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Posts Tagged ‘doctors’

Day 333 – Armando G.

Posted in Unknown, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 1, 2010| 4 Comments »

Great news!  I am so happy to finally announce that the Year-End Celebration will be on Tuesday December 14th from 6:30-9:00pm at the well-known Tabaq Bistro on U Street.  You are welcome to join me many of the 365 recipients for a night of celebration.  Your ticket in is a donation that you deem appropriate.  All funds collected will help pay for the event and go toward some awesome charities!  If we get a sponsor for the event, EVERYTHING goes to charity!

If you use Facebook and want to RSVP, click on the Facebook Event Page. 

Embassy Opticians, 1330 Connecticut Ave., NW, Wash. DC

I have spent a lot of time in front of a computer over the last 333 days and I am sure it hasn’t helped my eyes at all.  The other day I went to Embassy Opticians to get a new set of glasses and ended up giving $10 away.

This entire experience sometimes can get mind numbing.  First of all the whole idea of putting frames on to see how you look when you don’t have your glasses on to help you see is a bit of challenge.  But in the end I managed to find a pair of glasses that I liked for a reasonable price.

Armando has worked there for the past two years although he has been with the company at a different location for four more years.  He is very helpful and seems to have a good eye for what type of frame works well with your facial structure.  What I personally liked about him is that I didn’t feel rushed or pressured in any way.

Armando cleaning some lenses.

He’s a very out going individual, or at least it seems that way.  “I’m very extraverted at work, but introverted at home,” Armando told me.  “I’m out of control sometimes when I’m here and then I go home and I am really chill.”  Chill except for the time that he ended up in jail on his 26th birthday!  Yeah, don’t let the soft voice and innocent face fool you…this guy has done some hard time in the slammer.  Ok, I’m exaggerating.  He had a little too much to drink and passed out in the back of a taxi on his way home.  “I woke up to an officer pulling me out of the cab!”  It reminds me a little of the story that Tekele told me on Day 310 – maybe Armando passed out in Tekele’s cab!

Armando darts around the store looking for the perfect frames for me.  U2’s Beautiful Day is playing in the background as the drizzle moistens the pavement out front.  “I once melted a pair of my Mom’s glasses trying to bend them by heating them up with the stove,” he tells me placing a pair of glasses on my face.  I think it’s best they keep Armando out front with customers and not in the back adjusting frames!

I’ve tried to follow up with Armando to find out what he ended up doing with the $10 but haven’t gotten a response.  He’s either hard at work fitting people with new glasses or passed out in a cab some place in the city.  

Here I am yesterday wearing my new glasses. I'm organizing my notes about the day's $10 recipient in my Moleskine journal.

If you need new glasses, I highly recommend you check with Armando.  Not only did he fit me with a great new set of glasses, he worked with me to make it affordable as well.  What more can you ask for?

Oh, I almost forgot, today is Pay it Forward Day…it’s got almost 500,000 people committed to paying it forward in some way today!  That’s awesome.

Embassy Opticians are located at 1330 Connecticut Ave.  ½ block south of Dupont Circle.

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Day 215 – Linda M.

Posted in Food & Beverage, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 1, 2010| 2 Comments »

Happy first day of August!  Lots of friends celebrating birthdays today: Kim, Maureen, Laura, Murilo, Steve and others I am sure.  Happy birthday!

My buddy Chris is the father of three kids.  When his wife needed to go out of town for the weekend I got the call.  “Hey man, would you like to go up to Long Beach Island, NJ to my mother-in-law’s beach house with me and the kids?”  I agreed, but then something came up and the beach house was not available that weekend so I got a second call.  “The beach house isn’t going to work out, but, listen, my wife is going to be out of town and I really could use your help with the kids.”  So, we spent the weekend in the sprawling paradise of West Friendship, MD.  We had a great time and I love his kids.  I learned that I pretty much suck at the Wii.  His five and seven-year-old destroyed me in almost every game, especially Super Mario Brothers.  The only thing I could beat those guys at was ice skating and bowling!  I know, I’m pretty pathetic.

Anyway, on Saturday we took them over to the pool.  I didn’t think I was going to get that many opportunities to engage with other humans out in the metropolis of West Friendship, so I decided to see who I found cooling off by the pool that day.

After playing with Nick and Dylan for a while in the main pool, I headed over to check on Chris who was watching Avery in the baby pool.  That’s where I found Linda.

Linda (photo: Reed)

Actually I walked up to her husband first.  He was feeding one of their boys when I asked if he would participate.  He skillfully pawned me off to his wife who was reading her kindle and listening to music as she sunbathed poolside.  I felt kind of bad.  Imagine being the mother of two and finally getting a few moments of absolute bliss where you were relaxed, reading your book, listening to some tunes…..ah, life is good.  And then some weird guy wants to talk to you….yep, that’s me.  It could have been worse though.  My buddy Chris could have talked to them!

