Breakfast spots in Southwest Texas

I like eggs, coffee, and toast

And potatoes, that meal’s the most!

It’s truer and truer

That the choices are fewer

But there are 6 that this town can boast!

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1-year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  After 3 Community Health years, I took temporary gigs in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  Since the pandemic, I did telemedicine, staffed a COVID-19 clinic in Iowa, worked at the Veterans Administration in South Dakota, held part-time positions close to home, worked 10 weeks in western Pennsylvania, had a 5-month assignment in Northern Iowa, then several months of telemedicine.  I am now in Texas, a big place with a lot of Spanish speakers. 

I rode my bicycle from Connecticut to Colorado, with my friend Al Willard, in the summer of 1972.  We each started with about $60 and 30 pounds of gear.  By the time we finished we had spent about $40 each and lightened our loads by 6 pounds.  We spent 20 days on the road.

We camped out in a tube tent and though we cooked most of our meals, the vast majority of our expenditures were for food.  Diner breakfast at the time cost $.60.  In a situation where we calculated how much each calorie cost, we ignored coffee as a non-nutritive fluid. 

Almost every town big enough to have a gas station had a place for the locals to have a hot morning meal. 

The number and variety of breakfast spots has steadily decreased in the last 50 years.  Our home town, with over 100,000 population, only has 6 places where a person can get eggs over easy and breakfast potatoes. 

(I don’t count the national chains and franchises where the only choice of eggs is scrambled.)

The municipality where I currently work might have only 1/8^th the people, but it has at least the same number of breakfast places. 

Breakfast with a colleague is more than nutrition, even if it’s the most important meal of the day.  An opportunity to exchange medical cases remains an opportunity to improve clinical skills.  And in the process, guard against professional isolation. 

What are we seeing?  More STDs than COVID and influenza put together.  Lots of allergies.  One of my colleagues sees a lot of Lyme disease but hasn’t mentioned babesiosis. 

Surprising that I haven’t seen a horse-related injury yet. 

Despite the fact that bird flu has hit the cattle industry in Texas, I have seen little in the way of zoonoses (infections contracted from animals).

Although Texas enjoys a lot of sun and the people spend hours outside, about half the vitamin D levels that I order come back quite low.  I start the patients on 5,000 units daily for 2 months followed by a repeat test. 

I won’t be working here when the patient returns. The facility will onboard a new doc in June, and I’ll finish 2 weeks earlier than expected.

Tags: bicycle trip, breakfast, COVID, flu, meals with colleagues, places to eat breakfast, STDs, vitamin D deficiency