My beloved mother is a doctor. A pediatrician to be exact. She’s pretty kickbutt at her job too- she’s an officer in the AAP section on Bioethics and used to be an editor of Grand Rounds. She’s brilliant. And hilarious. And gorgeous. I’ve been told I take after her a bit. So anyways, all the photos on here are of my madre. (and heck, my entire family is cute, so they’re in a lot of these as well. : D )

Mom and I at the Texas State Fair a few years ago.
Feel free to laugh at my Ronald McDonald hair color-
that was one unfortunate case in my hair adventures.

Anyways, my entire childhood was colored by her medical career. Not in a bad way, but in a sort of- huh, this is a little different- way.

Mi Madre y mi hermana Karen at one of her baby
showers- I don’t know who took this picture actually.

There were some definite pluses. I was hardly ever the kid growing up who if I felt sick, had to go to the doctor’s office. I just went to Mom. She’d check my ears or throat or something and get me something out of her stockpile of medical samples. She’ll highly object to any sort of implication that she was my primary physician though- each of us kiddos had a separate doctor away from her. It just worked out pretty well having her mad medical skillz around the house- particularly for me. I was a pretty darn sick kiddo who had a habit of picking up nearly anything that was ever running around the neighborhood or school. I still have a bit of that- evidenced by the nearly three weeks straight I was sick in London (sinusitis is really gross). I’m sure my Mom’s abilities managed to save us quite a bit of money on doctor visits.

Mom with my brother Benjamin, his wife Valerie, and my Daddy
at Valerie and Benjamin’s baby shower.

We also would get into these great conversations over dinner when we were younger- Mom would tell these stories about her patients (completely anonymously of course) that we’d refer to as “Stupid Patient Stories,” or in some cases, “Stupid Kid Stories.” Some of them, such as “Fireworks Boy” and “Nintendo Thumb” have gone down in our family history as legend. Part of me still thinks they would make a fantastic medical short story book.

Mom and Daddy at a family friend’s wedding.

As I’ve grown up, Mom’s doctoring has led to some truly fascinating conversations on different diseases and bioethics cases. I’m currently looking at doing an intense article on Electronic Medical Records due to her own experiences with a new system at the hospital she works at. Her opinion has been invaluable on some of the articles I’ve written- and in turn, over the years, I’ve edited some of her medical articles. It’s a very happy arrangement.

Mom and Maggie. I just adore that look of wonder on her face.

I started thinking about all these things today as I noticed yet another Medical Journal on our kitchen table. This one was pretty tame- just a list of article titles on the cover- but I still enjoyed picking it up and trying to read the names. It included such scintillating articles such as, “Duration of Androgen Suprression in the Treatment of Prostate Cancer,” and “Primary Biliary Cirrhosis Associated with HLA, IL12A, and IL12RB2 Variants.”

So this one isn’t too bad. And honestly, most of the medical journal covers out there are sort of this same thing- classic text on a plain background. But I’m pretty sure my mind was scarred at least a few times as a child by the horrid covers on one of these medical journals…Cutis. A journal on “cutaneous medicine for the practitioner.” Aka- lots of horrid skin things.

I’m not going to put up a bunch of really gross pictures here- but I think I’ll post one of the covers from past years that scare me particularly…

Now is the time to put down any food you may be eating, drinks you may be sipping, and make sure your gag reflex is under control. This picture is not a close up or even that great of quality (yeah, I’m being lazy and sticking with my iMac camera right now), but it is still tremendously disgusting. (If you want better quality, click on it and it’ll do a better close-up).

Vol. 68 No. 3 of Cutis, published in September 2001. This picture is apparently of “Palmoplantar pustolosis exhibiting acral pustule formation on the palm and fingers with destruction of the nail plates.”

(Cutis, please don’t sue me. If you really have a problem with me having this photo up, let me know and I’ll take it down immediately.)

So yes. Having a mother for a doctor is truly an adventure.