Psychic Travels

So it turns out I'm not the first person to want to leave medicine!  Or even to write about it!  Wayyyyyyyyy back in 1988 (yes, that's sarcasm, although when I do the math, it's been 24 years and that makes me feel old), Michael Crichton (yes, him again) wrote a book called Travels. In it, he describes his extensive travels around the globe, mostly to lesser-trodden locales.  He details the self-insight and life lessons each journey teaches him, but he begins the book with a description of his four years in medical school. 

This book was recommended to me by my wonderful career-change coach, and at first I wasn't sure why.  Sure, I love to travel and MC has traveled to some amazing places.  He also describes his journeys on the spiritual plane - from psychic readings to astral projection to meditating in the desert, talking to a cactus for two weeks!  Initially, I wasn't really sure why he chose to begin his book with his med school days, since it doesn't really match up with the rest of the book, but he eventually spells it out - if he hadn't changed careers, if he had stayed in medicine, he might not have been forced into the sort of change that lays the track for all kinds of other life-changing experiences. 

MC started out as an English major, but found the English department at Harvard to be less than pleasant.  He switched to anthropology, and took some premed courses, "just in case".  He found the pre-med world to be quite different from the rest of Harvard, where people were less caught up in grades, and more eager for the learning experience in general.  In pre-med courses, he stepped "into a different world - nasty and competitive".  People would sabotage their classmates without a second thought - we called those people "gunners" by the time I went to med school.  No thought or consideration for anything but their own success.

He makes a couple comments that I found laugh-out-loud funny.  The first, regarding the gunners who gave out wrong answers to classmates who asked for help in his chemistry class and who sabotaged his lab experiments so he would start fires: "I was uncomfortable with the hostile and paranoid attitude this course demanded for success.  I thought that a humane profession like medicine ought to encourage other values in its candidates.  But nobody was asking my opinion."  How could I have found this LOL-funny?  Because it's true...  A quarter of a century later, medicine is still encouraging hostile, inhumane behaviour.  Not overtly, of course, and I do believe that things have improved.  My medical school had very few gunners, and overall was a pretty supportive place.  We were encouraged to explore our humanity, and we even had a humanities requirement in the curriculum (my favorite course - Red Flag #382 for my clinical career).  But I believe that the training, particularly by the time one gets to residency, beats most, if not all, of the humanity out of one. MC describes, "This... seemed more like hazing, like a professional initiation, than education."  I had to hunker down to get through it, and that hunkering down necessitated a complete absence of work on my inner self and created a version of myself that I really didn't like.

He continues, "I got through it as best I could.  I imagined medicine to be a caring profession, and a scientific one as well.  It was so fast-moving that its practitioners could not afford to be dogmatic; they would be flexible and open-minded."  Ha, ha.  Very funny, MC.  I am priveleged to know a lot of physicians who are wonderful people, caring as well as scientifically smart.  But I also know a lot of the other kind...  I will say that I believe that med schools today are trying to create more of the former, but unfortunately the profession does attract a fair number of the latter.  MC elaborates, "I learned that the best doctors found a middle position where they were neither overwhelmed by their feelings nor estranged from them.  That was the most difficult position of all, and the precise balance - neither too detached nor too caring - was something few learned...
 "It was certainly interesting work, and there was no doubt that you were doing something worthwhile with your life, helping sick people." This is true.  Medicine was, and is, an incredibly worthwhile profession, and it can be a very rewarding one as well. 

He goes on to tell some anecdotes about his pre-clinical and clinical training.  He explores the development of the gallows humor that anyone who deals with illness and death on a daily basis develops to some extent.  He describes the apalling behaviour of residents and attendings with whom he interacts, and his struggles with some patients.  He develops a theory of illness that requires that people take ownership of and responsibility for their mental and physical health.  He quits medicine.

