bonjour brightside

today i visited a patient in his home as part of a community palliative care visit. he was battling a terminal illness and was in a lot of pain. but he managed to smile at me and even offered me lemons from his lemon tree. he blew me away with his generosity, even in his difficult circumstances- so i accepted. we took a walk in his garden, towards his blooming lemon tree and he said i could pluck as many as i wanted. his wife gave me a plastic bag to put the lemons and so i gingerly tried to pluck 2 or 3 lemons but he stepped in to give me a hand. so we plucked lemons together and he made me take 11 lemons home. later he showed me his prized orchids, his empty aviary (he had to give his birds away), everything in his garden that was meaningful to him. he smiled at all these beautiful things and i genuinely believed that for that moment, he was happy and not in pain.

i saw 5 psych patients today. all of them had some form of schizophrenia, mostly the paranoid kind. all were nice and lovely. one taught me all i needed to know about clozapine. another left me with an original quotable quote: “people who write poetry only do so because they can’t write books.”

oh and i snowboarded over the weekend! it was lovely. the snow at falls creek was so white and pristine that i ate some. and snowboarding was EXTREMELY exhilarating and fun. we did the intermediate slopes and one of them was so steep i felt queasy just looking down. i spent the first day falling on my bum 378451 times while trying to master the sport. now my tail bone feels like it has been shattered into a million pieces and my knees are soooo sore i can’t squat. and ski-lift landings are my absolute nightmare! still. you know what they say- no pain, no gain. worth my every ache! now i can strike off ‘do some extreme sport(s)’ under my things-to-do-because-i-want-to list.