When immersed in my work as a resident physician, I would walk in and out of hospital rooms with mainly one thing on my mind: taking care of my patient. Like all of my colleagues, my to do list was long and consuming. Every day began with what felt like a marathon of sequential 100-yard dashes up and down hospital floors and in and out of patient rooms, nursing stations and radiology suites.
At that point in my life, I often referred to whatever was out of the hospital as “the outside.” When the rare opportunity came to grab food out of the hospital or clinic, I would ask my co-workers if they wanted anything from “the outside.” It was my way of making light of the grim fact that I often felt imprisoned by my schedule and workload.
Occasionally, “the outside” made its way into a patient’s room: a family member holding a Starbucks coffee cup or a patient’s friend holding a no-need-to-think-while-reading magazine. The background mumblings of morning television talk show hosts also occasionally made their way from “the outside” into patient rooms and tempted my ears during rounds. Sometimes I wished I could lay in the hospital bed myself and take part in the mundane. To me, these television shows seemed anything but mundane though. They were the comfortable blanket of popular media babble. Often, the blanket could be brought up over ones eyes and served as a convenient blinder to the hard reality of pain and death around me.
Since having children and spending some more time at home, I have found myself immersed at times in the blanket of popular media. One great example is that I still record and watch The View. At first, I watched out of a default reaction: “ah, here’s something I can watch while breastfeeding…” Then it was, “wow, a bunch of women on TV are speaking their minds and have a platform of influence!” This thought, combined with the entertainment factor (and my weakness for TV and film), has hooked me.
Sometimes the health information given on these shows is thoughtful and true. But sometimes, a health myth is mentioned as if it were fact. I ruminate for days about how awful it is that so many have potentially been misinformed. So, from time to time, you will read my responses to health issues brought up on such shows in an effort to clarify the information.
In my next entry, look for my response to a recent topic Lisa Ling brought up on The View: fertility and age. If you want to have kids, how long can you wait? What are the risks/benefits of pregnancy and childbirth at different ages?
Until then, may you feel like you are living on “the outside!”
