17:03:00.000-07:002020-04-03T17:03:03.781-07:00This too shall pass<div class="WordSection1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; page: WordSection1;">
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OLD NEWS<o:p></o:p></div>
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Calamity is fairly normal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Just read ancient Greek myth<o:p></o:p></div>
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Or any recorded human history<o:p></o:p></div>
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And feel reassured.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is as old as word and song,<o:p></o:p></div>
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As small pox blankets,<o:p></o:p></div>
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As warfare.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Doctors, nurses and the people who clean the hospital rooms<o:p></o:p></div>
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Know blood can spatter everywhere,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Like that guy who put the block behind the 747 wheel<o:p></o:p></div>
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With his bare hand,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Drawing blue gowns into the ER room,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sails in the wine-dark sea.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Stupidity receives no judgement here.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Refuse to listen to Dr Fauci,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Your right as an American.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Don’t fucking touch my apple pie.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Defund research, <o:p></o:p></div>
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Disable pandemic response teams,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Have just enough staff and PPE to get by.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Economy, from the Greek for<o:p></o:p></div>
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Household Management,<o:p></o:p></div>
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In American translates as <o:p></o:p></div>
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More important than lives,<o:p></o:p></div>
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My colleagues and friends <o:p></o:p></div>
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Our grandparents<o:p></o:p></div>
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My own immunocompromised<o:p></o:p></div>
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Self<o:p></o:p></div>
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Bows to wealth.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Happily, it is all old news.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The plague will pass<o:p></o:p></div>
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And Hamilton will again be <o:p></o:p></div>
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In theaters.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Late night TV hosts will wear their best suits.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We will hug,<o:p></o:p></div>
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And high-five every spectating child along the route of the New York City Marathon.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Which even before COVID-19 seemed a little dicey.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yet absolutely irresistible.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-68164306204543864602020-03-10T06:27:00.000-07:002020-03-10T06:27:35.935-07:00Bionic Nursing ShoesMy Mom was a nurse. When she bought new white sneakers for me, I would don them, then go to the top of Hagen Road, sit on my baby blue bike with the STP sticker on the banana seat and ride the mile downhill scraping the tops and sides of my shoes along the street the whole way. Because.<br />
<br />
My Grandmother was also a nurse. One day after work when she returned to their Peter Cooper Village apartment and was serving my Grandfather his before dinner wine and snack, she mentioned that Mickey Mantle had been in the office that day and people seemed pretty impressed and had he heard of him? Grandpa dropped the cheese right off his cracker.<br />
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When my husband came home from the Joggn Shoppe with my new Hoka Clifton's yesterday, I almost dropped the cheese off my cracker. But ever since Laura M named them "bionic nursing shoes" I love them more than any other shoe I have ever worn in my entire life.<br />
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<br />
I will need these dreamy cushion of clouds after my fifty miler this weekend. These creamy, angel food cake, eagle feather, thick foot gloves of love. These <i>bionic nursing shoes.</i><br />
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Will I finish the fifty miler? Hope so. Will I contract coronavirus before, during or after? Hope not. Will my husband be crewing me starting with getting to the chilly Rodeo Beach at 5:45 AM? Yes he will. Will he have these shoes in a bag for me just in case I need them? Damn straight.<br />
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I have become a bit thick myself in the last month, not really part of my training plan, but a side effect of my beloved husband-crew's cooking and baking skills. When my eldest saw these new shoes, she said "thiccccccc". So clearly we were meant to be together, these shoes and I.<br />
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Speaking of shoes, did you know we put people in them? They call them Solitary Holding Units, or SHUs. When one of your children is placed there what can you do besides run 20 miles in the forest or sit upon your couch eating pastry? You could curl up in the fetal position in bed, which I have tried, but when you are on call almost 24/7 it is hard to accomplish for very long.<br />
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Speaking of pastry, "choux pastry" is now a normal, conversational term in our house. So there.<br />
<br />
When my friend crashed her bike last month the whole world shifted. And yet it did not. She is the best all-around athlete I have ever known. She continues to be so in her recovery, probably now doing the hardest workouts of her life. She does not need bionic shoes. She carries in her heart and sinew and brain all that matters in life. In her recovery I have watched her tending to healing everyone around her.<br />
