Give

November is coming to an end and Christmas is getting ever closer.  The holiday season is a time for joy.  School lets out for the semester so students and teachers can be full of joy.  Even those who have to work on Christmas can usually find joy in the fact that they are getting paid some sort of holiday bonus.  But, to say that most will find this Christmas a joyful time, would be a lie.  Most of the world will be hungry and suffering.  This isn't a guilt trip or a challenge to give up Christmas and go work at a soup kitchen.  I would just like to challenge you to give something.  Something that makes an impact in some way.  Whether it's taking on an extra workload at your job so that someone else doesn't have to.  Sharing part of your lunch with some one on the street.  Even something as simple as saying one kind word to every one you see.  If everyone in the world did this I'm sure the world would be a better place.

Own it

Sometimes it's better to just own up to the mistakes we make.  It may seem like lying could be a quick and easy way to stay out of trouble but sometimes it just gets you into deeper s!@#.

Who I Don't Want To Be

There's a person inside each of us, that is waiting for its chance to take control. There's also a voice that says we should give that person control. The voice starts as a whisper, easily ignored. As your childhood innocence blossoms into full blown adolescence, the voice begins to get louder. At this point some people begin to believe some of the lies, masked though they are. It's like the first time you try a beer, you want to grimace, but you keep drinking. Eventually you realize you actually like the taste. Not really the perfect analogy, because I'm trying to make the point that complacency gets easier and easier, and beer actually does taste good. Anyway, as adolescence edges toward adulthood the voice has either accomplished it's goal and is now quiet, or it's yelling louder than ever. If you can still hear the voice, then there's hope. If you don't hear anything, maybe it's time for some evaluating.

College Football

I love Saturday during football season.  I woke up at a 5:45 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep because it was game day.  There's a lot going on today.  Alabama goes to Death Valley to play LSU in a big top 10 BCS match up.  Auburn is under allegations that Cam Newton accepted 200k to go to school there.  I personally think this is probably just a result of Auburn being undefeated and Cam being the frontrunner for the Heisman.  TCU is playing Utah in a major non qualifier match up.  It will be very interesting to see how the computer rankings go after this weekend.  I've already got my spot set up: Laptop in front of me, game alerts set on my cell phone,  big screen set on College Gameday, and cold beer in the fridge.  Now it's just time to sit back and enjoy the wonderful, heart-breaking, up and down, topsy-turvy, manic depressive, roller coaster that is college football. Roll Tide!

Ethics

Sometimes when our patients are "on their way out", so to speak, we are given orders to administer morphine and ativan on a continuous infusion.  These drugs are used to keep our patients comfortable.  A subtle side affect is that the morphine and ativan will decrease the patients respiratory effort.  It's hard to walk that tight rope between comfort and euthanasia.  A small decrease in the rate would leave the patient writhing in pain and an increase would kill them.  What happens when death is the only comfort?  It's hard to watch someone lying in pain.  Increasing the rate would really only speed up the inevitable, and the patient would be a lot more comfortable, but can you kill someone?

Inspiration

What inspires you?  Are you inspired by touching stories of rags to riches?  Do you leave the gym feeling inspired?  Inspiration is defined as "arousal of the mind to special unusual activity or creativity".  You may have noticed that this definition has no moral undertones.  The first thing that comes to mind in the instance of inspiration is, usually, something uplifting, but the truth is that you can be inspired positively or negatively. When I'm driving down the road and someone in a massive, jacked up truck cuts me off, my mind is aroused to some very creative ways to hunt down that person and kill them.  My iPod is full of inspirational music, some of it christian and some of it lewd and degrading.  Sadly, both of these types of music inspire me.  I am going to make a concerted effort to really monitor what I allow to inspire me, because inspiration is an amazing tool for productivity.