Episode 21: Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer

OK, so I’ve been away. Blogger says it’s officially been “three months” although I don’t totally believe that it’s been three full months. What have I been up to, you might ask? Um..well, as the last post would indicate, I’m in a new relationship. I’ve gone on some trips. To the West Coast. To Montreal (cool city!) to…Denmark (Copenhagen. Also a very “cool” city, in fact too cool for me. It’s a city made for the sort of person who wears skinny jeans, lounges at cafés for hours on end in the middle of weekdays, and pronounces the word ‘cool’ with a Danish accent. Think Arnold Schwarzenegger’s accent except Danish. The highlight of my trip was when a 20-ish Dane with spiky 80s hair and skinny jeans announced, “You are so cool.” She wasn’t being mean. She meant it. But, still, I couldn’t help but think, “Oh, clearly. I’m so coo-wl. Boot cut jeans and all.”)

Denmark. Look closely and you will see hipsters, I have no doubt.

Although I’ve carried my Grey’s DVDs with me on lots of these trips, the posting hasn’t happened. There are a few reasons for this: I’ve been stressed out with work; I haven’t been watching much TV, and, well, I feel a little self-conscious about the fact that the new girlfriend might not love the blog I started in the middle of my last breakup.

And, also, things have been hard, too: I've had a couple of recent deaths of family and friends, and diagnoses of bad diseases in people I love. Add to this that the grant that was supposed to pay my salary for next 5 years did not happen, even though I did everything right and got a good score. The agency just suddenly ran out of money, leaving my grant unfunded. So instead of celebrating, I was left to have meetings in the offices of various administrators where I had to beg for salary support for the next year, to say nothing of what I will be asking for a year from now.

Despite this combination of good fortune, setbacks, and sadness, I’ve been meaning to post, because I love my fans. I’ve also learned a few things about Greys: 1. All the episodes are named after songs! Who knew? Well, apparently, lots of people knew and now I know, too. And it only took me 21 episodes to figure it out. 2. There are lots of episodes in Seasons 2 and beyond. Lots.

So let’s hit it:

In the open scene, Izzie is going crazy decorating the living room because she has not yet learned the lesson that everything bad will continue to happen to her until she stops trying so hard. 

WWJD? I can guarantee not what you're doing right now.

As Izzie puts the last ornament on the tree, Meredith’s intro voice-over announces that depression rates spike at the holidays, which would be nice to mention if it were true. It turns out, however, that there’s no evidence that there’s any increase of rates of depression or suicide during the holidays. Sorry writers, that gets a no way.

The rest of this episode is more tiresome than taking care of actual high-maintenance patients on Christmas. There’s a couple who seem endlessly happy with their chaotic life and their 4 or 5 or 6 screaming kids until the husband ends up with a frontal lobe brain bleed which suddenly causes a change to his personality. This personality change functions to turn him from the sort of annoying parent who lets their kid run wild (you know the type: the kid is climbing all over you and getting their ice cream all over your shirt and the parent just looks at you and shrugs, as if to say, “Kids! So energetic!”)  to a regular person who is annoyed when he is surrounded by 6 screaming kids. It seems to me it might be better for the world if this guy realized just how annoying it is when people let their kids run wild and then assume everyone around will be amused, but the surgeons of Grey instead opt to “fix” the guy because he has a frontal hematoma that was missed during the first brain surgery of the day. How did McDreamy miss this, you might ask? Probably because during that surgery McDreamy was paying more attention to his diatribe about how much he dislikes the holidays (because, we’re supposed to believe, he’s still in love with Meredith and being with Addie is making him hate Christmas) than he was to the surgery he was doing (or maybe, as Izzie insinuates, the anti-Christmas talk in the OR infected the patients brain with pessimism. Yes, quite possibly it was the notorious “Anti-Christmas venom.”). Moments after discharging the patient to the PACU, McDreamy realizes his mistake and take the patient back to the OR. “Two craniotomies in one day?” Asks Izzie. “Is that a problem?” Uh, yeah. You should’ve fixed it the first time around.

After McDreamy takes the patient back to the OR and repairs the bleed the patient’s personality change is entirely cured, in such a short time frame it’s not realistic. Sorry writers. There’s no way.

In the meantime, George is taking care of a woman with an ulcer and her crazy family, and there’s an implication that that the stress of her crazy family caused her ulcer.

