The Call

I got a "B" in Genetics and Gene Expression during Spring quarter, so I was happy to find out when checking my grades that I still made Dean's Honor List Spring 2016 (top 16% in my college), AND I managed to get an "A" in my final course of calculus EVER! Good riddance, calculus! I am still keeping the dream alive of being able to graduate "summa cum laude," but I would happily take magna, and above all will at least be earning "I gave it my all." I get reminded on occasion that I was the first person in our family to make it past organic chemistry in college, and there was a lot of crying when it was discovered that I not only passed, but got an "A". Anyways, maybe this is because I love school (evidenced by the fact that I've already purchased and started reading all of my Fall quarter books for fun [Latin especially!]), so it's not really been so terrible... the start of Fall quarter seems so impossibly far away!

This excitement of course is all balanced with some recent sobering health news about a close family member (details about which I will respectfully decline to share). And a humbling MCAT practice exam. Even though I've been reading all about surgery, and have done some time in the OR, the thing about medicine is that every procedure, no matter how "common" or "routine" to health professionals, is at once being experienced by a patient for the first time. "Recommended to neurosurgeon for consult" is not in the day-to-day vernacular of the average person, and this is precisely when doctoring is the most crucial: when your medical experience and training are second to your compassion, empathy, and ability to connect to someone who's has just received news that their life will never be the same.

This ties in with what has been keeping me awake the last few nights, thinking about my family member, and the question, "Why do you want to become a doctor?". A question every aspiring medical student should expect to answer, but one that for me does not come with an easy answer like, "my parents want me to," or "I've always wanted to be a doctor" (the two I hear most commonly).

One day I will be ready to talk about what it is that made me want to become a doctor in more detail, but for now, I can see the moment clearly, I can look back and see myself as if from above, disoriented, on a crisp foggy night, rummaging to unhook my bag as my phone rang, muffled.
"Emma..."
the pause,
"Emma, we need you to come to the hospital..."
I hear a shallow exhale buffeting against the phone in the silence,
"...are you sitting down?"

This was the first of many calls, which over the next few years would extract me straight from my youth and throw me at the feet of mortality. A grey world where for the first time in my life, I would hold the hand of someone I loved, helpless to do anything else while I watched them pass away.

Barbie, Doctor Barbie

Every time I go to Target, I rearrange the Barbie section. I put all of the doctors, nurses, veterinarians and dentist Barbies in front of the other Barbies. Usually there are a quite a few of them, but they had this new swimsuit collection out when I went today, and I only found three health professions Barbies to stage. Andrew says they must be out of doctors because my efforts have finally taken hold and the girls are buying all of them... I sure hope so. When my family buys Toys for Tots to donate for the holidays, I always shamelessly buy only health professions Barbies. They should bring back surgeon Barbie, but maybe put her in scrubs and not in a mini skirt this time...

Do Better

46 pages from the end of my current book, and today is my last day of calculus! I think something must be wrong with me because in between studying, and leisure reading, and making coffee, and crossfit (that's me down there), my brain somehow decided to look up 1-year master's programs. I'll have a year between undergrad and med school (at least), so maybe I could fit a master's in there. Who knows.

Reading Better has made me think very critically about a lot of issues that doctors face, which I hadn't fully extrapolated before. Malpractice and insurance battles. How to close the care gap between hospitals, and better statistically monitor programs and procedural successes. One of the classes I took last quarter at Davis was GDB 102: Disease Policy and Intervention. As a capstone course for my major (Global Disease Biology), this class involved an "exit interview"/friendly interrogation with our major professor, with material from any of our major courses as fair game for questioning. One question in particular that stuck with me from this class, this interview, and from my research proposal, is "How do you define success?". More specifically, my question was, "How would you have defined success for both the WHO and MSF during the 2014 Ebola outbreak?" This is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night. Look at the Millennium Development Goals from the WHO. Overarching world health goals like "eradicate extreme poverty and hunger", and "to reduce child mortality". WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?! Think about the logistics of reducing hunger: planning, funding, training and deployment of personnel, developing a program that is culturally sensitive and self-sustaining... I mean, the list of logistics goes on forever, and the devil is in the details, but I love and respect the level of planning that must go into these things. But in the end, really, how do you define success for something like this? Small, measurable goals? A program whose success can be sustained without outside intervention?

What it comes down to, as I think the point of the novel Better is, is how do we as individuals dedicate ourselves to the relentless determination required to solve these colossal problems? It is not so simple, and yet it is. Be diligent in the work that you do, and do not become complacent. Do not accept failure. But know when to accept that you yourself have nothing more to offer. This is not to accept defeat, but to know your limits, to know what is realistically achievable in the time given, to know the limits of the human body, to know the limits of medicine. And yet... what is realistic? What is time? What is medicine?

“All things are possible until they are proved impossible and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.”

This is what drives me every day. 

It got me through 3 marathons, multiple half marathons, it got me to return to school while working multiple miserable jobs full-time, and it is what convinces me that we can each do better, in every aspect of our lives.

