Babies and Bluegrass

Thursday. Was. Awesome.

I delivered THREE babies and was 1st assist on TWO LAVH-es (that would be lap-assisted vaginal hysterectomies).

OK, maybe it was two and a half babies, but still. The third one seemed stuck and I was afraid of pulling any harder (of course, I was barely pulling at all). I am featured prominently in the first photos of a baby girl I will never see again. That's a weird thought. (Side note: I wish I had shorter hair so I could wear a surgeon's cap, rather than the stupid-looking bouffant cap. Stupid wedding I'm keeping my hair long for.)

I pulled a 13.5-hour shift and didn't even notice it. Contrast that to my grueling 8-hour shifts in the family medicine clinic from hell that leave me exhausted and drained and so frustrated. It's true that work truly doesn't feel like work if you're doing something you love.

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Last night I drove to Pikeville and met my friend David for an evening of bluegrass, courtesy of his preceptor. We drove for about an hour from Pikeville, up into a "holler" (at one point I had to say that word to someone, and I knew I couldn't pull off "holler," but "hollow" also sounded very, very weird), and to a "sportsman's club" that was really two large, wooden shacks. The doctor who brought us is a "picker" on guitar, and he and all these other guys get together every Friday evening for bluegrass jam sessions.

I wish I had had my camera with me, but I had left it in the car. I didn't have my cell phone camera, either. Upon realizing that, I started taking mental notes of the scene so I could recreate it for you, but I'm not that good a writer. the basic scene was a bunch of guys -- at one point, 8 guitarists, two banjo-ists, and a mandolin player -- seated around a table, just making awesome sounding music, surrounded by others who were just there to enjoy it. All were dressed in variations of "mountain casual" and "Appalachian," David and I were the only people under 30 -- actually, under 40 -- and I was the only girl. The bluegrass was great, and I'm sure I'm never going to do anything like that again. It was really neat, and I can think of multiple people who, if they had been there, would be gushing about it for weeks. We drove back to Louisville afterward, getting in around 2:30 this morning. It's a totally different world back here in the city, and it's strange to think about the dichotomies of this state.