January 26, 2012
interesting patients i saw today
- 1st woman looked like she was on drugs, and when taking her history, she openly admitted to smoking marijuana. “To help her sleep” she said, and apparently she gets her supply from her kids. Plus, the reason she was in was for dyspareunia (pain with intercourse). That’s a pretty common complaint, but her husband had just passed away 2 months ago. As my doc said (not in front of her of course), she’s “back in the saddle” already.
- Another came in with intense abdominal pain, poor thing. She was practically writhing on the exam table and I felt so bad for her. It was the first case of real rebound tenderness I’ve seen though, which was super cool (that’s when you press down on the belly then let go, and the patient screams in agony). A positive sign equals peritonitis, so she had pelvic inflammatory disease and we shipped her to the hospital for IV antibiotics. I’m gonna round on her tomorrow to see how she’s doing.
- A morbidly obese woman (according to her BMI, and it actually says that on the chart) came in complaining of itching and tenderness in her vagina. Actually, she outright said she was thinking it might be STDs. So we probed more into that history and found out she had been seeing multiple partners at once. (My doc later turned to me and asked “wonder if she had them at the same time”…LOL. He’s so inappropriate sometimes but its hilarious.) I got to do a pelvic exam on her…getting better at feeling for cervices! Turns out probably not STDs, maybe just yeast infection, but incidentally we also found a disgusting looking abscess on her mons pubis. I asked her if she had noticed it before, and she was like “when you’re this fat you can’t see much down there”. Heh…true I guess. Possibly staph infection.
- Then saw a 23 year old whose IUD had popped out a while ago and wanted to talk more about oral contraceptives. Actually, nothing too interesting with this patient, but as I rarely get to see women younger than 30 (my doc does only GYN now so its mainly menopausal women with things falling out of their vaginas. For serious, that’s what can happen when you get older…), a youngster was refreshing. Although the fact that she was younger than me and talking about sex was kinda weird, but I got over that quickly. You become desensitized to a lot of things in the medical world.
But yeah…southern Indiana farm country (that’s where most of the above patients came from), that’s where its at. Drugs, Medicaid, and obesity — you can practically write that on everyone’s chart. Bloomington is actually the largest hospital in practically a 2+ hour radius so we get all of those cases. Made for an interesting afternoon.
January 16, 2012
st. vitus trauma
Had our annual med school formal this weekend, titled St. Vitus Dance. This name is both apt and quite medically nerdy. When we looked up the etymology of the word last year, we found out that Saint Vitus is known as the patron saint of actors, dancers, and epileptics. Interestingly enough, there’s also a medical condition called St. Vitus dance (aka Sydenham chorea), one of the key diagnostic symptoms of rheumatic fever. I’m sure many people who observe modern-day dancing would say its not so far from an epileptic fit.
Anyway, not much to report on the dance itself. Sorry, no (good) pictures to prove I was actually there. Rather, all the excitement happened post-dance at the after party, and unfortunately at the ER. I heard this all second hand, as I was actually passed out (as in asleep, not blacked out) in the hotel room in an alcohol-induced stupor. So one of my friends JLC decided she wanted to ride the mechanical bull at the bar where the after party was taking place. (First of all, WHY would anyone decide to put a mechanical bull in a place where people are crazy drunk and bound to make poor decisions!??) She fell off, as everyone does, but in an attempt to hang on, she got smacked in the face by the bull. My other friend, ST, was there with her and thought she would be ok — no loss of consciousness, vision was ok, no obvious signs of damage. But head trauma can be pretty serious, so they went to the ER anyway. On CT, they found she had fractured THREE facial bones! And there was blood in her maxillary sinus. That’s serious stuff for real. When the rest of us heard about it, we were of course super worried, but I think we show our stripes as med students by the fact that after we finished our chorus of “omg, will she be ok??”, our next question was “so which bones did she break??” Like I even remember all the bones in the face…pshhh. Plus, I can only imagine the almost farcical situation of a group of medical students hobbling into the ER of the hospital where WE will be taking care of patients next year, with the chief complaint that one of said med students got smashed in the face by a bull while drunk at the med school formal. What’s that they say about first impressions? Oops… Oh dear future colleagues, please don’t hold this against us.
