Heartfelt images

"Heart match made in heaven"

Photography and digitally remastered

"Heart in the streets"

Photography

We have a little contest running in the Cardiovascular block to take photographs of things that are a literal representation of the heart or anything related to things we learned in lecture such as ECGs and heart defects. I put it two submissoins. Here they are. Crossed fingers. There's a Litmann stethescope as the prize for best photo. The first one is a picture of a Tundra swan I took during my days volunteering at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre of BC. I used photoshop to mirror the image and also played around with the colour curves to add a touch of vintage to it. The two images come together perfectly to form a heart shape in the middle. The second photo I took in Chinatown Vancouver at night when I realized the parking meter casted a heart shape shadow on the sidewalk.

Coronary Coincidence

We're in the Cardiovascular block now and I was just listening to a lecture on risk factors for atherosclerosis. The prof had a quick mention about a 40 yr old male who died of a heart attack during an innocent game of hockey. He said that this could only most likely be possible at that age if the patient had a genetic predisposition to accumulating high LDL (the bad cholesterol) in his blood and therefore had greater risk for developing lipid plaques and calcifications along his coronary arteries leading to a blockage in blood flow to the heart. Myocardial infarction can lead to a heart attack. I was sitting and listening and I remembered that about 3 yrs old, my Grade 6 teacher Mr. G (as we would all call him) died playing hockey one night with his friends. They were playing late at night and no one could resuscitate him in time. Mr. G was my favourite teacher of all time. He can say with great certainty that it was him who inspired me to really love learning. That it could be fun. His favourite saying would be "it's something like a phenomenon" (this was a hit song back in the day on the radio).

Olympic Break and personal update

We were very lucky as a class to have 2 weeks off in February to accomodate the 2010 Winter Olympic Games right here in beautiful Vancouver city. All the upper years were quite envious of our time off as they only had a long weekend at most for a spring break. We actually only had 1 real week off as we had online podcast of lectures and self-directed learning during the 1st week off. I had good times with my friends going around the city visiting the many olympic venues and attending free concerts. I've never seen that many people on the streets of Vancouver before in my life. The skytrains were packed and I even had to wait in line to get on a skytrain one night. I never felt more proud to be Canadian. Random people would burst out singing the Canadian anthem everywhere, in the streets, the pubs, the skytrain. The olympic break could not end any better with a fairy tale ending with the men's hockey Team Canada scoring in OT with Sidney Crosby and beating out Team USA 3-2. Team USA tied it up in the last minute of play in the 3rd period. Couldn't have been anymore suspenseful. One thing that was interesting was the protest that happened downtown to give Muk Muk (the official sidekick of the olympics who is a Marmot from Vancouver Island) official Mascot status for the games among Miga, Quatchi and Sumi. Aside from such frivilous protest, there were also the expected protest from anti-olympic organizations and the gestalt of others who used the international olympic coverage to gain awareness for their cause. Some of these protests got quite violent and many shops had their glass windows smashed.

So far, we are now into our 3rd week in the Cardiovascular block. I'm struggling a bit to readjust to a quicker learning pace and I'm finding it hard to dig up time in the day to do work, especially when I'm dead tired by the time I get home from school. This week, I spent 5 hrs interviewing a Rett Syndrome patient and her mother at their home. This is for our DPAS project to enable us to gain a stronger appreication for the difficulties and challenges that peoples with disabilities have in trying to live a normal life as possible and also navigating the healthcare system. Rett Syndrome is an early neurodevelopment disorder that leaves the patient unable to function normally in terms of physical movement as well as normal communication. It is a serious condition that requires very supportive and ongoing care either from family or care givers. I need to write a report at the end to describe what I had learned. After the interview, I can say that I don't feel as persoanlly uncomfortable to approach the disabled in the public as my perception has changed for those living with disabilities. I also understand the importance of my role as a doctor to consider the hardships of those living with disability and to recognize that my credibility and societal position has a doctor enables me to have an important influence on improving policy to help disabled persons advocating on their behalf. I will tell you more about what I've learned from the interview after I actually get my report done.

