Throwback Thursday

Five years ago today, two of my dearest friends got married! It's hard to believe how much can happen in five years! Vickie got a PhD in biochemistry from the University of California-Irvine, she and Dan had a baby (who is now one!), and they moved back to the middle of the country for Dan to get a PhD at KU in Lawrence, Kansas. I got an MD and MPH, got a puppy, got married, moved from Chicago to Omaha to Baltimore to Burlington, and started residency.

Even crazier is that last weekend was my 10 year high school reunion! I wasn't able to make it home for the celebration, and I both can't and can believe that it has been 10 years. I have changed so much since 2003--and I can't say I'm especially sad that I wasn't able to see the temporary posting of the class of 2003 slideshow on the Sidney High School website!

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For my dad

{Dad, third from right, breaking ground at the site of his clinic, ~1987.} On June 24, I graduated from family medicine residency and became the fourth family physician/general practitioner in three generations of Dorwarts. A week later, on July 1, our family gathered in Sidney, Nebraska, to celebrate my dad's retirement after 35 years as a family physician there. I couldn't be prouder of the work my dad has done throughout his career, his dedication to our hometown, his persistence through difficult times, and his unwavering insistence on doing the right thing even when it's not the easy thing. Even though I considered forays into surgery and gynecologic oncology (among other things), I am happy to have found my way to family medicine and to my father's footsteps. Although my dad worked long hours throughout my childhood, I never felt like I was missing out because I appreciated the importance of what he was doing. My perception was that he was spending his d...

5 years later

Somehow five years have passed since I finished residency and since my dad's retirement party (though he had the party, he has yet to fully retire). The passage of time is a funny thing...often when I'm running behind in my clinic schedule or when a patient arrives at 10:30 for their 8:15 appointment, I'll say something about time being a social construct or, "What even is time?" One of my coworkers and I often misquote Friedrich Nietzsche by saying, "Time is a square circle," which is our way of saying that time is meaningless or nonsensical. (I have just emerged from a deep dive into the Friedrich Nietzsche Wikipedia page where I learned or was reminded that the actual quote is "time is a flat circle" meaning essentially that history repeats itself.) Philosophies about the nature of time notwithstanding, for some reason I've decided to write a post. (Incidentally, I now have a 3-year-old daughter who occasionally uses the phrase "...

From Valentine's Day to International Women's Day

On Valentine’s Day, as I was walking back toward the hospital after buying a Coke from the Red Cross canteen (a little shop adjacent to the hospital “car park” where they sell snacks, soft drinks, and sadza ), a man about my age walked briskly toward me, saying, “Hi doc, I’m sorry to interrupt you but can I ask a personal question?” My mind jumped to: where’s the rash? Instead, he continued, “It’s about my wife. She was admitted to the labour ward for an induction today, but now they’re sending her back to the antepartum ward because she isn’t having contractions.” (The labour ward has a strict no visitors policy, which also means no husbands.Throughout the rest of the hospital, visitors are only allowed for two hour-long periods each day.) He went on to tell me about the recent course of his wife’s pregnancy, and I was becoming curious about what the “personal question” would be. After a few minutes, he asked simply, “Do you think she’ll be okay? Do you think the baby will be ...

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