Category: Values

Memories (In a pile of old receipts)

Originally posted in heelskicksscalpel.com

In college, soon after I got my first bank account and a credit card with a $300 credit limit, I started keeping every receipt for every purchase I ever made. At the end of every calendar year, I would box up an annual pile of receipts. This continued until a few years ago when my husband decided he could no longer tolerate me forcing us as a family to save every receipt filed away into individual envelopes for necessities, frivolities, groceries, gifts, etc. He was right, outside of certain big ticket items and shoes from Nordstrom, there really was not any reason to “hoard” receipts (his words, not mine).

It’s been a tough habit to break. Now, when I empty out my wallet after a few days I scan the receipt for what I purchased and then cringe as a toss it. Every. Single. Time. Not sure if it’s just me still trying to break the habit or some weird paranoia that I will truly someday miss having proof of purchase for that t-shirt from target or that gallon of milk.

In any case, during some spring cleaning yesterday I came across all of my receipts from those college years. It was a fascinating lens into my past habits and routines. He’s what I remembered/learned about myself all these years later.

  1. I bought a lot of feminine hygiene products. A lot.
  2. I spent a lot of money on photocopies and laser printing.
  3. I ate out. Often. And, surprisingly I can remember who I ate with for each of those meals away from our usual two or three go-to restaurants. Making the effort to go somewhere more expensive or (gasp) leave the general vicinity of campus = a special occasion and I found myself imagining everyone who I thought was special to me all those years ago.
  4. I didn’t, however, indulge in snacks at convenience stores or similar. This is notable only because I am married to someone who definitely did.
  5. I always love to shop, it seems.
  6. I never paid more than $19.99 for any of my shoes or clothes back then. Typically, my stuff came in well under ten bucks.
  7. I owe a special thank you to the Wexner family of Columbus, OH. Were it not for their Limited/Express stores back in the day I might have had to go through college naked.
  8. I even once purchased something at an Abercrombie & Fitch store. This must have been before I developed migraines in response to strong perfumes or colognes. I won’t allow my daughter to shop there (at least when I am with her) because it’s some sort of moral stand I decided to take for reasons related to the forced inhalation of strong smells as I walk by their stores in the modern American mall.   I have always denied ever shopping there; evidently, I am a big liar.
  9. I never bought anything that would be considered athletic. Nope. Not a thing in which one could workout. This is regrettable, not only for the fact that it is evidence of my complete lack of physical self-care back then but also because it likely led to the backlash known as my current Athleta problem.
  10. I got just a bit nostalgic that Caldor, Lechmere, and Filene’s no longer exist.
  11. I evidently was also the kiss of death for any bank I decided to do my saving with. None of the three banks I used during those years exist today.
  12. I used to listen to a lot more music than I do now. Today I could stream constantly if I wanted to but honesty I don’t ever listen to music outside of my car or on workouts. Back then between mail order and the local Tower Records, I bought a lot of CDs.
  13. I enjoyed live music far more often than the concert every couple of years I enjoy today. But, there was no genre in particular that called my name as was evident from my ticket stubs for House of Pain, Duran Duran, James Taylor, and They Might Be Giants. And, as with those special dinners, I remember exactly who I saw each of those shows with.
  14. If there wasn’t live music to be enjoyed, I went to the movies. I saw some great films and some mediocre ones. I often sought out art house cinemas for limit release films. I didn’t just seek out the big screen for films whose effects would warrant the time, effort, and cost of going to the movies [read: the only movies I have seen in the theatre in the last 3 years are the 2 Star Wars movies.] I simply enjoyed going to the movies back then unfettered by the logistics of sitters and evening little league games or by the gravitational pull of my pajamas at 7:30pm.
  15. Occasionally, I went to a play but I was not so much a theater person. Rather I was an ardent supporter of my friends who ran the set, played in the pit, or were making their acting debut on their way to become ophthalmologists, lawyers, and Drosophila experts.
  16. I clearly went out a lot. But when I was in, I spent a lot of time on the phone at substantial cost. If I had invested the money I spent on hours of late night calls with my best friend from home, she and I would be enjoying some really tricked out girls’ weekends now. Calling friends came at a premium back then. Now, we have unlimited minutes to talk yet we rarely do; and, if we do it’s for minutes, not hours.
  17. I was proud of the fact that I worked to finance all of these “frivolities” that lightened my college years. I made $65/week at my work study and always deposited $40, spending about $25 on the typical weekend (Thursday night through Sunday brunch back in those days — never paying for a brunch until years later because, well, dining waffled were just that good) and putting away the rest for my phone bill and summer adventures.
  18. I didn’t really have any real adventures, though. I visited my sister and my best friend in New York a lot. I had a great trip to visit my roommate on the west coast our first summer after college. And, yes I saved every boarding pass and bus ticket. Greyhound and Peter Pan still exist but wow my TWA ticket for the *non-smoking* section was a real blast from the past. As was that boarding pass for my first every Southwest flight in 1993 — an experience that kept me from using this airline for the ensuing nearly a quarter of a century until driven by desperation about 2 years ago.
  19. I wonder what has happened to the carbon paper industry. I miss the satisfying mechanical sound of the credit card impression maker thingy. The screeching feedback that it’s time to remove my chip is not the same.
  20. I also miss my original signature with first, middle, and last name fully legible. receipts