MC tried four different times to quit medical school.  At the time, he was required to meet with a psychiatrist before he could quit.  The psychiatrist talked him into continuing every time, basically telling him he hadn't gotten yet to the part he wouldn't hate.  The psychiatrist did this each of the first three years of med school, then finally gave up the ghost, saying "I thought you would quit in the end".  MC finished out his four years, then quit medicine before ever becoming licensed or practicing.  Here's where my experience differed.  I actually enjoyed the classroom aspect of medical school, and I enjoyed many of my clinical rotations.  I still had (a little) time to devote to outside pursuits (reading, dancing).  The rotations I didn't enjoy were the ones that impinged the most on my outside life, or that were extremely stressful.  Red Flag #936. 

Now, MC had a backup.  He was already making money as an author during medical school.  He quit to become a writer, and he was already somewhat established by the time he gave up medicine.  He also had a tool with which to meet the naysayers when he publicized his decision to quit medicine.  "In quitting, I was following my instincts; I was doing what I really wanted to do.  But most people saw only that I was giving up a lot of prestige...They admired my determination, but they thought I was pretty unrealistic."  Hmmmm, sounds familiar.  MC, though, had written a little thing called The Andromeda Strain which was about to become a movie.  Once it was known he was a successful writer, people got off his back.  "All the doctors and residents who had shunned me became suddenly interested in me."

I have no Andromeda Strain in my back pocket.  I've got this blog, I'm working on a website, and I'm doing some medical editing and writing on a freelance basis.  My future best-seller of a book (think positive!) is still a mass of unorganized, unedited words on my computer.  But I do have one thing in common with Dr. Crichton:  I am following my instincts and walking away from an unhappy life, forward into the great unknown.  Cheers!

Sick of Being Sick

I've had an annoying, nagging cough for the last couple of weeks.  I never got really sick, but I'm sure taking my time getting better...  Before leaving medicine, I would have ignored it and plowed ahead with my busy life.  Now, I wonder what my body is trying to tell me...  Sometimes a cough is just a cough, but let's back up here to a little object lesson in psychosomatics...

I felt like I was sick all the time in residency.  I had been ill here and there in medical school – the worst was on my Pediatrics rotation.  All those little kids sucking on your stethoscope and coughing in your face will give you the flu like nobody’s business, I don’t care how many flu shots you get.  But in residency it got truly ridiculous.  Serotonin levels were down and cortisol was through the roof!  I was always getting the cold-of-the-moment, and when I wasn’t sick, I was feeling ill.  I often had stomach upset and general malaise.  Occasionally, more concrete abdominal pain.  Too bad I couldn’t see that it was probably psychic, not physical.  My body knew I was on the wrong path, even if my consciousness hadn't yet gotten the message.  But I didn’t pay attention, and continued on to graduation.  No surprise, it continued after I finished residency and began practicing out in the real world.  Yes, of course, when you see sick people for a living, you’re bound to get sick once in a while.  All the hand-washing in the world can’t save you from that cold or flu virus when it’s all over the hospital or your office.   But it’s not just that.  Working crazy hours compromises the immune system and raises cortisol levels.  The body is so stressed, it can’t muster the energy to fight off anything else, so you get sick.  But it's not just that, either. 

When you’ve stuffed down all of the emotions and inner voices that are crying out at you to make a change (you must suppress these in order to do what you do), they're going to come out physically. That's what psychosomatic means, although any good physician knows that only happens to other people, right?  I saw patients all the time who would come into the OB triage unit with vague complaints of dizziness or non-specific abdominal pain.  Often, there was something going on at home – either domestic violence or just being ignored on a Friday night.  They wanted a little attention, and a physical complaint was a "valid" way to get it.  I could recognize it in my patients, but couldn’t see my own “I don’t feel well” status as Red Flag #256.  Zero Insight Girl, that was me!

By the last year I was practicing, I was breaking out in angry, painful red welts under my arms each time I had a call shift.  I thought it must be the surgical scrubs, so I would take hospital scrubs home to launder them in my own detergent.  I saw my dermatologist who tested for allergies - all negative.  It took seven courses of antibiotics and a few rounds of topical steroids to calm  my skin before my wedding day.  I also took six weeks off work before the wedding, both allowing my skin to heal and because I felt I needed that time off to be a sane person on my wedding day (Red Flag #257, there you go!  If you need that much time off to feel and look like a normal person, something is wrong with your working situation).  Maybe it truly was a bacterial infection, but I think it had not a little to do with stress and something in me screaming out to be heard – if you won’t listen to me, I’ll give you physical symptoms so you have to pay attention! 

