Lair of the Lost Girl

I promised myself I wouldn't make a whiny, vague, passive-aggressive post about my grumpy experience at the gym this afternoon. So I won't. But that doesn't mean I can't talk about my experience, or my emotions.

So I'm still not recovering very well from the most recent car accident. I'm still in a lot of pain; as I write this muscles under my right shoulder blade are spasming and twitching in rather odd and unpleasant ways in spite of the megadose of valium I took earlier. But I'm doing everything I can to get better, and that includes walking.

And, since it's midwinter and it's cold and snowy out there, I've been using the Tufts gym as my walking-place. umbran can drive me there when he gets home from work, and so most evenings we go there and walk around the track for half an hour or so. It helps me feel productive, on bad days it gives me a reason to get dressed and out of the house, it keeps me from losing even more condition, and the low-impact motion and activity actually helps with the pain in a pretty significant way.

And yeah, it sucks when I used to be able to run for half an hour, without breaks, to be limited to a slow walk, and it makes me feel kind of ashamed and kind of a prisoner in my own body, but it's a damn sight better than nothing.

So when the coach who was apparently supervising the 4 other people in the gym, who were running laps on the same (large, multi-lane) track yelled at us in a snotty tone that "Walkers, stay to the outer lanes; I have ATHLETES trying to run here,".... it hurt. A lot.

And I didn't cry, and I didn't yell at her (though I did point out that, last time we were walking in the outer lanes, we were told that walkers needed to stay to the inner lanes), but I kind of wish I could make a Public Service Announcement to Everyone At Gyms - the people there who aren't at your level of activity aren't automatically inferior beings. I'm not walking because I'm too lazy to run; I'm walking because I'm recovering from multiple severe spinal injuries. I'm an athlete too, and I deserve as much respect as anyone else on that track.

Also (and okay, this is venturing slightly into bitchery), if they're such athletes, shouldn't they be able to handle the strenuous ordeal of moving one foot to the left or right to pass us?

Please. Don't take away what has become my safe space for recovery; I don't know what I'll do without it.

On a brighter note, much gratitude to the door guard who seemed to notice I was upset and chatted with me until I was smiling again. I am absolutely baking you cookies next time I come in....

Apologies for the rant that's about to follow, but....

So I've been thinking a lot recently about social classes, and financial privilege. And I have to wonder - at what point of material well-being does one become incapable of comprehending that there are people whose upbringing did not match theirs?

Because I have a significant handful of friends - good friends, good people - who grew up fairly well-off, who are just incapable of comprehending this. They weren't wealthy, and that's all that they see, and so they feel that they grew up underprivileged. And, by extrapolation, that anyone else who claims the label 'underprivileged' grew up in a situation like theirs.

And to be honest, it frustrates me, because... well, there was a bit more challenge to growing up on food stamps, or with sometimes not enough money for both heat and food, than to growing up with only one summer home and no in-ground pool.

I grew up lower-middle class. Food stamps, reduced-price school lunches, hand-me-down clothes from my cousin who was sixteen years older than me. And yet I understand that it could have been a hell of a lot worse, and that there were people out there who DID have it a lot worse - we had enough food (mostly cheap stuff like Hamburger Helper, but it was food), we had a phone and tv.

And I think that's what confuses me the most. It seems like, at some level of privilege, people become incapable of recognizing that some people have it worse. And I don't understand how this happens, or at what point - or when the assumption becomes that everyone starts life off with more or less the same resources as you.

(And on that note, don't get me started on 'We're not rich, we WORKED for our money!' So did my family. The only difference is we started out with a lot more debt and a lot fewer resources, and earned a lot less. We weren't poor because we were lazy; we were poor because no one paid for our education or sent us out into the world with a stock portfolio and a trust fund.)

That said... ultimately what I want is to understand, and figure out how to explain. Because it's no one's fault that they grew up in different circumstances, and ultimately, as I said, they're good people. But I think that finding a way to communicate clearly this difference in experiences and circumstances would go a long way to improving the situation in this country.....

I love books, and I love reading, and I love genre fiction, but over the past few months I've noticed a consistent pattern in the books I've been reading that has bugged the ever-loving crap out of me.

Several times in recent books, I've noticed that whenever an author describes an overweight character, they need to remind us of this fact in nearly every sentence - several times per paragraph, even. Almost every single time they reference the character. He can't just stand up; he 'stands up, his jiggly body shuddering.' She can't walk across the room, she has to 'shift her enormous bulk across the room.' They can't be referred to by name, they're always referenced as 'the fat man/girl/whatever.'

