Book review

This is cross-posted from Goodreads.  I finished "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" yesterday, and it was a book that gave me a lot to think about.  Please enjoy.

This was a really interesting book that we read for a med school book club.  The main idea here is the huge cultural divide between the Hmong people's paradigm and that of Western medicine.  Fadiman dispenses a lot of information about the history of the Hmong people, their beliefs, and their difficulty adjusting to life in the US.  Interwoven through this is the sad story of Lia Lee, an epileptic child caught in the space between these two worlds.

Lia's parents view her disease as something spiritual--her spirit is caught away during her epileptic episodes.  The doctors view it as a storm of electrical activity in her brain.  Both sides have different ideas about how she should be treated, but communication between the groups (and even more so, understanding) is exceptionally difficult.  There is no shared language, and Lia's parents are illiterate.

What do you do when you are faced with a situation like this?  I felt extremely frustrated for and with both sides as I read this book, and I think the book presented more questions than answers.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it leaves a lot of thinking to be done (and some good discussions at book club).  Lia ends up a vegetable, but with parents who love and care for her in a very powerful way.  Tough stuff here.

When I was in Bolivia, I was told many things there by well-meaning people about how to maintain good health.  Their counsel included warnings about not sitting on a hot seat ("it will give you hot blood") and not sleeping with a fan blowing on you ("you'll get sick").  I did both of these things and was just fine (I wouldn't have slept at all otherwise).  Looking back, I laugh at some of the ideas they had and the consequences.  I can't laugh the same way about the consequences of Lia's parents' ideas.

One of the biggest things I will take from this book is the need to connect with the patients I work with over the coming decades.  If I don't understand them, everyone is in for a world of hurt.  My medical school has made a good effort to teach us patient-centered interviewing and care, which I think will be a helpful way to approach my interactions with patients and prevent situations like that of Lia.

I appreciated that the book was very balanced--it bashed neither the doctors or the Hmong people, and presented both sides as very invested in helping Lia, but with their own strengths and weaknesses.

This book was written almost 15 years ago, about a series of events almost 20 years ago.  I'm curious to know how the situation has changed in that time--I think it would be great if Fadiman wrote a follow-up article or book.

Rating: R, for language (3 or so F-words, little else).

Brilliant idea

Saw this a while ago online.  It's fake food that looks like it has spilled.  Perfect for saving your seat!  Where would you use yours?

h/t to Gizmodo and Jeremy's Place

Cuttin' for the very first time

We began anatomy this week, and unlike the class at my undergrad, we get to do the dissections ourselves.  Each group of 8 medical students is in charge of one cadaver, and we learn everything from them--starting with surface anatomy and working all the way down to the deepest muscles and skeleton.

Medical school usually begins with anatomy because that is the foundation for all of the rest of the knowledge that follows.  The donors who gave us their bodies have facilitated this for us, and it's a humbling thing to dissect another human body.  We learned a little about each of our donors (age at death, what they did for a living, family members who survived them), and their initials.

*This paragraph deals more directly with dissection.  I've tried to keep it from being terribly graphic, but this is a warning for those who don't want to read it*
Our donor was a female, and we began by making t-incisions in her back.  The first step is removal of the skin and the tissues directly below it--this process is called flaying, and is one of the few parts of dissection that involve a scalpel.  You pull on the corner of the skin, and use the scalpel to cut the connective tissue that attaches the skin to the muscle below.  Most of the rest of dissection is called "blunt dissection", and is done with a blunt metal probe, scissors, and your fingers.

We follow particular instructions, found in a book called Grant's Dissector.  We dissect MWF, with four of the eight people in our group being there and doing the dissecting.  We rotate through on a two on, two off basis, which is done in such a way that on any given day, two people who are there were present at the previous dissection.  This helps keep continuity, which is useful.

By the end of next week, we'll have worked our way down the arms and to the hand.  Pretty neat stuff.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask!  Also, there are videos on Youtube (search "human dissection") that you can view if you're interested in seeing what the process looks like.  Because it's not the sort of thing that you want little Timmy to stumble on, it requires that you have a Youtube site login to view them.  By the way, it's not a gory process, as bodily fluids have been replaced with formaldehyde and other preservatives.

Incepcion

On Saturday Jess and I went to see Inception, and it was awesome.  Probably one of my favorite movies that I've seen in a while.  Seriously, if you haven't seen it yet, go do so.  It was a pretty clean action movie with some very interesting themes (and I double-checked at kids-in-mind.com to make sure I was remembering things right).

