a few thoughts on thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving and the Tea Party

I think on a holiday such as thanksgiving it’s important to remember the origins and historical significance of the holiday, but also appreciate the modern implications.  I agree that it’s wonderful to have a day when people are encouraged to gather with their family and remember all the things in life they have to be thankful for.  But it always makes me a bit sad for all the reasons alluded to above.

This holiday season, i would like to not let all my free time be washed away by the torrent of commercialism, but rather focus on the things that really matter to me – my family & friends.  Instead of spending all my time scouring deal websites, i would like to get back to reading and painting and music.  And writing.

i met a nurse on my pediatrics rotation as a third year who said, regarding trick-or-treating, “oh no, i don’t let my kids do that.  i object to it in principle, and they understand.”  i think that was the first time i’ve ever heard a parent say that.  but really, what are we teaching kids in the celebration of halloween?  that good things in life come for free if you walk around and say “trick or treat?”  it’s not like thanksgiving or 4th of july where there’s some semblance of education about the “pilgrims and the indians” or colonial america… do kids learn to respect the dead?  certainly not…

what the holiday has become, far from it’s roots as a a day of recognition and appreciation (from what i understand), is an opportunity for parents to worry about how much sugar their children will be ingesting for the next few weeks, and for adults to display their masculinity (men) and flaunt their sexuality (women).  and to continuously come up with new ways to offend people.  (case in point: this year’s illegal alien costume.)

hold up, while we’re on that point: paris hilton honoring native women indian princesses

anyway – why is it that male costumes are usually celebrated masculine roles such as policeman, firefighter, superhero, etc.  and it seems like the only requisite for a successful a female costume is to be as slutty as possible.  really?  i mean we can look at it in a mate-finding, evolutionarily successful traits of the opposite sex sort of way, but even so i don’t think that’s any excuse.  sure, there’s always people who wax creative and spend time to create something that’s thought provoking and/or clever, but those are far and few between.

on halloween i was in the car driving somewhere down town and ended up in the lane next to a cop car, with two male cops inside, who were going about 3 mph with no cars in front of it so that they could check out a group of scantily clad teenage/college girls walking down the sidewalk.  it made me want to gag.

will i encourage my kids to celebrate halloween one day?  would i go so far as to prohibit them from celebrating it?  hmm…

i nearly had a breakdown the other day when i looked at my apartment and realized what a pigsty it had become.  without fail, every new year’s day i make a resolution to keep my living quarters clean – i’m drawn to spaces with light, warmth, organization, and a carefree, simple elegance.  such as the pictures above.  no clutter to be seen!  only flowers and glowing light.  the pictures are from a website, Freunde von Freunden which shows the environment of various creative geniuses.  similar to the selby project.

what’s the secret to keeping a place looking peacefully clean?  my apartment looked like that for approximately 3 days after i moved in.  then the coffee table was stacked with mail, papers accumulated on the desk, clothes became strewn on the couch, shoes inched their way from the entrance way into the living room.  and the kitchen is a completely different story.  i keep telling myself that for every thing that is brought out, i must put it back immediately where it came from as soon as i am through with it.  much easier said than done.  small spaces should be the best opportunity to lead a simple, minimalistic life, yet clutter never fails to find its way to my home.  i see some ferocious cleaning in the future…just in time for the holidays.

sigh.

i wish coffee could magically appear at my desk at around 3pm when i start falling asleep while doing questions.  it’s hard when you go at 8am to stake out your favorite spot and then feel hesitant to leave the whole day for fear that you will lose that spot. (i am crazy.)

when i study, i tend to spend about half the time surfing the internet.  usually this starts out as a “i’ll reward myself with 5 minutes of random surfing!” and the next thing you know, 25 links later, an hour has passed.  take tonight.  after a sense of accomplishment having just completed 40 questions, i looked at some fashion blogs and an hour later found myself at kathleen hanna‘s blog reliving the days when i used to listen to le tigre on repeat during my 1.5hr drive to the monkey lab.

p.s. – budgerigars i trust you can wiki (don’t own birds, they give you hypersensitivity pneumonitis), but if you see a kid who smells like boiled cabbage, apparently they may have tyrosinemia from hereditary fumarylacetoacetate hydrolase deficiency.  or, my theory – maybe they’re irish.

