Episode 30: Superstition

I got the last DVD for season 2 this week. I checked the hours and announced to GF, “Yay! Only five hours in this miserable season left!”

And she said, “You know this is entirely voluntary, right?”

I guess. Voluntary in the sense that I have a grant due and I’m back on the wards soon and I am therefore very busy but I’m still sitting up late at night, watching Grey’s. I would have watched sooner, wanted to watch over the holiday, but my entire family was in town for the weekend and my father hijacked my computer and used it to play online bridge for four solid days. I couldn’t write, watch, or take notes on episodes. In addition to this little injustice, my parents broke my TV, jammed my printer, turned on my oven and then promptly left the house for hours, and left my milk out to spoil. Yes, one would think, if he or she saw my house, that my Thanksgiving consisted one giant frat party, starring my parents as “the seniors.” At one point, GF’s sister came to my house and looked around and saw the oven that they had left on, the milk that was sitting out, and said, “They’re like children.” Yes. Yes, they are, and I don’t understand it. Maybe they’re trying to get back at me for once being a child myself.

Because my parents broke my television, I was forced buy a new one, which meant that over two days, I went to Best Buy 5 times. I bought and returned 2 different TVs that had problems (I will never buy an "open box" item again). By the end, I was so furious I couldn't see straight. I now have a TV at my house but have not yet been able to force myself to take it out of the box. Purchasing it was exhausting enough. And then there was the pain of Grey's. This was one of the episodes when the writing was worse than usual. I wouldn’t even call it “filler.” More like “garbage.” Some important plot points emerge, no doubt, but I spent most of the time rolling my eyes saying “For God’s sake! Is it too much to ask for a single episode with good writing??”

The opener:

 “My college campus has a magic statue. It’s a tradition for students to rub its nose for good luck. My freshman roommate really believed in it and insisted on rubbing its nose before every exam. Studying might have been a better idea. She flunked out her sophomore year. But, we all have little superstitious things that we do. If it's not believing in magic statues, it's avoiding sidewalk cracks or always putting our left shoe on first. Knock on wood. Step on a crack, break your mother's back. The last thing we want to do is offend the gods."

This is a clue that Meredith went to Dartmouth, where students rub the nose of a statue of Warner Bentley in the Hopkins Center for the Arts for good luck. This was the replacement of an older tradition in which students rubbed the nose of a bust of Craven Laylock, an 1896 Dartmouth graduate. Although this practice sounds odd, it turns out that rubbing bronze body parts is a common practice in the Ivy League. Brown students rub the nose of Secretary of State John Hay. Harvardians pat the toes of Ralph Waldo Emerson in Sever Hall. Harvard magazine recently published an article stating that the shoe of another statue, John Harvard, hasbeen damaged by "thousands of visitors a year who rub it for luck.”

Back in “Seattle,” (a.k.a. Prospect Studios in Los Feliz, CA, where Grey’s is filmed. I thought it looked way too sunny to be Seattle), the chief takes care of an old friend who used to be his AA sponsor. The former AA sponsor is played by Mary Kay Place, who has been in countless movies and TV shows. I won’t linger on Ms.Place’s career or the bad medicine the chief is offering her because it’s not interesting. However, we do find out that the chief has been in recovery ever since his affair with Ellis Grey. Yes, it was the affair with Meredith’s mother that drove him to rock bottom and into AA.

All I can see when I look at her is Roman Grant's evil scheming sister-wife on Big Love.  I suppose this is the danger of wearing a bun and pioneer clothing on television. It might also be known as the "Melissa Gilbert Effect."

In other ridiculous news, Denny needs yet another open heart surgery (something about a clot) but Burke won’t do the surgery because his hideous yellow surgical caps have gone missing (a fact he cares about because this is the episode on “Superstition” but maybe also because he already killed someone today, a result consistent with his other terrible surgical outcomes.). 

Nice yellow cap. I find it strange that both the women and men on the show wear the slick surgical caps. As a medical student, I wore such a cap only once, and I couldn't figure out why the anesthesiologist called me "Tom" for the entire case. Only later did I realize it was because women are "supposed" to wear the poofy bouffant caps and men wear the sleek tiebacks. Change it up and gender confusion is the result.

George and Izzie, a.k.a. Burke’s little watchdog and Denny’s future lover, find out that Cristina is in possession of one of the lucky caps, but she is holding the cap hostage (of course she is). Antics ensue as they chase her all over the hospital.

This is the way most surgical interns spend their days, I'm pretty sure (this is actual dialogue from this scene):  
CRISTINA: "This is the women's restroom."
GEORGE: "Give me the cap!"
CRISTINA: "That's my breast."

Cristina offers to return the cap to Burke in exchange for kicking George out of the house. See, she walked in on Burke and George blowing each other’s horns the other night and she can’t get the picture out of her head:

Some part of me thinks this plotline, the one where Burke and George are supposed to be "bonding," is what drove the Isiah Washington/TR Knight situation into crisis mode. Put a then-closeted homosexual and a homophobe together in scenes where they are in elevators together, engaging in sweaty, back-slapping after "exercising,"  and this "blowing each other's horns" moment and there's going to be off-screen tension.