We tried out a new theater called the Movie Tavern.  Not only do they sell a $5 ticket anytime if you show a student ID, they sell food during the movie (in a very unobtrusive way).  As we were there to celebrate my recent white coat ceremony, we partook of food and drink.  Jess had a tasty panini, and I got some chicken sliders.  I don't know why these share a name with the abomination from White Castle, but they were pretty darn amazing, and one of the cheapest things on the menu.  It was a great experience.

After the show, I happened to see this mashup of Dora the Explorer and Inception, and I loved it (plus, the little girl is adorable).  So now I'm sharing the love with you.  Please enjoy.



Can you say "buuurrrrrmmp"?

White Coat Ceremony

First thing first.  I was able to get the parking ticket situation resolved.  An email came out on Thursday telling us what to do (I wasn't the only one who got a ticket).  It was simply a matter of going to the Traffic and Parking office and paying $5 for a "day pass" for the day before.  While I was a little bugged, I was much happier to pay $5 than $50.  But I've still got a lot to figure out about parking at / around the university.  One of the only things that I don't like.  Now on to more ceremonial things.

Monday afternoon, Jess and I headed over to the student union building.  It's a new building, finished earlier this year, and it's really pretty nice.  The ceremony was held in one of the ballrooms upstairs.

Pretty stuff hanging from ceiling of the ballroom

Nearly all of the 200 or so new students were there, many with members of their family present (probably more than had RSVP'd, because there weren't enough seats for everybody).

There we are, before all the action started.

I could actually see Jess taking the picture, thus my smile at the camera.

We then heard from some of the higher-ups at the med school, several of whom shared some nice things about what it means to be a doctor, and the symbolism of the white coat (integrity, trust, etc).  After the speeches were done, we were called up row by row to receive our new short white coats (you get a long one once you get your MD) that were embroidered with our names on them (very cool).

Your coat is placed on you by members of the administration, and several handshakes and "good luck"s and "you'll do great"s are given.  This was a cool ceremony and a cool milestone.  Unfortunately, it was also kind of boring, like a graduation ceremony.  So I'm glad that I don't have to do this too often.  After all of the hoopla, we shuffled over to another room where ice cream was provided and mingled for a bit.  We snapped a few pictures on our way out, and then I hung up my coat in my closet when we got home because, as far as I know, I probably won't be wearing for two more years when I begin my clinical rotations.  But it's still spiffy.

Also, here's an official news post about it from the College of Medicine.

Orientation: Complete

This week I officially began my journey to become a doctor.  Orientation ran from Monday until today, and while med school orientation may seem like a really exciting thing, it turns out that it's really not much different from any other orientation / beginning of college or high school classes.  Yup, you sit on your duff for several hours each day, learning about policies and procedures.  Including the amazingly complicated academic status colors (at least 20 minutes on this stuff--it should have been more like 5: "Green is good.  We'll email you if it changes, look to see what the change is and what we need to do about it." Was that so hard?).

Fortunately my expectations of hundreds of inane, too-specific (that is NOT B-roll) questions asked by former pre-med students went unfulfilled.  It was the pre-med part that worried me (because pre-med students in general are anal), but the "former" part that saved the day.  This was good.

My whining aside, I'm pretty excited for what's ahead.  I've met a lot of great people, and this should be a great class to study and have fun with.  Anatomy begins on Monday, and in order to learn about the human body, we have the privilege of taking one apart.  Pretty awesome.  More to come on that next Wednesday.
Monday afternoon was the White Coat ceremony, probably one of the cooler moments of the week.  I'll probably post about that on Sunday.

And I got a parking ticket today... even though I followed the instructions for parking given to me by the orientation committee.  It's $50, so it's more than I can just shrug off.  I will appeal it tomorrow.  Keep your fingers crossed, gang.

Like Sands Through the Hourglass, This Was the Longest Day of Our Lives

We recently had the wonderful opportunity to return to Utah for my little sister's wedding.  This was made immensely more affordable (read: possible) by a good friend who had access to buddy passes with a particular airline.  Most emphatically, I do not want this post to come across as ungrateful.  We're so glad that we could use the passes and make it back for such a special occasion.  And the trip back home to Ohio was uneventful and worked out great, so no worries there.  However, the flight out to Utah was something that we'll probably never forget.  Here's why...

Highlights / summary:
- 22 hour day.
- Feet in all four time zones across the contiguous US in one day.
- Annoying televisions in most of the airports (turns out that most daytime tv really sucks--wait, I already knew this).
- Annoying people in some.
- A lot more people flying than expected, and thus:
- Lots of full flights with not enough room for everyone on standby.