<br />
Healing everyone around her.<br />
<br />
And now with 3 1/2 more days between me and longer than I have ever run in my life, I feel not the least interested in the outcome. A strange feeling before a race. I am wondering some things, like when will the nausea and gut cramps set in, will I fall, will I see a whale as I gaze out on the Pacific Ocean from the headlands of Marin, simply one of the most beautiful places in the world? Will my Speedgoats grip the rocks and mud? Will my husband talk me off the ledge when I think I need to quit? Will I listen to music or just the sound of my feet, the wind in the redwoods and the crash of surf? Will I get a work-related phone call at mile 27? And 38?<br />
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So many unknowns.<br />
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I expect my choux pastry stores (thighs, abdomen, chin and God knows where else) will fuel me well. I expect my incredible fortune to be able to do this race will humble me every step of the way.<br />
I expect to leap over walls in my bionic nursing shoes.<br />
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Hopefully I won't get disqualified from this race for the unfair advantage of carrying in my heart the amazing, freakish combination of Jamie Sommers, thicccc booty and the strongest, least complaining people I know: nurses. And my imaginary Laura.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DZvw9O_1hMs" width="560"></iframe>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-88856685033990174712020-01-27T21:15:00.000-08:002020-01-27T21:15:36.204-08:00Irish BlessingsWhen you are outside enough, you will bring pieces of nature into your home. A leaf on a shelf, dried in autumn fragility. Five or five thousand redwood fronds in corners or stuck to a canine paw or ear like jewelry. Beach sand in bed linen.<br />
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Several months ago when playing piano, I became diaphoretic, nauseous, had palpitations and my face started tingling on one side. Certain it was not some transcendental reaction to my unpolished Bach, I was equally certain I was having a stroke. I laid down on the couch and touched my cheek, brushing away the craziest, neon yellow, black-spiky caterpillar. It had left a rash where it tread upon my face. I took it outside and wondered what it all means anyway.<br />
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When you enter the home or life of a sick, vulnerable human being, you will bring pieces of that vulnerability into your heart. Methamphetamines sit on a a counter near a plate of cookies. The cat crawls in through an open window. Someone cannot breath. Something is infected. However the epigenetic fallout of systematic racism makes the idea of going to the ER or hospital more terrifying than death.<br />
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You chart the winding paths of attempted healing. You know the right answer to every test question but they never taught you about slumlords or the pushers that deliver drugs to the hands of elders. Penicillin is magnificent. Unless the disease is grinding poverty, abysmal despair, multi-drug-resistant hopelessness. The tobacco is so thick that the carpet blows smoke rings with each step you take. You will have to change your clothes later.<br />
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You run so many miles on trails 6, 8, 13.5, thick with mud from the rain, the rain. Quick steps grip the curves made by mountain bikers, like the periphery of the Indy 500 track. Dancing, one foot on each rim, over that root, skipping that stone. Passing families with tired or curious children, and passing unwashed homeless men out on their various walks.<br />
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High tide pushes you away from the shore to the hilly dunes. Saw grass slices your ankles and calves. Your son cried about this once and you gave him a hard time about it and maybe that's why he is in prison. That thought like the sand collecting in your shoes and the ticks hitching a ride on the dog sticks to you and follows you into the next morning when you lay in the still dark, separating from sleep. In those dunes a burrowing owl runs by and you carry that with you too. It brings back your first date with your beloved, a long walk by a bay punctuated by little man-owls puffing their chests out, running you out of their neighborhood because you do not belong.<br />
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Cars crash, helicopters fall out of the sky, hearts break, people make it or they do not. You smell the destruction of Eucalyptus trees driving down the highway to work and wish it was scented this way always.<br />
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You sweep your floor today<br />
Redwood needles wait at the door<br />
To replace their binned brothers tomorrow.<br />
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All this falling apart, this disintegration of order, of what we need it to be, is not like JS Bach.<br />
Bach JS like not is, be to it need we what of, order of disintegration this, apart falling this All.<br />
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My parents had a coffee mug that said "May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead." Even at age 6 I thought that was one fucked up Irish blessing.<br />
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Being part Irish myself, I propose this:<br />
For those in pain, may you feel loved.<br />
May our homes be open to the dubious gifts of nature.<br />
May our hearts hold space for kindness in this mean and meaningful world.<br />
And may the disorder turn upside down and all around like the most clever Bach fugue of all.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1Qa4GkJ_BSw" width="560"></iframe>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-24568158658753311852019-12-11T06:44:00.003-08:002019-12-11T06:44:54.158-08:00DarkI like my coffee dark. Hip baristas have tried to school me over the years about the inverse ratio of caffeine level (lighter more, darker less), but I just smile and stick to the dark. In a seasonally affective sense, dark is distressing, though I am realizing this may be a line I have bought from my own mind about the way things are. Rape is less of a concern than it was, a perk of aging I suppose, though the younger woman inside still runs the show, so we never find ourselves between parked cars and bushes on a dark sidewalk. My mother -in-law once asked me why runners run in the street in the dark and I answered, its the rapists.<br />