So, lesson learned from this situation: don’t ride a mechanical bull. Or if one must, at least do it sober.
January 13, 2012
bend over, elbows on the table
That’s what they say when you get a prostate exam done. And I got to do one today! First time getting my finger near that part of the anatomy, but it was pretty neat as one guy had prostate cancer and the bump(s) are quite obvious. I felt bad for the poor guys who had to have 18 fumbling medical students poke around their bums, but supremely grateful for people who are willing to contribute to our education like this.
January 10, 2012
I’ve noticed I’ve become more inclined to curse now. I don’t think its necessarily because people around me do it all the time (although that may be part of it), rather some of my feelings just seem more properly conveyed with that vocabulary. Example: previous post title “stuff is getting real” just doesn’t have the same effect or convey the same level of exasperation/trepidation as “shit is getting real”. Right? Not using this as a defense of cursing, just noting an observation.
stuff is getting real
We had a third year come talk to us tonight about what to expect/how to schedule for next year. What with being so excited to leave book studying behind me, I guess I never thought about how tough 3rd year would be physically. The girl who talked to us said that for her surgery rotation, her work days were 4am to 9:30pm!!!! Six days a week!!! OH. EM. GEE. That’s like banking hours, maybe even worse than banking hours. I get incredible lower back pain if I stand for too long, so I scared to think how my body is going to take this next year. Plus, I never even pulled an all nighter in college, so I don’t know how I’m going to handle the 24 hour shifts+calls. Holy crap…I hope I’m not constantly stress-sick next year.
Still super excited inspite of this though.
January 6, 2012
I got my hair cut yesterday because it was in serious need of a good trim. I’ve never had really good luck with stylists before so I tend to bounce around to different salons trying people out. The ONLY time I felt like I had finally found someone I trusted with my hair was the end of this summer in New York…but of course I was leaving the city so that relationship didn’t even get off the ground. And really, finding your own stylist is like finding a good husband — its hard!! So I went this nice salon in Bloomington, thinking that part of my problem before was that I was too cheap to pay for a good haircut. But after forking over the most money I’ve ever paid for a cut, and with an Asian stylist too (I don’t trust white people with my hair…its not a racist thing, Asian hair is just different), the result it that I look like a hermaphroditic Asian FOB. SHE CUT MY BANGS TOO SHORT. I wanted side bangs, the kind that sort of hides your eyes but you can tuck behind your ear, but instead they’re like ACTUAL bangs. I used to wonder what I’d look like with bangs, and now I know…not flattering at all. I really look like a boy. Especially since she thinned out the bottom too so it looks more full in the top than bottom. I have never been so annoyed after a haircut…. I’m almost desperate enough to go back to New York to see Edison (he’s my love at first sight stylist).
Oh, and we have our med school formal next weekend so now I have to figure out how to salvage my hair. Was just going to leave it down but now I’ll just look retarded. Greaaaat…
January 2, 2012
semester recap
Happy New Year!
I realize it’s been a while since I’ve had anything to say about my life. It’s not that it’s boring, per se, but the monotony does overwhelm me sometimes. At any rate, I thought I’d look back on this semester and attempt to draw out any conclusions/reflections that might be found before I forget it all. And truly, my brain is so stuffed I feel like things might be pouring out of my ears by now.
This semester kicked off with our annual boat trip on Lake Monroe, which is less than a 30 minute drive from Bloomington. It’s actually quite beautiful out there, an adjective I never would have thought to associate with Indiana 4 years ago, but age and maybe a teensy amount of experience has helped me appreciate things I didn’t in high school. The boat trip is our last hurrah before classes consume us with a vengeance, a time for the 1st years to bond by getting disgustingly drunk together and for the 2nd years to reconnect after a summer apart. It happened to be a beautiful sunny day and a good time was had by all, both drunk and sober. One hiccup involved a pair of impertinent 1st years who, probably after one beer too many, asked me if my boobs were real. I wasn’t sure if I should have been flattered or outraged. But as they probably didn’t even remember the exchange the next morning, I let it pass.