Dr. Trevor Corneil, a member of UBC Faculty of Medicine and a family doctor gave a talk educating us about what we should be thinking about with regard to career planning. I would say that it was quite useful hearing about the things that usually get swept under the rug unless you shake the answer out of the right person. It was good to know that 95% of us will match with the residency speciality of our choice. 1/3 of us will be family physicians. 2/3 of us will be leaving BC to other provinces for our residency. It was shocking to me that now that we've made it into medical school, the next 10 years of our lives will be dictated for us in terms of where we go. We really have no say in terms of where we want to be geographically. We just choose our speciality and let that take us wherever that may be. If I'm out of BC, the next place I'd want to be would be Toronto. I prefer living in big cities. The bonus if I were in Toronto would be that New York City would just a drive away. I've never been there, but it's one of the places I've recently developed a strong urge to visit. It's the wealth of culture and history that's concentrated there that attracts me the most, especially the many stories of 1st immigrant families that had to struggle to make it in the big city. I've been listening to classic songs like "New York State of Mind" -by Billy Joel and "New York New York" by Frank Sinatra. I love the phrase "If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere." It's just a very uplifting and optimistic phrase that embodies the constant struggle to be successful. Right now, I'm just wondering if there's a possiblity that I can do part of training or practice in New York one day.

I recently bought some sketching pencils, acrylic paint and some paper at an arts supply store on Granville Island. I'm going to start doodling away now. I'm also playing with my new iTouch now. I couldn't afford to own an iPhone so I'm doing away with the Touch. I can take my rap music wherever I go now. Before I forget, I also did something really cool over the break. I got the opportunity to shadow Dr. Raval, an colorectal surgeon at St. Paul's Hospital. I followed him for 3 days doing colonoscopies, in and out-patient rounds and colorectal surgery in the OR. One of the hardest things to do as a general surgeon at least for me from this experience is the intense amount of thinking on your feet that you have to do. And I mean that literally, standing for 8 hours straight with barely a break in between surgeries and having to figure your way thru a successful operation. I got to srub in, stick my hands into someone's abdomen, give the patient an anaesthetic, learned what a stoma was and felt a 3 cm rectal tumour (and in the process almost stuck my hand into the wrong hole - very embarassing but the senior surgeon almost did the same thing with a pipe much larger than my fingers). I learned that surgery is hard work and it felt like the long work days stacking cans and ringing customers in at my summer jobs, except this time I couldn't be mindless. I had to be 100% concentrated in the mind, despite the physical strain of doing the procedure. Dr. Raval glanced over at me during the surgery and said "Hard work, eh?" I went home and took a very very long nap.

Release

Today we had all the video presentations for DPAS run for guessing the microbes. A lot of the videos were really funny and I know I can always count on my colleagues to make me laugh. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. We've developed a lot of inside jokes as a class over the short period of time since we started school together. Mocking medical incompetency among our fellow dental students. Making fun of the students at the Northern Medical Program for always asking whether the lecture notes would be posted on Medicol (our online learning centre) when the lecture notes clearly should be there for all of us. Impersonate many of the professors and their inidividual personalities which have become cliches among medical students. I'm glad a lot of my classmates enjoyed my little verse in our rap.

I also released a lot of personal issues out of myself today. These past couple years have been rough on me and I've kept all my emotions held up inside. I finally was put in a situation that forced me to lay it all out. Not a situation I wanted to be in, but it finally woke me up. All the negative emotions held up inside me was making me think irrationally and affected my actions. Actions, I thought I could never see myself doing and now I have to face the consequences. I'll take this as a lesson learnt, a mistake I'm glad I made early on in my career if I ever had to look back into the past to re-evaluate myself.

DPAS Microbe X Project

So as a project for the HDI block in our DPAS course, we have to film a skit, a song or poem to present to the whole class. Our team would encompass our tutorial members and there's 8 of us. Each team is given a microorganism and they have to try to explain/give hints as to what the organism is without actually mentioning the name anywhere. It's up to the rest of the class to guess our organism. I can't tell you which organism we did just yet. Secret.