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Dark O'Clock is the best time to rise out of bed, once having completed the screaming argument in your mind with the more sensible half of your being. Early morning hours are less busy on call, for some reason, than late night hours, and the dark makes being up, the only one up, not even the dog is up (!), a clandestine act. Woods in the dark can be navigated by head lamp and dog with a flashing light on collar. If the dark is also foggy, headlamps are less helpful but the effect is like falling into a Sherlock Holmes novel, if he wrote about the dark, misty redwood forest instead of the Baskerville moors.<br />
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What scares me most in the dark is the automobiles, and when I ride my bike home from work with lights blooming out of every part of my bodily person, even then the cars act like I am the devil itself. How dare I ride my bike in the bike lane fully lighted in reflective clothing while signaling every turn after a hard day at work when it is dark and they just want to get home while playing that game of "how many points do you get for scaring the shit out of a tired doctor on a bicycle." Or how many points for a runner who is in the middle of the cross walk and fully lit, in the luminary sense people, because in the dark a zooming right hook turn into a crosswalk is fully acceptable maybe because no one can see you, sort of like when a toddler closes their eyes and the world that baffles them so disappears conveniently and truly.<br />
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When it is dark it is hard to maintain a fast pace for fear of tripping on some small crack in the sidewalk, some stone in the trail, and it forces you to slow down which is at once frustrating and pleasant. Training headlamp at sidewalk or trail, darkness is somewhat defeated but it will always prevail against the non-nocturnal human eyeball. I wonder if being blind is like running in the dark or if being blind is not so much darkness as much as a whole new way to see the world. <br />
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Any dog in the dark looks like the cast of a Stephen King novel. Seen in the distance, they are only eyes, two embers bouncing up and down, and dark calculations of the mind take place, to determine if the unknown factor ahead is a raccoon or a lion or a labrador retriever. The time I surprised a raccoon and it surprised me on Old Arcata Road we both jumped in tandem and that was the one and only time I danced in the dark with a member of genus Procyon.<br />
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In the power outages, at least five of my patients fell in the dark. Pacific Gas & Electric thought they were saving people but we forget our vulnerability as creatures of the light, quite at mercy to the unflouresced night trip to the commode or refrigerator, stray shoes or cords on the floor melting into the darkness so they can grab our feet and fling us onto our face, forcing us to kiss the very earth while we fumble for the lifeline which we probably left hanging on the kitchen chair instead of wearing because who wants to wear a lifeline to bed.<br />
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And as we approach the shortest day of the year, which always confused me as a child because are not all days 24 hours?, we hunger for the day after that when the bookends of darkness start to slowly inch apart thus leaving more room to add our daytime stories to the collection. My child in prison sits in a dark cell day and night because society has decided prisoners do not deserve windows or vitamin D. Vitamin D requires the sun to make its chemical appearance, like a magic trick of science,it is and the supplement makers of the world are so grateful for the dark so they can charge us all millions of dollars to buy our sunshine vitamin in a plastic bottle which will later clog the ocean and lead us all into the darkness of an inhabitable planet, though first it will choke a sea turtle or dolphin, and at least we have stronger bones and happier affects in the process.<br />
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I do not like it when I am running the bay trail in the dark, the one by the highway, and some guy on a bike with an unleashed dog comes slowly toward me and I have three options: keep my cool and put those keys between my 2nd and 3rd finger to jab him if needed, dive into the icy bay, or dive onto highway 101 into the traffic parade of cranky drivers. Thus far, the dark trail riders and their dogs have posed no real threat, so maybe the real problem is the dark recesses of my mind where all the lore about a woman alone at night sits to remind me of my lack of power. Why should the spin of the planet so spin our psyches, why should dark and light be the binary of boogey men and beauty, why should we not rejoice in the stars and the quiet that night brings? It is this or that, them and us, good and bad, dark and light, he and she thinking that makes us all feel we have a grip on reality. Not all light in the electromagnetic spectrum is visible to the human eye, so maybe the darkness is light. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second and the bulk of the light in our universe is invisible to us, so we call it dark.<br />
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Like dark coffee, it holds secrets that we cannot fathom, pearls that were our father's eyes, rich and strange, and it is a place where we can plagiarize tales and poetry to the glow of our own souls, scared and thrilled and serene and often asleep where we dream of the next voyage and the voyages of the day before.Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-23893728770118630942019-11-04T08:09:00.002-08:002019-11-04T08:09:25.292-08:00Because I Am Alive and Filled with Longing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Western Wisconsin, October 2019</div>
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/sports/marathon-world-record.html">Marathon records have been smashed.</a> Fast shoes, bodies less than 7 stones in weight. Flying through cities at a rate beyond what most achieve on one lap around a track during interval workouts.<br />