And they don't write this way for other characters. Tall, or ugly, or people of color, or other descriptors get tossed out once or twice and then let go of, as if the readers can be counted on to remember it for themselves. It's just fat that they need to constantly reiterate.

And this bothers me and offends me and upsets me for scads of reasons. It's shaming and phobic and cruel, because the language they use is always negative and because it's never allowed to rest. It narrows the character down to one specific trait - they're not allowed to be beautiful, or clever, or creative, or a good piano player; they have their one trait and that's their pigeonhole and they're stuck in it. It's just bad writing - the repetition grates on my nerves and it makes me feel like the author thinks I'm kind of stupid and can't remember a character description for more than a sentence or two. And, worst of all.... I had thought that we, as genre folk, were better than this. That because we F&SF fans and writers were intelligent, open-minded, accepting people we wouldn't engage in this kind of prejudice and cruelty. (I know that's naive, and I know that no group is perfect, but still... I'd expect that if I found this kind of meanness anywhere it'd be in Sweet Valley High novels, not in The Walking Dead.)

It stinks, and I wish there were a way to go to the writers and shake my finger at them and point out that what they're doing is bullying and shaming, but until I figure out how to do that (beyond B&N reviews and hoping to run into them at cons) I'll just say here, for any of my writer friends:

I'm guessing you don't do this. But for the record? It's okay to have fat characters, and thin characters, and green characters, and alcoholic/autistic/Amish/anything you like characters. But when you use one trait as a bludgeon, and consistently associate it with negative or cruelly-humorous descriptors, and feel the need to mention it every single time you reference the character? That's not cool.

So for the next couple of months, I'm working Fridays at one clinic. Same clinic, same staff, so I'm working with the same doctor. And this is an incredibly talented doctor, but for the past few weeks said doctor has been dealing with sick children at home - and so has been bringing said sick children into the office so they could be cared for and watched. The practical offshoot of this is that I have been sharing a desk for two weeks with a six-year-old with a raging case of bronchitis.

Last night, while I was talking to my husband, I noticed that my throat felt a little scratchy. That's all. No big deal, right? And then this morning I felt a little more ouchy, and my voice was a little hoarse. Over the past two hours, that has progressed to a racking cough and an impressive inability to take a deep breath. Joy of joys.

Unfortunately, the ultimate result of all of this is that, since I work in a field that doesn't allow sick days for anything short of hospitalization, I will still have to go to work tomorrow, at a different hospital. I will then spend the whole day talking with, interacting with, and being in an enclosed space with about 20 different clients, and the entire hospital support staff. And despite my best efforts to drug myself into a symptom-free state and cover my mouth, odds are I'll share my newfound prize with a hearty number of them, leading to another hospital half-down with bronchitis for the next month.

For a profession made up of medical professionals, we can be remarkably un-smart sometimes.

And as a side note, I am ragingly furious at the fact that my ONE chance this week to go out and be social with people, after spending the entire week feeling lonely, isolated, and cut off from friends, has been ruined by microscopic lung-villains. Or at least, I would be if I had the energy and blood oxygen levels necessary to rage....

So one of the many reasons I currently love LJ more than Facebook is that FB seems to be where memes go to die. And while I like keeping in touch with my friends there, it gets a wee bit repetitive seeing the same pictures reposted and shared a dozen or more times.

And in particular, lately, the pictures and memes and witticisms being shared all seem to be on the same theme - namely, that current times are in every way inferior to the past. There are cute, witty pictures of modern reality stars wondering when they were deemed to be hotter than pinup girls, depictions that men's fashion has taken a serious nosedive, that song lyrics are nowhere near as creative and deep as they used to be, and a half a dozen other similar things, all summing up to the idea that NOW is completely and invariably worse than THEN, in every way.

And I kind of want to take everyone posting this and invite them to my house for a forced showing of 'Pleasantville.' And then I want to ask them if they really, truly believe that the 1930's/40's/50's/70's were a better time to live than now.

Yeah, plastic surgery and spray tans are a problem. But people have done stupid and damaging things for the sake of beauty for millenia. Stupid song lyrics go back hundreds of years, too. And if things aren't perfect now - and I'm not saying they are - they sure as heck weren't then, either. Or ever. We have our demons to fight right now (and I'm not sure saggy pants are the most important of them); they had theirs. If you don't like the way things are now, do something about it, rather than just pointing out how things used to be better, maybe, in some limited ways.

On the other hand, I'm also willing to bet that fifty years from now our grandchildren will be sending each other interactive holographic pops and clicks and abbreviated signals that will translate, in old-fogey talk, to 'When did our hideous dyed-skin, facially distorted, chimerically-hybridized celebrities of today become hotter than the wholesome smooth-faced, orange heroines of fifty years ago?'

