Organizing, Day Two

My birthday present was, Lisa Gooding! Again! I just love working with Lisa - nothing is too big a task for her, and she is a can-do type of person. For my birthday, David gifted her services to me again to reshape my cluttered bedroom. My bedroom, you can see, was a mess; stuff on the floor, the bed rumpled, dirty clothes here and there. My closet crammed full of stuff that I didn't even know was in there.

Now, it is a dream come true. My closet is cleared out; only organized items sit on the floor, I can get to all of my clothes, and my bed has a headboard, rails and baseboard, so it looks nicer.

I bought another bookshelf for the office/piano room, so I moved the smaller bookshelf into my bedroom. It's starting to look pretty nice around here!

The 5th Annual Bull Session

Last Saturday was the 5th Annual Bull Session at Rock'n D Ranch. The day started out cloudy and cool, but by late afternoon the sky turned blue and it was a bit warmer and perfect for selling bulls!

Everyone had a good time, even my Mom!

David was the official photographer, so I've got some pictures to show you of, well, bulls!

Frankly, once I've seen one, I've seen them all. To see more pictures of bulls, go to Pam's website.

I'm Organized!

Well, almost! Thanks to my Christmas present from David, my home has been beautified. Above is the "before" picture (kind of dark) of the room I worked on Saturday. Below are the "after" pictures of the same room.

We're not done! I have big plans for Lisa, so don't try to poach her, anybody!

Lobotomists

I was watching PBS the other night when they brought on the documentary "The Lobotomist." This documentary is about Dr. Freeman, the inventor of the lobotomy, and it documents this awful procedure. It was developed in response to bad publicity of overcrowded psychiatric institutions.

From the program:

On May 6, 1946, Life magazine published "Bedlam 1946," an exposé of two
state hospitals: Pennsylvania's Byberry and Ohio's Cleveland State. To a country
shaken by recent revelations of Nazi
atrocities, the pictures were deeply affecting. The crisis in state mental
hospitals motivated Dr. Walter Freeman to devise a simple version of the
lobotomy procedure, one that could be used on a mass scale.

"All of a sudden America sees these photos that look like concentration
camp photos. You see people huddled naked along walls, strapped to benches --
and it really is this descent into this shameful moment. And the country did
say, we have to do something about this." - Robert Whitaker, writer

So Dr. Freeman did something about it. He made patients quiet and easy to control by scrambling their frontal lobes, inserting ice picks through their orbital cavities. I'll spare you the pictures (see the PBS website for the graphic details).

I must emphasize that this documentary puts the procedure into perspective. They were desperate times and there weren't many options for many of these patients. However, now that we've developed many more procedures and medications, it is not a good idea, nor necessary. I've asked all my docs to make a pledge with me: they will not stick ice picks into people's frontal lobes. Nearly all of them laugh at me when I ask them that, which I take as a good sign. One older doc actually said to me quite gruffly "Oh, we haven't done that procedure in a couple of years, at least."

The New Wendy

When I left the Center for Evidence-based Policy, I created a full-scale book describing how I performed all my duties there. I created chapters, pictures, instructions, etc. I thought it was the best way to leave that job to the person who would eventually land the ship.

When I took my new job, I looked around for the instruction manual. I looked high and low, and there is no manual. Every day is a new experience in bewilderment, as I call around to differing departments looking for the person who's the expert on, say, professional services contracts, getting research dollars out of suspense, or, my favorite, what to do when employees are stealing cash from your clinic.

Everywhere I go around the OHSU campus I am introduced as "the New Wendy." On Day One that was cute. It is now Day Eleven. Its rapidly becoming annoying. Today, at an executive committee meeting some pulmonologist actually said to me, "Oh, you've got big shoes to fill as the New Wendy." Those who refuse to know my real name are getting a return smile that is a bit snarly. The New Wendy has a few questions for the old Wendy; like where the Hell is the operation manual on how to run the department? Also, The New Wendy wants to know the combination to all the safes so that the New Wendy can keep the cash drawers locked up.

The only up side to all this is that there is a proposed revision to the Fiscal Integrity Policy that makes Department Administrators responsible for all cash lost out of the clinics. As long as they think my name is "New Wendy" they won't be able to charge my account.

Psychiatric Hospitals

For the most part, psychiatric hospitals, institutions that house people for their lifetimes, are things of the past. In Oregon most hospitals are shutting down their inpatient wards. At OHSU we only have 10 inpatient beds for psychiatric patients. This in a hospital of 550+ beds.

One reason: they lose money. Another reason: there's no need for them. It's better for people to stay in the community, even the chronically mentally ill.

Across the country this is true; in upstate New York one mental institution was closed completely in 1995. When they went to clean out the building they found a stack of suitcases in the attic of the main building. These suitcases were the possessions of the inmates, brought with them when they checked into the hospital. A few curious people decided to sort through these things with great care and ended up writing a book about what they found. It is a bittersweet story. There's a display at the New York Public Library, chronicling the lives of some of the inmates. Many of them appear to be immigrants who had some horrible temporary circumstance in their lives, which led to incarceration. Over half of those committed to these institutions spent their entire lives there, and ultimately died there.

Oregon still has two state mental hospitals up and running. One is in Pendleton. The other in Salem. The hospital in Salem is in deplorable physical condition, and is being replaced by a new hospital. Where? Junction City. Stay tuned....I will know more about this when I start my job....

I have a new job!

This just in: I've been offered (and I have accepted) the job as the Administrator of OHSU's Psychiatric Department! I've been looking around for a new job, as my current gig with OHSU's Center for Evidence-based Policy is coming to an end. I had two serious contenders who interviewed me for days, literally.

I meet with my new boss next Wednesday where we will hammer out the details of the new position. Until then, stay tuned.....

Update: See the announcement on OHSU's website.