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Meanwhile, running through the trees, I begin to see the forest. It also smells of fall and the sound of deer dashing through the brush draws my eye for a moment away from monitoring the floor for rocks and roots. Turns out trail runners <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/green-life/wildlife-hates-hikers-wilderness-disturbance">can trouble wildlife.</a> Nature is good for humans but we are not so good for nature. Though I argue we are animals too, and have found ourselves out of our natural habitat and boxed away, butt cheeks spread on office chairs, having to protect our garbage from neighborhood bears. Telling someone you ran 31 miles in the woods draws concerned stares.<br />
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Music conducts through my skull, bypassing my ear drums, thus allowing me to tend to my surroundings. Bone conduction headphones threaten the purity of my soul, or so says the man who stopped me recently on a run on a Wisconsin trail. "Snark, snark!" said he. Then proceeded to sermonize on the righteousness of His Way of Running Trails. "Thanks for the advice, mansplainer" said I, then with middle finger aloft left his pasty midwest ass in my dust.<br />
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I did not actually employ the middle finger except in my mind. I did run on this astounding trail in southern Washington, and as I climbed into more remote territory, the little hairs on back of neck rose to remind me of bears not appreciating sudden appearances by interloper nature crashers. So I turned off my headphones and blasted my music outright into the air, serenading bear with The Clash and Lizzo and some Bach as well. I turned my head left and beheld Mount Saint Helens, nearly falling over the cliff so surprised by the perfection of the moment, and with a sound track to boot.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span> Southern Washington, October 2019<br />
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No bears were hurt in this process but when I descended back to humanity I got a sour look from a hiker about my music, from the pocket of my tights "should I stay or should I go", and is not this the multimillion dollar question? Adjusting my music back to the private world of bone conduction, I smiled at her and continued on my way.<br />
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First ultra done, grand master champion for women, I now see myself in <a href="https://utmbmontblanc.com/en/page/1/a-mythical-race,-an-unique-experience.html">Chamonix, doing the UMTB</a>, for the bluffs of Wisconsin are surely proof I am destined to be...<br />
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Truth is I loved that 50 kilometer trail run, despite the three near launches into the air, toe catching on a rock or root, surely disturbing deer and foxes with my desperate yelp and flailing arms, but no harm done and I loved that 50 kilometer trail run, despite the prolonged bout of diarrhea at mile 20, pulling over <a href="https://olympics.nbcsports.com/2018/04/16/shalane-flanagan-port-a-potty-bathroom-boston-marathon-video/">Shalane Flanagan style</a>, though as with her running she is an elite bathroom user as well, and her time of 13.86 seconds was a fraction of my time gazing at the blue walled porta-potty which was mercifully sitting there right when I needed it most.<br />
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Truth is I loved how after I had to walk and recover from my nausea and gut twisting existential crisis, the amazing volunteers sitting there trailside with a table of snacks pointed out the flat ginger ale and that was exactly what I needed most in life and it gave me my second wind and I came across that finish line and got a special mug for being a champion.<br />
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Truth is I came back to Wisconsin to run but what was most precious was the multiple connections I made with friends from childhood who gave me the gift of their presence and did not even roll their eyes once at how I chose to celebrate turning 50, in my home town, with a long run, with old friends, with two separate servings of deep-fried cheese curds, with a drive through the old neighborhood, with family time, with deep gratitude.<br />
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Home is back here in California. I brought back a turkey feather I found in the arboretum in Madison. I brought back the views of the Mississippi from atop Grandad's bluff. I brought back the smell of autumn and the multicolored trees which I believe is God's tip of Her hat to gay pride. I brought back the question of what is next.<br />
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I think it will be <a href="https://www.trailrunproject.com/trail/7002702/marin-ultra-challenge-50-mile-by-inside-trail-racing">this 50 miler.</a> Because I am alive and filled with longing.<br />
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Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-79745578509115917022019-10-13T13:44:00.001-07:002019-10-13T13:44:38.459-07:00Obituary of a Trail RunnerShe ran a lot. Once an Eastern European cardiologist pulled her aside in the hospital corridor and asked in a low, Slavic tone “what are you running from?” It was on a run that she died when a mountain lion made a stealth attack. She stopped him with a whack to the nose but it was too late.<br />
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A big gash in her side bled rivers on the trail, further reddening the redwood fronds.<br />
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She was always on call so had her phone tucked in the thigh pocket of her glow-in-the dark Oiselle tights. Laying there alone, she grasped the phone and gasped “hey Siri, call 911”. To which Siri replied she could but didn’t think it worthwhile at this point but would she like to know which local funeral parlors ranked most highly on Yelp?<br />
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Her dog wanted to help but being a poodle only knew how to look good and burp in French. He curled up next to his bleeding running companion and laid his heavy head on her side that was still intact.<br />
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The guy with the yak walked by, averting his gaze, suspecting a trap. Despite her pleas he went on, leaving only a Patchouli dust cloud, not unlike Pigpen of Peanuts fame.<br />
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Her dog normally would’ve wanted to eat the yak but sensed his place was at her side. Her dog never lied about anything and preferred the beach or watching television to food. He would stay there forever, with her in the woods.<br />
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She never understood math as well as she would’ve liked. She enjoyed long bike rides but feared having a flat in the middle of nowhere and being too inept to fix it. She often joked around with her patients. She thrived on diagnostic puzzles. She did the New York Times Crossword each and every day.<br />