Why is it that clients refuse to believe my advice on pet foods, claiming that 1) "vets don't take any classes on nutrition or learn anything about it" (untrue in the extreme), and/or 2) I get kickbacks from the pet food companies for recommending their brands (also completely and utterly untrue, unless you count my cool red Purina ballpoint pen) - but will then rabidly devour any advice given to them by the clerks at Petco, in spite of the fact that said clerks 1) are not medical professionals or nutritional/biology specialists and 2) work at a store that exists only to sell you those products - functionally, getting paid to sell you stuff.

And they will believe anything they say without question, even when it is pathologically wrong. In the past two weeks I have had clients come in and tell me that they're feeding their dog an "all-protein diet" (which would rapidly be toxic); that "all-protein" just means that it's gluten-free (incorrect, and gluten is a protein), and that gluten-free means it doesn't have corn in it (incorrect, corn does not produce gluten), and that they were taught all of this by the pet store employees. They have also informed me that the pet store informed them that feeding their senior cat canned food would kill it, and that old cats need dry food (frequently, the exact opposite is closer to truth), and that all dogs are allergic to grain (I don't even know where to start).

Here's the truth, folks - most pet foods are, all things considered, pretty darn good. Being more expensive, or more fancy, or being labeled as holistic, or organic, or natural, does not make it better, at least once you get past the level of no-name, store-brand food. As long as it's AAFCO-certified (Association of American Feed Control Officials), it's a fully balanced diet, and likely more nutritious and balanced than anything you or I eat on a daily basis.

And just so you know, all those fancy words you pay extra for? Not that relevant. In particular, "holistic" doesn't mean anything. It's not a regulated word, when it comes to pet foods - any manufacturer can stick it on any bag of food, and that's completely legal. You're just paying for the prestige of the word, and the image it suggests.

As for food allergies, yes, some dogs are allergic to wheat, or corn. And some dogs are allergic to chicken, and some are allergic to beef, or lamb, or turkey, or soy. An animal can be allergic to any food ingredient. But wheat and corn are no more likely to be the problem than anything else. And unless your dog has allergies, putting them on a diet to treat allergies won't accomplish anything except spending more of your money. In particular, please do the world a favor and avoid putting your pet on novel protein diets like salmon or venison or bison? We use those as treatments for dogs with food allergies - we need to feed them a protein they haven't been exposed to before. And that leads to a perception, somehow, that because we use these foods to make dogs better, that the foods are better. And so people feed them to their puppies. And then, two years later when those puppies develop food allergies, they've already been exposed to all of the existing novel proteins, and we don't have anything left to feed them. Right now, we're resorting to stuff like kangaroo; I don't know what we'll use when that's no longer viable.

And for the record, you can't "cure" your dog's allergies by changing from, say, Iams to Pedigree, or Blue Buffalo to Organix. That's the functional equivalent of changing from Coke to Pepsi - they're still more or less the same thing. Your dog may digest one or the other better, and they're both perfectly good foods, but if there's an actual allergy that's not going to fix it.

Just feed your healthy pet something reasonable, and good. As long as it's not Wal-Mart brand, it's probably fine. But if you have an actual health problem to manage, and you ask my advice, and I tell you that your pet needs a (hypoallergenic/low protein/low residue/whatever) diet and recommend something in particular, please believe that I know what I'm talking about. And please do not come back to me a month later and inform me that the kid at PetSmart told you that Science Diet is poison and you should feed this $40/bag grain-free holistic diet instead, because I might just implode.

I do not understand how anyone who isn't independently wealthy ever manages to actually go anywhere on vacation, or do anything.

I have spent the last two hours trying to find a nice, simple, local place that umbran and I can go for a couple of nights in July. I know that this is THE SEASON, and that places will be a little on the pricey side, but I figured I could cope with that. I had no idea.

Several people have told me that Nantucket is wonderful, and beautiful, and lovely, and delightful. For $400 a night for B&B's with no bathtubs that don't actually serve breakfast, it had better be pretty fucking awesome. Not that I'll ever find out. Because I'm not willing to pay that kind of money, even if I *could* afford it.

There has got to be SOMEWHERE in the MA/CT/VT/ME area where we can go, that's at least passably nice, that won't cost more than our entire wedding. But I'll be damned if I can find it. Because right now, our "vacation" is looking more and more like "one night at the Motel 6 in Worcester," and it's causing me more stress to hunt it down than it's going to cure by actually going.....

