May Memories, Part I

I have taken so many more pictures than I have shared to Facebook over the last month, so I thought I would put some of them together here in a post written after eating a delicious spring-like lunch (salad and Triskets with brie; the secret is Green Goddess dressing). It feels so good to sit at the dining room table--while Dear Husband eats lunch and watches soccer in the next room--with my wet braid hanging between my shoulder braids, refreshed from a shower after three hours of trimming bushes and pulling weeds and raking up the long grass left by the mower, fueled only by NPR radio on my phone, since I skipped breakfast. That's okay: more room for a piece of the heaping strawberry pie DH baked this morning. It's my turn to have the kitchen for the afternoon: I will watch Persuasion on Netflix Legally Blonde on YouTube while I make banana bread with the over-ripe bunch I brought home from the office.

The first weekend I attended two films at the Jewish Film Festival on the Carnegie Mellon Campus. Validity is a Pittsburgh-produced film starring my colleague's sister as a scientist struggling with whether to use unethically sourced data about hypothermia collected on concentration camp prisoners. It's based on an actual person and controversy, and I don't know why the film's promotional material didn't name Robert Pozos's work at the University of Minnesota (perhaps he asked them not to?).

Meanwhile, Dear Husband was playing and conducting a choral service at church with the Schubert Mass in C (WordSung).

That afternoon I hung out at the main Carnegie Library before watching Disposable Humanity, a documentary about the Aktion T4, when healthcare providers helped the Nazi government sterilize and kill disabled Germans. Theirs are the only Holocaust victim names that by law have to be redacted, as if it is still so shameful to have been diagnosed with a disabling condition that it would be embarrassing for yourself or your family to have it known.

The second weekend I drove to National Harbor, MD, for the Society for General Internal Medicine conference. I didn't actually stay at the expensive hotel, having snagged a bedroom in an AirBnB across the street and through the fence. It was awkward if I had to run back in the middle of the day for some reason, but parking was free, and I could afford it without a roommate.

I attended a variety of panels--on reproductive health for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, treating osteoporosis, culturally competent nutrition, and fibromyalgia--and helped present a workshop on taking care of adults with Down Syndrome.

I brought a bunch of "I <3 medical history" ribbons to leave at check in and was gratified to find someone wearing one. (Even though you can't see either of ours in the picture!)

I had resolved not to play trivia again after winning two years in a row and then joined an unlikely table at the back of exhibitors from Team Health. Team Stealth ended up coming in 2nd place! 

After the conference I attended the wedding of my residency cohortmate. The next morning, I met a colleague for breakfast in Old Town Alexandria to discuss our respective books and then enjoy the art studios at The Torpedo Factory. After Mother's Day lunch with My Awesome Parents, it was an easy drive back to Pittsburgh listening to Anthony Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See. (It was okay.)

I'll leave you with a panoramic view of Pittsburgh from the back deck of one of the residents, who lives on the South Side and hosted journal club. There was a break in the rain just long enough for us to go out and marvel at the city spread out before us.

Click here for Part II.

Saturday and Sunday in Oslo: European Conference on Social Medicine

 

The whole reason I was in Norway was for the first-ever European Conference on Social Medicine, hosted by the University of Oslo. Under the banner of "Practice. Theory. Action." the organizers planned two and a half days of activities, beginning with a community-immersion activity Friday afternoon: either a city tour with a drug user/activist or a tour of a clinic for undocumented migrants. I chose the latter and ran into a number of friends and colleagues who were also in town for the conference.

"No one is illegal"

After the tours was dinner at Vippa, a food hall featuring immigrant cuisines.

Then we walked across downtown to a leftist cafe for arts and crafts. (I stopped to buy an ice cream cone on the way.) While other people painted a banner, composed a conference song, or did improv, I sewed a patch ("Do no harm").

Saturday was a full day of keynote speaks, posters, and sessions.

Plenary keynote by Helena Hansen, MD, PhD, Professor and Interim Chair of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine

"Liberation medicine: A literature course in medical school" at the University of Halle

"Together against Tuberculosis," a program at Justus-Liebig medical school that paired medical students with patients with tuberculosis, to help the patients navigate treatment and the students overcome prejudice against immigrant or poor individuals.

"Diversity-Sensitive Medicine (DiverMed)--Developing a Longitudinal Curriculum to Teach Structural Competence" at the medical school in Brandenburg.

Plenary keynote by Ghassan Abu-Sittah, MD, Associate Professor, American University of Beirut Medical Centre, a surgeon who spoke about justice for Palestine.

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the workshop I led with friend JB,

"The Practice and Praxis of Structural Ableism in Healthcare."

Group brainstorm: "What is social medicine?" I confess I was not as prepared as I wanted to be for this part: I had ordered Medicine on a Larger Scale: Global Histories of Social Medicine from my favorite bookstore, but they messed up the order, so it didn't arrive in time to be my airplane entertainment (which I needed, because the wifi was poor both ways, so I played inordinate amounts of wooden block puzzle on my phone). ETA: I've since received, read, and reviewed the book for JHMAS!

Dinner was vegan Middle Eastern food prepared by a Black-owned catering company at a progressive theater venue. After we ate, the whole group sang the conference song to the tune of "Bella Ciao"; lyrics reproduced below. Have you ever been to a conference with its own theme song?