A pic of my friends and I prior to leaving for the boat trip. Notice how we’re not all Asian!
Now that we’re on block schedule this year (4 weeks of classes + 1 week of tests), my life is divided into 5 week chunks. The first two weeks of each block involve various levels of slacking off, and the last two involve various levels of scrambling to catch up. Although as the semester progressed, more slacking off occurred with less effort to catch up. By finals, I was completely apathetic towards exams and spent probably a good amount of time lounging around in bed and watching TV. Thankfully, and perhaps semi-miraculously, I still did quite well on exams, so that is a blessing I won’t take for granted. And while I do know I possess the sin of laziness in abundance, the end of this semester was more than about merely not wanting to do the work. 2nd year has been hard, but not in the “omg I’m so stressed” kind of way. It’s more like after running 25 miles in a marathon (not that I ever have), you know you only have a little bit more to go, and usually the finish line inspires a burst of adrenaline and you can sprint the rest of the way. But then someone jumps out and says “just kidding!”, you have to run another 26 miles after that! And that knowledge of a much longer road ahead, even though you’ve covered so much distance already, just psychologically and physically drains you until all you want to do is walk the rest of the way. And unfortunately for me, a huge hill still looms ahead as well (ie. the boards), so I pray I will have the energy to sustain that journey. I guess this is why they say 2nd year is the hardest.
A few bright spots this semester have been my trips to Boston to see Derrick. It cuts into the monotony of school and I know I can look forward to a visit at the end of every 5 weeks. It’s been an adjustment for him to be back in school again, although a welcome change for me as he has more time and I have someone to commiserate about studying with. I think our time together is better told through pictures so:
This is Halloween. I was a butterfly and he was a butterfly catcher, hence the net. If I recall the net was the life of the party. I giggle every time I look at this set of pics.
HBS has a winter formal called Hollidazzle, so I jetted over to accompany Derrick. If we were sending out couple Christmas cards, this would’ve been the picture in it.
After both our respective finals were over, we flew out to Las Vegas with a bunch of his HBS friends for a mini-vacation. They’re all cool people and hanging out with them feels just a tiny bit like college again. This is our “mafia family” picture.
Plus, we had an AMAZING view from our hotel balcony. We all stayed at the Cosmopolitan, which is a high rise built next to the Bellagio, and we had a magnificent view of the fountains. Absolutely unbeatable.
On the issue of relationships, medical school has not been kind to many people in our class. Most of my classmates who started 1st year with a significant other have all broken up by now, including a couple who had been engaged! I’m not sure if its the nature of med school itself, or other unrelated issues, that is the cause of all this. But med school for sure does not make being in a relationship easy, what with all the time we need to devote to our textbooks rather than people. The time required to invest in our studies (and future) unfortunately regulates social relationships to the back burner, and I imagine this can’t be healthy. This makes me ironically thankful (and I’ve thought many times how blessed I am and how God does provide in the strangest ways) for having a long distance relationship. We’re fortunate that we don’t have to deal with the huge issue that plagues couples who lead super-busy lives: “you’re not spending enough time with me!” So I’m thankful for this season apart (not that long-distance is easy…there are so many challenges that are simply different), but it’s also a season who’s end I look forward to.