 

What I Really Care About During A Trump Presidency

Originally posted on heelskicksscalpel.com

The internet is ablaze with images and commentary about our new president. They focus on a baby blue dress with an interesting collar or lack of chivalry or delusional views of a crowd or pithy signs about that which cannot be combed over, but let me tell you what I do and don’t care about when it comes to our new president.

I don’t care what his wife wears; but, I do care about how his trade policies will impact the price of everyone else’s clothes since most Americans cannot afford 4-figure price tag garments made in America.

I don’t care how he treats his wife or the two wives that preceded her; but, I do care about what he is doing to dismantle women’s healthcare and reproductive choice.

I don’t care what size of his crowds were compared to my crowds; but, I do care that  he has no qualms about every person in either of those crowds or in any other public space carrying a loaded weapon.

I don’t care how bad his spray tan is or how awkward his combover looks when the wind gusts; but, I do care that he is going to decimate our environment and exacerbate global warming.

I don’t care about his son’s personality or medical history; but, I do care that he is going to dismantle a public school system and higher education financing mechanism that educates the rest of our children.

I don’t care that he hasn’t released his tax returns; but, I do care that he intends to give the top 1% tax cuts while everyone else pays more and loses necessary services.

I don’t care that he is not as amazingly healthy as his hyperbolic doctor purported him to be; but, I do care that he is going to significantly reduce access to health care for millions of our most vulnerable citizens.

I don’t care that he was obsessed with promulgating the “alternative fact” that our 44th President was not born in the US; but, I do care about him oppressing those among us who were not born here especially if we do not bear a white European ethnicity or do not practice Christianity.

When our new president cares only about stroking his own ego and pandering to those who simply cannot tolerate a progressively diverse society and increasingly global economy, we must have a laser like focus on the values and policies we really care about.

What Brock Turner, his a$$ho#e dad, and a biased judge make me want to scream at my daughter (and my son)!

Originally posted at heelskicksscalpel.com

Warning: Expletives to follow

The internet has been consumed this week with outrage regarding the trial of Brock Turner a varsity swimmer at Stanford University who was convicted of 3 counts felony sexual assault and only sentenced to 6 months in the county jail for a crime punishable by upwards of a decade in the state penitentiary.

Evidently the trial was a classic blame the victim set up by the well compensated attorney hired by Turner’s family who was painted to be an all-American good guy. The jury didn’t fall for it and he was convicted. The judge, however, himself a former Stanford varsity athlete with seemingly similar racial and socioeconomic background, worried about the impact of a longer sentence on the convicted rapist. And so, the extraordinarily light sentence followed was in sharp contrast to what a young man of a different racial and socioeconomic background might expect from our judicial system.

Now twice victimized, first when she was raped and second when her behavior on the night she was raped and her character were drawn into question in a court, the young woman who was assaulted by Turner wrote a powerful letter that galvanized social media followers who were soon calling for the judge’s recall. The convicted rapist’s father countered the letter noting how just ‘20 minutes‘ of his son’s life had resulted in such a detriment to his well-being. He went on to suggest that his upstanding progeny take up motivational speaking on the the topic of alcohol and promiscuity on college campuses rather than taking up space in a jail cell. Not surprisingly, this sent the twitterati into an uproar.

‘Rape Culture’ and ‘White Privilege’ have been hashtagged repeatedly these last few days and I too am enraged. But, I am not here to talk to you about my rage. There are plenty of others who have expressed my thoughts on this brave victim, the entitled brat who victimized her, his piece of shit father, and a judge (no matter how neutral his prior rulings might be) who clearly was woefully imperceptive of his own unconscious bias in favor of affluent white males in rendering a sentence in this case.