The thing is, that only works if you are tuned into it.  Otherwise it just leads to more denial, and an outward focus on the physical symptoms.  They at least detract your attention from the inner turmoil, and give you something upon which to blame your misery.  They will only heal, however, if you learn to dig out the real issues and deal with them.  Since this is both difficult and scary, most people choose never to go there.  I was not exactly raised to embrace my emotions, so allowing myself to feel them was terrifying, and it took a few years - this is certainly not something that happened overnight.  Once I started paying attention, however, there was no going back.  Luckily, by the time the outbreaks started, I already knew I was on my way out of medicine.  That didn't stop my body from trying to reinforce the message.  "What do you mean, you're giving six months notice?  Are you crazy?  You need to get out now!" 

And since I quit?  Clear skin and clear skies...  except for that stupid cough.

Coming Out

Today, I proudly present my first guest blogger, Rob Baginski MD.  I spotted this post on a website dedicated to physicians contemplating career change, and it really resonated with me.  I had struggled (and still do) with how and when to tell the people in my life that I am no longer a practicing doctor.  I hadn't thought about the comparisons to "coming out" until I read it here, and it's spot-on!  How will my parents react?  What will my friends think of me?  Read on, my friends, for Rob's words of wisdom, and feel free to pour a glass of wine whilst you peruse....
 

Telling Mom

So, I want to change careers. More specifically, I would like to change my career from that of a clinical, emergency department physician to that of… well, something non-clinical. I suppose the exact “what” has yet to be determined. I must say, the process is a daunting one, fraught with worries about what it is that I wish to do, what it is that I am qualified to do, how I can afford to leave clinical medicine, how to break into a new field, and many, many others. Nevertheless, a conversation with my mother the other day added yet one more concern, one more stressor to the list.

Now, as many of you who have or have had mothers in the past know, there is almost nothing in this universe that cannot be made more stressful by a conversation with her. There is something inherently anxiety-producing in getting helpful advice from the woman who bore and raised you. In this case, we were talking quite nicely about day-to-day things when I casually mentioned that I was speaking later that afternoon to my career counselor. There was a pause, and she asked, “Why, honey, are you speaking to a career counselor?”

I sighed, as we had discussed my desire to leave clinical medicine several times in the past.

“She is helping me figure out how to leave the ER, Mom. You know I’ve been wanting to get out of the ER for a while now.”

“Oh, sweetheart. You know you love the ER. You’re just confused right now. Give it time, and you will realize you want to stay there after all.”

And then she let drop the phrase that stunned me.

“You just haven’t found the right ER yet.”

It was then that I realized that I had to come out.

No, I am not talking about coming out as gay. I’m talking about telling the people around me, my family and friends, about my life choice to leave clinical medicine. I didn’t realize how my choice would affect them and how they see me. Like telling people about sexual orientation, revealing a dissatisfaction with “being a doctor” can be shocking to people who see you in a certain way. They now have to see you as a person who is unhappy at work, who has other dreams or aspirations other than medicine, and who is not fulfilled in a career that American society has somehow glorified and idolized. Therefore, I need to come out… again.

My mother’s words struck a chord that pulled me back 15 years ago. How many gay men and women have told their parents that they were homosexual only to be told, “You just haven’t found the right girl/boy yet.”

Well, it has been 10 years, and I still haven’t found the right ER. And, Mom, it isn’t that I haven’t tried. Believe me. I have dated around. I have tried small community ERs and large, city ones. I have flirted with urgent care centers. I have tried long-term relationships where I have stayed with one ER for years, and I have experimented with short-term, per diem trysts. None of them have satisfied me. As much as I want it to work out, whenever I am in the ER, I can’t help but fantasize about something else. Something more satisfying. I have to admit that I have desires that the ER cannot satisfy. I need something different, something more.