went to pilsen last night for “second friday,” a monthly event where a bunch of art galleries in the area open their doors to the public for free.  there was also an studio loft apartment building which i guess is mainly inhabited by artists, and individual apartments were open to the public.  i went almost more to see the loft spaces than the artwork – open white rooms with tall ceilings and old windows.  it was interesting to see how people organized the space – each person built a different arrangement for their bed/kitchen/work space, most often consisting of wood constructed to form a platform on which a bed sat.  seemed like hard work.  although in theory the idea appeals to me – having a big empty space that’s great for entertaining, open to your decorating whimsy, creating as big of a kitchen with as much counter space as you want, partitioning space with big bookshelves, etc., it also seems like really hard work.  and not having a walled off bedroom, call me old-fashioned, seems like it’d get old pretty quickly.  still, it was refreshing to see the different loft spaces.  the above picture was taken from the window of one particularly spacious and well-organized loft owned by a food photographer.  why do artists like to live in lofts?  i wonder.  we went to one loft owned by a painter.  it was a pretty cool space and the two-story walls were covered by his large canvases, but i think the most intriguing thing for me was a shelf that separated the “gallery space” from his work space which held large plastic bins with different labels: “underwear,” “sports underwear,” “nice shorts,” “athletic shirts,” etc.  there were about 6 bins total.  the guy was probably in his 50s.  he also had a corner desk with 4 large computer screens, which i think would’ve made any guy drool.  ah, the life of a bachelor artist.

2 posts in one week!  how you thought about THAT!

i glanced at some old posts after my last entry and realized that lest i change something quick, this blog will turn into a blog about my parents.  ha.

the picture above, believe it or not, was taken in it’s full color glory in 1909.  came across this website that features pictures taken in Russia around the turn of the century.  the photos are astounding in quality and it blows my mind that they were taken 100 years ago.  many look like they could’ve been taken today.   http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html

perhaps i’m in the mood for some visual stimulation because engagement photos are being taken today 0_0.  i can only hope that they turn out as timeless as the photos above.

it is the season of residency applications, and tis a crazy season indeed.  at this point, everything’s pretty much said and done (your grades, your clinical performance, your letters), etc., but while in reality this is when you have the least control, it feels like this is the time when every tiny thing you do matters.  the agonizing personal statement, the hours spent debating how many and which programs to apply to, how many hobbies to list in ERAS.  i will be happier once it is said and done and that final “submit” button has been clicked.

i think when i feel nervous or anxious or down, it helps to look at the big picture and keep things in perspective.  at this stage in my life, i feel very ill-equipped to handle “the world.”  i have yet to work a REAL job and make an actually salary.  i have been in school for the last 18 years of my life.  and all of a sudden i will be responsible for guarding people’s lives.  it’s quite a lot to take on.  this feels like the start of so many things, scary and exciting at the same time.  though intimidating, i am so damn lucky to have a start like this.

i think of my parents.  when they came to the states for graduate school, we lived in an apartment – a two bedroom with a brown shaggy carpet and someone else’s discarded sofa that sagged even when 7 year old me sat on it.  at the time, it felt like home.  my parents had a combined salary of $1,100 per month.  i remember getting roller skates for christmas one year and being so happy – even though they were about 1.5 sizes too big (so that they would last) and i outgrew them in a year.  i took piano lessons. i remember getting new back to school supplies – a notebook, black wool socks, markers.  only years later did i realize that it was from a place similar to the salvation army where low-income families could go to get things for free.  we got a turkey for thanksgiving from there one year.  later my mom told me that she felt so ashamed standing in line to get free food like that that she swore never to do it again.

now i worry whether our combined salary of likely close to $100,000 per year once we start residency will be enough to cover our expenses.  eating out a few times a week, cell phone plans with the data package (still haven’t splurged on that yet), 2 cars, etc…  sure we’ll have student loans, but we’ll already be making much more than most people in America.   much more than my parents when they were starting out – and they were able to provide a happy childhood for me.

in my application, as advised by a sample CV by the OME, i put “native chinese speaker.”  my mom called me and strongly urged me to not put that on my application.  or if i really wanted to, at least take out the native.  she stated that she didn’t want me to face the same discrimination that she did as an immigrant.  oh, reality.

one of my favorite covers of one of my favorite songs.

over one week of neuro sub-i complete…and i must say it’s reaffirming to feel like i happy and engaged at work, i’m semi-good at it, and pts for the most part appreciate what i’m doing.   what a relief.