As a person who is well and truly addicted to the written word, I am somewhat of an omnivore when it comes to books. I'm not completely indiscriminate, but I've learned better than to dismiss a book because it is, or isn't, relegated to a particular genre. In particular, at least for my current conundrum, I've learned that a lot of good stories get hidden in the YA genre, especially if they fall into the category of fantasy, SF, or supernatural fiction.

There are bad YA novels, it's true, but there's a lot of good stuff hiding in there. Charles DeLint, J.K. Rowling, Kelley Armstrong, Cassandra Claire, Diane Duane... all good. They write stories worth reading, with decent plots and interesting characters, and they don't condescend to the reader just because they might not have finished high school yet.

So I've read more than my fair share of YA novels, both as a young adult and as a technically adult adult. And unfortunately, more and more often lately, I'm running into one particular problem. Since most of the books I'm reading tend to be fantasy/supernatural fiction, there's always a push to make the conflict be Epic, with the villain being World-Shatteringly Evil. And since the protagonists are young adults, the writers also seem to feel a need to make the villain be a young adult, as well - or, if not, to give the Big Bad a young apprentice villain. The end result is the Young Adult Villain of Epic Evil, a character usually between the ages of 15-20 who has been corrupted to the Dark Side and is now supposed to be the walking, talking epitome of everything bad, corrupt, twisted, and wrong in the world.

And, without fail, these unspeakably dark, evil, horrifying monsters display their malevolence by some combination of dyeing their hair, dressing in slutty clothes (lingerie or Catholic school uniforms for girls, leather jackets for boys), eating junk food (specifically bacon cheeseburgers, Froot Loops, or lollipops), occasionally skipping classes, and pulling heinous pranks like forging fake names on check-in sheets, crashing birthday parties, and, if they're REALLY malevolent, breaking a window or making the prom queen's dress tear so her underwear shows.

That's it. That's the epic, world-destroying evil. And I can't describe how many ways this frustrates, disappoints, and offends me.

Okay. For one thing, are those really, truly, the most evil things the writers can think of? For real? These aren't episodes of The Brady Bunch I'm talking about; these are supposedly epic stories. Get an imagination. For another thing, even if you can think of more evil things, is it that you think teens can't handle anything more scary and threatening than that? They get scarier scenarios on the news, and in their own classrooms. If your Supervillain of Epic Evil can't muster up the badassitude to at least cause a little actual harm and fear, not only does it devalue your story, it makes your heroes look pretty pathetic when they cower in terror at the villain's name.

Lastly, though, and most importantly (to me, at least)... do we want to be sending teenagers the message that being a mischievous non-conformist is sign that you're evil? I find that both depressing and terrifying - these kids are smart enough and curious enough to pick up a book; odds are they're going to be identifying, at least in part, with the misfit characters. And to show that, whenever a character turns to evil they always come back in the next chapter with pink hair, a tight t-shirt, and a penchant for delivering comeuppance to their oppressors.... that's not evil, that's just every dweeb's secret dream. Telling them that they're evil for wanting this, or for acting this way, is an epic disservice.

There's the argument that writers may not want to portray teenagers committing major acts of evil, but in that case, don't make your villain a teenager. Make them a monster, or a force of nature, or an adult, or something else that you can foist all that villainy onto. Or, you know, just grow a pair and have an evil teenager. I'm not necessarily talking about 'Apt Pupil' levels of atrocity (though I read that as a teenager and somehow survived), but at least let them be as evil, say, as people in the real world. I know, for me, growing up and reading stories like that, encountering truly villainous villains didn't scar me or break me or disturb me - it gave me the reassurance that there was bad stuff out there in the world, just like my own experiences had shown me, maybe worse, and that, at least in stories, heroes could be strong enough to overpower that bad stuff.

Please, YA writers. Give kids credit for being able to handle stories that don't wrap them in cotton padding, dumb down the villains, and tell them they're evil for wanting to act out.

And if you'll excuse me, I feel the overwhelming need to go reread 'Deep Wizardry' now....

So I know that most of y'all reading this aren't veterinarians - but I'm going to fill you in on Basic Veterinary Medicine 101: Dogs and cats are not humans. I'll even go so far as to teach you the secrets of Veterinary Medicine 201 - Dogs and cats are not interchangeable, either.

If you have a pet, and you decide that you want to give it some sort of human medication, ASK YOUR VET FIRST. Because dogs and cats are not humans. I don't care if you take it every day and it's perfectly safe for you. I don't care if your grandmother gave it to her dog for a year and it seemed fine. I don't care if you googled it and the internets said it was okay. I don't care if your cousin's roommate said it would be safe, unless your cousin's roommate is also your veterinarian. I don't care if your dog took it so now you want to give it to your cat - dogs and cats are not interchangeable, and what's safe for one can kill the other.

