Festival Sunday

It was a beautiful day for a festival in southeast Louisiana. The 33rd Annual Strawberry Festival was blessed with perfect weather. The day began early. We were up at 5:30 AM in order to get to the race on time. The old body clock felt like 4:30 AM due to the time change.



The morning was cool and just perfect for a 10K race called the Strawberry Strut.







This is a picture of me holding my trophy for 2nd in my age group. I ran the 6.2 miles in 46:04 which works out to about 7:25 per mile. After the race, I cleaned up and changed clothes. Before I left the house, I put a damp wash cloth in a ziploc bag and packed a change of clothes. After the race, I had a couple of fresh strawberries and two beers. Some may feel 9:30 am is too early to drink beer, but something about a race makes it OK.









The festival was just getting underway for its third day of fun. I had run the race, got my trophy at the award ceremony, which involved me getting to stand between the Strawberry King and Queen. How much better could things get? Hungry now, I ate some crawfish pie.









I was still hungry, so I ate an alligator sausage sandwich with peppers and onions.









Topped off the meal with some strawberry ice cream.











One of the most interesting things about a festival is the people. There are people in all shapes and sizes. One motorcycle rider had a rebel flag on his leather jacket. Beneath the flag was this: "Try burning this one asshole."



About 3:00 PM we left the festival. We swung by a seafood place and picked up some crawfish for supper. A nice conclusion to a beautiful spring day.



Until the next time

John Strain

Strawberry Festival

I am getting up early on Sunday to run in a 10K at the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival. Check back in the afternoon for photos and descriptions of the fest.



John Strain

Weeds

Have you noticed the television commercials hawking products to eliminate weeds from your lawn and your life? Spring is the time of year weeds are most plentiful. A weed is defined as something out of place. An oak tree, for instance is a weed if it is growing in a patch of monkey grass or a bed of marigolds. It gets plucked and thrown away. I kind of feel sorry for weeds. They are only doing what they were programmed to do millions of years ago. Man comes on the scene and makes new rules. Don't grow here or don't grow there. Weeds have absorbed full scale attacks of chemicals and armies of weed pulling, unappreciative people. Some clever weed haters have gone so far to invent special contraptions to yank weeds from the ground by their little roots.



Look at this photo of dandelion seeds. Beautiful. One does not see this sort of beauty out of the corner of their eye, or as they mow their lawn. A photographer, however, saw this weed differently. We often hurl platitudes about like "everything is beautiful," but rarely follow suit with our actions. I am not saying let weeds take over your lawn. I am saying some things may need to be viewed closer or differently to be appreciated.



Some people are like weeds. They are out of place and others seek to pluck them out and get rid of them. Maybe if the little pluckers were to look at the weed / person differently they would see unexpected beauty, charm, humor, maybe even learn something.



I suppose this is a post about tolerance and looking at something again before you decide it needs to go. I would hope I could do that. I would pray others would do that to me.



Until the next time

John Strain

Crazy

I deal with all kinds of crazy.

Crazy number one: This is the traditional sense of the word. The people with whom I work, patients, are often thought disordered. They may hallucinate, hear voices, see things. Their ideas may not make sense to most people. Their actions and behaviors may be bizarre. All of this I am prepared for and expect. I am comfortable with it and it is certainly my job. Calling them crazy may not sound politically correct, but it cuts through a lot of jargon. I often use the term talking to them. Here is an example, "Jerry, if you get out of the hospital and stop taking your medication, you will get crazy again." If I use the term, it is usually in a way to evoke humor, never to be condescending.



Crazy number two: These past few weeks at work have been so busy it has been crazy. In this sense, crazy refers to the demands and unusual situations one finds themselves in. "It is freaking crazy around here." Our expected length of stay is about 11 days and we get one to three admissions per day. Each patient represents a lot of work to admit, treat, and discharge. Priorities shift depending on admissions and discharges. Treatment often lags and I wind up processing people in and out. I am often left feeling I am neglecting my patients even though I am working my ass off. It can feel like being inside a whirlwind. Crazy is when I am not controlling my work, but my work is controlling me. It has been CRAZY lately, but a certain part of me, the sick part, likes it.