Now, I’m sure my mother doesn’t want to hear this. Coming out can be difficult not only for the person but also for his or her loved ones. For some reason, becoming a doctor has taken on a certain mystique, sort of like becoming a priest. Once you are a doctor, you are always a doctor, at least in many people’s eyes. Asking those around me, in particular my parents, to alter that perception of me is not easy. I understand that it will take time for my mother to adjust to this new reality. I also understand that this transition may be aided by her two close friends, Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio.

Coming out for a parent also affects how she interacts with people outside of our relationship. One of the time honored perqs of having a physician for a child is bragging about this to your friends who preferably have children who have failed out of beauty school or who have become roadies for the local Grateful Dead cover band. For my mother to confess to her book club that I have decided to leave medicine must be akin to telling them that I am leaving my beautiful, blonde, real-estate agent wife and 3 adorable children for a drag queen named Miss Kitty Litter. I can hear the conversation now:

“Mimi, how is that doctor son of yours doing?”

There is an awkward pause.

“Well,” Mom hesitantly begins. “He has decided to leave medicine.”

There is a shocked silence. But now that the confession has been uttered the dam has broken, and she tells all.

“He says he doesn’t feel happy as a doctor. He wants to quit and become… Oh, I don’t know, a… a…”

“A what?”

“A marine biologist!”

There are gasps of horror all around. Chardonnay is spilled on dog eared copies of “The Bridges of Madison County.” Finally, someone takes my mother’s hand and whispers..

“Don’t worry, Mimi. Don’t worry. I’m sure it is only a phase.”

And with that the coming out comparison is complete.

So, with my career transition in its beginning phases, I have come to understand that this decision doesn’t just affect me. It is something that touches my family, my friends, and my spouse. It is something that, while necessary, is a life-changing event for not only me, but for those who care about me. Nevertheless, I will forge on. I know that, no matter how difficult it may be, this change is for the good and that I, and those around me, will be the better for it. It is, therefore, with confidence and no small amount of pride that I proclaim:

“I’m here! I want to change my career! Get used to it!”



BIO: Rob Baginski is an emergency medicine physician in Massachusetts who is in the beginning stages of transitioning to a non-clinical career. He lives in Rhode Island with his husband and a spoiled dog who doesn’t care what he does with his life as long as there is enough time for belly rubs and an ample supply of Milkbones.

Relief

As an obstetrician, I helped bring life into this world.  What cooler job is there than that?  But honestly, I was not really the one bringing life into this world.  The life was there, I was just guiding it out.  It’s an interesting thing, being a deliverer of babies.  Most of the time I’m really not needed.  I’m there to help coach the mother, make sure her delivery is progressing and that both mother and baby are safe.  Most of the time, mothers do what they do and nature takes its course, bringing another baby into this world, just like the last seven billion babies.  A good attendant, whether obstetrician, family practitioner or midwife, can help guide the delivery to minimize injury to the mother, but the baby would arrive safe and sound no matter what we do or don’t do.  Not all the time, however.  There’s a reason mothers and babies used to die in childbirth in such huge numbers compared to today.  Things can go wrong, and when they do, they often go wrong very quickly.  

As I was evaluating my relationship with my career, I had to ask myself:  did I want to be in a job where I was often not needed, but when I was, it was an emergency?  That is a very stressful way to live.  When you tell people you deliver babies for a living, every single one of them says, “oh, what a joyful job you have”.  And they’re correct – most of the time.  I’ve not once had someone say to me, “ gosh, that must be so stressful – every mom is expecting a perfect birth experience and a perfect baby, yet nothing in this world is perfect – you have a lot to live up to!”.  This would be a more accurate description.  And so would, “wow, you have to make complex decisions quickly, and sometimes tell people things they don’t want to hear – what a responsibility!”.  I’ve never heard that.    It is a joyful job, until it’s not.  And I was finally realizing that I was not cut out for the hard parts.