Anyway, so Linda is a thoracic surgeon.  As the name implies, this is surgery related to the treatment of diseases affecting organs inside the thorax (the chest) such as the lungs, chest wall, and diaphragm.  She pursued this area of specialty after participating in a surgery rotation during medical school.  She really likes anatomy and the idea of fixing things.  It also seems like one of the more manageable fields of work in surgery as most of the procedures are scheduled allowing the physician to have a somewhat normal work-life balance.  Sometimes you hear crazy stories of doctors being summoned at all hours of the night on a regular basis.  Or ER doctors who don’t sleep for 36 hours.  Anyway, sometimes she gets woken up in the middle of the night too, but not as much as some others she tells me.

One time she got a call around 3am and was asked to come in to take a look at a stab wound victim.  Although she really didn’t think that her expertise was necessary given the other medical staff that was on hand, she got out of bed and hurried in to the hospital to help the patient.  As it turns out the man had several punctures in his organs.  As they operated on him she discovered that he had a hole in his heart that ended up splitting open.  Had this have happened before they got him on the operating table he would have died for sure she told me. 

photo: Reed

I couldn’t suppress the urge to ask about a few other interesting cases that she has seen.  Dr. Linda shared with me the story of a young woman who came to see her a few months ago with some severe problems not being able to keep food down.  It turned out that the sphincter muscle between the esophagus and the stomach was too tight and she had to go in and cut it in such a way to release the tension.  She had been battling this problem for a long time.  In fact, when she was younger doctors thought she might be bulimic, but she was not.   

 Another case Dr. Linda told me about was an 89-year-old patient who went to their dentist for some dental work.  Apparently the dentist dropped the tiny drill bit he was using and the patient swallowed it.  The patient went home but started coughing all night long.  He called his dentist and the dentist felt so bad that he went with the patient to the hospital in the middle of the night and she removed the drill bit which was lodged in the lung. 

Dr. Linda told me that she and her husband, who happens to be a cardiologist, were going to have a rare date night that evening and were going to the movies.  “I think we’ll use the $10 and treat ourselves to a popcorn and a drink tonight,” she told me.  I’m not sure the $10 will cover that, movie theater food is one of the most overpriced items in our country. 

I thanked them for letting me invade their quiet afternoon by the pool and went back to the chaos that awaited me with Chris’ kids.

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Day 212 – Justin F.

Posted in Food & Beverage, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 26, 2010| 1 Comment »

Justin (photo: Reed)

Working now creates some new challenges to keeping up with my commitment.  On the plus side, I have some positive cash flow!  On the negative side, my days have become much longer trying to keep this up while working.

Well long days and short nights of sleep are nothing new to today’s recipient.  Meet Justin.  I was leaving work and walking toward Dupont Circle when I ran into him as he was walking home from GW Hospital in his scrubs.

Justin is a 1st year resident in the department of radiology.  Originally from northwest Indiana, he went to medical school about an hour away at Chicago’s Northwestern University.  He recently finished his internship at a hospital in Akron, OH.

When I ran into him he had only been here a few weeks and when I asked how it was going he said, “So far it’s pretty good for me.”  Pretty good attitude for a first year resident.  He’ll spend the next four years here going through intensive training. 

So how is residency life?  “It’s ok, I mean there is just an overwhelming amount of stuff that you are required to learn,” Justin tells me.  Although he said summer in DC was really hot, he likes the city.  He was already familiar with the DC area before moving here.  In fact he spent a summer doing research at NIH which he says definitely played a role in his choice to come here for his residency. 

I wonder how you decide that you want to study radiology.  Check out why Justin says he chose it.

Miraculously he finds some time to relax and enjoy life.  When he is not soaking up endless quantities of knowledge at the hospital, he enjoys playing music.  He started playing bass guitar a while back and would like to get a band together here in DC.  For a guy who is new in town, he already has a guitarist and a keyboardist lined up.  They need a drummer though.  “We need a beginner/intermediate drummer who wants to play some rock music,” he tells me.  My brother hasn’t played in a long time, maybe he wants to get back into it.

Justin right before he turned my $10 into dinner (photo: Reed)

So what does a first year radiology resident do with $10.  Eat!  That’s right he said that he was going to take the $10 straight to Potbelly’s to get some dinner.  He kindly let me tag along as we hiked the 8 blocks over to the sandwich shop where he got his dinner. 

Bon appetite Justin!

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