Into the Great Wide Open

Occasionally in life leaping off of tall structures and wading through mud isn’t enough of an adrenalin rush.  Occasionally you just have to jump into the great unknown to find out what adventure is all about.  That is why, after much thought and consideration, I have decided to eschew the comfort and stability of a regular paycheck in favor of diving headfirst into starting my own law practice.

Thankfully, I am not alone.  Two dear friends, who also happen to be first-rate lawyers, are taking this leap of faith with me.  

While my emotions run the gamut of excitement, sheer panic, happiness, anxiety, and confidence about this new endeavor, I am indeed looking forward to this next chapter in my life.  So far, I have been shown an incredible amount of support from my family, especially Guido, my friends, and my clients.  When I talked with a client earlier this week about transitioning to my new firm, she asked me if I would have an assistant or a paralegal. I explained that I would be playing all three of those roles (hopefully only temporarily), She immediately, and without hesitation, volunteered to come in a few days a week to help answer phones and file.

So, while my hair may be standing on end for awhile as I settle into this new gig, I am excited to see what the future holds for the three of us and our families.  I would tell you more, but I don’t know how the rest of the story goes yet!

Well, I swear!

There’s a funny cartoon circulating around the attorneys’ circles about all the reasons you shouldn’t go to law school.  When the future law student tells the lawyer that she hopes to argue constitutional cases in the Supreme Court, the lawyer dashes her dreams by telling her that there are only 3 guys who graduated from law school in the 1970s who handle those cases.  So this week I went to Washington, D.C. to see if that’s really true.

I checked off a bucket list item on Wednesday when I was sworn into the United States Supreme Court.   While I don’t ever anticipate arguing a case before the Supreme Court, it was quite an honor to be inducted into the highest court in the land.  Truth be told, I actually checked off two bucket list items that day – the other one being watching Clarence Thomas take a nap. 

The morning started off in the admissions clerk’s office where we were greeted by the Assistant Admissions Clerk (or was he the Assistant to the Assistant Admissions Clerk?).  For all that this man lacked in personality and ability to properly pronounce words, he made up for with his sense of decorum.  There was no way that any of the potential new bar members were going to screw this up on his watch.  After reading us the riot act, he lined us up outside the courtroom to make our big entrance.

The courtroom was incredibly inspiring in all of its grandeur -- the soaring ceiling, the velvet curtains, the marble columns and sculptures, and the bronze gates.  It was beautiful.  The biggest surprise to me was how close we were seated to the justices.  I expected a good 10-15 feet to separate the bench from counsel table, but the two are really only separated by about 5 feet and the bar seating is directly behind counsel table. Since there were only a handful of people being sworn in that morning and we were seated in alphabetical order, being a “C” paid off – I had front row rock star seating right in front of Sotomayor, Thomas, and Breyer.

The courtroom was full of bar members and their guests, flatland tourists in flip flops and shorts (tisk, tisk), and the press.  It was kind of a who’s who of DC.  Anita Tottenham from NPR was a few seats over from me, Bill Sessions, former FBI director, was two rows behind me, and there were probably quite a few others I just didn’t recognize.

Promptly at 10:00 a.m., the justices entered the courtroom and immediately got down to business.  Chief Justice Roberts announced that they were releasing an opinion and Justice Thomas would be reading it.  From the look on Justice Thomas’s face when he heard this announcement, I think he forgot that he was at bat that morning.  

The next order of business was to get us sworn in.  The clerk called each movant’s name, the movant stepped up to the podium and requested the Court to admit someone to the bar.  In my case, my dear friend Tim Hexler flew to DC from Denver to personally move for my admission.  Thankfully, Chief Justice Roberts granted Tim’s motion and I was officially in the club.

After all the motions were completed, we took an oath and Chief Justice Roberts welcomed us to the Court.  Once those formalities were completed, they immediately launched into oral argument and naptime.  Justices Breyer, Scalia, and Thomas settled into their reclining leather chairs for some shuteye.

