Pancake-o-rama

My experimental cohabitation with Auggie the golden retriever has officially failed, and now I am back in the home of the H's, where this morning I gave in to my recent obsession with pancakes.  We had a scrumptious pancake breakfast, complete with Grade A medium amber maple syrup from LL Bean.

 

Here are the recipes that I used, in case you also have a hankering for pancakes...
Oatmeal Buttermilk Blueberry Pancakes (modified from the New York Times)
1 cup rolled oats                           1/2 tsp salt
1 cup lowfat milk                         2 large eggs
1 cup whole wheat flour              1-1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup white flour                       1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp baking powder                     3 tbsp canola oil
1 tsp baking soda                          1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
1 tbsp sugar

1. Combine milk and rolled oats in a bowl, and set aside
2. Sift together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt.
3. In another bowl, whisk the eggs.  Add buttermilk, vanilla and canola oil, and continue whisking.
4. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix quickly but do not overbeat.  Fold in the rolled oats & milk mixture, then add blueberries.  Let the batter sit for one hour before cooking, or refrigerate overnight

Pumpkin Pancakes (modified from allrecipes.com)
1 cup white flour                      2 eggs
2 tbsp sugar                              1 cup milk
2 tsp baking powder                 15 oz of canned pumpkin
1/2 tsp salt                                2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp cinnamon

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl.
2. In another bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, pumpkin and oil.  Stir into dry ingredients until just moistened.

Repeat Offender

Cyndi Lauper came to see me 3 times this week.  Okay, not the real Cyndi Lauper, but a patient who bears an eerie resemblance to the 1980s "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" chanteuse.  She was the most unreliable historian ever.
Visit 1: After complaining about a 3-week history of diarrhea with fecal incontinence, then getting lightheaded and requiring infusion of IV fluids, she mentioned on her way out the door that she has been taking miralax (a moderately strong laxative) every day.  An abdominal x-ray confirmed that her colon is holding a very large amount of stool [yes, faux Cyndi Lauper, you are full of crap]
Visit 2: The next day, she returned to the clinic insisting that she needed antibiotics for strep throat.  Really, Cyndi Lauper?  Her rapid strep test was negative, she had no tonsillar swelling or exudates, she was afebrile and well over the typical age range of 3 to 14 yrs for strep throat.  I usually order a rapid strep test only for patients with a modified Centor score of 2-3, but people in this town seem to think that all pharyngitis is strep, and they fear strep throat like it's the Bubonic plague.
Visit 3: The patient popped up on my schedule, proclaiming, "I broke my ankle!"  She had been rushing to get to the bathroom when she tripped on a throw rug, "and now my ankle is really floppy".  As I tried to examine her for ligament and tendon stability, she kept making her ankle flop like a fish that was caught on a hook and struggling to get free.  Finally, I gave up and ordered an ankle x-ray which was, of course, completely normal.  At least she didn't start crooning "True Colors" or "Time After Time", for which I am extremely grateful.

The Sheer Terror of Driving Downhill on An Icy Mountain Road

My daily commute from Dr & Mrs H's home in the mountains all the way down to the clinic is almost exactly 10 miles.  It's fairly easy when the road conditions are good because there are no stop signs or traffic lights, just steady driving.  But when it becomes icy and foggy, and my rental car (a Ford Focus that is not well-suited to mountain roads) begins to skid, I start noticing little details that I previously never paid attention to: how winding and steep the downhill drive is;  how there are no guardrails at the most treacherous of curves; and how easy it would be to accidentally go plunging down an embankment...

My phobia of driving downhill on an icy mountain road luckily coincides with discovering that I am not too terribly allergic to Auggie, a friendly golden retriever who lives in the home of Dr S and her husband.  They reside just 4 miles from the clinic, and their house is not far from the western bank of the Okanogan River.  At any rate, it's not on an icy mountain road.

I have mixed feelings about leaving the H's because they have been such a wonderfully fun family and I love the peacefulness of their surroundings.  It's hard to believe that I've already reached the halfway point of my tenure here in Tonasket.  What am I going to do with the giant bottle of gin I won as a door prize weeks ago at the clinic holiday party???  Here's what I'm thinking: either drink it all, or send the whole thing back to Seattle so I can mix gin & tonics for everyone upon my return.

How Allergic Am I?

The original plan was for me to rotate residences and spend each month at a different doctor's home, so I could get to know a variety of people.  But a lot of families in Tonasket have indoor pets, and I have significant allergies to most furry animals.  It's hard to predict which animals I might be able to cohabit with, except through trial and error.  I usually premedicate myself with a double dose of claritin before heading to homes with indoor pets.
Experiment 1: The allergen is a calico cat who immediately singles me out and starts rubbing her fur on my ankles.  When I sit down, she repeatedly climbs into my lap, then onto my shoulder, whipping her tail onto my neck several times.  One hour and 45 minutes into our hearty dinner of roast lamb with butternut squash, I start sneezing.  By the time I make it back to Dr & Mrs H's house, I have broken out into super itchy hives.
Experiment 2: The allergens consist of a black cat and an enormous black Labrador dog.  The cat brushes against me once, while the dog repeatedly licks my pants throughout my visit.  We have a lovely dinner of beef pot pie and spinach salad, but by the time the steamed pudding cake is served (in honor of Epiphany, which comes after the 12th day of Christmas), I have started wheezing.  Back at the house of the H's, I have to take a benadryl, perform a nasal saline rinse, and apply a corticosteroid nasal spray before I start feeling normal again.  I wake up with a benadryl hangover...

Squish! Squish! Squish!

You know you're a procedure junkie when the best part of your afternoon appears in the form of a patient with a mass on the dorsal surface of her foot roughly the size and consistency of a miniature water balloon...it's a giant cyst!  And after aspirating a small amount of clear fluid, you start breaking up the septations of the cyst with a #15 blade.  It's so unbelievably satisfying to push down on the cyst and get a gush of fluid with the viscosity of egg whites oozing out.  The patient got so excited, she started applying pressure to the area with a bit of sterile gauze, just to watch it ooze.  Overall we coaxed about 10 cc of fluid out of the cyst, which is quite abundant.

On an entirely unrelated note: my Hipstamatic iPhone app churns out groovy pictures with oversaturated colors and dreamy ethereal lighting effects.  It makes my first pair of fingerless gloves--which I just finished knitting seconds ago!-- look less raggedy (I have such a hard time getting the thumb properly attached to the rest of the hand) and more artistic:

  

Happy New Year

After we played several lively board games on New Year's Eve, Mrs H brought out 5 little boxes of dangerous-looking sparklers from Thailand!  Instructions say to Use Only Under Close Adult Supervision...

                                 

My inner pyromaniac was delighted!  We lit the sparklers outside in 2-degree weather with great gusto despite our frostbitten fingers:

It was a lovely way to start 2011...