Will the Real Susan Duncan Please Stand Up?

There are two Susan Duncans in my life.

On the left, Susan Duncan of Hammond, Indiana, Ph.D., research scientist at the University of Chicago. On the right, Susan Duncan of Portland, Oregon, working on Ph.D., educator of science to gifted children in the Beaverton School District. Each living parallel lives in different places. Each with their own stories to tell. But each looking remarkably similar to one another.

Yes, I am rich in Susan Duncans!

Elopement Risk

I park in the Emma Jones lot behind the North Hospital where I work. Every morning I walk up stairs out of the lot, through a back door of the North Hospital, past the inpatient psychiatric unit until I wind my way up the stairs to the second floor to my office.

Around Valentine's Day I noticed the pink sign on the door to the inpatient unit. It took awhile before I read the sign. It reads: Caution: Elopement Risk.

All kinds of fantasies stirred up in me with this sign. I started having thoughts that if I stood there long enough, somebody would burst out of the secure ward and grab me running as we headed for the heliport and were whisked off to Vegas.

Or there would be overwrought parents standing by the door whilst their daughter's beloved paced nervously outside, heartsick over her entrapment.

I was so disappointed when I finally asked my boss what this meant, exactly. "You idiot," he assured me, "it means that someone will want to escape, so be careful going in and out."

I looked up the verb "elope" in the Oxford English Dictionary. It confirms my suspicion. The first meaning is: "Of a wife: To run away from her husband with a paramour." Then it says "More frequently said of a woman running away from home with a lover for the purpose of being married." Only the third meaning is "to run away, abscond."

Whatever, I find the whole thing very quaint.

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.