We awoke at 4am eastern (that's 2am mountain time) to have time to finish packing before we began our epic journey.  We left the apartment at 5, and were at the airport around 5:30.  We drove ourselves, and some great friends were willing to come pick up our car (and us when we got home) so that we wouldn't have to pay $50 for a week of parking.  We split a tasty Chili's breakfast burrito at the airport (only $8!) right before boarding.  The first flight left Columbus for Chicago at 6:30, and we got on without any trouble.

Chicago was another story.  We spent most of the time running from gate to gate (fortunately, just once to another terminal and back), getting on the standby list of any flight heading west.  For the first couple hours, we were a little more selective because we wanted to fly to Denver, then to Salt Lake.  No dice.  So we kept trying, and would be standing next to a new gate every 20 minutes or so, listening and hoping that our names would be called.  Finally we were able to get on a flight to Omaha, Nebraska.

In Omaha, waiting for a flight.

The airport in Omaha was much smaller than the one in Chicago.  This was good because it wasn't so stinking crowded.  This was bad because there were far fewer flights leaving the city.  We arrived around 1pm central, and hoped to catch one of two flights around 2:30.  We split a Godfather's personal pan pizza for lunch (~$5, probably one of our better food deals at the airport--the other was Popeye's in Vegas) and waited until 5:30 when a flight was leaving for Phoenix, and another for Vegas.  During the wait, the tv droned on and on in the background, playing Days of their Lives, and a handful of other soap opera dreck that all looked the same.  Boo.  After sitting and waiting for a while, my legs needed some stretching.  I stood up and stretched various ways while reading my book, and this initiated a conversation with a nice old couple sitting across from us.  Apparently I was an odd sight.  Anyway, we lucked out and were able to board the one to Vegas.  After thanking the airline employee profusely, we hefted our carryons and got on the plane.

We arrived in Vegas around 6pm, with two more flights leaving for SL before morning.  We were unable to get on the flight at 6:55, so we started looking at our options. 1) We could rent a car and drive to SL, arriving probably around 2 or 3am.  Once we looked at pricing, though (~$200 plus gas for just one night), we changed our minds.  2) We could get a hotel room for the night for about $30 and then catch the 6am flight the next morning.  This was a pretty good option, but I didn't want to deal with shuttles and such.  Lazy, I know.  3) Have a sleepover at the airport!  What with the bouncing floor and noisy slot machines, it would have been a long night.  We hadn't finalized our decision by the time the next flight was boarding.

We sat, listening, but couldn't hear anything the gate agent was saying.  We could see that she was talking into the PA, but for the first time that day, we couldn't pick up what the agent had said.  So we hustled over to her to check and see if, just maybe, we had been called.  Sure enough, she had called our names twice and we hadn't heard a thing.  Lucky for us we checked.  So we got on the plane and Jess was lucky enough to babysit a 7 year old and 9 year old the whole flight home.

We arrived in SL, exhausted but happy, at about midnight.  My folks were kind enough to come pick us up (and we'd had a couple other offers from wonderful friends and family to do the same) and shuttle us back to their place where we crashed (in the sleeping sense, not the automobile sense).

So yeah, a rough day for flying, but we were grateful that we could do it on the cheap, and for all of the support that the buddy pass friend gave us throughout the day, helping us find the flights we needed and such.  And now we're really happy to be back home in Ohio.  Med school orientation begins tomorrow morning.  Here we go!

Likes and Dislikes

Likes:
- Being at home again.
- Huge thunderstorms.
- Going to the temple.
- The green-ness of Ohio.
- Having groceries in the fridge.

Dislikes:
- Cost of airport food.
- Seriously, airport food is freaking expensive.
- Being woken up by huge thunderstorms.
- Going from Mountain time to Eastern.
- The fact I always get a runny / stuffy nose whenever I fly.

Super Special Thursday Post!

Here it is!

Item the second:  some weeks ago, I went to a picnic dinner up the canyon with some family and a few friends.  We had some yummy rotisserie chicken, rolls, jello salad, etc.  After we ate, we did a little geocaching (and found the cache, because dad is so good at it) and walked past a small reservoir on our way back to our picnic site.  My brother and I had been looking for and collecting flat rocks for skipping on the water.  After we finished tossing our rocks, my dad proposed a competition (as he is prone to do).  Floating about 40 or 50 feet out on the water was a line of white pipes, which help block detritus from flowing down the spillway and continuing to wherever the water goes.  The challenge was to find five rocks and throw them at the floaters, and whoever hit the pipes would win.

Dad went first, slowly getting closer with each throw, but never quite getting there.  Then Jordan took his turn--his rocks landing just on either side of the floaters.  Jeff, a family friend, went next and hit the pipes with one of his tosses.  Then it was my turn.  I hit it with three of my five rocks, and ended up with the high score.  I was very proud of myself