who I really am

When I started this blog, most of the other blogs that I read were anonymous. I started by reading the now infamous Mikey blog that turned out to be a hoax. So I didn't include my name. But I have no reason not to put my name out there. I've been out for many years now, so why not?

My first name is Burch. Yeah, I know, a weird name. I was named after my father, who was given the last name of a family friend as his first name. I decided not to include my last name here, not because I'm not out, but because I'm a physician and I don't want my patients who do a Google search on me to find this blog first. This blog is about my personal thoughts and events in my personal life, not my professional life.

My husband's name is Christopher, not the pseudonym David that I gave him. Christopher would prefer to keep our son's name off of the blog, so I'll continue to call him Leo

I'm still here

I've been gone a long time - just got busy with other things.

We were in San Diego last week for vacation. We offered Leo a Disney trip but he preferred to return to San Diego again, mostly to go to Legoland. We stayed in a condo very close to the convention center, so we were there for the end of ComicCon. I noticed people wearing unusual outfits/costumes before I realized what was happening. We did the usual kid things, but didn't go to Sea World this time. I can only take a few days of amusement parks before I overdose on them.

When we rented a car at the airport, we were offered a Hummer. I never thought that I would get in a Hummer, and I didn't. We had reserved a small SUV (David's idea, not mine) but they gave us a huge one instead. What we didn't realize was that the parking space under the condo complex was very small, and getting that boat into the space was difficult to put it mildly. David scraped one door handle the first time that we did it.

We drove up to Orange County to have lunch with a friend of David's in San Juan Capistrano. (She's a liberal Mormon, if that isn't an oxymoron, and refers to entering Orange County as going "behind the orange curtain", a reference to the old Iron Curtain across Europe for those too young to understand.) We toured the old Spanish mission there after lunch. I was surprised by the San Onofre nuclear reactor. I knew that it was along the coast but it's just right there between the beach and I5, where a terrorist with a car or 18 wheeler full of explosives could take it out and spread radioactivity for many miles. And why put a nuclear reactor in an earthquake zone and in a place that could have a tsunami? The disaster in Japan could have happened there.

I'm really angry at Obama and the Democrats for caving to the crazies in the Republican party over the debt limit. Grow a spine and tell the loonies no and then stick to it! I am seriously thinking of joining the Green Party. I actually agree with them more than the Democrats, but after the Ralph Nader debacle in 2000 I feel like a vote for the Greens is a vote taken away from the Democrats, which is essentially the same as voting for a Republican.

who will my son marry?

On Sunday I took my son Leo to his school to play on the playground. During school the playground is separated by grade - the kindergartners have a separate playground, one for first and second graders, and one for 3rd through 6th graders. Since Leo is at the end of second grade (two more days left), he has wanted to play on the "big kids" playground since he was a kindergartner. As we were walking up, he made some negative remark about girls. I told him that he would change in mind about girls and would most likely marry one. He immediately said no, that he was going to marry a boy. I smiled to myself, thinking that he was imitating his own family. And chances are he is heterosexual and will marry a woman. When I mentioned this to my husband David, he said that I shouldn't dismiss Leo's statement so quickly. David said that at Leo's age, 7, that David knew that he was interested in other boys, but without role models in either his life or the media he didn't have an understanding or vocabulary to express it. I guess that is possible, but nothing about Leo has set off my "gaydar." I am curious though - of the people who read this who are gay or lesbian, did you know at age 7 that you were attracted to people of the same sex?

tobacco still kills

One of my nicest patients died last week. She always asked about Leo and how he was doing. She smoked for many years, and last year had an episode of blood in her urine. The workup showed cancer of her ureter, the tube from the kidney to the bladder. She had to have the ureter and kidney removed, then had lots of complications, including a wound infection, sepsis (the infection spread to her blood and all over her body.) She was able to be discharged and went home for a while, but she was too weak to take care of herself so went into a nursing home. Then she developed pneumonia. She did not want to be intubated (put on a ventilator), so she died of the pneumonia. But it was the tobacco induced cancer that caused her death. Some patients have been surprised that smoking can cause bladder or ureteral cancer, but some of the toxins from tobacco end up in the urine, and the ureter and bladder are constantly exposed to the toxins, and cancer is the result.

Another patient was brought in last week for a change in her personality, inability to sit still with near constant twitching, and muttering. I thought that she might have a movement disorder and sent her to a neurologist. The workup showed two masses in her brain that were likely metastatic cancer from somewhere else. Further scans showed a lung mass, so it is likely lung cancer from her smoking. The patient is now very confused and can barely get out of bed, so I suspect that she won't live much longer.