Seriously. If you can be bothered to give the medicine, you can take the time to pick up your phone and call your vet and ask if it's okay to give your puppy a percocet, or give your cat benadryl, or whatever else tickles your fancy. We won't get mad at you for asking, I promise. And we will happily tell you that yes, that's perfectly safe and here's the dose, or no, please don't, that would be fatal.

And that's the other reason to ask - because (say it with me) dogs and cats are not humans, even if the medicine is safe, the dose may not be what you expect. Sometimes the safe and effective dose is much lower than you would think; sometimes it's much higher. We go to school for this stuff. Let us help you, please.

And if, by some chance, you ignore this and go ahead and give your pet your medicine, TELL US. This has come up half a dozen times in the past week, but the appropriate response to possible toxin ingestion is not "let's wait and see if they start acting sick."

Poison in real life doesn't work like it does on TV. They don't clutch their throats, gag, fall down, and then have a safe window where you can research the antidote. For most toxic substances, by the time symptoms show up (which can be anywhere from an hour to a month later), it's too late to do anything but support the patient and try to do damage control. It's a lot easier to prevent damage than to repair damage, and in order to do that we need to see them as soon as possible after the ingestion.

I know it's weird. With most illnesses and health problems, we're used to having to wait until the signs show up to treat it. But with toxins, we actually have the chance to prevent damage. If we get at the patient soon enough, we can figure out the best way to get the bad stuff out of their system - sometimes that involves making them throw up, sometimes it involves giving them antidotes or binders that will keep the toxin from being absorbed, sometimes it just means flushing their system with fluids, but we can usually do SOMETHING.

So. Don't give your pet human medicine. And if you do, tell us. And if you tell us, tell us sooner rather than later. Please. I will thank you, your vet will thank you, your pet will be alive to thank you.

(Oh. And if you have a pet, keep this number around: 888-426-4435. That's Animal Poison Control. Call your vet first, if they're open, because there's a $65 consultation fee for calling APC. But if your vet's not open, or in a serious emergency, these guys save lives.)

Dear Clients,

In our conversations recently, I have come across some incidences of confusion that I would like to clear up:

Distemper is a nasty, unpleasant viral infection that causes often fatal disease in dogs and ferrets.
Temperament is your dog's personality and behavior.
I cannot give your dog a temperament shot; as much as it would be awesome. Controlling that is all your responsibility, sweetums, though I'd be glad to give you some advice on training and behavior.

Spay is the colloquial name for surgical sterilization of female animals.
Spade is a garden implement.
If you want your dog to be spaded, please do not tell me; I will need to report that as animal cruelty.

Lyme is a city in Connecticut. It is also the common name for a tick-borne bacterial infection, originally found most commonly in and around that area.
Limes are a citrus fruit.
You do not want your dog to get a Limes vaccine. It will sting a lot, and not actually produce useful immunity to anything.

Eukanuba is the name of a popular brand of dog food.
Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arranging.
When I ask you what you feed your dog, I seriously doubt that the latter is the correct answer. If it is, I suggest making a change. Not only are many flowers toxic, but most high-end dog foods are expensive enough without adding aesthetically placed irises and cherry blossoms.

Hip Dysplasia is a common (but not universal) disorder in large and giant-breed dogs, involving abnormalities of the hip joint, that leads to arthritis and pain over time.
Hip Displeasure is what I get when I try to pull on my jeans after they just came out of the laundry and don't want to fit over my backside.
If you think your dog has hip displeasure, get him some bigger jeans. Or better yet, don't make him wear pants.


Anal Glands are two small sacs inside your pets backside. Their only purpose is to produce foul-smelling gunk and occasionally get infected, requiring someone to empty them out. My job is so glamorous.
Annual Glands, as far as I can tell, are a small subset of the pituitary that, once a year, make people say meaningless things in front of medical professionals.
I will not check your dog's annual glands. Dogs cannot talk. I may suggest getting yours evaluated, though.

Conjunctivitis is inflammation of the conjunctiva, which is the mucus membrane covering the white part of your eye.
Junkyitis is a made-up bullshit word, but if I had to come up with the closest Latin derivative, it would be inflammation of the junk.
If your pet has inflamed junk, I honestly really don't want to know. One of the joys of being a general practitioner is that I get to refer cases like that.

That's all.

Thank you!

Love,
Me