I began typing this post in 2011, now finishing it in 2012. The arrival of a new year no longer seems as momentous as it used to be. But the celebratory marking of the passage of time reminds me to reflect, and look ahead. And every year, my heart is burdened and I am reminded of how I’ve stumbled in my spiritual life in the past year, but without fail, I feel God calling me back to him. It is strange how God’s voice speaks to me the loudest during this time, but perhaps it’s because my conscience is turned inward and the clamoring outside has quieted for a short time. Ecclesiastes always comes to mind too (a book I love for its depth and mystery): life, and the passing of time, is all meaningless if the heart is not seeking after God. How thankful I am that I can be reminded of this every year! There is so much to look forward to in 2012 (foremost in my mind is the end of 2nd year and beginning of clinicals). I know I say this all the time, but I do hope to blog more regularly. I realize as I get farther (in time) from college, the easiest way to maintain continuity with friends is through blogging. Thank you! to my friends who allow me to live life with you in this way.
September 29, 2011
heart stuff
For my med school friends/aspiring med students/ppl who appreciate nerdy videos:
(we’re doing cardiology right now and it’s super confusing. but this is fun 
no sound though)
(Explanation for people who might be confused: his arms are the atria and legs are the ventricles)
September 7, 2011
funny but sadly true
The Oatmeal’s “What we should have been taught in our senior year of high school”
August 28, 2011
“the box”
I watched the movie “The Box” tonight with some of my friends, thinking it’d be a nice pseudo-action/intriguing film to finish off Saturday night. Instead, I walked away thoroughly perplexed and yet more intellectually satisfied that I have been in a long time. The premise of the movie is that a couple wakes up one day to find a package sitting on their doorstep, containing a button. They learn that they can press the button and get one million dollars, but in exchange, someone they don’t know will die. When we were watching, we were asking each other: would you do it? And even after a time of hemming and hawing, we invariably said we probably would. Would you? It’s in interesting question that has deep implications, especially if you watch the rest of the movie.
I want to write down some of my thoughts after watching it, so this may contain SPOILERS. If you don’t want to know what happens, stop reading here. If you want to know the plot, go read the synposis on Wiki, it’s pretty thorough. In a nutshell though: Norma and Arthur press the button, and a series of frightening events culminates in a second ultimatum. Their son Walter is now blind and deaf — they can choose to do nothing, keep the million dollars and live life with their disabled child, or Arthur can kill Norma and Walter will regain sight and hearing. Arthur pulls the trigger, right after another couple somewhere else presses the button…
Essentially, the movie is utterly confusing until somewhere around the end, when you’re like “OH I get it…” and then a few seconds later….”wait, what??” So of course, we googled for an explanation and found a great essay that highlighted the philosophical undertones of the movie. The full essay is here. Here’s an excerpt:
While it may see that The Box explores the question of what makes us worthy of everlasting life, The Box could be an existentialist, science fiction morality tale that, like Sartre’s No Exit, merely illustrates, not a future purgatory, but a present kind of purgatory that permits us to change and escape the box. Solomon and Higgins describe Sartre’s view that the human being can always change: “We are always striving to define ourselves, but we are always an ‘open question,’ a self not yet made” (281). In The Box, Norma is not in hell—she is in purgatory, still an ‘open question,” a person who has the possibility to change and create a better self. The Box is probably not concerned with God, aliens, or literal heavens, hells, and purgatories. In a true existentialist fashion, it is about the free choices we make, the seeming inescapable consequences of those choices, and the hope that there may yet be an exit from the hells or purgatories we have created for ourselves. Satre’s view was that we don’t need a God to give us moral standards. Likewise, he didn’t think we need a literal hell or demons to torture us. We make our own hells and torture ourselves. We don’t need a Mr. Steward to present a moral test for us. In many ways, we contemplate pushing the button every day by the selfish choices we make.