People also think, when you say you're an ob/gyn, that all you do is deliver babies.  They don't think about the annual exams, the hysterectomies, the laparoscopic surgeries, the trips to the ER in the middle of the night for suspected ectopic pregnancies or for miscarriages in progress.  They don't think about the fact that I have to tell women they have cancer.  They don't think about the fact that I have to tell women they have an STD (and, therefore, that their partner has been less than faithful and/or forthcoming).

So what, just cut and run when things get difficult?  No, that’s not what I’m trying to say.  Every job has hard parts.  When I was sixteen years old and waitressing, I had a volatile Neopolitan boss who would scream at me in front of customers.  That was hard.  But the good parts (earning money for my class trip to France) outweighed the bad.  Life has hard parts, but you make it through them to enjoy the good parts.  But when you’re in a situation where you are dreading the hard parts of every day, when you just want to curl up in a ball under the comforter and never come out, when your job is making you clinically depressed, that’s a pretty good sign you’re not cut out for that job.  I’ve worked with fantastic doctors and nurses who ARE cut out for their jobs.  That’s not to say they don’t feel the difficulties, but for them, the rewards outweigh anything else.  That was just not the case for me, and the sooner I admitted it, the sooner I could move on to something that would make me happy.
Yes, I did some pretty cool things in my former career.  I even saved some lives, and I don't say that with any sense of bragging or arrogance - it could have been any trained ob/gyn or surgeon who saved those lives - I just happened to be the one on call when the patient came in.  But do I miss it?  Nope.  Someone else can save the lives, I don't need the glory.  I needed to save my own life. I needed relief.  And I am relieved that I made it out before I spent the next 30 years in misery.  How do I spell relief? Q-U-I-T-T-I-N-G.  Not as catchy as the Rolaids jingle, but it'll do.

When I think about my former career, from the vantage point now of six months out, I feel an overwhelming sense of relief.  Relief that I'm no longer working those hours, under those pressures.  Relief that I don't have to know everything anymore.  Relief that I have my life back.  Relief that I made the right decision.

There were amazing moments in my job and I will miss them.  (The fact that I don't miss them yet probably means I'm still healing from the PTSD...)  Delivering babies  - there’s nothing more beautiful than that.  But I give it up willingly to bring MY life into this world.

Medical Divorce

You know how once you hear about something, or begin thinking about something, you start seeing it everywhere?  Well, once I decided to quit my career and branch out into the unknown, I started meeting people right and left who had made career changes.  All of them were incredibly encouraging, and much happier with their lives post-change, even though the process of change itself was stressful and challenging. 

It came down to this:  I chose my own happiness and my relationship with my husband over my career.  Okay, it was not even nearly that simple, but it's a good place to start.  I had reached the point where I realized that if I wanted to stay a) sane, and b) married, I could not stay in this career.  And once I realized this, I started seeing it echoed everywhere I looked.  I met a luxury vacation planner who used to be an attorney.  I met a massage therapist who used to be a military engineer.  I met a yoga teacher who used to be a mortgage banker.  A friend of mine got married and moved to a different country to be with her husband, leaving behind her just-taking-off business.  These were the stories that, once upon a time, would have made me say, "are they crazy?"  But one and all, they are happier now.

Even magazines and books I pick up remind me I made the right decision.  Just last week, I was reading about the physician at OHSU that developed Gleevec, the miracle-drug that has saved the lives of thousands of CML (chronic myeloid leukemia) patients.  His first marriage was a casualty of his career.  He states, "I wasn't what you would call a devoted husband.  I was a devoted researcher and scientist and physician.  And that took a toll."  Obviously, the thousands of people who have avoided the death sentence of CML are grateful that he is such a dedicated scientist.  Clearly, we need people like him in the world.  But I don't feel the need to be one of them.

