http://tld.poeticpublishing.com// 2010-03-11T22:47:04-08:00 http://tld.poeticpublishing.com// http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//lib/images/favicon.ico text/html 2008-11-01T16:30:15-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//start?rev=1225582215&do=diff [Truc-Ha Duong and camera] . mission statement . bio . contact me . locales . people . UNM Pediatrics . projects . blog . My Current Doings * <http://twitter.com/Lithesomewiz> my twitter feed for casual updates on my life. * A list of interesting websites bookmarked recently via the social bookmarking tool, <http://del.icio.us> * Some of my photos on Flickr. (Not wedding pictures, which are on the gallery at <http://solsticetosunrise.net>) * <http://solsticetosunri… text/html 2007-10-14T12:51:30-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//about_blog?rev=1192391490&do=diff A newspaper has sections and columns that focus on different topics. Some of my topics are below. * The Blog * blog_archive * Travelogue: about traveling and about my travel wishlist * Citizen Of The World: general political science and international politics * Being Whole: personal wellness techniques I'm using * Pediatric Check-Up: pediatric residency comments * A Cat's Life: all things Ulysses * Writers' Cafe: the writing life * Skin and Bones: ? I forgot * Dictionary D… text/html 2007-10-14T12:45:57-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:pediatric_check_up:a_time_of_advocacy?rev=1192391157&do=diff From Merriam Webster Online Support: (1) : to promote the interests or cause of (2) : to uphold or defend as valid or right : ADVOCATE <supports fair play> (3) : to argue or vote for So one of my ideas for my advocacy project was to build a website for the local GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bi, trans, queer) community. This website would function much like an information and triage desk. It would list available resources, as well as providing enough information to give people an idea of where they … text/html 2007-10-14T12:43:20-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:pediatric_check_up:crazy_saturday?rev=1192391000&do=diff I get asked what my life is like fairly often, as I'm undergoing a type of training whose rigor is renowned. In J. Ruth Gendler's book, The Book of Qualities, I like how she describes how some people seek out suffering and are proud of having suffered. Some people avoid it. I sit somewhere in the continuum, but towards the avoidant side. I don't buy the idea that suffering automatically makes the sufferer noble. In my totally unresearched opinion, that's a religious tale they sold to some peasan… text/html 2007-10-14T12:41:24-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:pediatric_check_up:friends_babies?rev=1192390884&do=diff I have very prolific and fertile relatives, and many of my aunts are young and still contemplating further babies. Also, my friends are starting to drop babies, though thankfully not many. The first pregnancy in my cousins has been announced, and in any pediatric setting, you'll find lots of colleagues with fetuses or babies. The fertility boom makes it an awkward time to be a pediatric resident interested in sleeping at night. text/html 2007-10-14T12:39:58-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:pediatric_check_up:hours?rev=1192390798&do=diff Current total hours worked: 101.5! Current days working on this part of the job: 7 days text/html 2007-10-14T12:32:08-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:pediatric_check_up:moms_quote_1?rev=1192390328&do=diff Doctors, especially doctors in training, like to bemoan that “no one understands” just what we go through other than our allied medical professionals. Now I don't agree with that completely, but I do agree that a large percentage of people do not understand the training pathway or just what our training consists of. So here's a funny quote from my mom this week while I was visiting Reno (translated): “So now that you're out of school, you're less tired, right?” text/html 2007-10-14T12:29:06-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:pediatric_check_up:out_of_internment?rev=1192390146&do=diff Part 1: Back in World War II, the US government rounded up a good portion of Japanese Americans and sent them to detention camps simply because the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. They were considered “security risks” based on their ancestry. During the scary days after 9/11, a good many of us worried a similar fate would befall the South and Middle Eastern Asians. text/html 2007-10-14T12:24:26-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:pediatric_check_up:passing_disease?rev=1192389866&do=diff One big issues with having a centralized institution for the care of the sick is that there are naturally a lot of sick people