It's not easy being green.

I was sure there would be comments from the last post. You are all obviously out enjoying the summer. If you live on the east coast that means drowning. If you live on the west, frying to a crisp. In the spring I was thrashing around in my yard almost every day. I am determined to have a garden that looks like a grownup planted it. You know, for someone who imagines herself having some kind of artistic talent, garden design is not my forte. I really love that casual English garden style where it looks like a bunch of foxglove, daisies and roses just wandered in. My attempt at casual elegance however, looks like a school’s flower bed. Ah, that must be the area they let the kindergartners plant.
To make matters worse, the weeds have crept in and gotten away from me. They didn’t have far to go. The lawn is mostly weeds. I will not take the blame for this. The yard was a big mess when we moved in 6 years ago. All Alain and I have been willing to do is mow the suckers down occasionally. When we first moved in my neighbor across the street tried to be helpful. She said, “You know, if you were thinking of spraying some weed killer down, now is the time of year to do it.” I told her, “If it’s green it stays.” Hey, you’ve got to admit that huge patch of clover looks pretty darn good during a drought. I don’t know for sure but I think all those weeds have something to do with the annual crop of really weird mushrooms that sprout up all over the yard. One of my neighbors practices his golf swing on his. Me, I get out the mushroom guide books to see which ones I can eat. I am strange in many ways. Wouldn’t you know? Not a single one edible. And what peeps out from under a pine tree just three feet over the property line of my neighbor’s yard but a tiny patch of chanterelles. It ain’t fair.
Now, even I, the earthy-crunchy, tree hugging environmentalist, have contemplated the purchase of Round Up. But no, I can’t do it. Lest I offend you Monsanto types I would just like to point out that it would take poisoning all of nearby Lake Ontario to kill all the weeds in this yard. I have to remind myself of what I tell other people as they gaze at all the many leafy green things that have completely outcompeted the grass. What some people call weeds, I call biodiversity.
I did cheat though. When we were away in France my neighbor sent her lawn service guy over to mow our lawn. Yes, Ann is a saint in many ways. One of the best things you can ever do is make friends with a neighbor who is a neat freak. One day she came over with her power washer and cleaned my deck. The workmen renovating my kitchen are still talking about it; they never saw anyone do that kind of thing voluntarily, just to be nice.
The lawn looked nice. Damned nice. Alain was away this week at a conference enjoying balmy, sweltering Vancouver. Did you know the public beaches there are clothing optional? Did you know Alain hates the lawn services because of all the noise they make on the weekends? I cheated. I had Ann call the guy back. Don’t tell.

Are you busy or guilty?

Someone I knew a long time ago sent me a friend request on facebook. I sent a reply and he answered three months later, apologizing for the delay and stating that he had been busy until now. At first I dismissed the comment because one hears it all the time. Then I got to thinking. What makes that guy so damned busy he can't answer an email? Last I checked he wasn't running the Fed or the free world.

Then I began thinking about how infrequently I apologize for being too busy to do something. I apologize for things I haven't done all the time. I apologize constantly for the state of my house whenever anyone comes in. I am always doing things at the last minute (I should be cleaning the house right now) but it never occurred to me to apologize because I was too busy. What is the difference between someone who assumes the world will understand that too much has been placed on their shoulders to accomplish even the most mundane of tasks such as answering an email versus the person who beats themselves up regularly for not being organized enough?

So I tried it. I just said it. My apology for not doing something (which I don't recall now) was simply to say I had been too busy. To my amazement the person to whom I said this just accepted it. There was no look of condescension at my incompetence. In fact the look was one of pity that I could be so busy.

Toss my cell phone/calendar/email/organizer in the trash, I am free at last.

Dr. Bif

Schnoz Free!

My nose is free. The tube is out. Tomorrow I eat something and get the hell out!

I am the Highlander, there can be only one!

I'm at Highland Hospital again and I'm not the only one here so not a very good title.

I should be out soon. I had a bowel obstruction on Friday. Previous surgeries and radiation made things sticky in there. I have a tube down my nose and into my stomach. It is an absolute joy. On the pain medication I was having freaky dreams, getting chased by monsters. As I started to feel better I started having dreams about glasses of water. The best was a glass of cold orange juice. I opened up a fridge and there were several gallon jugs all open.

Today I drank about 4 little cups of apple juice. I'd have to say I prefer that to orange juice lest some kind hearted soul send a bunch of cans to my house. I'm hoping to get out in a day or so. the NG tube in my nose is clamped and we are seeing how well I fly on my own. I'm supposed to leave for France on Friday. We're going to France, we're going to France, everyone now, we're going to france...

a bientot.