Later, Izzie confronts Cristina about the cap situation with the best line of the episode:

IZZIE: "I swear to god, Cristina... I like you. I really do. But I grew up in a trailer park and I am not above kicking your pampered little Beverly Hills ass."

Izzie also breaks up with Alex because she is falling for Denny, her patient. So problematic.

ALEX: "What? You're breaking up with me over a corpse!"
IZZIE: "No! No! I'm breaking up with you because... on your very best day, that corpse... is twice the man you will ever be. You're not good enough for me, Alex. You're not good enough for anyone."

In the meantime, Meredith gets coffee or maybe hot chocolate from Addison, as part of a form of bribery Addison calls “juju.” I am familiar with hospital bribery. I used to bring all sorts of treats for the nurses so they would be nice to me. It totally worked, although I gained 30 pounds in the process because I always ate some of what I brought in. I’ve lost most of that 30 pounds, but certainly not all.

Anyway, Meredith throws out the hot drink (an action referred to as “dissing the juju”) and heads to the ER where she is caring for a girl who claims to have been struck by lighting while in her boyfriend’s yard. Later, we find out the patient has no boyfriend and wasn’t struck by lightning. What’s the point? I don’t know, but the patient dies of internal bleeding. Good story, writers. I hope you tell another just like it. Oh, I forgot, you probably will, next week.

McDreamy at one point says, “It’s a beautiful afternoon to save lives, people.” Then that patient dies, too. Something about obsessive compulsive disorder and a head bleed. Still, I’m going to recite that line that to my team every day next week.

Yeah, both of you in the gurneys will be dead in less than 43 minutes, not counting commercials. Bummer. Also, since when do interns transfer patients? This is not an educational activitiy.

All in all, a downer of an episode, but there's still a moral:

“Superstition lies in the space between what we can control and what we can't. Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck. No one wants to pass up a chance for good luck. But does saying it 33 times really help? Is anyone actually listening? Why do we bother doing those strange things? We rely on superstitions because we're smart enough to know we don't have all the answers and that life works in mysterious ways. Don't diss the juju, from wherever it comes."

The part of the episode that rings the most true for me is a conversation Cristina has with Bailey and Izzie:

CRISTINA: "This is great. No blood, no guts, no lives to save. It's dead quiet..."
IZZIE: "Cristina!?"
MIRANDA: "Yang, did you really just say that?"
CRISTINA: "Say what?"
GEORGE: "The 'q' word."
IZZIE: "That's like saying 'Macbeth' in the theater."

I can’t tell you how many times I have refused to answer the question “How is your day going?” I so want to say “slow” but fear the sh*t that statement may bring on me. So I say, “I’m not going to comment on that right now,” with a little tension in my voice. Why? (Here's my moral, for once it's the same as Meredith's): All doctors are superstitious. There’s so much we can’t control that we have to pretend to control something lest we lose our minds.

Episode 16: Something to Talk About

I mentioned in a previous post the indignities I suffered during my last bout of gastroenteritis. These last few days of The Bug were not quite so bad as the XXXL gown with a ruffle, but did have some really low moments. For one thing, I continued to go to work and to participate in activities of daily living despite three days of abdominal pain, only develop intractable diarrhea at the end of day 3. In 12 hours, I lost 5 pounds. I had to call in sick Monday morning, something I swore I would never do while I was on service (because it puts such a burden on my colleagues). And then I made an appointment to see my doctor, who wanted a stool sample.

It should have been easy. I had gone to the bathroom every 15 minutes for 12 straight hours, but when called to perform in the doctor’s office, stage fright ensued. I tried to force the issue by gulping down an entire bottle of water, but no dice. It was not going to happen. So, the lab ladies gave me a little cup, a label, a plastic bag, and two gloves, and told me to try it at home. The problem was that home was 20 minutes away, and after 30 seconds in the car, I was in an emergent situation. I screeched into a spot outside of Bruegger’s Bagels, ran into the bathroom, snapped on the gloves, held the cup in place, and prayed my positioning wasn’t too far off. After it was done, I tucked the still-warm plastic cup (encased in a biohazard bag) in my coat pocket and drove it back to the doctor’s office. Embarrassing, gross, and weird, I know, and the sort of thing that would make a person want to give up Bruegger’s Bagels (or at least their bathrooms) for life. It was one of the low points of my week, for sure.

But not the lowest point. There’s nothing like a stomach flu to make a single lesbian realize how alone she is in the world. That moment, at 3 AM, when you’re in pain, sick, and at your ugliest, is exactly when you realize that no matter how supportive your friends, they can't match having a partner who can see you at your ugliest and sickest and still love you. At that moment, it wouldn’t even matter if it happened to be the same partner had betrayed your trust and/or broken your heart. You just wish she was there, holding a damp cloth to your head, and telling you it’s going to be OK. (I apologize for my stylistically incorrect use of the “generalized you” in this paragraph. It just seemed to work.)

