My official medical advice is to avoid hot tubs. Always.

They’re germ soup. The temperature is perfect for bacteria to thrive and multiply. You can get some nasty skin infections from going in those things, it’s possible to get lung infections from pathogens aerosolized by all the bubbling, and heaven forbid you should get that water in your mouth.

Just say no. Period, the end.

So after my workout this morning, I got into the hot tub at the gym.

When you’re a doctor, you’re always weighing risks and benefits. You’re uber aware of risks. It’s such a bedrock of the years of medical education and training that it becomes ingrained, automatic, a reflex, to think of what can go wrong with any decision you make and how you could kill someone. You’re also weighing how any decision you make can help someone. It’s a balance.

Anyhoo, back to the hot tub.

I recently decided to kick my fitness routine up a few notches. I pushed it a little too hard, and a few days ago I pulled a muscle.

Nothing like doing that to make you feel old.

I rested it a couple days and got back to my workouts yesterday and today. And today’s workout finished in the pool. Right next to the hot tub.

My muscle was a little sore. And the pool was a little cold. And the jets in the hot tub were on. And I knew how good it would feel to get in that hot water and hold my sore muscle near a jet.

I thought about the likely bacterial level. And I thought about how I see gym personnel checking pH levels and adding disinfectant regularly in both the pool and hot tub.

I thought about potential skin infections. And I thought about the fact that I haven’t shaved my legs since two days ago so probably didn’t have any micro-nicks in my skin where bacteria were likely to get in.

I thought about potential lung infections. And I thought about the fact that I have a good immune system and healthy lungs.

I thought about the potential of accidentally getting any of that water in my mouth. And I thought about how easy it would be to keep my face out of the water, and that no one was splashing.

I got in. And put my sore muscle against the jet. And stayed there a good 10 minutes.

And damn, did it feel good.

And it stopped the soreness.

I got out, took a shower (I may or may not have soaped up a second time), got dressed, and went on with my day.

Glad that today I did not follow my own medical advice, and will let you know if I end up with hot tub lung.

I can’t sleep. It happens sometimes. So I’m downstairs in my parents’ house, reflecting.

Today I’m not annoyed at being awake this early, where normally I would be. Normally, when I do this early-wake-up thing (one of the joys of the hormonal changes of getting older that no one really warned me about), I look at the clock and get really pissed off. I lie there angrily, sometimes for a couple hours, until it’s time to get up. I play with my phone. You know, exactly what I tell my patients not to do.

I stayed up too late last night. I do this frequently when we’re all together. My son’s friend, who is with us for this trip, described it just as I experience it – wanting to be with people means he stays up way later than he should. I, too, am fueled by being with people. At least with people I care about. I probably wouldn’t want to stay up late hanging out with a bunch of assholes. But when it’s MY people, the draw of the social connection is stronger than the draw of my bed. It’s actually stronger than any other draw I can think of.

The four boys and I (and yeah, the “boys” range in age from 18 to 23, and they’re fully men, but from what I can tell about myself, I will always refer to them as the boys or the kids or the babies) went skiing/snowboarding yesterday. It was fantastic – conditions were perfect. It wasn’t crowded, the temperature was in the mid-to-upper-20s, the view was beautiful, the snow was great, and the feeling of flying over that snow was everything it always is. And it was physically exhausting – in that every-muscle-system-got-a-workout, got-my-heart-rate-up-for-hours, laughed-enough-that-my-abs-got-even-more-workout kind of way. So I was tired. I needed a good night’s sleep.

Around one a.m., I fell asleep in front of a movie we were watching together. That happens frequently – the family is together, we’re happy, and I feel so relaxed and content that I just fall asleep while watching a favorite. And of course the being-tired-from-staying-up-too-late probably plays a part. Movie was over around 1:20, and I went to bed and fell asleep next to Doug. A deep, contented, tired, good sleep.

And then I woke up at 6:30.

I talk to my patients all the time about sleep. I talk to my weight loss clients about it as well. I talk to my kids about it. It’s so basic, and yet so many of us don’t do it right.

We just don’t get enough. Adults really do need about 8 hours. It helps with brain functioning. We’re sharper when we sleep well. It helps maintain healthy cortisol levels. Our metabolism works better when we’ve had enough sleep. Our stress levels are better. Our blood pressure is better.