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As she breathed her last, the past flashed in the manner of a View Master from her 1970’s childhood, a frame with each pull of the lever. The time she first said goodbye to her Dad at age 5 in the cardiac care unit. Click. Her mother’s fingernails caressing her scalp. Click. First kiss under the viaduct. Click. Learning the names of the notes on the spinet piano in the church basement. Click. Making love, having children. Click. Pronouncing someone dead for the first time.<br />
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Who would pronounce her dead? Would yak guy come around again and shake his dreadlocked head then break his creepy silence to declare her demise to the world at large? She closed her eyes and hoped that would not be the case. She imagined being left to slowly decompose and some sunny afternoon a hiker finding her and dog in skeletal repose.<br />
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When she expired, her Apple Music Family Membership persisted. She had two unused credits on Audible.com. Her paycheck would be automatically deposited, with the unworked days paid as “other”, no category on the drop-down list on her Excel time card to precisely explain being bitten to death by a catamount.<br />
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She was married to her best friend. Her only regret as the air grew thin being never seeing him again.<br />
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She liked to practice piano in the dark pre-dawn hours. Her running preference in order:<br />
1) Mad River Beach<br />
2) The Community Forest<br />
3) The Marsh.<br />
She wanted to run ultramarathons, work less, and spend more time with her children. She never really liked talking on the phone.<br />
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Her death was not tragic and her life was complete. In lieu of flowers, show kindness to everyone, even the assholes. Send donations to Planned Parenthood in honor of the NRA. In lieu of a memorial, run on a trail you’ve never set foot on before and notice everything. If you must have a memorial, remember-no harps.<br />
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She died doing exactly what she loved. Her final request: don’t shoot the puma, who only wanted a taste of her trail-running bliss.Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-41842118865746380142019-09-22T09:02:00.000-07:002019-09-22T09:11:32.910-07:00OzI ran at the beach yesterday morning, after waking up to being newly fifty years old, then sending my youngest child off to college. Dog in back seat of beach-mobile fully agreed with beach running plan and added layers of poodle snot to the windows. The fog was so thick when we arrived, we could just barely make out the waves. Well I could just barely make out the waves. Dog was so happy I think he tried to make out with the waves.<br />
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We ran north and about a mile in crossed a line in the sand and we were transported from Kansas to Oz. Stage left, a fog bow spanning the grey to the blue and touching the water in each world. Center stage along the shell-strewn road, a clarity that can only be had when one leaves the fog behind.<br />
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The sand was that perfect mix of soft and packed, making my Hokas feel like flubber and my dog spring around like a bunny rabbit out of hell. One great blue heron we see there sometimes (I assume it is the same one but we've never actually formally met, so...) gave us side-eye disdain. "That effin' poodle again" he/she said. Not knowing that Dog really just wants to cuddle. Or make heron soup. One of those.<br />
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Sir Strava was not invited to this party, nor has he been for awhile. Not that he did anything wrong. Though he is a pretty bossy jerk. We just needed some time apart, some space to sort out our relationship.<br />
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I might need that guy again right now. For one thing, I miss my Strava peeps. For another thing, I signed up for a 50 Kilometer trail race in October and I do sometimes wonder if I am REALLY putting in enough miles. Sure 3-4 hours running in the woods SEEMS like plenty. But what if I am actually running 1 mile per hour? Tomorrow is my 5 hour run day, and I am going to sweet talk Strava, the asshole, and ask him if he will go along.<br />
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After sending my youngest child off to college yesterday, and before climbing into beach-mobile with my maniac Dog, I sat in my very quiet house. It echoed with kid laughter and teenage snark. Before child left, I received two unsolicited, sincere hugs and my heart liquified into a sloppy mess on the kitchen floor and I keeled over and died happy. I then reincarnated as a fifty year old with an empty nest.<br />
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Later, I sat on a piano bench next to a world class pianist and played music in front of people. I mused as we musicked that at age 25 I never would've pictured myself here at age 50, sitting next to <a href="https://danielamineva.instantencore.com/web/bio.aspx">Daniela Mineva</a> playing dances by Barber and Piazzolla. Come to think of it, I do not suppose at age 25 I could picture myself as 50, doing anything, anywhere.<br />
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Question: why does <a href="https://www.aarp.org/">AARP</a> kick in at age 50?<br />
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The other band (I like to think of myself as a "band") that played the concert last night ended up with a sing-along of "This Little Light of Mine". It was weird and goofy and I about cried as this is one of the songs I sang all three of my children at bedtime. No matter what else one does in this life, it always comes back to being tucked in at night or tucking in those you love. Herein lies the foundation on which love is built. Also, chocolate chip cookies, family car trips and all the extra call taken by a certain mother in order to pay for college for certain children.<br />
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Dog and I did eventually return to Kansas but I could not shake the Oz off my birth day. It was like I took a trip somewhere brilliant and came back changed. It would have seemed like a dream but there was all this magic sand packed into the tight curls of Dog, a gift of fairy dust from the Good Witch of the West Coast. Fog is temporary but magic beach sand will be found in one's bed for weeks to come.<br />