In other relevant news, I got this email this week:

“Dear Colleague,

We are writing to inform you that the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons met on Sunday, April 17, to consider the continued status of Lazar J. Greenfield, M.D., FACS, as an officer of the College. Dr. Greenfield recently authored an editorial in Surgery News that some members of the surgical community found offensive. The College received numerous communications from the surgical community about the editorial.

Dr. Greenfield addressed the Board and expressed his deep regret that individuals had been offended by the article. After reaffirming his long-standing support for women in surgery, Dr. Greenfield resigned from his position as an officer of the College.

The contributions Dr. Greenfield has made to the field of surgery, including the invention of the Greenfield Filter, can not be overstated. We wish to honor Dr. Greenfield and celebrate his inestimable contributions to the College and the surgical community. We also know that at this critical juncture for surgery and health care in America, it is important that the American College of Surgeons not be distracted by any issues that would diminish its focus on improving care of the surgical patient.

Sincerely,

Carlos A. Pellegrini, MD, FACS, Chair, Board of Regents L. D. Britt, MD, FACS, President David B. Hoyt, MD, FACS, Executive Director American College of Surgeons”

So what is this about? Apparently, Dr. Greenfield, the famous and accomplished inventor of the Greenfield Filter, made a stunningly bad decision by writing an editorial about the antidepressant effects of semen. His most quoted line: “So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates.” I mean, what was he thinking? He might actually be quite supportive of women surgeons, but he wrecked any chance that it mattered by publishing this article that sounds like a conversation between Don and Roger on Mad Men. Oh, Dr. Greenfield, I know this is surprise, but it’s not 1959 anymore. 

This episode of Grey’s opens in the locker room, to the endless chatter of Meredith’s colleagues. Clearly, the gossip mill has honed in on the Grey-McDreamy breakup:

 “She got what she deserved, dating an attending.”

The scene quickly transitions to McDreamy and Addison in couples therapy:

Couples therapy. A great way to spend your 12 hours off. (Sadly, practically every married resident does it at some point.)

McD: “I need her to move to Seattle.”

A: “I need him to stop talking to Meredith.”

McD: “I work with Meredith.”

A: “You want me to move here? Fine. I want him to give up his girlfriend.”

McD: “I did give up my girlfriend. You want me to take you back? Fine, I’ll take you back. Here in Seattle.”

A: “It’s all about what you want.’”

McD: “I am not the same person I was in Manhattan.”

A: “I know! You’re a flannel-wearing, wood-chopping fisherman!”

Therapist: “OK, we have to stop. Good progress!”

Yeah, that’s why couples therapy sucks. But, by the end of the episode, these two are holding hands in the therapist’s office and talking about their bright future together in Seattle.

In the meantime, to make Meredith feel better, Yang and Izzie have a special surprise for Meredith: a pregnant man. Or so it seems. Of course, there have been actual pregnant men, although all of these men were born women, transitioned into being men, and then were able to get pregnant because they kept their female reproductive organs in case they ever needed them. The man in this episode is in a different situation: he’s a bio-guy who actually has a kind of tumor called a teratoma. 

The medical plausibility of this scenario is near zero for the following reason: teratomas occur in men, but are most often testicular or mediastinal (in the chest). I was able to find one described case of mesenteric teratoma in a man, so it is theoretically possible, but very, very rare. 

George is caring for a woman who is demanding and horrible to her husband. She needs open heart surgery, then, during her surgery, her heart catches fire (an outcome that is consistent with the unbelievably bad cardiac surgery outcomes at Seattle Grace). Somehow, she survives, prompting her husband to leave her before she even is discharged from the PACU.

“Her heart caught on fire in the middle of her fifth open heart operation and she survived! She’s like a mythical monster. She’s never going to die!”

Cristina has a terrible episode after telling a nurse, “We’ll call you if we need a bedpan.” This dismissive comment leads the nurses to spend their day trying to make Cristina’s life hell. They give her stacks of charts and vomiting patients and all-around load her down with scut. This is a common theme in medical shows, and has been done well in the past, especially on ER. Still, it’s a great theme, because it’s true. 

Nurses can save your ass or ruin your life. So go ahead, be rude to them. See what happens.

There are lots of really bad jobs in the hospital and nurses can make interns’ lives as easy or as terrible as they choose to make them. It’s funny, because I keep telling my interns this, and about half of them believe me. And the half that don’t? Well, those are the interns who don’t bother being nice to the nurses. They are the interns whose pagers go off nonstop, every other minute, all day long. They are the interns getting paged with reports from nurses on borderline lab values, patients in need of emergent manual fecal disimpaction, and emesis that is “strange-looking” and therefore needs an intern to examine it for evidence of blood.

In other news, Bailey is trying to protect Meredith from McDreamy’s douchiness:

Bailey to McD who is walking towards Meredith: “Turn around. Walk away from my intern. You don’t have the right. Not anymore."

McD: "I just want to find out if she’s OK."

Bailey: “She’s not! She’s a human traffic accident and everyone is slowing down to look at the wreckage. She’s doing the best she can with what she has left. Look, I know you can’t see this but you can’t help her now! You’re making it worse. Walk away! Go on!”

Thank you, Dr. Bailey.