When we don’t sleep well, we don’t function at our prime. We handle stressful situations with less resilience. We put on weight. We don’t remember things as well. Our bodies and minds aren’t at their best.

And I’ve just had a 5-hour sleep.

But this morning I’m enjoying it. I am fully content. There are seven people I love sleeping peacefully under this roof. The view outside the window of the pond and trees covered in a light layer of snow is peaceful. I’ll read for a bit. Eventually others will awaken and join me, and we’ll talk politics and movies and music and sports and people. We’ll play games. We’ll eat. We’ll laugh a lot.

And I’ll stay up too late again.

So yes, it would be better for my health not to wake up early like this. But sometimes these late nights and early mornings are good for my soul.

Words matter. Words have consequences. Lies matter. Lies have consequences. People have understood this for a very long time – note the biblical prohibition against bearing false witness against one’s neighbor (that one actually made it into the Top 10 list).

What our current president stated at his recent rally in Wisconsin is false witness, defamation, slander, against doctors. It goes beyond that to incitement. His words, his lying, defamatory, slanderous words, will cause death.

Doctors do not “execute infants.” Full stop.

They do not wrap a living, breathing baby in a blanket and “determine whether or not they will execute the baby.”

This particular outright lie of Donald Trump has painted bullseyes on doctors, nurses, and patients for violent anti-abortion extremists. Doctors may be killed because of his words. Nurses may be killed because of his words. Patients may be killed because of his words. His false words. His slander. His lies.

He has harmed doctor-patient relationships with his slander. His defamatory words drive a wedge between those who have spent lifetimes dedicated to helping others in their times of greatest need and those who need their help.

He has born false witness. He is quite possibly inciting murder. He has put my colleagues’ lives in danger. He has put my patients’ lives in danger – both from direct violence by those agitated by his lies attacking people seeking care, and by alienating patients from doctors who are there to help them.

The blood will be on your hands, Mr. Trump.

Spent a big chunk of the afternoon cleaning up shit.

No, this is not a metaphor. We have a dog, and although most of the year we make it a point to clean up the yard daily, it’s been really cold and snowy and rainy and cold and snowy and muddy and cold and rainy and did I mention cold? and I just haven’t been in the mood to do it for a while. And today it’s in the 40’s and dry and actually (I think) supposed to stay warm for many days in a row, and so it was time to get out there and clean up the mess. And today is garbage pick-up day, and although the recycle truck comes early, the garbage truck comes late in the afternoon, so if I got out there and did the turd pick-up quickly enough, I could get it to the curb in time to be taken away from my house today.

So out I went.

The process involves significant risk of stepping on poop land mines, so, wisely, I wore Doug’s shoes (sorry, Dougie, but you weren’t home and your shoes were conveniently located at the back door and I love you!).

In my “reduce/reuse” effort to decrease our plastic impact on the planet, I save produce bags and newspaper delivery bags to pick up after our pooch, and I filled up quite a few.

So here come the metaphors (you knew they were coming):

Health? Life? Politics? Let’s throw in a little of all of the above.

We’ll start with the produce bags: onions, broccoli, and zucchini in, poop out. So the produce bags can be a metaphor for intestines. And we’re discussing chores we don’t necessarily want to do. Perfect segue for an update on the American Cancer Society’s colon cancer screening recommendations. They now recommend that people of average risk for colon cancer begin screening at age 45 (the old recommendation was 50). Gold standard for screening is colonoscopy (starting age 45 and then every 10 years for the average-risk folks). Those at higher-than-average risk likely need to start earlier and do it more frequently. The prep isn’t overly pleasant, but it’s way better than late-stage colon cancer. So talk to your doc about it. This public service announcement brought to you by a bunch of canine backyard bowel movements.

Moving on:

It’s fairly easy to be methodical in the collection endeavor, as our pup is quite consistent in his tendency to defecate along the periphery of our property – he’s an edge-pooper. For the most part, I knew where to look: within a foot of the fence. This is true for most of us. We learn when and where to expect crap. Yes, every once in a while, there’s a big steaming pile in the middle of the lawn where you don’t expect it, but by and large, in the day-to-day, it’s where it usually is. There’s a lot of traffic at rush hour. There are long lines at Trader Joe’s the day before the Super Bowl. You don’t get as much sleep as you’d like when you have exams or when you’re on call. Your spouse is snippy when he/she is under stress. You expect it. You plan for it. You deal with it. It might not be pleasant, but it’s not surprising.