there. Furthermore, they're sick with different things. In pediatrics, this translates to clinics and floors full of infectious diseases that can be passed from patient to patient, from patient to staff, and vice versa. text/html 2007-10-14T12:21:02-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:pediatric_check_up:sign_out?rev=1192389662&do=diff I've often been asked how much sleep I get as an intern; it's an understandable question because on certain rotations I work 30 hour shifts. What really bothers me, though, is not necessarily how much sleep I get, but when I have to get up. Generally, when I was on the inpatient service in August, I hit the floors around 7AM. However, now that it's the wintertime, I'm really facing a wake-up time of around 5:30AM and an arrival of around 6AM to get the work done in time to present patients to th… text/html 2007-10-14T12:19:14-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:philosofiend:wealth_and_gifts?rev=1192389554&do=diff Everyone knows a person it would be hard to shop for: a colleague with everything, in-laws with odd tastes. I've got a mother who doesn't make decisions on her own. How do you find a Mother's Day gift for someone without an opinion, especially if you detest insincere holidays such as Mother's Day? Luckily, my mother in-law is very “girly” and into various scented sundries as well as cosmetics, so I picked up a spa kit from my favorite, moderately Earth friendly boutique chain. Of course, mos… text/html 2007-10-14T12:15:58-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:skin_and_bones:car_seats?rev=1192389358&do=diff Today, Consumer Reports released a paper saying that the car seats they tested failed side-impact testing. These were rear-facing, snap in car seats. For those of you with children, you may be really mad at me because I've been having the following conversation with my patients' parents all year long: text/html 2007-10-14T12:12:44-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:writers_cafe:a_diamond_age?rev=1192389164&do=diff This Sunday to Monday night marks the transition to the last day wherein I can work on my entry for the 2006 writing marathon I started on Poetic Publishing, the online art development and publishing site that Sunny and I are developing. For my entry, currently titled “The Grotesque”, I'm trying to write fiction, a new thing for me, and the piece sits nicely in the genre labeled science-fiction. text/html 2007-10-14T12:07:15-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:homesteading:xeriscaping_zeroscaping?rev=1192388835&do=diff [?300] Landscaping a home doesn't necessarily result in monetary returns once the house is sold, so our home was perfunctorily landscaped in the front and not at all in the back. The front yard is definitely dated; it's two mature trees and a flat grass lawn with a few smaller trees. It brings to mind the white picket fence era, circa 1950, when the home was first built and municipal water didn't cost so much. It looks cute...when it's green. And at a mile high in the desert, it doesn't look gr… text/html 2007-10-14T11:57:35-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:dictionary_day_agoraphobia?rev=1192388255&do=diff From Merrimam-Webster Online: Agoraphobia: abnormal fear of being helpless in an embarrassing or unescapable situation that is characterized especially by the avoidance of open or public places In psychiatry, one can have panic attacks with and without agoraphobia on top. People stop going out into public places because they fear that they might have a panic attack in public. text/html 2007-10-14T11:52:29-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:dictionary_day:baraka?rev=1192387949&do=diff From the Merriam-Webster Open Dictionary Project: baraka (noun): [ba'ra-ka] [arabic] - a state of heightened consciousness or grace achieved through religious fervor involving prayer and dancing; a blessing that can be carried and transferred from one person to another or from an object to a person (usu one who has made the hajj); the blessedness possessed by a person of character, courage, and selflessness Muslims who have completed the fifth of the five pillars of Islam are often endowed by … text/html 2007-10-09T11:42:57-08:00 tld http://tld.poeticpublishing.com//blog:brief_check_in:white_sands_first?rev=1191955377&do=diff [Sunny at White Sands National Monument][Truc-Ha at White Sands National Monument] [Truc-Ha and Sunny at White Sands National Monument] This weekend, Sunny and I took a day trip around southern New Mexico. We started by heading to the Trinity Test Site, the site of the first nuclear device explosion in the world. It was pretty anticlimactic. The whole of the original crater has since been filled in by dirt, so none of the fused sand is visible except for some pieces in a display case. There are…