The Rounding@Iowa podcast has many fascinating and helpful episodes, not the least of which is this one on heat-related illness. The days are getting hotter and we need to pay close attention to what happens in our bodies when exposed to excessive heat.
Category: Iowa
Cicada-Geddon in Eastern Iowa
A couple of days ago I saw one of the many news items about the 17 year (and 13 year) cicadas invading Eastern Iowa this summer.
But I haven’t seen any mention of the sex-crazed, fungus-infected zombie cicadas announced in April.
So, you can relax. Try noise-cancelling headphones.
Releasing Your Inner Nerd
Getting the new laptop reminds me of my pocket protector nerd days. That’s because the modern laptop is a sharp contrast to the big heavy desktops. I worked for consulting engineers back in the stone age and I wore a pocket protector. Some people might not know what that is. It’s a little plastic pen holder that fits in your shirt pocket. It protects your shirt from ink spots, but makes you look like a nerd. I would also keep notes on a little pocket flip cover paper notebook.
It was mandatory that you carry six or seven pens and mechanical pencils in the pocket holder, which typically would be emblazoned with some kind of engineering advertising label: Nerdy Engineers Are Us or The Silos of Tomorrow.
When I graduated to a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) complete with stylus, I thought that was a major upgrade. It was a mobile handheld device on which I took notes using a stylus. It was a little on the big side for my shirt pocket, so it displaced the paper notebook and the pocket protector.
You can see the PDA in action by watching the Men in Black II movie in which a couple of junior level men in black are using them to take notes. This is the scene at Ben’s Pizza Parlor in which Frank the talking pug says the deflated body of Ben has “zero percent body fat” and the two men in black laugh at the joke.
Also on the nerdy side, I used to wear bow ties. They were kind of fun to tie. I had many. One of them was plaid, which I realize raises the nerd level up a notch. My nerd fashion attire also included (you might want to sit down for this)—clip on suspenders. I later graduated to the suspenders you button on the inside of your pants beltline.
I think you can still release your inner nerd by getting a pocket protector. And remember, you didn’t hear it from me.
In Memory of L. Jay Stein
I was thinking of one of the Johnson County judicial mental health referees I often worked with years ago. L. Jay Stein died in 2014. I looked up his obituary the other day and was a little surprised to find I had written a remembrance for him. I’d forgotten it.
“I will always remember my first encounters with Judge Stein. I was a first-year resident in psychiatry at The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. He often presided at mental health commitment hearings at which I was often the nervous trainee providing “expert testimony” as the treating physician. Jay taught me and countless other psychiatry residents about the importance of procedure. His knowledge was prodigious. But it was his compassion, his fairness, and his inimitable sense of humor I will always treasure.”
Judge Stein’s vocabulary was impressive. Even his recorded telephone automatic replies sounded amusingly erudite. Occasionally, when I had a question about legal procedures in mental health I would call him but get his answering machine. These out of office replies were entertaining and sounded very much like the way he did during commitment hearings. I can’t remember all of it, but it began with something like, “Once again, your request has been denied…” It made me think of what I might hear at a parole hearing—not mine of course.
L. Jay Stein was wise and funny.
Thoughts on Down Time Activities for Land Survey Technicians
I was just thinking about the old-time land survey crews. When I was getting on the job training as a survey technician, the typical land survey crews were at least 2-3 persons. One rodman, one instrument man, and a crew chief who organized the job, which could be property or construction jobs.
Nowadays, you get by sometimes with one man doing the jobs using a theodolite that measures angles and distances. You don’t always need a physical measuring tape; you can use something they call “total stations.”
It’s cheaper for engineering companies to use one man survey outfits. On the other hand, one disadvantage is the lack of mentoring for learners who want to become land surveyors or civil engineers.
Mentoring from surveyors on the survey back in the day not only taught me such skills as how to throw and wrap a surveyor’s steel tape—it also taught me how to work well with others as a team. Of course, this was transferrable to working on the psychiatry consultation-liaison service in a big hospital as well.
It’s well known that playing cards in the truck while waiting for the rain to stop was an essential skill. I don’t know how they manage downtime nowadays. We didn’t play cards on the consultation service during downtime, partly because we didn’t have much downtime.
Anyway, as I mentioned in a recent post, we played Hearts in the truck on rain days. I always sat in the middle. At the time, I was a terrible card player in general. It was a cutthroat game and I had trouble remembering which cards had been played.
When you consider that the strong suit of engineers and surveyors is math ability, you’d think that survey crews would have figured out a way to play Cribbage during downtime. You can have a Cribbage game with 3 or 4 people although I’ve never played it that way. If there are 3 players, it can still be cutthroat.
The one problem I can see is that, the guy sitting in the middle would have to set the board on his lap. You’d almost need a special, custom-made board which would have a space for placing the cards to keep track of what’s been played. I think that might have made things easier for me.
The other drawback to one man survey crews is that pretty much the only card game you can play is solitaire.
Big Mo Pod Show: “In Search of Good Company”
When I listen to the Big Mo Pod Show, I tend to almost free associate to memories which the songs sometimes evoke. The 5 songs this week came from, as usual, his Big Mo Blues Show this past Friday night. The theme of the pod show was “In Search of Good Company.”
I’m not so sure about good company thoughts, but the comments about Muddy Waters song “Long Distance Call” reminded me of something way back in my past. Big Mo talked about making long distance calls a long time ago, which he connected with pay phone booths.