Sacrificing one's relationship on the altar of career just isn't for me.  When I went into medicine, I honestly never thought I was going to meet the right person and get married.  So why not throw myself into this career?  But it's not just about spending quality time with my husband.  What if I'd never met him?  What if I were still single - would I still have quit?  I'd like to think so.  The fact that this career was wrong for me on so many levels remains, regardless of whether I am married or single. It may have taken me longer to get to the point where I was ready to quit without that support at home, but I do believe I would eventually have "seen the light",  realized how unhappy I was, and made the decision to make a change.

I just finished reading Michael Crichton's first book, A Case of Need.  Originally published under a pseudonym, it revolves around illegal abortion (published in 1968), and is a decent noir-ish medical mystery, although it got more than a bit implausible at the end.  There were lots of interesting themes running through it - how doctors stick together, for one - the "old boy's club", as it were.  How a physician is vilified for making a human error, for another (the author doesn't seem to have insight into this one, but it caught my eye and grated).  But what really grabbed my attention were the throwaway comments he made about doctors' relationships.  He refers to the abbreviation M.D. as standing for Medical Divorce.  (see above re: wanting to stay married!)  He describes one doctor thus:  "He has a surgeon's view of right and wrong.  He sees only black and white, day and night.  No gray.  No twilight."  Black and white thinking - a topic I addressed on this blog only last week!

But the passage that really got my attention was this:  "Certainly he is bitter toward his profession.  Many doctors are, for various reasons ... I suppose in any profession you meet men who despise themselves and their colleagues.  But Art is an extreme example.  It is almost as if he went into medicine to spite himself, to make himself unhappy and angry and sad."  I could relate to this last sentence in a big way.  I've hinted on this blog about how I didn't feel I deserved happiness, and I am writing a lot about that in my book-in-progress.   But I don't think I'd seen it written down anywhere else.  That you can choose a profession in order to guarantee that you will not be happy.  Clearly not a conscious decision, but a decision nonetheless.  Once I woke up to it, I decided that I didn't want to stick around long enough to "despise myself and my colleagues".  I didn't want to look back thirty years from now and wish I'd made a change...

Now is the time for change!  Now is the time for happiness!  Okay, Universe, I get the message!  Now, if you can just start sending some how-to-be-fabulously-wealthy clues my way....

Gross(er) Anatomy

Back in the 80's, I loved the movie "Gross Anatomy".  Okay, okay, I still love it, although I haven't actually seen it in years... I had a big crush on Matthew Modine as the lazy but smart med student, and maybe on some subconscious level that movie fed into my eventual decision to go to medical school.  They had such fun, those first-year students, even when they were studying hard.  The study-all-the-time female lead, in the end, found time for romance with our hero.  And of course there was the professor with the mysterious disease (lupus, naturally) who saw something special in Matthew's character, Joe. 

What was not to love? 


My own gross anatomy course was not quite so humor-and-romance-filled, but we did have a good time.  It was our first class in med school, and took up the first several weeks of the first year.  We actually combined gross anatomy with pathology in an integrated "structure and function" course, but it was basically gross anatomy.

We were divided into groups, and my group of four got along well.  Besides myself, there was the large, black former football player, the tiny, white New York Catholic girl, and.... some guy I really can't remember at all.  Isn't that awful?  We were lucky in our cadaver.  He was a skinny guy, which made for easy dissection.  We didn't have to spend the extra hours clearing fat away from the structures we were meant to identify.  Some groups were not so lucky and spent those lab hours covered in grease as they tried to "melt" the fat. 

Everyone going before had told us the hands and face are the hardest parts, emotionally, to dissect.  These were kept wrapped until we were ready for them.  I agree that it felt odd to cut into them, but not as problematic as I'd thought they would be.  The face, for one thing, was so distorted by death and the tissues so hardened by embalming that it was hard to get a sense of what our guy had really looked like in life.  The hands were a bit more challenging, but mainly because I have a squeamishness about hand/finger pain to begin with.  For our group, the worst part was the arms.  The right arm in particular.  Because there, inked onto his cold, dead skin, was a big, racist Nazi tattoo.  We didn't see this until many weeks into class, when we unwrapped the relevant body part.  It was very hard to reconcile our gratitude for this man's unselfish act of donating his body to science and knowledge with this very visible proof that he was an ignorant bastard, or at least had been at some point in his life. 