I also put some of the bright light in my pocket and it is right there for me, illuminating whatever might come next.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R0qAYq1GVec" width="560"></iframe>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-85274197693084005522019-08-12T08:27:00.000-07:002019-08-12T08:27:03.616-07:00Mother OdeThe 17th generation of hummingbirds that nested in the redwood trees outside our sunroom window moved away. More accurately, they were forcibly relocated, by the felling of redwood trees blocking the neighbor's sun. The ache I feel when standing at the window with my coffee in hand is not unlike the ache I feel with every other loss. Though reliable in its lack of mercy, impermanence still baffles me. Each breath we draw from birth on forward teaches us that nothing lasts but not how to cope with that hard piece of fact. The bewildered hummer moms hung around for a day or two, then most likely rebuilt their nest elsewhere. The sugar water altar they prayed at for seventeen years now stands abandoned, like a chapel in a war-ravaged town. When I cleaned up the tree debris, a salamander scuttled away. I planted a rhododendron and went on with my life.<br />
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23 years ago this week my mother died. I have been telling her some things in my mind that I should have thought to say before she was ashes scattered, earless and presumably in a Better Place. Gratitude for being there for me, and for letting me spread my wings. Apologies for my lack of interest in her as a fully formed human in her own right. I am now in that position of being less than visible, as all Moms are throughout time and will be. When my nest empties, I wonder if I will disappear altogether.<br />
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"If I could do it over" is a recurring phrase that makes that ache, like how I feel when I look out where the hummingbirds always were. I can no more do parenting over than I can reverse the redwood stumps back into towering giants. It is true there is more sun now that those trees are gone. Loss brings a certain clarity, a light trained on imperfections and sins. Loss is like an interrogator who has you tied to a chair, terrified and trying to decide what you can admit to and what you must keep locked inside no matter what blows fall.<br />
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When I sit next to people with dementia, they often talk about their mothers as if they were still around, and coming by in a bit to "take them home". This limbic link to the woman who was once dispensable and considered an irritant is neuro-ironic. Even the damaged brain has saved some space for her, in the back closet, behind the dust pan and broom. Its possible I too will receive limbic visits to my Broom Closet Better Place someday from some grown child who just wants to tell me this or that. Or who has forgotten everything else but me and is waiting for me to come pick them up and take them home.<br />
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A story about a mother frustrated:<br />
One day our hen seemed sick. She sat so motionless I thought she had died. Then she stirred and moaned and did that world-weary cry that only hens can do. We thought perhaps her egg was bound. We brought her in, fascinating the dogs. We placed her on an oven rack over gently steamed water, a towel wrapped around her. She clucked and looked at us like we were idiot farmers. Smart hen. Then I tried a lubricated finger in the cloaca to turn or dislodge the egg, my dusty obstetric skills asserting themselves. Her cluck became more of a what the f:#%? No egg. Back to the coop. We finally called a wiser hen-keeper who said, why she is just brooding! She wants her egg to become a chick. She does this regularly now, the only one in the brood to be such a broody brooder. Maybe someday I will slide a chick under her, all warm and real and fuzzy feathered.<br />
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When my nest empties, perhaps instead of disappearing altogether, I will become solid once again. My brooding might turn to staring at the back of my hand which now looks exactly like my mother's hands which used to freak me out with their veins and age spots. They will try to tell me the story of me, little hands that once climbed trees and were enamored with the piano at the age of three. Bigger hands that practiced piano for hours then decided to hold a scalpel in gross anatomy instead. Hands that felt the swell of my pregnancy. That held the hand of my husband. That rested on the top of the heads of my three children in turn. That extracted splinters expertly. That played catch and held every Harry Potter book, each heavier than the last, for night time reading-out-loud sessions. That flew to my mouth when I heard terrible news. That gripped the dashboard while teaching the mysteries of driving a stick in the parking lot of St Mary's School. That touches the back of my teenager just to have some contact before they roll their eyes and walk away. That write things down and paint a house and palpate joints and abdomens to diagnose. That make me feel I have everything in hand.<br />
A mother in the hand is worth two in the bush.<br />
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I do miss my mother's hands.<br />
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<br />Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-53193360646161132682019-07-15T21:40:00.000-07:002019-07-15T21:40:30.789-07:00Summer CommunionI was thinking of being six years old and a member of a two person club, the California Condors. The name was everything we needed, based on a semi-mythical and nearly extinct bird with a wingspan longer by three feet than that of the best NBA players. And California conjured exotic landscapes, far from the rolling hills of Western Wisconsin and Eastern Minnesota, rising up and watching over each side of the Mississippi River.<br />
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I swam in the Mississippi and would dare myself to open eyes under water, though mostly finding a silty darkness looking back at me. Once, briefly, I shared my inner tube on a tributary, the Black River, with a long water snake. I caught it on my shin, legs bent over the tube, butt hanging in the holy center, and kicked it in the air, watching it arc and splash down river while I screamed and it did whatever the equivalent snake sound of horror might be.<br />
