Seedians,
I am a resident in the department of pediatric oncology at a local teaching hospital in the north-central FL region (USDA zone 9a), with a passion for growing plants with medical, edible,
enlightening, aesthetically-pleasing, or otherwise awesome properties.
My recently-revived love of gardening, conducting plant research, foraging, spending entire days lost in the wilderness of local nature preserves, etc. pales only with respect to my love of treating children afflicted with (oftentimes terminal) cancers, tirelessly working 80 hour weeks on the ward, doing all and everything I can to serve these poor cancerous patients. If it were not for me finding love in growing, researching, and caring for plants, my listless corpse would have been found dangling from the rafters of my medical school's lecture hall years ago.
Over the past couple months, things had gone from rough to me drafting a novella of elaborate suicide methods, complete with a series of algorithms for deciding which one would be the right one for me under varying circumstances during my lunch breaks. The six figures' worth of debt I have accrued throughout my time in medical school, sleeping every second or third afternoon for the past year, a stack of overdue bills the size of my copy of Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason and growing to the size of my copy of Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged (Who Is John Galt, anyways?), topped-off by the grief of regularly finding dozens of plants--most of whom I had germinated from seed and/or cutting myself--dead on a regular basis upon returning home from yet another 2 or 3 day long shift which I had forgotten to tend to the last time I returned home from my prior 2 or 3 day long shifts.
For the past two months, had neither remembered, nor had enough energy to look at, let alone water, the most-likely dead plants in my backyard (I just couldn't afford to care about anything, or anyone who wasn't a patient, anymore...), let alone even peer-through the door to see if they were still even remotely alive.
The last time I had looked out my back porch, the drooping leaves on my Psychotrias seemed a spitting image of how I felt on the inside after returning home from my most recent 2 day long shift on the ward, which ended with me adding a note to the chart of yet another 14 year old patient with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer who had, alongside her parents, refused chemotherapy in favor of palliative care, of my order for her to be put under terminal sedation with morphine STAT (I had asked that we use some propofol to help her go to sleep faster, but she said her last wish was to meet Morpheus, not Micheal Jackson...), such that it may reassure her and her family that we had done all we could to make her living and dying as humane as possible. I couldn't water or care about them, anymore. I was as tired of living as she was.
I nearly fainted when, on the off-chance that I peered through my backdoor window, I was shocked to see that my plants were not only still alive, but thriving, up-potted, with dew-drenched leaves smiling at me, happy, and well taken care of.
Then came along Mangrove.
We collided into one-another on the sidewalk. My face was glued to an email I was typing to my attending physician stating I may be a bit late this morning as I mowed him down, his skull smashing the ground head-first, concussed and rife with laughter, the scene yet another case of what he called "distracted walking".
I insisted he go to the hospital, but he was adamant on me taking care of him, myself, and talk it out over a cup of tea at his place. Despite telling him that I was an MD, that this could kill him (he said he'd heard that crock of bullshit from his Neurologist mother many times before, and that he'd rather be dead than a vegetable), and that I could be sued if he died from complications from the suspected concussion. He told me that I should have thought about that first before mowing him down whilst sending an email whilst walking, and that losing my license would be teach me a splendid lesson about why I should not text whilst in motion; I would have socked him right in his collar bone, but then I realized that would just make things worse. He said he'd rather die teaching me a lesson than be billed several thousand dollars for yet another hospitalization. What's a doctor supposed to do?
I made a quick call to work, told them that I had the flu, and was taking a sick day off.
He made me a splendid blend of ma Huang, gunpowder green tea, and rooibos as we got to talking about plants and our lives and stories and the like (there's no pleasure greater than sharing cool case reports with other medical nerds). The next few hours were spent in constant conversation about our lives, pasts, jobs, responsibilities and the like, until finally we got to talking about plants.
He confessed to have been taking care of my plants over the past couple months, and said that he admired my collection. Plant geeks are an endangered species in this town, so I decided to make a friend of him.
He mentioned a community called Sharetheseeds.me (commonly called STS by members), and that it was a great way to connect with fellow members of our collective hobby of growing, sharing, playing with, and otherwise discussing/researching all aspects of plants, with the exception of cannabis, because that one was, to quote Mangrove:
A Bad Plant.As thus, I have finally taken another sick day off to join this community and see if Mangrove's raving rants about how cool this place was really were true, and, God Smack me silly, it's exactly as advertised!
I am very interested in expanding my succulent collection (especially so with respect to finding cultivars of succulents which are rot resistant...), alongside cultivating just about all any/all other cool and exotic plants of every kind and cultivar in creation. I am enthused to expand my mind's knowledge of the plant community, and feel blessed to have run into Mangrove, who is, without a doubt, the nicest neighbor I could have ever wished to have.
I chose my username out of the respect I have for P. Somniferum, and it's amazing alkaloid, morphine: an oncologist's patient's' best friend.
P.S.
To answer the obvious: NO. I will not give medical advice over this forum nor through PM as it relates to Human Beings, regardless as to how dire it is. To do so would be tantamount to me putting my medical license--which I have spent four-five years devoting every ounce of my mental energy to earning--in jeopardy. I would be more than happy to discuss anything not related to human/animal medical advice (PLEASE don't try to mask human/animal health advice requests as plant health advice requests). If I can learn how to discern if a hypochondriac just wants to get high off another shot of hydromorphone, or if they are in legitimate pain and need help, I would likely know if you are putting my medical license in jeopardy, or not.) The Hippocratic Oath has its limits. Medicine is an industry, and doctors need to eat, too.
Blessings,
--Papaver
Author
Topic: On the hunt for fellow plant freaks (Read 7354 times)