"Beeps" in the Middle of the Night

From the depths of REM sleep, something stirred me very early this morning.  Beep, beep.  Turned toward the wall in my bed, I moved toward the sound, becoming only slightly more aware of my surroundings.  I remember thinking, why is the dryer beeping?  For a short time, I guess my brain thought I was back in Ohio where my parents have a dryer that does make a beep similar to what was sounding in my bedroom.  There it was again.  Beep, beep. 

This time, there was a light, the faint glow of a small LCD in the darkness of my room, and everything snapped into place in my brain.  All at once, I realized I was not in Ohio and I was not hearing the dryer.  I was in Iowa, in my bed, and it was my cell phone that was making the noise that brought me out of sleep.  It wasn't ringing, but it was indicating that I had new text messages.  I flipped open the phone, and there were two messages already, correlating with the two separate beeps.  It was 2:13 a.m., and 1:13 p.m. in Mosul, Iraq.  The messages were from MP. 

I was alert and very excited, almost overwhelmed, all at once.  I had not heard from him, not even a message on his family message board, since January 19th.  Of course, it's a war zone, and I don't expect to hear from him frequently, but it always brings a smile to my face when I score the chance to communicate with him from an ocean plus away.  The first thing I wrote back to him on my cell phone was "wait."  I didn't want him to sign off before I could at least say something to him.  I knew from past opportunities to "talk" to him that his time is limited at best. 

Getting his attention was easy, but he acknowledged right away that he only had a few minutes.  I had practice writing to him with my cell phone in the past, and had mastered speed in T9Word typing in the time before he left for Iraq.  Now, it was coming in quite handy.  He finally received the package that I sent to him in December.  I wonder if that means that the package that I sent last week will arrive by March?  By 2:27 a.m., he sent a message that said "later gator," and closing my phone again, I am sure I fell back asleep with a smile.

All too soon, there was another beeping, louder, more obnoxious in tone, and all together different from what woke me up five hours earlier.  It was 7:30 a.m., and my alarm was sounding, urging me to get out of bed.  It was another new day, already Thursday, and in a few hours, I'd be taking another quiz.  As soon as I unburied myself from my blankets, and touched my feet to the carpet, I walked directly to the TV, and touching it "on," I tapped "4" twice on the remote.  Fox News is my channel of choice as of late, with the reporter from that network being with MP's company.  As I was putting my contacts in a few moments later, I heard the news reporter mention that they were going to a live report from David Lee Miller, the reporter that is with the 3-2-5 in Mosul.  With one contact in, I watched the report intently, but did not see MP.  The coverage was rather grainy on the screen, but still that was the closest I've been to seeing him since October. 

Arriving at the college just before 10 a.m., I held my breath once more, waiting for the professor to walk up and down the steps of the lecture hall handing out an unannounced quiz.  There as a collective sigh of relief from myself and the students sitting around me when the lights were again dimmed and the lecture began, without a quiz.  The following hour, though, there was an announced quiz in toxicology.  I have every reason to believe that I did just fine on it.  I breezed through the three pages of the quiz, and was quite pleased that the information that I had been studying all week had stuck in some crevice of my cerebrum somewhere and somehow made it's way back out onto the page.

My weekend will be spent studying pathology.  Tuesday will bring about our first exam, over equine diseases.  I've been studying since the first lecture, little bits along the way, which should make the task of preparing for the exam much easier.  And since equine diseases, especially those of respiratory origin, all seem to be a game of alphabet soup, I'll start by simply making a list of all those diseases that I need to know, and fill in the blanks about pathogenesis, lesions, specimen appearance, and all that other possibly requested test information throughout the weekend.  It's a good thing I have a wedding shower in the middle of the weekend to break up the monotony.

This evening, I found myself at KDA's house, as per usual for Thursday night.  With "Friends" a distant memory from last spring semester, we only meet for "ER" now.  Tonight's "ER" certainly did live up to the previews, indicating that it would be one that people would talk about the next day.  Tonight's episode depicted a neurologist who prescribed a drug to a patient with known side effects of renal failure to a patient who had already received one kidney as a transplant from her father.  When it became apparent that she would need another transplant or lifetime dialysis, the father shot himself in order to be able to give his only remaining kidney to his daughter.  Of course, there were other subplots swirling about, but that was the primary focus of the show. 

It made me think about the ethical responsibility that I will have as a veterinarian.  While I doubt that in my lifetime that private practitioners will be doing kidney transplants (save that for the teaching hospitals), nor that one person would sacrifice the life of one pet for another in such a manner, it still presents the idea of prescribing medication to a patient with known side effects.  If it will benefit the patient, but have the possibility to cause more detrimental damage, is it worth it?  Benefit versus risk.  Which adverse effect, that of the disease or that of the medication, is more acceptable for the patient to endure?  The last question is one that I may face as a doctor, depending on my patient and advances in veterinary pharmaceuticals.  It's one that in between now and then, I should work out an answer to, I suppose.   

Keeping my mind busy, whether it's pathology or ethics questions with opinionated possibilities, detracts from my thoughts about MP's safety this weekend, as the Iraqis go out to vote.  I don't know if I'll even want to listen to the reports on Fox News this weekend.  Sometimes, what you don't know is better than what you do know, except, of course, in the case of pathology. 

Comments

[Jon]

Hope you mastered pathology and ethics this weekend. Glad y'all had an opportunity to catch up.