Auto-pilot

Its been a laid-back month, with no new difficult cases.  I'm in auto-pilot mode, or my version thereof.

Picasso, Self-portrait

Am I the only one who's stalked by this job or is this, in fact, an occupational hazard?  Clinical insights choose the weirdest moments to pop into my head: while I'm driving, snorkeling, barbecuing, showering, even whilst reading junk.  Most anything can set off these digressions: flak jackets (how to hide ambulatory infusion pumps), LvB's 9th (gamma knife for acoustic neuromas), Kris Aquino's billboard (MR mammography for breast implants), fluorescent plankton (herceptin schedules in FISH+), Ronald Ventura (CT/X-ray correlations), etc.  It can get really tiresome.  Who wants to suddenly awake with the realization of the "right thing to do" for a specific patient— Eureka! — when one wasn't even conscious of any doubts?  Or require a TV set at loud volumes to fall asleep? Or host ASCO fora in your head on limb salvage for sarcomas… when Russell Crowe is about to brain the living daylights out of Commodus in Gladiator?

Jeez.  Smacks of a "Flight of Ideas" or some such DSM thingy.  Strangely, the complete reverse happens when I have a problem before me, as with crossword puzzles, a Windows crash, light fixture reassembly, cancers of apparently unknown primary, or impending C-P arrest. Then, the house could be on fire but I'd have to be carried out to notice it.  Needless to say, this is a trait that The Spouse would rather live without.

Oh, well.  Either I need a shrink stat or, perhaps, a prolonged vacation. Or maybe this is just simply the game I've played my life into.   Whatever.