I don’t think I’ve seen an actual pay phone booth in decades, since the invention of cell phones and that kind of technology. But the conversation about phone booths reminds me of my youth.
I used to live at the YMCA and the rooms didn’t have phones. No cells phones were available back then because it was well before the 1980s. The only way you could place a phone call was to use the one phone booth in the building, which was on the second-floor landing. The rooms were on the third floor, and they were for men only, of course.
Also on the third floor was an old snack vending machine and I’m pretty sure I’ve told this story before as I recollected while writing this post.
I got a Butterfinger candy bar from that vending machine one time. I took a bite out of and saw half a worm wiggling around in it. You don’t want see a worm at all, but half a worm has a whole different meaning.
I was worried and used the pay phone to call the local emergency room. I think I paid less than a quarter to place the call.
I guess I would have been relieved to hear the ER doc tell me that I would be OK—if he hadn’t been laughing so hard. Good thing it wasn’t a long distance call.
Reminiscence of My Younger Days
The other day we had some stormy weather roll across central Iowa, although it was not as bad as the tornado that swept through Greenfield. We hope the best for them. We didn’t actually get a tornado, but I remember wondering why the siren went off about 6:00 a.m. It woke me up and I wondered what was the matter. Turns out it was a tornado warning and we had to sit in the basement for a little while. It was a little scary, but the storm moved east pretty quickly northeast out of our area.
For whatever reason, this eventually led to my reminiscing about my younger days. Maybe it was because of a temporary scare and increased awareness of our mortality.
I used to work for a consulting engineers company called WHKS & Co. in Mason City, Iowa. This was back in the days of the dinosaurs when it was challenging to set stakes for rerouting highways around grazing diplodocus herds.
I was young and stupid (compared to being old and stupid now by way of comparison). I lived at the YMCA and took the city bus to the Willowbrook Plaza where the WHKS & Co. office was located on the west side of town.
I usually got there too early and stopped for breakfast at the Country Kitchen. The waitress would make many trips to my table to top off my coffee while I sat there waiting for the office to open. That was fine because I had a strong bladder in those days. I left tips (“Don’t cross the street when the light is red”).
My duties at WHKS & Co. included being rear chain man and rod man, at least when I first started. A “chain” was the word still being used for a steel tape for measuring distances. It was well past the days when land surveyors used actual chains for that purpose. You had to use a plumb bob with the chain to make sure you were straight above the point (usually marked by a nail or an iron property corner pin) you measuring to and from.
You and the lead chain man had to pull hard on each end of the chain to make sure it was straight. It was challenging, especially on hot days when my hands were sweaty and the chain was dirty. Callouses helped.
The rod was for measuring vertical distances and an instrument called a level was used with that. One guy held up the rod which was marked with numbers and the guy using the level read the elevation. Another way to measure both horizontal and vertical angles used a rod and a different instrument that we called a theodolite (older instrument name was “transit”).
We worked in all kinds of weather, although not during thunderstorms. In fact, when it was looking like rain out in the field, a standard joke for us sitting in the truck waiting for rain was to draw a circle on the windshield (imaginary, you just used your finger although if your finger was dirty which it always was, you left a mark) and if a certain number of drops fell in the circle, you could sit in the truck and play cards.
When we played cards, it was always the game Hearts, which I could not play skillfully at all. I always lost. But it kept us out of the rain. If a big thunderstorm blew in, we just headed back home.
We never got caught in a tornado.
Rounding At Iowa: Smoking and Vaping
I just want to give a shout out to University of Iowa Health Care and the Rounding@Iowa podcast for an outstanding presentation on the hazards of smoking tobacco, vaping, and dabbing.
The program originally aired on May 14, 2024 and the guests included two ICU doctors who are pulmonologists I’ve worked with as a psychiatric consultant. They are very dedicated.
There was a third guest and he is a patient who vaped and suffered disastrous consequences leading to lung transplant surgery. His insights are invaluable.
Breathing is good; not breathing is bad.
Thoughts on the Big Mo Pod Show: Theme “Music Changes Context”
I heard the Big Mo Pod Show, which relates to the quiz about 5 songs he played on the Big Mo Blues Show last Friday night. He got all the artists right, just missed 3 song titles!
I had a couple of thoughts about the song lineup related to the theme “Music Changes Context.” Actually, the point was that one of the songs had what might have made some people mad. It was “Funky B***h.” The idea was that some words might be offensive if you say them, but when words are sung, that might make them not offensive, in a way. It’s a matter of opinion.
How that happens is not clear. Big Mo’s example of it was in a historical context related to slavery. Slaves could not say certain words while they were working in the fields. But the overseer would let them get away with if they used the words in a song.
I heard one song that was not part of the Big Mo Pod show that might put a different spin on the idea of how music changes context. It’s about brotherly love, in a manner of speaking—or in a manner of singing, I should say.
Another Look at the C-L Psychiatry Pecha Kucha
Back in 2018, one of my emergency room staff physicians asked me to do a Pecha Kucha on what a consultation-liaison psychiatrist does. If you know what a pecha kucha is, you can understand why it was challenging for me to put it together and present it.
Although you may have seen the video I made of the pecha kucha 5 years ago on this blog, I think it’s OK to present it here again.
Briefly, PechaKucha is Japanese for “chitchat.” It’s a presentation format using 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. It took a while to rehearse to get it right.
I think it’s also worth emphasizing because most of the ideas in it are still relevant to consultation-liaison psychiatry. See what you think.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 