I am here to express my grave concern about what to say to my children in response to this.

I don’t want my daughter to have to go through what this young woman went through. I don’t ever want to see her spirit wiped away by the most gruesome of personal violations and to have her reputation destroyed in the process of seeking justice. I want to provide her with wise counsel to protect herself from ever being raped. And by this I don’t mean the scary bogeyman rapist who lurks in the bushes preying on unknown victims; for that she will have a black belt in Krav Maga.  Since the vast majority of rapes are perpetrated by known assailants upon known victims, be they long-term intimate partners or recent encounters on a dance floor, my daughter needs solid advice on how to avoid the Brock Turner types now and in the future.

Wharton Professor and author Adam Grant’s post on Facebook (pictured below) sums up the causes of rape exceptionally well.

 And if these are it, then what can I say to my daughter to not play into the blame the victim stance that is so common in our society? I want to scream at her:

“Don’t ever, not ever, drink a single drop of alcohol, ever no matter what! I don’t care how safe the social scene appears to you. I don’t care how solid a crew your girlfriends promise to be. I don’t care if you are the legal age. You have no idea if and when you judgment will be compromised; and, since the Brock Turners of this world can’t be relied upon to exercise any judgment even when you are sloppy drunk to the point of unconsciousness just don’t let yourself to be vulnerable to the likes of him due to intoxication so JUST. DON’T. DRINK!”

“Ditto for drugs. Don’t expect anyone around you to exercise good judgment on your behalf. They won’t, especially if they are Brock Turner. Got it? NO DRUGS!”

“Don’t dress provocatively. No cleavage. No short skirts. Nothing that accentuates your femininity, NOT EVER! You can read about how rape is about violence, aggression and power rather than about sexual arousal, pleasure, and sex in the text books but in real life I beg you not to do anything that could possibly make you more attractive to the Brock Turners of this world. They are incapable of exercising control over their sexual urges and they will lash out violently and aggressively to satisfy these urges with bodies that are simply more powerful than yours so NOTHING SEXY on that body!”

“Ditto for flirty behavior. I wish a coy remark here or a sideways glance there could be just a fun, arm’s length interaction but to someone like Brock Turner it is like an invitation for sex even if it takes violent aggression to get it. So please DO NOT ACT LIKE YOU ARE ASKING FOR IT!”

“Don’t walk alone. You never know when a stranger is going to assault you. Wait you have Krav Maga for that. What I really mean to scream is DON’T GO ANYWHERE ALONE WITH SOMEONE LIKE BROCK TURNER! Especially if you have not obeyed my prior four rants about drinking, drugs, dressing, and flirting. If you do, you better hope that the non-Brock Turners are randomly riding by on their bikes or their skate boards to save you.”

And here I am seriously teetering on the edge of an unprovoked screaming fit at my daughter because my first reaction is not to scream at my son:

“DON’T BE LIKE FUCKING BROCK TURNER!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Nope. Not ever. I don’t care how she dressed or behaved, or how compromised her judgment may have been for whatever reason, or whatever fantasies have been imprinted in your brain from the media, or how our society tends to treat men and women differently when it comes to matters of power and sex and everything in between. You are better than that. You treat women-all humans for that matter-with respect. You protect those who might be vulnerable, be they male or female, young or old, drunk or sober, black or white, whatever their potential vulnerability may be. You stand up for what’s right and you squash all that is morally reprehensible. You be the guys on the bikes or the boards. You help. And unlike Brock Turner, his asshole dad, and this biased Judge you be the one who sets a good example for all the little boys that follow.”

Reflections on ‘The Great Work Life Debates’

Originally posted at heelskicksscalpel.com

Last week I, along with nearly 10,000 other surgeons of various specialties, attended our profession’s premier annual meeting, the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress. Of these, some 50 attended a panel session I chaired called the “Great Work Life Debates.” Embed from Getty Images

Quite honestly, I was so relieved by the turnout.

Every conference needs to have a last day and the desire of attendees to duck out before that day (especially given work life issues such as not spending another night away from your nursing infant or not missing another OR day) is totally understandable. Nevertheless, some sessions will be assigned the dreaded last session of the last day.

So yes, leading up it, I was filled with dread that the co-moderator, six speakers, and I would be the only people in attendance. I was delighted to be wrong.