last week one of my patients was transfered to the unit for respiratory distress.  i stopped by the ICU at the end of the day to see if his wife was there so I could check in and see how she/the patient was doing since she wasn’t there during the transfer.  I couldn’t find her, so i went back, packed my stuff together, and as I was walking out of the hospital, i spotted her in the ICU family waiting area.  she had tears in her eyes and was staring blankly at the TV.  i stopped, thought about going in, but felt out of place now that i was in my “civilian” clothes, carrying my lunch bag and my backpack, and there were other people in the waiting room.  i walked a bit down the hall, paused, turned back feeling like i should at least check in, stopped, and eventually went back and forth down the hall 3 times before i finally left (without saying hi).  did i do the right thing?  did i let my fear stand in the way of doing what i should’ve done?  i’m not sure.  i felt like i might  have intruded on a very private moment in a disrespectful manner had i walked in on my way out.  but i still think about it and wonder…

my mom is in in town for a conference and i had the chance to see her for a bit today, but sadly we’ll probably only get to spend a total of 6-7 hrs together before she leaves.  maybe that’s why i wanted to listen to that sonic youth song today – because i have distinct memories of my mom singing the carpenters growing up.  (apparently the carpenters were really big in China in the 80s.) for one of her birthdays one year i got her a CD of the carpenters love songs, and we would play that on repeat on road trips and my mom would prop her feet up on the dashboard in the passenger seat and sing along regardless of whether or not she knew all the words.  and my dad would say that she sounded better than karen carpenter.  in the midst of busy work days it’s sometimes easy to neglect my parents, but being reminded of their unconditional love makes me wish i lived closer to home so that i can take care of them as they get older.  as an only child, i know that they think and worry about me every day – and as time goes on i am learning how to think and care for them too.  to my parents, for continuing to show me how to love.

He was sparse with his words, but endlessly generous with his smile.  He stood in the back in patient rooms on rounds, only piping in toward the end to reassure the patient that everything would be ok, people have survived heart attacks to do just fine, including himself.  He had high expectations for the students: he gave us a multiple page handout on supraventricular tachycardias (a handout that was by then notorious amongst the residents and included rearrangements of the letters A, V, N, R, and T that I’d never seen before), and then the next morning asked us to walk through the answers.  It was clear by our mumbling that we had not adequately digested the concepts, so he sheepishly recommended a “great article” on UpToDate.  By the grin on his face, it was clear who the author was.  He expressed his sadness when our time on cardiology came to an end.  He didn’t want another team, he said.  And we didn’t want another attending.

A few months later, on a different rotation, my attending asked me, “did you hear about the horrible car accident the other day that killed a famous cardiologist at the U of C?”  I had not.  To my horror, I found out that that famous cardiologist was, of all people, my old attending.  He was stopped for a left turn and got hit from behind by a drunk teenager, propelling his car into oncoming traffic.  It was struck, burst into flames, and he was subsequently trapped in his flaming car.  And that’s how my attending died.

I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the insanity of it all.  Although I have interacted with patients who have subsequently passed, my attending was no bed-ridden end-stage cancer patient full of widespread metastases.  He was a national leader, my teacher, someone I had just seen carrying himself happily from room to room on his own two feet.  The impact of his sudden death was clearly felt throughout the medical community.  But what did I expect?  In my limited hospital experiences with death, the crying and grief-stricken family has always been ushered out of site during a code, or has disappeared with the patient as he or she faded from black to grey on the sign-out.  I never really saw or had time to feel the repercussions of death.  My own grandmother, of whom I only had vague recollections, died of cancer thousands of miles away on a different continent when I was in middle school.  I remember the house being sad, so I went outside and picked some wildflowers.  But no amount of wildflowers can take me my mind off of my attending being trapped inside a flaming car.  To say the least, Death, you have taught me not to take you lightly. To respect Death, as it turns out, is to celebrate Life.

When I went to the official university website reporting his death, I noticed that the picture they used was different from the one I had seen on the departmental website during my pre-rotation stalking.  In this picture, he was shown smiling in front of a bookcase (not vague cloudy skies), his eyes twinkling behind his slightly crooked glasses.  He looked as he might have if I had run into him in the hospital and he asked me, laughing, what I thought of that UpToDate article.  I’m glad they chose this picture.

on to more important things…

http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2010/20100611-arnsdorf.html

Dr. Arnsdorf was my attending on cardiology for one measly week, but made a lasting impression as an endlessly generous, kind-hearted, and devoted teacher and clinician.  i had heard in whispers hear and there that he was a “big deal” in cardiology, that he was one of the 50 some “masters” of cardiology nationwide and was a giant in the field.  i had no idea what a privilege it was to have worked with him for a week.  and to find that he passed away in a car accident – nay, was trapped in a flaming car after being struck from behind by a drunk driver – breaks my heart in more ways than i can describe.  every life is a precious one, and sometimes we forget that until we lose someone we know.  especially as doctors, seeing people die day in and day out, it’s easy to medicalize death.  but every person has a network of loved ones and people whose lives they’ve touched, just like Dr. Arnsdorf.  Dr. Arnsdorf just happens to have a particularly wide network due to his countless years of devotion to teaching and research.  i was certainly lucky beyond belief to have had the chance to interact with a man who was clearly so loved and well-respected, and i will never forget his humble smile and twinkling eyes.