How much longer is this going to continue? Tobacco is a known carcinogen, as is second and third hand smoke. (Second hand is what others breathe in while someone is smoking, third hand is the residual left that others breathe in later - yes, that "tobacco smell" is cancer causing.) So why does our and nearly every other government let tobacco sales continue? In this country it is the tobacco lobby paying off our elected officials to continue this corporate murder. If I am every made ruler of the world, tobacco will be gone very quickly (but after equal rights for gays, lesbians, transgendered and women are written into law.)

parsnips and cherries and the bomb and the end of the world

Recently I added parsnips to the grocery list. Do most people even know what parsnips are? Could you find them in the grocery store if they weren't labeled? They look like large white carrots. I put them in a parsnip and split pea stew that I make, and it is tasty - I see that look of doubt on your face. But David, my husband, couldn't read my handwriting and bought papayas instead. Needless to say, I made another trip to the grocery store since papayas would not have worked in the stew. Then David complained about my handwriting. This is from the man who once put "hairs not" on the grocery list. This was in the early 1990s when we were first living together, long before cell phones were common. I got to the store and had no idea what he wanted. When I got home I asked him and his answer was "It doesn't say 'hairs not', it says 'hair snot'". Oh, thanks for the clarification. He called the hair gel that he used then "hair snot" and that was what he wanted me to buy.

Since I'm on a roll with food, David bought the first cherries of the season last week. Fresh cherries are great - one of the things that I look forward to in late spring and early summer. Now that I think about it, I like almost all fruit. (I know, insert your favorite gay joke here. I once joked that I brought the ideal food to a lesbian and gay mixer - fruit salad.)

One of my patients emailed me today to thank me for refilling her medication. She said that I was "the bomb." Hmmm, I'm pretty sure that's a compliment, but I've never called anyone "the bomb" before. The patient is older than I am, so I am guessing that she picked it up from her 20 something kids.

Oh, and the world didn't end on Saturday. Will these doomsday cults never end? I guess that I shouldn't say more about religion so that I won't offend people.

I'm back

After over 2 months I am finally back. I wasn't planning to take a long break but it just seemed to happen. Work got very busy, family life was busy, you know how it goes.

My son and I took a vacation to visit my parents during his spring break. My dad annoys my husband too much for David to come along. The two of us had a good trip, but I left Leo's favorite bathing suit - the one that is too small - at home and he decided that he didn't want to go to the beach, which is normally one of his favorite places, in the other bathing suit. I got to spend some time with my sister, brother in law and my niece, who is 16 months old. She never got used to me and wouldn't let me hold her. It's also amazing to me how much she looks like my sister. I'm enough older than my sister to remember what she looked like as a kid, and my niece looks like a clone of her. What's really strange is that my niece looked just like her father and not at all like my sister when she was born. Someone commented that it is adaptive for children to look like their fathers at birth - it confirms that the father is indeed the father and strengthens father-child bonds. I guess that I had not thought of it in Darwinian terms like that.

There doesn't seem to be a lot happening in gay and lesbian news lately. Next month there is a hearing in the Prop 8 trial. The pro-Prop 8 side is claiming that Judge Walker was biased because he is gay. I don't think that will work too well. Then several more months until the California Supreme Court considers whether the Prop 8 backers have standing to appeal the district court's decision. I don't think that they do, and California Attorney General Kamala Harris agreed in her amicus brief. I also hope that New York can pass marriage equality legislation. But Rhode Island failed to and seems to be headed toward Domestic Partnerships instead. And Minnesota may have a constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality in 2012. More evidence of why I have never been able to trust a Republican politician.

game over? I hope so

I live just outside Sacramento, California, and Sacramento has one major league sports team, the Sacramento Kings of the NBA. Their arena has been open since the 1980s, and the team wants a new arena (built at taxpayer expense, of course) with more seats and more high priced boxes for people crazy enough to pay for them. The team asked for money from the city sometime in the 1990s, and over the objections of most of the citizen, the city loaned the team $70 million, which is slowly being repaid. The owners are the Maloof brothers, who "earned" their millions or billions from casinos in Las Vegas. The city has tried to build a new arena, but like most cities now there is just no money. The city asked the voters in 2006 to raise taxes for a new arena and the citizens had the wisdom to overwhelmingly vote no. And the citizens were dumb enough to elect Kevin Johnson, a local man who formerly played in the NBA, mayor a few years ago. (What is it with Californians that so many will elect movie "stars" such as Reagan or Schwarzenegger (however that is spelled) to elected office?) So now the Maloofs are working to move the team to Anaheim. Billboards have sprung up saying "Game over?" with a photo of a partially deflated basketball. I say let them go. The city has spend way too much time and money trying to build an arena for a team that won't finance an arena themselves. And I can't count how many players and coaches have been arrested for domestic violence, drunk driving, weapons violations, etc. I would really like to get rid of all professional sports. They just seem to be a way to give people entertainment to distract them from important issues that should be dealt with.