Embed from Getty ImagesWhy did these hearty surgeons stick around for this session? Why were there so many men (also much to my delight) in the audience? Were they there searching for the right answers to the Great Work Life Debates? Did the panelists even have any answers to provide?

The committee sponsoring the session was the American College of Surgeons Women in Surgery Committee (WiSC). I would posit, however, that in the modern era issues of balancing the demands of work and the demands of life at home (or as I like to think of it, the joys of my profession with the joys of my personal life) are not limited to women surgeons. WiSC just happens to have taken the lead in bringing such issues to a format that I imagine years ago was limited to the best technique for such and such procedure or what’s new with such and such surgical disease.

Just because male surgeons of a particular generation may have propagated a particular stereotype about how they valued or prioritized their work relative to their life outside of work does not mean that the male surgeons of today fit into that stereotype. Just because women are increasingly represented in surgical careers does not mean that socio-cultural norms for women surgeons’ roles outside of work have dissipated. An so, I believe that both men and women sought out this session because more circumscribed professional meetings are less likely to address non-biomedical topics even though concerns for wellness both in and out of work—wholeness as a person inclusive of professional and personal needs—transcend surgical specialties, and yes even gender.

Surgeons, irrespective of specialty, gender, or sexual orientation, who haven’t found a life partner, may be prone to wonder whether they should marry another surgeon or seek a non-surgeon with whom to spend the rest of their days outside of the hospital. Those who do have partners, may wonder how to make it work for the long term irrespective of their lifemate’s profession. Surgeons of both genders who do not have children may be experiencing deep inner desire to start a family or may be frustrated by the perception that choosing not to have a family is somehow not acceptable. And, those with children surely have days when inevitable stress of modern day parenting leave them wondering why they did it just as they surely have days when every worry, whether it is about work or home or world peace, is dissipated by boundless giggles of a toddler or the unexpected talkativeness of an otherwise moody teen.  Surgeons whose careers or family situations throw childrearing into chaos must consider the pros and cons of care rendered by nannies in the home or childcare in the diverse, highly regulated environment provided by out-of-home daycare. And, no matter what option or combination of options they choose there will be less than perfect days when both work and child(ren) will be needing you at the exact same moment.

Surgeons—not male surgeons, not female surgeons—but just surgeons sharing similar work life concerns came together to listen to these Great Work Life Debates. These points (and barring time limitations we could have point/counterpointed countless other work life dilemmas) were argued by women with different life experiences, different perspectives, and different debate tactics but both the pros and the cons resonated with the women and the men in the audience who it seems, based of their feedback thus far, simply desired a venue that acknowledged that we surgeons are in fact humans—we have lives outside of work, lives that are made ever more complex by long hours, possible lives at risk while we are working, and myriad other professional demands (which include, by the way, attending such meetings for so many hours/year for continuing medical education credits).

acs

So what was the bottom line for the men and women who stayed for one of the last sessions on the last day of our conference? Not surprisingly there wasn’t one.

Thus, while marriage is challenging no matter what your day job is (if it wasn’t they would just call it dating forever!) you can’t always control who you fall in love with; a loving, supportive spouse will make your work more manageable whether he/she understands to a tee what you go through every day work or has a vague understanding of why you sometimes come home tired or distracted or not at all. But you too have to be loving and supportive in return and that rendering of love and support may take different shapes.

While children come with the stress and anxiety of raising them along with the costs (~250-500k per child up to 18 years before including the costs of college according to one debator) raising them also brings the joy of nurturing, chubby cheeks, Disney World vacations, etc. but choosing to be childfree also brings many joys (e.g. unfettered travel that need not involve animatronics, increased focus on nurturing your relationship with your partner, increased time to pursue personal wellness) that parents often forego or delay.

Finally, both a nanny and daycare can provide a loving, caring environment replete with both educational and emotional growth while you are working but relying on a single individual may limit diversity and back-up options while relying on daycare increases the day to day burden of prepping the child(ren).  Either way, your children will know you are their parent and they will love you back even on the days when things don’t go smoothly.

My hope is that listening to a spirited debate on these issues related to the dilemmas of partnering, parenting, and childcare will have enabled the audience thoughtfully consider what matters to them and various strategies to help alleviate the strain between the joys of work and the joys of personal life. While there are no perfect solutions (and to strive for a vision of perfection is to set yourself up for disillusionment in your choice of life partner, your decision to (or not to) have children, or your childcare preferences), it’s about crafting a reasonable approach to your own great work life debate based on self-reflection and practical needs.