We made a parody to Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise and changed all the lyrics to describe our bacterium. After 8 shots, we nailed it and had a running copy. It was really fun for all of us and we were quite pleased with ourselves afterwards. I personally love rap music. And who knew I could be a rapper vicariously through being a full-time med student. The best of both worlds.

Surrey Office Visit #2

I am seriously estatic that I have such a wonderful preceptor and Dr. Baker has failed to disappoint. I got to do my first breast exam today. It was a little awkward at first and it was hard for me to look the patient in the eyes while I was doing the exam, but I got over it quickly. They say a lot of guy med students find it hard to contain their sexual arousal upon being exposed to a random woman's breasts. I don't think it was a huge problem this time since the patient was quite old in age. I still don't know how I'll react, had the woman been younger.

I was also fortunate to use an ultrasound to find the heart beat of the fetus in a pregnant girl. It's just like using a metal detector to look for long lost treasure. Once you find something, the small hand-held doppler instrument makes a cool swooshy noise. I know, I get off on the silliest and most trivial things. I was also given the opportunity to preform cyrotherapy (using Nitrogen to freeze off flat warts) and partake in a minor surgical procedure to remove a papule for testing.

The experience that was most profound for me was helping with a 1st prenatal visit. I realized I had made a huge assumption at the beginning, that this girl came in with full anticipation and eagerness to support the baby. I was instead confronted with a 17 year old who only recently found out she was 21 weeks pregnant. I say to myself that I have nothing against teens getting pregnant as I understand everyone has their own prerogatives and issues. However, I was quite stunned and I didn't know exactly how emotionally involved or challenging my questions had to be with her. I've only met her for a few seconds now, she's very shy and closed off, so how can I possibly without knowing her just jump into asking her whether she wants to keep the baby or not. I'm sure this is a hard skill I will need to learn as a future physician and it's probably my role to ask these hard questions. I realized my utter lack in training and experience in this realm of medicine where I gotta deal with awkward situations. At the end of the day, I was glad my preceptor challenged me and asked me to hash out the feelings and emotions that were going on inside me while I was alone in the room interviewing her. I realized first hand how important it is for me as a future physician to analyze and understand my own reaction to such issues so I can properly respond in such situatins without being simply flabbergasted. Laying it all out on the table, I realized that I wasn't as comfortable personally as I thought with teens getting pregnant at such an early age despite personally knowing a very good friend of mine get his girlfriend pregnant in highschool and going through with the delivery. I guess it's different when you're only a bystander watching things like these happen. Once you're the physician, you're thrown right into the whole thing. I defintely found the conversation to be awkward, the girl was very closed off with her body language (no eye contact, flat expression) and one-worded close-ended responses. A tough day for me and I know it must be even tougher for the patient. All-in-all a great experience for me.

HDI

Host Defence and Infection. With the new year ahead of us, we are no longer in PRIN (principles of human biology), but starting FMED. FMED is divied up into different 'blocks' varying in subject and length. I'm beginning to realize just how much information I will have to commit to rote memorization from now on. You can't get by anymore just by understanding concepts. All this new information is important and we need to have it accessible in our heads for practicality in the profession. I'm lacking the motivation to study and commit things to memory on the spot. Usually, I just read over something, understand it and save it for memorization later. I don't think it's gonna run the way I want it to anymore unfortunately. I definitely find that the faculty hasn't done a great job in organizing the lecture material and notes for us. The handouts for each lecture are not in the correct order, final revisions always need to be made on learning objectives and lecture notes are not all made ready for us prior. I guess the disorganization stems from the fact that we're in more specialized subject matters now and changes are more frequent due to changing material and lecturers from previous years. But I would imagine that they would have discovered how to manage this by now after so many years the medical school has been running.

Spent my weekend reading in a library. How boring. Common, I wasn't just reading lecture notes. Who do you take me for? For some reason, I find it a lot more motivating to read liesure books when I'm surrounded by lots of books and random people reading them. I'm sore all over from getting back into kung-fu. Went for a run today to keep the cardio up. A morning with extreme winds and rain. Sun comes up in the afternoon. 11 degrees outside and wind settles. No need for a jacket. Very cool, but warm with the sun's rays just landing on me. Best feeling.