We come together

In stormy weather

We share our will

Share our hearts

Share our calls calls calls

We come together

Birds of a feather

To share our stories and our thoughts

We're more than doctors

We're more than scholars

We have a vision of health

Full of hope hope hope

Collective knowledge

Collective power

To transform and to resist

Let us imagine

A world of justice

A world of care, world of love,

world of peace peace peace

A painful struggle

A joyful struggle

In solidarity we trust

It was very warm on the second level where I ate with friend JB, who didn't want to play trivia, so we left early to meet her husband for fancy cocktails at a fancy hotel, which was a lovely way to end the day. This is my The Counting Sheep, made from Scotch whiskey, cloudberry and raspberry, hay (!), citrus, and vegan foamer.

Sunday morning I only stayed for the keynote and looked at the posters, because I was afraid that if I tried to squeeze in another paper session, I might get to the airport late.

"Trans History and the Troubling Legacy of Social Medicine"

Plenary Keynote by Ketil Slagstad, MD, PhD Fellow, Institute for History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at Charité, Berlin

 As it turns out, I was early for my flight and had a solid hour to check email while I waited, but I decided that was better than giving myself an ulcer trying to navigate an unfamiliar mass-transit system and potentially miss my trans-Atlantic flight, since I have to work on Monday.

So long, Norway! It's been a blast. Looking back, here's "Norway by the Numbers."

My Norway in a Nutshell

I used the promise to support a group of scholars in Norway starting an academic organization for health humanities and social medicine as an excuse to extend my stay in the country into a vacation using two weekends. Dear Husband had a work trip the same week, but luckily a friend from grad school who now lives in Germany was able to organize her time so that she could travel with me. While you could take the train from Oslo to Bergen in one day and either tack on the side trip to Flåm (pronounced "floam") the same day or backtrack to do it the next day (like the people on our train), we thought that was too much time sitting. We decided to break up the stereotypical "Norway in a Nutshell" train trip from Oslo to Bergen with intermediary stops for hiking and sightseeing--see our itinerary at the bottom of the post. This meant I had to pack for summer in Oslo (70 degrees and sunny + 60s at night), rain in the mountains (50-60 degrees during the day, except in the 40s at Myrdal and at night), and an academic conference (but more relaxed than most).

Packing while toggling between 2025 Eurovision music videos and the Norwegian weather site, I decided to bring my hiking boots and a pair of flats, 2 long-sleeved t-shirts + jeans for hiking, a selection of short-sleeved t-shirts + 2 pairs of slacks for the city, 1 bathing suit for the sauna, 2 pairs pajamas, an assortment of socks/underthings, and the minimum of toiletries. By the way, if you haven't yet enjoyed the 4th-place Eurovision video from Swedish group KAJ about going to the sauna, it's worth a listen: Bara bada bastu.

This is all of my gear for the weather: an umbrella, a kerchief, a knit cap, an Orioles baseball cap, a woven scarf, a fleece jacket, unlined rain/ski pants, and a water-proof windbreaker that can be folded and zipped into its own pocket to make a fanny pack (if you're really skinny!). I ended up leaving the umbrella in Oslo during our train trip and was a little sorry about it, but the combo rain pants (which I already owned) and rain jacket (new investment) plus the baseball cap turned out to be clutch in the mountainous west of Norway, where it rained off-and-on continuously.

 

I was pretty darn impressed with my packing job! I also brought some travel gear: a neck pillow, a smaller day bag, 2 soft knee braces, a pair of arch supports, a sleep sack in case the hotel sheets were suspect, and a dirty clothes bag. I should have left the sleep sack but brought flip flops and a travel bottle of shampoo for the couple of times we had communal showers without supplies. For the saunas we either used the hotel towels or rented some. I also brought my old European converter plug for my phone and laptop as well as 3 books for work: American Disgust: Racism, Microbial Medicine, and the Colony Within by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (he and I share some theoretical frameworks);  Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High (for my leadership seminar), and Making Disability Modern: Design Histories edited by Bess Williamson and Elizabeth Guffey (for my conference presentation on structural ableism).

I went straight from work on Friday to dinner with Dear Husband on the way to the airport. The 6-hour flight from Pittsburgh to Reykjavik didn't allow for much sleeping. Airplane breakfast: 12 Euro oatmeal, hot tea, and OJ.

On my second trip to Europe, in June 2005, I flew through Reykjavik Airport. Leaning against this angled wall in a jetlagged haze while my companions purchased something in the food court is one of my distinct memories of that trip.

Oslo to Bergen Itinerary

Saturday ~ arrive in Oslo, get sunshine to adjust internal clock, consider partaking of Oslo's fancy food and/or drink scene

Sunday ~ morning train from Oslo to Geilo (pronounce the G as a Y), hike around the lake, hotel has a sauna

Monday ~ mid-morning train from Geilo to Myrdal [we could have taken an earlier one and missed some of the other tourists], hike 1.5 hours down into valley (there's also a zipline option!), rent bicycles for a 45-minute ride the rest of the way to Flåm, then catch the last Naeroyfjord fjord ferry because there was nowhere to stay Flåm that was in our budget. Due to inclement weather, large backpacks with food, and seats opening up on the touristy Flåmsbana, we scrapped the bikes at the last minute and took the train.

Tuesday ~ wake up in Gudvangen and either take a hike or visit the Viking Village, then take the bus to Voss to ride the gondola up for a hike and/or see the (mostly outdoor) folk museum [we skipped this]

Wednesday ~ take the train to Bergen for a walking tour, check out the museums, ride the Fløibanen funicular up for a hike. E.R. discovered a sauna on the harbor that we booked for after dinner

Thursday ~ early morning flights back to Oslo / Germany

 

Saturday: the journey begins in Oslo