Along the perimeter of our fence we have all sorts of perennials – day lilies, crocuses, hydrangeas, peonies, various other pretty green and/or flowery things that I don’t know the names of. And under the piles of fecal matter I found a plethora of green shoots. The icky and the good are right up next to each other. The fertilizer feeds the flowers.

Much of the excrement has been through multiple freeze-thaw-get-rained-on-and-snowed-on-and-frozen-again-and-thawed-again cycles, and although you can certainly tell that it’s shit, it’s not fresh shit – a lot of it is really dried out and actually somewhat easy to scoop up and most of it doesn’t really even have much of a smell. When life throws general crap at us is can seem pretty awful at first. The fresh stuff stinks – we should pick it up right then and get rid of it, because if you step in it, it embeds in every crevice of your shoe and you have to do the twist on the grass to get the big chunks off and then bring the shoe straight to the utility sink and scrub the rest out of the treads. But if you’ve just stayed away from the crap for a good part of the winter, it might not be so bad when you come back to deal with it later. Works for some things, not necessarily others. Breast lump? Deal with it now. But some things that seem like a big deal right now turn out not to be such a big deal through the lens of time.

Of course, we’d never leave our dog’s waste on the ground when out walking – you don’t leave that for someone else to step in or have to clean up. But we don’t always afford ourselves the same courtesies we give to others. Maybe we should.

I seem to recall I said I’d find a way to tie this to politics as well. I used a bunch of newspaper bags. Need I say more?

Truth be told, I only got around 40% or so of our property’s perimeter-o-poop (there was only so much I wanted to deal with at one time), so will head back out later today or maybe tomorrow. My shoes (well, Doug’s shoes) are clean for now.

Well, I just had a relatively shitty morning. But it could have been a lot worse.

I have a lot in my head these days – plenty that’s good (like starting a new business venture with another doctor), but quite a bit that’s not so good (relatives with health concerns, multiple friends with significant health crises in their families, a friend who just lost a sibling), and I’m a little tired. My brain is doing a lot of multitasking.

Our dog’s annual checkup/vaccine visit was scheduled for 9 o’clock this morning, and he gets very stressed out at the vet’s office (read: “wont-even-step-on-the-scale-so-I-have-to-lift-and-hold-my-60-ish-pound-dog-while-I-weigh-us-both-together-and-then-weigh-myself-and-subtract-my-weight-and-then-heaven-forbid-the-vet-should-try-to-look-in-his-ears”). So I started to think about how much I hoped he wouldn’t stress too much, took him for a walk, and seat belted him into the car for the 20-minute drive. Perfect timing, since it was 8:35 when I left the house.

Except it wasn’t perfect timing, because the freeway is under construction and they closed the exit ramp that I needed to take to get there. Not a huge deal – I’d have to take a later exit and wiggle back to get there from another direction – GPS would get me there just fine. I called the vet’s office to explain what happened and tell them we’d be a few minutes late – they said “no problem.”

Thought about friends’ family members. A few miles later, there was an open exit ramp. I took it, and started using my internal sense of magnetic north to navigate until the GPS recalculated.

Again, no problem. Cell signal was strong. Map was on the screen. The little blue circle representing my car was on the blue preferred route. I glanced down occasionally at the navigation as we made our way to the vet’s office. Thought about the condolence call we’d be making this evening. Thought about the website copy I needed to complete today. Thought about the talk I’d be giving tomorrow to the Science National Honors Society at the high school my boys graduated from. I had a lot to do.

And then the map shrunk down to a tiny little box in the bottom corner of the screen. No clue why it did that. Glanced down and tapped the little box with my thumb. Eyes back on the road. Thought about my friend’s father.Glanced back at the phone – map still tiny. Crud. Eyes back on road. Tapped at the tiny map square again. Eyes back on the road. Thought about the new business bank account I needed to open. Glanced down – map still tiny.

Of course, what I should have done was pull into a parking lot and figure out what my phone map was doing, but what I did instead was continue to repeat my same action while expecting a different result. I didn’t have time.

