Latest Reflections
Everybody Has a Worry Bottle
The first year I worked at the University of Minnesota, I didn’t know what program I wanted to enroll in, but I did want to take advantage of free classes. I took drawing, and ceramics, and graphic...
In the Shadow of His Mother
Let’s go back to the clinic, back to the Accutane study, back to that sixteen-year-old standing in his mother’s shadow. Let’s call him Keith. (I do not remember his real name.) At Keith's first...
“The Worst I’ve Ever Seen”
To tell this story, I’m making up some names, using ‘Brenda’ for my boss’s pretend name, and ‘Doug Russo’ for the pretend name of a patient. It was a Tuesday morning, and while the Transplant Clinic...
Tran1 or Tran2?
The interesting thing about working at a university in a staff role is that those roles, especially the ones lower on the totem pole, tend to be populated with people who are working the job as a...
A Better Future
I did things at Hennepin County Medical Center that most hygienists never do: I cleaned someone’s teeth in the O.R. I asked a teenage sex worker about her practices, to inform my opinion of the...
Mothering
After the dentist fired me from ‘the good dental practice,’ I quit the pedo mill. It was ruining me as a hygienist. My next two part-time jobs were in a Minneapolis community clinic that catered to...
Got enough love?
When my husband died and other changes followed, The Love Bucket helped me figure out how to bring more love into my life. If you’d like an objective method to increase the level of love in your life, this guide is for you!