The case involved an Apache tribe suing the U.S. government to get information about a trust managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  The issue involved questions of attorney-client privilege and the government’s ability to withhold documents from the tribe.  In the end, my best bet is the Indians are going to lose (again). 

Watching the arguments was fascinating.  The solicitor general for the United States didn’t look a day over 30.  Not only was he not in his 70s, he probably wasn’t born in the 70s.  To say he was impressive is an understatement.  The man was unflappable.  He knew his case backwards, forwards, up, and down.  With the exception of Thomas who recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the last time he asked a question, the justices were challenging the solicitor from the very beginning and he didn’t look the least bit flustered.  He answered their questions, spouted off case citations left and right, and went right back to his original argument.  Incredible!

This entire experience is one I will not soon forget.  With all of the cheesy lawyer commercials (Texas Hammer anyone?) and bad lawyer jokes out there, it was extremely gratifying to see so many traditions within the court upheld and decorum and respect for our profession.  It was an excellent reminder of why I went to law school.  Maybe I should add arguing a Supreme Court case to my list.

On Dasher, On Dancer, On Prancer, On Vixen

“A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.”
Napoleon Bonaparte

In my case, it was a cheap Viking hat with horns that was made in China.

This weekend’s adventure was to complete the Warrior Dash, a 3.2 mile obstacle course including, among other things, LOTS of mud and a fire. 

As is frequently the case when I announce my weekend plans, most people just asked why.  And, as the day of the dash approached, I received a slew of text messages wishing me well.  It was as if my friends thought that text message might be their last contact with me…ever.  Fortunately, I am here to tell my story and they are not just hearing it sorrowfully recounted at my memorial service.  

My favorite question of all was from my mother who asked, “What does this race benefit?”  I thought about it for a moment and responded, “My blog.”  This is not a race that purports to support a charity.  The organizers are simply in it for the money and the participants are in it for the free beer and turkey legs…and Viking hats.

When it comes to participating in such a physically-demanding event, strategy is key.  Months of planning and training go into conquering the course.  Or maybe not.  Since Guido* was unwilling to build me a fire pit in the backyard to adequately condition for this race, I decided to forego training altogether.  What was the point?  If I couldn’t scale the roof of my house or practice jumping over a raging fire, then we might as well enjoy some margaritas with friends the night before the dash and just hope for the best.

The good news is I completed the entire race and only skipped two obstacles.  The bad news is I did not exactly escape this day injury-free.

After wading through murky waters, climbing over wrecked cars, reenacting the scene from “Entrapment” in which Catherine Zeta-Jones crawls through a tangled mess of ropes (albeit not even remotely as attractively as she did it), scaling walls and cargo nets, jumping over fire, slithering through a mud pit under barbed wire, and getting pounded with a water hose in the “Warrior Wash,” I managed to injure myself by slipping and falling out of the school bus that shuttled us back to our car.

Yes, that’s right.  I made it through all of that mess only to fall out of a school bus.  Thankfully, my injuries consisted only of a bruised arm, leg, and ego.  Somehow that’s par for the course for me, but it did not diminish my pride at proving to my friends and family that this girly-girl doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty occasionally.  As for the much sought-after hat, Guido says I look more like a Muppet in it than I do a Viking warrior. 

In the end, Guido and I had so much fun that we're planning to do it again next year.  After seeing hordes of people wearing kilts with fake swords, "Braveheart" warrior face paint, Fred Flintstone costumes, a bridal party having an unconventional bachelorette party, and tons of other people have a ball, it became clear to us that we need to recruit an army to join us in 2012.  Consider this your official invitation.  And, between now and 2012, I plan to train extensively to safely exit the school bus.

*My husband will henceforth be known in this blog as “Guido” as I am tired of referring to him generically as “my husband.”

Rare Side Effects May Include Spontaneous Combustion

Do you pay attention to commercials?  For the most part, I don’t.  In fact, that’s one of the main reasons I love my DVR so much, because I can just buzz past all the ads and return to regularly-scheduled programming.  There are some very funny ads out there, but generally commercials have gotten so outlandish that I can’t even relate.