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Hot summer evenings, at dusk, in those, the days of laCrosse Encephalitis, brought the mosquito spraying truck through our neighborhood, first spraying one side of the street, then the other. It made a particular deep, sonorous hum that attracted groups of children, not unlike an ice cream truck with its creepy tunes. We would chase it and feel the poison mist falling gently on our faces and scrawny, bare arms and legs. Probably our parents were never aware of this pastime. My mother, who was up every day at 5 o'clock AM to braid my hair, make breakfast, make lunches, then work all day and come home to make dinner and clean the house was likely at this point in the evening curled into a corner of the couch watching Hawaii Five-0, as well she should have been.<br />
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My tree house had a ladder and a trap door. Inside was a musty carpet and homemade curtains on each of the four square windows. Daddy Long-Legs considered it their vacation home of choice. One of the neighbor boys used to catch Daddy Long-Legs and chase me and my friends then pull their legs out. I suspect large, angry Daddy Long-Legs will be a prominent part of the Karmic payback for many a neighborhood boy, come judgement day.<br />
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My father would stand outside on summer days after work, shaking his fist and swearing in German at the deer eating his tomato plants and flowers. They would stare back at him like a pack of teenagers, unconcernedly chewing. My job was to lug the watering can up and down our steep hill to water the plants. I also mowed the lawn and at least once during every four hour mowing session, the mower would take off on some hillside and threaten to slice off a body part and I would run in the other direction until I was sure I could turn back and catch the thing on my own terms and keeping all of my toes. I hated accidentally running over toads, and was constantly stopping to move those guys out of the way.<br />
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On hot summer days growing up, I ran all the time. Walking was inefficient and a waste of my little muscled, mosquito-bitten stick legs. I ran to kick the can. I ran for Allie-Allie-in-come-free. I ran through the sprinkler. I ran and dove upon the three Slip-n-Slides laid in an epic, yellow Slip-n-Slide row, inevitably drawing blood on the jagged sharp edges where the water sprayed out.<br />
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My Mom played catch with me, her arm informed by her days as the only girl playing for New York City's Little League. She played shortstop. I played softball, and was the pitcher. My mother once convinced me to eat a plate of disgusting canned spinach because it would do for my arms what it did for Popeye's.<br />
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Not to brag but we rode our bikes all day long and without helmets. We skated and skate-boarded without pads. We had exactly two choices on a hot summer day:<br />
1) Go outside and play<br />
2) Or I will find something* for you to do<br />
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*involving miserable house cleaning chores<br />
* we did NOT have play-dates**<br />
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**I wonder... were play-dates the beginning of the end of Homo sapiens ability to survive in the wild?<br />
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I was thinking about my friend and I being California Condors. Soon after, she moved to Idaho and the day she left I watched her climb up into her family's truck and I cried.<br />
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I do not recall the California Condors having any specific mission. We just flew free, in Zips sneakers, for hours, by ourselves outside. Likely we were watched more than we realized by our parents and neighbors, but it felt like we were soaring independently, with endless wing spans, coming in for a landing only when we felt the animal urge for Red Kool-Aid and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. My Mom even had one of those glass pitchers, as in the advertisements, with large ice cubes clinking as she poured the summer's wine, like communion, into our dixie-cup chalices.<br />
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<br />Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-23358676396774164172019-07-06T21:56:00.000-07:002019-07-07T21:05:10.884-07:00This One is About Running<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
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Crush despair<br />
Impulse by impulse<br />
Launched, landed, launched<br />
Redwoods fronds like the high dive<br />
Some kid behind you yelling hurry up<br />
Brooks slapping path, bouncing, committing<br />
Six times up the hill they call the beast or is it<br />
The bitch. Pit bulls on leashes strain to nose sweaty<br />
Practically fifty year old runner and the phone rings, the work phone,<br />
Pulling up to a burnt out 300 year old stump, tending suffering, catching breath<br />
With calm words in the redwood cathedral, itself a healer of brokenness.<br />
Confessed sins scamper under ferns and swaths of three leaf clovers<br />
Attaching like ticks to the next ankle or dog passing through.<br />
No matter created or destroyed just redeployed<br />
Under canopies, salamander playgrounds,<br />
Neon slugs consume shit,<br />
Dopamine rush, I care.<br />
Crush despair<br />
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<br />Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6238511388306193619.post-58044458126150222112019-06-29T22:27:00.000-07:002019-06-29T22:27:02.766-07:00PowerI would like to consider power, which I can do only from my own perspective, which is both steeped in power and roasted in powerlessness, giving off the aroma of fragility with an after-burn of ferocity.<br />
I would like to consider the potential power of unpopular opinions, the power trapped inside the magazine gorgeous body of my eighteen year old daughter who is unafraid to speak her mind. The power she showed looking her school administrator straight in the eyes and declaring she did not need him to tell her she is intelligent. Nor does his opinion much matter.<br />
