Jennifer

September 3, 2022

The Part Before “Fine”

When someone asks, “How was your day?”, you probably briefly look back and choose one or two words that summarize your strongest feelings about it. “It was exciting!” or “It was exhausting” or more often, “It was fine”. While this is what we have come to expect in our everyday short-form communication with one another, what we end up doing is burying dozens of other emotions that deserve a mention, too. This got me thinking about examining just one day...

May 11, 2022

It’s Complicated

TL;DR: Stay curious. The abortion issue is actually very complicated. Be humble. Listen. Be willing to be uncomfortable in the conversation. As a matter of background, I grew up in the church and had always identified as Republican and pro-life. I questioned little and took it at face value that “abortion is murder, murder is wrong, we have to end abortion”. I remember attending a Rally for Life for the local Right to Life chapter. And pinning a small paper...

April 27, 2022

Equal, but Not Invited

I’ve been listening to a podcast about the fall of Mars Hill, an evangelical megachurch, and its volatile lead pastor, Mark Driscoll. As I was listening, I noticed I started to feel quite uneasy. Anxious. My heart rate ticked up. My breathing was a little faster. I felt a lump in my throat. A tenseness in my shoulders. I noticed the same feeling when I happened to see a pastor from the church we have just left at my son’s...

February 16, 2022

The Quitting Threshold

I quit my job. Actually, I quit my job 180 days ago, because that is the number of days my employer requested I give as “notice” when I signed my contract more than six years ago. Not two weeks’ notice. Not 90 days. 180 days. I quit my job before I had a new one lined up. And that was scary…the prospect of not securing a new job before that 180 days was up. I quit my job even though...

December 29, 2021

More Weight

We’ve all read the headlines. Scrolled through our social media. Talk to almost any healthcare provider these days and you will hear words like “exhausted”, “overwhelmed”, and “disillusioned”. The more angsty of us will add “exasperated”, “wounded”, and “given up on humanity”. I have to admit. It’s bad in here. Patients everywhere. Tired staff. Demonstrably preventable death all around us. So it’s pretty easy to get into a downward spiral of doom. What is more, we have seen the worst...

October 23, 2021

Sonder

Sonder — noun. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, and inherited craziness — an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing...

August 18, 2021

Pop

“Here’s $20. Go buy a pitcher of good beer. You deserve it,” he winked as he slipped the crinkled bill into my now husband’s hand. We were two young kids at my cousin’s wedding, standing near the cash bar. We’d just started dating. And he could see the love in our eyes. I was his grandbaby. A tender 20 years old. And he saw the man at my side, who’d really only been there a matter of months, and he’d...

May 2, 2021

Deep Cuts

On busy days, my desk is a random collection of papers and objects. In a rush between receiving trauma patients and bouncing between meetings, I toss things down and plan to deal with them later. The other day, I glanced over and saw a scalpel and a tube of nice lip gloss resting next to each. Random for sure, but also stopped me in my tracks. It’s not uncommon to find a surgeon with a scalpel in their pocket…at the ready...

January 27, 2021

Diastole

Our hearts beat somewhere around 80 times per minute, every minute, of every day, of every year…until we die. When we are stressed, our hearts beat faster; stronger. When the heart squeezes, we call it systole. Our hearts are incredibly strong and efficient, never really resting. But the faster they beat, the less time they have to fill up between beats, the period we call diastole. When diastole is too short, our hearts remain relatively empty and don’t fill up...

December 5, 2020

On the Flip Side

On October 12, my right leg went weak, numb, tingly, and I had shooting pain from my gluteal region down to my ankle. I did one simple 3-mile run on the treadmill, and by the time I got home…this. I thought maybe I sprained my ankle or something (amazing how doctors forget anatomy and forgo a physical exam when it comes to themselves) so I took some ibuprofen and went to bed. Nope. Same story in the AM. I’d been...