For example, I’ve never been awoken to a happy family reunion in my kitchen because someone made coffee.  Frankly, if I woke up to the smell of crappy coffee brewing and my husband was in bed beside me, I would huddle under the covers and call 911.  Also my husband and I have never had a conversation (or anything else for that matter) on a hilltop while soaking in bathtubs.  There is no scenario in the realm of my imagination in which either one of us would ever need to hike, bathe and talk so urgently that we would haul two bathtubs up a hill to take a bubble bath, hold hands, and chitchat. 

That being said, there are times when I probably should have paid closer attention to commercials.  In my first blog post, I referred to some of my past weird health issues.  Unfortunately, there have been quite a few over the past couple of years.  As a good friend once told me, “Your health issues are not only educational but they’re also hilarious.”  I don’t know about the hilarious part, but I’ve certainly learned a lot from my ailments.  You can decide for yourself.

About two years ago, I woke up on a Sunday morning to discover that my right arm had swollen up to twice its normal size.  When I dragged myself and my arm out to the kitchen and asked my husband if he noticed anything strange about me (loaded question), he immediately rushed me to the emergency clinic around the corner.  They took one look at me, said they didn’t know what was wrong, and sent us to the ER.  It’s always reassuring when the quack at the Doc in the Box can’t even come up with a plausible theory.

At the ER, the nurses and doctors were equally perplexed.   A multitude of possible illness/injury/terminal disease theories were tossed around, including a suggestion that I was having an aneurysm.  At a loss for what to do with me, they resolved to run every test in the book until they got to the bottom of it.  Come Hell or high deductible, they would leave no stone unturned until I was cured.  Before I knew it, I was whisked away to the lab where they sapped me of all my blood and wheeled into radiology for a Doppler scan of my arm. 

Thankfully, the Doppler did not show a clot, but that left the doctors even more confused.  The blood tests showed that I had extremely high levels of a protein that indicated muscle breakdown – a protein that can clog your kidneys and cause them to fail.  They immediately put me on a saline drip to try to flush the protein out of me and they drew blood periodically to test whether the levels were dropping.  The best theory available was I had overdone it at the gym and torn my tricep, which was causing the swelling and muscle breakdown.

After several hours in the hospital, the doctors felt confident that I could go home and heal without any further ado.  Or so they thought.  The next morning I woke up with both a swollen arm and a swollen hip.  I once again asked my husband a loaded question: does my rearend look big?  I could see the fear in his eyes.  He didn’t want to respond.  Finally, he conceded that my left hip looked larger than the right one.  Weird.  I didn’t know a muscle tear could spread nor did I know I could have half an applebottom.

This latest development confused the doctors even more.  What would cause swelling and pain in my arm and my hip?  Obviously it was not a muscle tear after all.  After going to four different doctors, one finally arrived at a theory that made sense.  I had taken Levaquin following a minor surgical procedure (another story) and it has a “rare side effect” of causing tendon rupture, tendonitis, and ligament damage.   At least I had some answers, but there was no solution.  Nothing I could do would flush the medication out of my system.  I researched as much as I could and found out that tendon issues could happen up to six months after I finished taking the antibiotics.

In the end, I had tendonitis in my elbow, hip, and knee and a tendon in my hand ruptured.  I was a walking time bomb.  And, if there’s ever another anthrax scare, I will have a tough decision to make.  Will I take a Z-Pack and risk exploding or try to fight anthrax homeopathically?

It was only after my personal experience with the supposed rare side effects of Levaquin that I started to see ads for ambulance-chasing lawyers suing the pharmaceutical company that makes this medication.  Seems I am not the only one out there who had a few tendons explode after being prescribed this drug.  Maybe I didn't pay attention to the commercials before this episode, because they didn't pertain to me...or at least I didn't think so.  I would love to say that my experience has made me pay closer attention to commercials, but it hasn't.  Honestly, I don’t want to see foreshadowing of what might happen to me next.  I prefer to be surprised.  And how can I possibly educate my friends through my own ailments if I am armed in advance with information to avoid such debacles?  It is probably better for everyone for me to just learn as I go.