Crazy number three: Things that do not make sense are also crazy. I received a call from another hospital wanting to transfer a patient who had taken an overdose in an attempt to end their life. The caller had already been on the phone with the insurance company, who notified her, that their policy does not cover overdoses if they were suicide attempts. Talk about a catch 22. I encouraged her to call them back with a different approach. First of all, a complication of depression is suicide attempts. Some people kill themselves out of a decision not related to depression, but the majority have something going on which could be considered a mental illness. I wondered if she heard the insurance company right. Maybe they did not cover self-inflicted overdose if it was part of a substance abuse pattern, but maybe they did. At any rate, it is crazy when an insurance company says, "We will cover depression, but if you become so depressed and suicidal you actually attempt to kill yourself by overdose, then we will not cover you." These same assholes will tell you on the phone when you are trying to get a depressed person in the hospital, "You say they are depressed, are they suicidal? do they have a plan to kill them self? is their gun loaded with hollow point ammo?" If the answer is no, they say, "well, it is just a gesture, they are not serious, refer them to outpatient." So they are referred to outpatient and that night, they take an overdose. Now they aren't covered. That is crazy.



Using their same logic, smokers should not be covered for lung cancer. Over eaters should not be covered for diabetes. People who eat french fries do not get cardiac treatment. Insurance companies are the devil. I heard one person say they are like a casino who do not want to pay off. We buy insurance betting things will go wrong. They sell it betting things won't go wrong. To cover their end, if things do go wrong, they just don't pay. What an industry. I pay a zillion dollars in insurance, then when I file a claim, they read me the fine print. "Oh, Mr. Strain, your policy says you can only go to the emergency room on MWF's. You should have waited." I know you know what I am talking about.



There are many more forms of crazy. Why don't you drop me a comment on one you have noticed.



Here's to hoping your Friday is only good crazy.



Until the next time

John Strain

The April Fools Day That Backfired

In the mid 90's I had an idea for April Fools Day. In February I posted a sign outside my office door. It read: ONLY _____ MORE DAYS UNTIL . . . The blank was a countdown. I had made little hooks and cardboard numbers so I could reduce the count each day. Slowly, coworkers made comments about the countdown. They did the math and figured the countdown was for April Fools Day. They were right, but I would not tell them what was going to happen. I tried to build the suspense. "Oh, you'll see," I would say. This went on and on as the days counted down to April 1. The joke was going to be there was no joke. I had some experience already with anti climax and knew how it would be the perfect April Fools result. All the time, I would laugh to myself when people would try to find out what I had planned for the fateful day. Many, however, did not want to give me the satisfaction of asking me what I was going to do. I knew they wondered though and I could not wait to pull the string. It was like one of those really long jokes that had no punch line. They would be so disappointed. Hehehe.



All I succeeded in doing was organizing an opposition to myself. My coworkers figured the best defense was a good offense. April 1 launched an offensive against me and I was unarmed.



It started with a few weak attempts to get me. Phone calls from the corporate office trying to make me think I was in trouble were good ideas, but I was far too bright to fall for them. I do not react automatically with fear so the attempt was fruitless.



The best string of events orchestrated by the opposition transpired in the afternoon. I was walking to my office and negotiating a locked door when I heard my office phone. I rushed to unlock and lock the door then get to my office to answer it. My door knob had been greased with something which gave me the initial "yuck" response. When I went to lift the receiver, the entire phone came with it because some person with too much time on their hands had taped the receiver to the phone body. I set the phone back down and ripped it from the phone body. Holding the phone carefully now so the tape still sticking out in several directions did not affix to my beard I began saying, "hello, hello," when I noticed the phone cord dangling from the receiver unattached from the phone body. Once I plugged it in I was instructed to come to the administrator's office by Harriet the marketing director.



Still playing it cool, I did not acknowledge anything was wrong. However, I was slightly paranoid. Were they watching me? Was this whole thing on some twisted kind of candid camera? I would play their little game, but I would win, hahaha.



I walked to the administrator's office and he made a weak attempt at accusing me of doing something and being in some sort of trouble. He couldn't keep a straight face though so it all ended there.



It was a fun day, but nothing like what I had envisioned. I hope you have some laughs today. I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve. Later today, I am going to have the operator phone the director of nursing and inform her inspectors from Medicare are in the lobby. That will cause an immediate panic response. I like to do things like that, then pull the string quickly. I consider it poor form to let the victim suffer more than a few moments.



Happy April Fools Day everyone



Until the next time

John Strain