Perhaps your dreams are daunting, perhaps the world is filled with disease and pain, but maybe it's your broken hands that can sustain the life of another. Maybe it is your compassion that will change things. Maybe you need to give yourself the chance to see if it is possible. But maybe this is only possible if you commit to doing better, in every aspect of your life. 

Speaking of better, I feel like this post could be better... but alas, one thing at a time! Ha! 

An Aspiring Surgeon's Notes on a Surgeon's Notes

Even though I am a notoriously slow reader, I managed to finish Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science in only three days. I have since started Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, a novel by the same author, and my love for UCDavis has really taken hold. In the first fifty or so pages, not one surgeon, doctor, public health intervention, or historical disease incident has been mentioned that I am not familiar with. Semmelweis? Of course! He's the guy who determined that childbed fever and subsequent maternal death came as a result of poor doctor hygiene (particularly, not washing hands between patients). In 1847, he stood by his hospital's sole handwashing station and intimidated doctors into washing their hands. Thus hospital hand-washing protocols were born. They also talk about polio interventions and "mop-up" vaccination programs in India. And Robert Liston, THE FASTEST KNIFE IN THE WEST END! This guy is a legend, and one of my favorite surgeons. Infamously amputated a leg in 2-1/2 minutes, and managed to somehow take 3 casualties in the process: the patient and an assistant died from gangrene as a result of the procedure, and another assistant in the room purportedly had a heart attack witnessing the blood-bath.  The first assistant got gangrene because Liston cut off his fingers by accident while trying to do the amputation so hastily. Liston was insane. Anyways, it's been a good Summer for books written by surgeons, and I only have two more days of calculus left!

Berbere On My Mind

At the beginning of Summer I started reading Cutting for Stone, and I finally finished it last week (the last two hundred pages of which I devoured in one sitting like an addict). The novel is about 700 pages, and in theory, most of my focus is on school right now, but the writing is so elegant, and the lives so immersive that it was really difficult to put down. The morning after I finished it, I found myself at the library looking for my next fix. That glorious day, I discovered section 617.092 of the dewey decimal system. Technology/Applied Sciences>Medicine> SURGERY! This section of the library is a gold mine! I got six books (Summertime and the living is easy) and am almost done with numero uno: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. In one part, Atul muses at a surgeon's conference and it makes me daydream about getting to play with new sutures and tools one day, as an experienced surgeon. Most of my Amazon Wish List at this point is just anatomy books, disease history books, dream microscopes and suture practice kits. Once you find something you love, it's hard not to be anxious to learn everything you possibly can. Stay hungry, stay foolish. 

Speaking of, last night, Andrew and I got Ethiopian food (most of Cutting for Stone is set in Addis and the food descriptions in the last section were making me salivate). I did some much-needed research on spice blends of Ethiopia and how to cook things like misir wot and injera. For someone who was once, and I guess always will be, a chef, part of the joy of eating is knowing how things were made. Dissecting dishes, nutritional anthropology, and the tangible nature of food are really what drew me to cooking. I guess in that respect surgery has its similarities.

Well, I have a weekend of reading and coffee to take advantage of... and one more week of calculus! Yeehaw!

Break on Through to the Other Side

I got a perfect score on my calculus midterm so I guess it went okay. HAHA! Crazy! Cancel the nonchalant, I was astounded and amazed!!! I put a lot of study time in, so I was happy to see that it paid off. Two more weeks until the end, and the countdown has begun! Actually, who am I kidding, I was counting down from day one of Summer Session.

Got kind of emotional at the UC Davis campus last weekend. I can't believe this is my school, and that I'm a senior. One more year and I'll be renting an overly priced cap and gown and walking in the hot, hot, hot Davis Summer sun to get my diploma. I have already mentally allocated all 7 of my graduation tickets: Parents, Sister, Boo, In-Law's, Best Friend. I will probably just cry uncontrollably the whole day. I'll be the first one in my immediate family to get their bachelor's, so I'm guessing there will be a lot of crying all around. It's been a long road, but I am starting to see the end of this chapter. Then I'm onward to bigger, more surgical, dreams.

Also, on a side note, if you enjoy watching/learning about surgical procedures, this site has a really superb video archive: Med Line Plus Surgery Videos. If you look under "Bones, Joints and Muscles" that's where all the orthopedic stuff is! Also this one: More Orthopedic Surgeries

P.S. I finally finished watching Friends!

Calculus Midterm?!

I know I've been completely MIA the last three weeks, but that is only because I am taking a 5-semester-unit calculus class in 6 weeks. I just spent the last few days writing out every question on the practice exam 4 times with different variations (see picture of my "desk" below).

That is how terrible at calculus I am. Anyways, professor changed the class format from multiple exams to just a midterm and a final, so no pressure, but if I don't do well on this exam I am screwed! As incentive to power through the maths, I have been watching Friends on Netflix between problems (you do what you gotta do!). I finally made it to season 10 and got to see the well-rumored reason why everyone started naming their kids Emma when I was in high school. I mean, it's a good, strong name for a feisty, independent, adventurous, and stubborn girl. I should know, I am one. MUAHAHA

Okay, just wanted to do a quick update... I'm off to take my midterm! WISH ME LUCK. Let's just not get bitten by a dog on the way or anything.