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I would like to consider the power of being in power. I have watched hospital administrators crush the souls of physicians and nurses. I have watched my childrens' school allow racism and bullying to run freely while pretending to be representative of our self-proclaimed liberal town. I am watching and not doing a thing about children being imprisoned by my government, kidnapped from their parents, and placed in facilities not fit for any living thing. The power of those in power is they make the rest of us feel paralyzed with uncertainty. How can it be true that homeless people are disparaged by a Catholic hospital? How can it be true that a school protects itself on the back of a child who just happens not to be white and who happens not be able to remain silent? How can it be true that the country that once elected Obama is letting babies die in captivity? It is all so unfathomable, I feel like I spend half my life just trying to pick my jaw up from off the ground.<br />
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It can be hard to consider power when you come from feeling less than. Not pretty enough, not talented enough, not a good enough mother, not a competitive enough medical student, not a well-dressed enough physician, not fast enough, not thin enough, too thin. Staring in the mirror at boobs too small, unless wearing a cross country uniform, in which case I should have no boobs at all.<br />
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Power without wealth is rare. A favorite quote of administrators, and one I have even spouted once or twice myself is "no mission without money". Healthcare without resources is only cool if you are in the wilderness, on purpose, and remember the tricks you learned at your wilderness medicine conferences. In my rural area, where poverty reigns, we are lucky to have specialists and some technology. But don't ask for a hysterectomy at our hospital, nor a tubal ligation, nor anything that might have to do with transgender healthcare. Jesus was very clear about these things, in his sermon on the Mount of Majesty, where declared blessed were those who did not act weird, smell funny, request birth control, or kiss people of the same anatomical sex.<br />
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I was thinking the other day that one of the most dangerous types of people is a wealthy, white liberal. I am white and liberal and compared to most people on this planet my wealth is grand. I know what is right, but spend my free time going on trail runs and reading fiction and playing piano. Meanwhile, a young black college student was murdered in my town and no one ever figured out who did it or why, my daughter was treated like shit at her high school and no one ever apologized, and little children are sitting in their own excrement in cement cages on our border to make a political point. I am mad as hell, and not doing anything about it. Dangerous in my complacency. Dangerous in my desire to just keep my children safe in this scary and unjust world, even if other people's children are having a hard time.<br />
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Having a son in prison reframes things, with the perfect family portrait tinged with a backdrop of the noir, the family theme song slightly ominous, and the proverbial neighbors looking knowingly at our particular failure to thrive. I used to dread lunches in the doctor's lounge, with everyone's children winning the state science fair. I often quipped about being glad my son was not in jail. Definitely a conversation stopper. Let me eat my gorram peanut butter and jelly sandwich in peace. Course he did end up in jail, then prison, and let's consider the power dynamics he faces every day. Young, baby-faced, not terribly tall, a goof ball, and irritatingly smart. A target for those who find power in physical prowess. The guards steal things from the letters I send him (like stamps and envelopes so he can write back). If he does well at work (which he has been), the guys there longer and much older give him grief. If he has one impulsive reaction to someone making him feel small and insignificant, it could lead to more time in prison, and the endless cycle of taking young men with addiction and short fuses and making them even more angry and scared and so powerless that they finally just give up. Blessed be the Prison Industrial Complex.<br />
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I would like to consider the power of women. At a recent writing and running retreat, led by and attended by women, there was so much power in the room that it felt like I could breathe for the first time in a long while. Because the power was not toxic. It was steady and fierce. Like one of those redwoods that it would take ten people to wrap their arms around. Like the way the ocean rolls in and in and in with a roar of serenity. The food was also good and I don't think we talk enough about the power of good food, good water, and a decent bed to sleep in at night.<br />
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has that kind of power. Nourishing and honest. Can you see how she makes the very house of representatives quake in its boots and powdered wigs? Can you bear her truth telling? Can you believe she started her campaign with $2 and a job as a waitress? The scariest thing to those in inherited and bought power is a pissed off, highly educated, brown-skinned waitress from the Bronx.<br />
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AOC reminds me of my daughter, the one who has been standing up for her rights despite the perturbed discomfort of angry administrators and challenged teachers. I worry and worry that they will try to hurt her further. Let's consider the misuse of power and its penchant for destruction. Abuse of power will, in the not too distant future, be the end of homo sapiens. Unless...<br />
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...power is considered less important than courage. And compassion. And speaking up for those that may not be able to on that given day, and when they are able to, stepping aside so they can speak for themselves.<br />
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A bunch of small, insignificant people could theoretically decide as a group that they have had enough and it could change everything. And can we please elect a woman to the presidency of the United States of America?<br />
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It is time someone magically awakens the inner vampire slayer so many seemingly timid beings possess. Blessed are the slayers, for they will inherit the earth.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6tH2PJRejVM" width="560"></iframe>Jennifer Heidmann, MD, FACPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05268232179851621603noreply@blogger.com0