But the moral lesson taught by Steward is twisted an perverted at best. In the end, Norma chooses to sacrifice her life for the well-being of her son. Arthur must commit a truly selfless act by murdering his own wife and facing life imprisonment so that his son may have a good life. But it is just here that The Box falls apart as an existentialist morality tale. At first we may think that Norma has truly learned to behave altruistically by sacrificing herself for the good of her son. But how do we know that Norma is really motivated by altruism? How do we know that she is not motivated by a self-pity caused by an overwhelming sense of guilt? Perhaps her willingness to die is just a form of suicide caused by a selfish desire to escape more suffering. After all, if she doesn’t choose to die, she will have to face her husband and her blind and deaf son, knowing that she was responsible for their unhappiness and suffering. Like the three characters in No Exit, Norma would endure the hell of being defined by her husband and son as a selfish mother who not only was responsible for her son’s affliction, but also unwilling to do what was necessary to give him a normal life. Does Steward really cause Norma to act altruistically?
Before Norma decides to sacrifice herself for the good of her son, she asks Steward if she can be forgiven for pushing the button which caused the death of another person. Steward says that he doesn’t know, but reminds her of how important the concept of freedom was to Sartre, one of her favorites. Steward implies that Norma can still act freely and do the right thing. But is Norma acting freely, or has she been manipulated into a decision where she feels she has no other option. Here is another place where the film seems to fail as an existential parable. In existentialism, the “authentic” person is one who creates his/her own morality without the influence of outside, objective standards. Describing Sartre’s view of the freedom of the individual, Bryan Magee writes, “In a Godless world, he [Sartre] said, we have no alternative but to choose, and in that sense create, our own values…. Many people find this freedom and this responsibility too terrifying to face, so they run away from it by pretending that they are bound by already existing norms and rules” (217). Yet, Norma allows Steward and his own standard of altruism to define not only her, but the rest of the human race as well. Reminiscent of Klatu’s speech in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), earth faces extinction if its people do not exhibit his Steward’s definition of altruism. Steward, as an almost godlike figure, is imposing his values on the human race and manipulating the events of their lives to leave them “no exit” if they do not conform to his standards, which is more an existentialist hell than a solution to our problems.
My friends and I had along discussion afterward about whether Norma (the wife) truly committed an altruistic act by sacrificing herself for her son. My thoughts: isn’t is just a way to escape the consequences of her actions? After all, if she dies she isn’t the one who will ultimately suffer, but rather her husband who has to live with the guilt of killing her for the rest of his life. Do we escape the consequences of our actions by deluding ourselves into thinking that we’re actually being selfless? Is any act an act of true altruism? Can we just say that it’s human nature (or nature in general) to be selfish? After all, even supposedly altruistic animals (ie. eusocial creatures like the naked mole rat and bees) are really not truly selfless, since they give up their own reproductive rights in order to better further the survival of their genes/species as a whole. In nature, its all about evolutionary fitness, meaning the ability to pass on your genes to the next generation. Isn’t that what Norma was doing too…her sacrifice allowed her son to become whole again so that her legacy would live on through him. It’s so interesting because this can be interpreted on so many levels: biological, philosophical, spiritual…
And in light of the spiritual components of this movie, I couldn’t help thinking that one of the ramifications of watching it was that it ultimately forces you to look at the state of your own depravity. Going back to that question we asked ourselves: would you push the button?… I said yes (as did everyone else), and the rest of the movie proceeds to bash you over the head with “look! this is what happens when you make a selfish decision!!!” And at the end, I stared into the face of my own sin and I’m terrified by what I (think) am capable of. When people used to say “oh, I feel so anguished by my sin…I feel the weight of it and see the evil inside me”, I never really got what that meant before. But I felt it tonight–not so much a single act of sin but rather the potential of sinfulness inside me, the ability to harm and hurt by my smallest acts and decisions. And it was scary. But one thing the movie failed to catch in all its existentialist glory, was that we do not live in a God-less world…we don’t need to create our own morality — in fact, we can’t. (The whole point being, if we did, the movie would be an accurate depiction of our lives.) We have Truth, we have absolutes, and ultimately there is forgiveness for our sins.
I don’t think I’m accurately translating what I’m thinking onto paper, so sorry if this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense…somehow I wish I could just plop my brain down into word form. But basically, I just saying that The Box was a surprisingly terrific movie and I had the best intellectual stimulation/conversation since I left Princeton.