Eyes on the road. Glance down. Tap. Eyes on the road. Glance down. Tap. Eyes on the road – oh SHIT. The pickup truck in front of me was stopping because there was a bus stopping in front of him.

Slammed on my brakes. Hit him anyway.

We pulled immediately into the driveway/parking lot of a bank. It took all my strength to turn the wheel – the power steering was dead. I jumped out of the car as he exited his and asked immediately, “Are you OK?” “Yes, are you?” “Yes. I’m so sorry.”

The front of my 14-year-old minivan was hemorrhaging red liquid onto the ground. I started to smell something burning and realized I hadn’t turned off the engine, so I immediately turned it off. Our dog was sitting calmly in his seat.

Called the police. Stared at my bleeding car. Looked at the hole that was punched in my front bumper by the trailer hitch (now slightly bent) on the back of the other guy’s pickup truck.

And now there were no other thoughts intruding on the issue at hand. Nice timing, brain.

Police officer showed up, took our info, and was just generally really nice, as was the guy whose truck I hit. Called my husband, told him what happened, and asked him to call the vet’s office for me.

Called our car guy (when your family’s “fleet” consists of vehicles that range in age from 6 to 22, you have a car guy), who told me where to have it towed. Called AAA, who told me a tow truck would be there within an hour.

The police officer stayed until I knew the tow truck was on its way. He offered to drive us up to the vet’s office (about a mile away), but I needed to stay with the car until the tow truck arrived. The officer gave me his card and told me to call if I needed any help with anything.

A woman pulled into the bank parking lot to use the ATM. She saw me and asked if I was OK. I said yes and thanked her.

I called the vet again, and they said they’d fit our dog in whenever we got there.

After just a couple minutes, someone from the towing company called and said he had a truck nearby that would arrive within five minutes. It arrived within three. The driver was also extremely nice – offered to drop us at the vet’s office, but my dog did not want anything to do with going up the steps into the truck (and I was NOT about to attempt to carry him, struggling, up them – picture, if you will, a 60-pound bucking bronco with nails that need to be trimmed). So I paid the tow truck driver for the miles-beyond-which-AAA-covers and started the walk to the vet’s office.

I may not have mentioned that it was about 25 degrees. My hands were frozen. I stopped at a store along the way, where the employee kindly allowed me to bring the pup inside for a moment to warm up.

I may also not have mentioned that one of our other cars (the 1997 model) is in the shop, so My husband didn’t have a car at work. One of his colleagues lent him his car so he could meet me at the vet’s office and bring me home. His colleagues also changed the location of their afternoon meeting to be near where we live so that Doug could get there easily.

I still had to pick my dog up and weigh the two of us together and then subtract me, but he is fully vaccinated and healthy.

The collision shop has managed to find used parts for the bumper replacement. The red liquid was not coolant – I had just squashed and punctured the power steering fluid line. I should have a functional car back by Monday.

It could have been a lot worse. I could have caused an injury. The repairs could have ended up costing a lot more. Any of the people mentioned in this story could have been unkind.

So it allows for perspective. Because of my line of work, and because I and people around me are all getting older, I am frequently exposed to people’s sadness, worry, pain, and frustration. It can really get stuck in my head, because my drive is to fix it. And when it can’t be “fixed,” I still want to make it better. So sometimes I think about it more than is helpful. Sometimes, like last night, I lose sleep. Sometimes I think about it when I should be getting other things done, so I end up thinking about getting those things done when I should be thinking about the smart thing to do when my GPS screen shrinks.

Perspective. Priorities. I can’t let thinking about the big things get in the way of thinking about the little things, because a little thing, like driving to the vet, has the potential to become a big thing. Perspective. Priorities. Even when you can’t change what’s happened, you can change the experience of those it’s happening to by being kind. I called the towing company to tell them how helpful their towing guy was. I called the police chief to tell him how helpful and kind his officer had been. Perspective. Priorities. Allowing the stress of being late and of having things to do cloud my judgement so much that I thought it was reasonable to try to fix a GPS issue while driving caused worse issues than just being a little behind schedule and could have caused much worse still.

I’ll consider this a wake up call. And I hope that, if you need it, my morning can serve as a wake up call to you as well, so that you don’t need your own.