Dr. Le Bif

The Legend of Uncle Bill

Hello,
Just an update from the field since my knitting friends think I've gone awol. I missed the last knitter's guild of the year. Very unlike me. I just plain forgot. My knitting has really fallen by the wayside recently. I finally figured it out. I have been knitting "the cable nightmare" for 2 years now, on and off. I decided I would not work on anything else until it was done. Strangely my interest in knitting has waned over the last few months. I've wanted to knit but just couldn't make myself. Even stranger was that I didn't understand why. Ah, at last some wisdom has percolated into my addled brain. I've been monogamous too long. As soon as I realized I wanted to knit a baby blanket for a friend's new baby I haven't been able to put the needles down. While in Boston I spotted some groovy, overpriced yarn in a trendy yarn store. I schmoozed with the ladies, impressing them with my lingo, tossing around names (oh yes, I love Alice Starmore patterns...blah blah blah...), bought the yarn and started a scarf. I am obsessed again. I left the baby blanket project at a friend's house this week and it's killing me. No more monogamy, the yarn slut is back!

Chemo seems to have settled into a routine. God, what a weird thing to say. the last round was a breeze. It might have had something to do with me taking one of Alain's meloxicam for his stress fracture by accident. I thought it was my citalopram. for you non-medical types it's just an anti-inflammatory not a freakin' narcotic. I score those outside my office on Monroe Ave. The high school kids just stand there outside our break room on a busy street corner and light up weed. Other mornings there's a homeless guy or two passing a brown paper bag.

So the title of this post says "The Legend of Uncle Bill." This is a story I've wanted to tell for a while but have been unable to write. How do I do the man justice? For a long time I felt the need to get all the details correct. I even called Uncle Bill and interviewed him. I have let myself off the hook for the simple reason that I will never get it exactly right and as you can see from the last post, some Moran will respond by telling me exactly what detail I got wrong (ahem, Mom...). So, Frankie, Martha, Nancy, Sally, Susie and any other "Moran Police" who feel the need to correct me, this is just an artistic rendering if you will, a gestalt, a mood piece, a fable...and if you don't like it. Get your own blog.

If you recall the other postings you know that the Moran clan is highly respectful of tradition. Our traditions, the ones we find funny. We don't respect much else. We will do things to amuse ourself and mortify those who have married into the clan because it is more fun that way. My mother and her siblings loved to remember games they played as a child. A favorite was called Chuckle Belly. Everyone lies down on the floor at right angles, one head lying across another person's abdomen. The first in the line says just, "Ha!" The second person says it twice, the third, three times and so on. Go ahead try it. The Morans can't get past the third "ha" before everyone is laughing with their heads bouncing up and down on each other's bellies. It's hysterical actually. My mother and her siblings proved this by starting a game at a wedding reception. Maybe I'm not being clear here. They were not children, they were grandparents when they did this. Hey, it's a tradition.

Uncle Bill though, is a tradition unto himself. In addition to being a major player in all the water fights he alone has a tradition unique to him. It started years ago and it involved a cake. It was a cake he was not supposed to eat but there it was, a slice missing and someone very upset. Uncle Bill explained that taking a slice of the cake was an old Irish tradition. The male head of the family was supposed to sample the cake and make sure that it had not been poisoned before guests could eat it. Apparently this assuaged the indignation.

Well, give the man an inch and he takes a mile. Uncle Bill ran with that and has been running with that excuse for years. At the wedding reception of his brother's daughter he was seated near the cake. The dinner went on and on. The reception hall was hot. No one was cutting the cake. Time went by, still no cake. Bill thought the cake was going to melt. "Well, I'm just going to go get myself a piece of that cake!" and off he went. The cutting ceremony followed seconds later by a flustered wedding party with the missing piece hidden in the back.

At my cousin John's wedding the tradition had been well established. So John's new wife was ready for Bill. She enlisted John's brother, Tommy to stand guard at the cake. The reception goers waited to be seated at dinner. All the Moran siblings were to be seated together. My mother was standing with Uncle Bill and some of her sisters waiting to sit down when she noticed Uncle Bill was eating. No one else was eating... He'd accomplished his mission and changed out of his ninja gear long before the "guard" was posted.

At my wedding I felt sorry for Uncle Bill. The cake wasn't in the reception hall. I was actually a little sad that he wasn't going to sabotage the confection. Unbeknownst to us, Uncle Bill was up to the challenge. I think they'll be using this as plot device for the next Bourne Identity movie. Uncle Bill talked with one of the waiters. He told him as the eldest member of the family he had to inspect the wedding cake. It was an old Irish and family tradition. The waiter was a little confused. He called a manager. Uncle Bill explained the story to her. After some negotiations she led Bill downstairs into the bowels of the Hanover Inn and to the restaurant kitchen. The cake was delivered later to the wedding party minus one small, perfect wedge.

The picture above shows us pointing at the culprit. Obviously the photo was staged.

The allergist hates benadryl.

Man does benadryl knock me for a loop. I got it yesterday pre-treatment and I was slurring my words. It's still not as much fun as a couple glasses of wine. Why can't they put that in my IV?

On Thursday I saw one of my allergy patients who also has a terrible medical condition that wracks her with pain daily. We compared a few notes on how people react to our illness. Here are a few of our favorites.

A total stranger says, "gosh, you handle it so well!" Why, because I can tell you I have cancer without sobbing? You expect me to be out on disability at home getting drunk?