What to do with this contradiction?  There wasn't really anything to be done.  Just proceed with our dissection, our education.  But now with an odd puzzlement.  We owed our intimate knowledge of the human body to someone who was quite possibly an abhorrent human being.  Yet he made this incredible donation, his very body, so that we could learn.  This tended to mess with our type-A, med-student predeliction to see the world in black and white. 

Many years later, I would again be challenging that black and white thinking, as I got ready to break free from my career.  I was learning to see shades of gray, and the more I got used to this new way of thinking, the more liberating it became.  I didn't have to use my medical education, or even my residency training, in one particular "approved" way.  I could help people in a different way.  All the shades of gray were possibilities, and I'm working on turning them into color!  I'll spare you the "Wizard of Oz" analogy... except, darn, already went there...

Maybe this racist little man, in his own way, planted the seed all those years ago that everything was not as straightforward as it seemed.  He showed me that people could surprise you, and I went on to surprise myself, and everyone around me.  And for that, I must be grateful, no matter what.

Wedding Flowers

This is my first time participating in Let's Blog Off!  The current topic is "Flowers". 

What a lovely topic.  I love flowers!  Who doesn't?  Okay, perhaps those with allergies might not be so fond.  But what could be wrong with beautiful, lovely, colorful, fragrant flowers?

I'll tell you what.  When the florist for your wedding messes them up.

My favorite flowers are daffodils and tulips.  Those gorgeous harbingers of spring, that peep their little shoots out from their bulbs just when you think that winter is never going to end and the rains are never going to let up!  I probably prefer daffodils just slightly more than tulips, but it's a pretty close contest.  Since red is my favorite color and, naturally, the wedding color, daffodils weren't really going to work as a decorative flower for the wedding.  No worries, tulips would save the day!  Gorgeous, red tulips.  Heaps of them.

I met with the florist that I had picked from the ones recommended by our wedding venue.  I had loved the online pictures of her work, and was excited to discuss my tulip mania!  I didn't want them everywhere, not even in my bouquet, but I did envision the centerpieces for all of the tables as bowls of rich, lush red tulips.  The tablecloths were to be black, and the glass vases were to sit on a mirrored panel, so I know that the lovely red would pop, and the beautiful flowers would be a show-stopper!  On the advice of the florist, we decided to incorporate a little bit of white hydrangea, to have some contrast between the red flowers.  I trusted her - flower arrangement is her job, after all.  I would have my bowls of red tulips with little bits of white in between to set them off to best advantage.

The day of the wedding came.  My bouquet was delivered - gorgeous!  I absolutely loved it!  I wasn't as crazy about how the bridesmaids' bouquets turned out, but I could live with that.  My flowers were stunning - just what I wanted!  See here:

Tons of red, lots of texture, with hints of white and green to break things up a little. 

Then I walked out to see the centerpieces...  What's this?  All I see are white blobs on the tables.  Where are the real centerpieces? 

Honey, those are the real centerpieces.  See your tulips?  I saw them, all right.  A few tiny little shrimpy red tulips, poking their feeble heads out of a sea of white hydrangeas.  Straggly and sparse, not at all the overflowing bouquets I had envisioned, and thought I had asked for.

To her credit, the florist was quick on her feet.  There was no way to get more tulips, but she could tone down the overwhelming white-ness of the blobby centerpieces by airbrushing them.  This pink was the closest we could get to red, but believe me, it looks way better than the way they started!

So, that is my flower story.  Is it a huge catastrophe?  No, just a disappointment.  I was a little embarassed that our wedding guests might think I had picked pink hydrangeas and straggly tulips on purpose, but really... who actually pays close attention to the flowers at a wedding.  The important thing is that I got to marry my beloved on that day, not that my centerpieces were masterworks of tulip gorgeousness.  But it would have been nice...  Maybe for our anniversary I'll buy some tulips - and arrange them myself!!!