“Two ulcers. Not surprising with that family.”

This is basically an old wives tale-we know now that ulcers are caused by a bacteria called Helicobacter Pylori. (and sometimes by Advil) But never, ever, are annoying families the sole cause of an ulcer. Sorry again, writers. No way.

Cristina is taking care of a pouty boy who needs a heart transplant. This boy has clearly been made aware of Burke’s surgical outcomes because before the surgery he asks the very wise question: “If I die during surgery, will you give this heart to some other kid?”

Instead of assuming that this kid is smart enough to look him up on Hospital Compare, Burke decides to contemplate all the reasons the kid might not do well. He asks, during the transplant:

“With all medical realities being equal, why does one patient live and another die?”

(At this point, I’m already about to scream, “Jesus, I’ll stab myself with a spoon before I engage with this! But...I’m going to postulate that based on previous evidence of your surgical outcomes, more of your patients die than anyone else’s because you’re a lousy surgeon!”)

Instead, the writers let him go on:

“I believe that there’s a mind body spirit connection, and if he doesn’t want this heart, his body will reject it.”

And this is not the end of the God talk:

Patient to child: “We have a doctor named Shepard!”

Burke to Cristina: “If I didn’t believe in something bigger than me, than the powerlessness would eat me alive.”

And, finally, and worst of all, Alex asks Izzie, “Why would you want to help me anyway?” and Izzie answers while crying, “Because it’s what Jesus would freakin’ do.”

Really, writers, Yahweh?

Thank God for Cristina, the voice of atheist reason, who says:

“I haven’t observed religious holidays since I was old enough to know better.”

And

“I don’t believe in Santa or God. I believe in medicine. It’s a miracle that you’re alive. Some surgeon figured out a way to give you someone else’s heart, which is so much cooler than Santa. I think you should live so you can become a doctor so you figure out how to do heart transplants without someone having to die. Decide to live, because in your case, dying really isn’t the best revenge.”

Uh, OK, whatever. Anybody who’s gotten as far as internship knows that there are, sadly, very few miracles in medicine, but I guess this is better than WWJD?

In the meantime, Bailey is being Bailey:

Against ACGME rules, she is operating alone (she’s a resident!) despite having morning sickness.

Dr. Bailey: Must you insist on making everyone around you look so much worse than they already do?

She defends Alex despite the fact that he failed his boards and maybe killed somebody: “My husband makes mistakes at his jobs all the time, but as far as I know, he’s never killed anyone, but I have and you will and Alex did.”

She allows Meredith to help Alex study for his boards (and try to convince others to help):

Meredith: “What if it were you?”

Cristina: “It wouldn’t be.”

Meredith: “But what if it were?”

Cristina: “It wouldn’t be.”

Dr. Yang sometimes reminds me of my friend Dr. McAwesome, at least a tiny bit.

And Meredith finally does convince everyone to become practice patients for Alex, including Izzie who poses as “A farmer who is drooling and puking and crapping my pants”

She’s clearly talking about organophosphatetoxicity, which I actually saw when I was working in Kenya during my residency.

George tells off the annoying family that "caused the ulcer:"

“You can sue us or you can consider the possibility of shutting the hell up….visiting hours are over. So goodnight. And Merry Christmas.”

God, I wish I'd said that to some families while I was on the wards last month. Minus the Christmas part.

McDreamy comes clean with Addison:

“Christmas makes you want to be with people you love...Meredith wasn’t a fling. She wasn’t revenge. I fell in love with her. That doesn’t go away because I decided to stay with you.”

And there’s a neat moral at the end of the episode:

“There’s a school of thought that you can’t choose your family. You take what the fates hand you. And like them or not, love them or not, understand them or not, you cope. But then there’s the school of thought that says the family you’re born into is simply a starting point. They feed you and clothe you and take care of you until you’re ready to go out into the world and find your tribe.”

Saturday I’m going to the memorial service for my friend’s mother, and I’m taking my girlfriend to meet this group of dear friends (whom she’s not yet met) from my med school days. In a recent email, a friend referred to them as “The Crazy Wing of the Family,” which may be true, but they are such important people to me. They truly are members of my tribe. This makes Meredith's point a good one for this week: I love you, my dear friends, my tribe (even those of you who are a little bit crazy). And I love my fans, too-thanks for reading. It's good to be back.