A nice little old lady in my own synagogue once told me, "oh ovarian cancer? My mother died of that." I should have kept my mouth shut but instead I asked her, "now why do you think I needed to know that?"

Here's a personal favorite, "god doesn't give you any more than you can handle." You mean if I was a weaker person this wouldn't have happened to me? That comes from Harold Kushner's When bad things happen to good people. Good one Hal.

And now for something completely different. Here's the story of Grandma and the Can of Tuna, or The Funniest Day of My Entire Life.

Grandma Friedman was a miserable person. No exageration there, she really was. Some of it she came by honestly I suppose. The woman was divorced when my father was a boy, a time when that was just a little bit frowned on. She never remarried and pretty much raised her two children on her own as a nurse.

Nothing ever seemed to make her happy. Certainly not my father's marriage to my mother. I never in my entire life saw those two women together except for one occasion. She lived in series of shabby apartments throughout her life. She would never put a picture up on any wall because she never planned on "staying in this dump" for very long. And she didn't.

She had no friends that I knew of who she socialized with. I don't know what she did with her days except for the odd trip to the doctor's or the grocery store. She did have a friend or two from nursing school and a few relatives that she corresponded with but no one came to visit but us. She did love us though and thoroughly delighted in seeing her grandchildren. When I went to Haverford College outside of Philly I would take the train over to her apartment in Upper Darby to see her occasionally. All her apartments smelled the same. A combination of boiled vegetables and Yardley's English Lavender. It actually wasn't too bad. She always greeted me the same way, "Hello my Bethy!"

Then she would proceed to feed me. As you know that is required of grandmothers. Some people are lucky enough to have grandmothers who cook from the Old Country, recipes from their grandmothers. Mine cooked from Prevention Magazine. She would take a piece of chicken breast and poach it until it resembled shoe leather. She'd do the same to canned green beans. Luckily I will eat anything including the canned fruit salad for desert (the best part actually). That made her the happiest woman on the planet. "Doesn't everything taste so good?" she'd exclaim. I'd have done anything for a shaker of salt but who was I to argue, it made her happy.

Eventually she began to need more assistance. After a stint with my aunt it was our turn and Grandma moved up north to New Hampshire where she bounced around another series of apartments. My brother, sister and I still visited and took her grocery shopping every now and then. It was a singularly painful experience because for some inexplicable reason my grandmother could not walk and talk at the same time. She'd shuffle along with her cart and collection of coupons. Then she'd stop dead in her tracks to say something. Usually to complain about the prices or the quality of the produce. She would slowly bend down to pick up a couple cans of tuna, slowly raise one to her ear and shake it to see if it had to much water in it. It did absolutely no good to tell her they were all the same. It took forever to get down an aisle. Only my sister had the nerve to say "let's go grandma!"

Grandma developed more dementia over time. She became even more paranoid than usual and actually called the police about money that had gone missing which she was sure a neighbor or landlord had stolen. She burst pipes in her apartment by turning off the heat to save money. Finally it was time for the nursing home.

Grandma didn't like that place much but why would it have been different than any other place? Her mental status declined rapidly as she had one micro stroke after another. She still recognized me but didn't say much any more. The day I went to visit her and saw her hair in a braid down her back instead of in it's usual bun was the day I knew she had already left. She would never have allowed her hair to be done in such a manner when she was younger.

Her body lingered on though. She went through one pneumonia after another. Although my grandmother had been placed on comfort measures only she had a pansy of a primary care physician who kept making the argument that antibiotics counted as comfort measures. When faced with the possible demise of a relative it's hard to argue; doctors, including my father are not immune to this.

Finally she passed away. After my mother called to tell me I shed a few tears of sorrow and relief. Her wish had been to be cremated. There was no wake, no funeral. The funeral director asked if we would like to go out to the cemetary to have her ashes buried. My brother was home and I was home also, in medical school at the time. My father was traveling that day and met us later so my mother came out with us. We met Mr. Campion and walked to the plot. I cried a little. We stood there for a moment. Then Mr. Campion handed the urn to my brother and asked if he wanted to say anything. This took Ted by surprise and he just looked down at the urn held awkwardly in his hands for a moment. Then slowly he raised it up to his ear and shook it.

Peels of inappropriate laughter rang off the headstones. Now tears of laughter ran down my cheeks. Even my mother was laughing. Poor Mr. Campion. I think that was a first for him.

Dr. Bif

Ah technology...

I just figured out why you all can't leave comments. This silly thing was set to take comments only from registered users. I fixed that. You may now comment away. What's the matter, cat got your tongue?

We had our usual speed seder last night. I made a LOT of food for passover. My parents were in attendance and some friends. My mother and my friend from medical school, Helen were in rare form either swearing or recounting how gruesome one of our urology professors could get in his lectures (that's the pee-pee doctor for you non-medical types). Most of the stories had to do with misguided but enthusiastic attempts at self-gratification. Vicky, Adam's nanny was also in attendance. She's a very religious woman who never swears. I wanted to slide under the table a few times. She seemed to hold up well though.

Lara and Dina came to knit with me and I am now happy until the next knitter's guild meeting.

bif