Category: life

Sculptures that Provoke Thoughts and Emotions

When I visited Seoul a while back, a friend told me about Ron Mueck’s exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art during the time I was visiting. I’ve never heard of him until then, but a quick search tells me I shouldn’t miss it. For those who’re not familiar with him, Ron Mueck is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor known for his incredibly lifelike and emotionally evocative sculptures of the human figure.

What makes Mueck’s sculptures stand out is their astonishing realism combined with dramatic shifts in scale—his figures are either much larger or much smaller than life-size. He meticulously crafts every detail, from wrinkles and pores to subtle body language, creating a deeply intimate experience for the viewer. His works often explore universal human themes such as birth, aging, vulnerability, and mortality, inviting reflection and emotional engagement.

I was glad I went, despite the non-stop rain that day. Each and every piece shown at the exhibition were captivating in their own ways. Mueck created these figures that managed to reach out to the viewer and evoked emotions that are often times unsettling, gently prodding us to think about the deeper philosophical questions of life, death, and everything in between. I left the museum feeling both heavy-hearted and enriched. Here are some pictures from the exhibition to share. Captions are my own commentary.

So this is how being sick is like. What does one think about in their last moments of life? Does it hurt when we die? Do we turn into stardust and everything disappears?
Is that all there is?
Baby it’s us against the world.
The world is a harsh place to be sometimes. But you have me.
I’ll show you how to find optimism, in spite of all that surrounding us.
I wish… I could shut out the voices in my head.
Crossroads: Where do we go from here?
Mass (genocide). This… is happening right now. It hits a little too close to home.
How does it make you feel? What do you do about that, if anything?
Hard questions to ask, but better now than 10 years from now when it’s too late.
Are we friends, or are we foes?
Will I be your dinner tonight? Is there room for co-existence?
Is this still about us–chicken vs man?
We’re all wearing masks one way or another.
When the mask is laid down, what lies underneath?

I hope you’ll take away something from these 2D pictures. It’s not as real as the 3D sculptures at the museum, but if it makes you stop and think a little about the society we live in, the current events, our actions/reactions (or the lack thereof), if it makes you reflect or dig deeper about yourself, that’s something, isn’t it? That would be enough.

Memories of Pre-Covid ICU

Found this note deep in the Draft section. Didn’t post it then because the pain was still raw. And so I kept it contained. I’m good at that, hiding emotions so people can’t see, can’t tell. All is well- on the outside. Nobody knows what goes on beneath the smiles. But years have passed, and it’s long enough that I feel like I can share now. So here it is.

—

Every beep and blip means different things in the ICU. There’s the cardiac monitoring alarm that goes off when oxygen level drops; the tone gets lower and lower, it’s inversely proportionate to my heart rate. Then there’s the beep for blood pressure falling lower than what we’d like. And another one that indicates arrhythmia. The ventilator alarm- intimidating and authoritative, as it should be. The IV pump that got stuck- this one reminds me of a screeching mandrake, and gets me worked up no matter how calm I was before that. The door-is-not-closed alarm – equally annoying, which IMHO is intended to wake sleepy residents up during the hours-long rounds. The one alarm, that should be attention-grabbing, fear-mongering, that should be sending a sign of impending death, is surprisingly soft and gentle- the code blue alarm. Makes no sense at all. But just like life in the ICU, logical sense is a luxury that those contained in it cannot afford.

It takes some getting used to before all these blips somehow managed to mysteriously harmonize into a Chopin-like piece, where you could hear them in your dreams (and not in a nightmarish kind of way). You wake up, go to work, come home, bringing the tunes and everything in between, home with you, go through the motion of doing what you need to do to survive, pass out on the bed. Day break- rinse and repeat, like clockwork. It becomes a comfortable rhythm that you do not question much, just going with the flow, lest you fall in between the cracks and get stuck or get hurt. And yet, sometimes, try as you might to avoid pain, it has a way to find you. 

This woman was unlike the others I took care of. Instead of graying hair and wrinkled skin, she had what most who ended up in the ICU had wanted- youth. She embodied a full body, well groomed, and in all her 5′ 7” figure, it painted a picture of a woman living a rather good (or at least average) life. Painted nails, trimmed eyebrows, and pubic hair. Little did she know, that her life would take a huge turn that day. All the hopes and dreams a mother has for her child would dissipate in an instance. It was there one moment ago, and then all at once- not at all. Zilch. Death is coming for all of us. You just don’t know when. 

That morning she wasn’t feeling well. She didn’t look quite well. So Mom brought little Brian to pre-school. Maybe if she felt better later she’d go pick him up. It was just another day for everyone, and everyone got along their usual business. Coffee, newspapers, chores. By lunchtime, Mom decided to check on her.  Not in bed. Where could she have been? The black Mazda was still parked outside; view from the upstairs windows reassured Mom that she’s still at home. Unless the Boyfriend came to pick her up. She thought she’d check the bathroom, just in case. A mother’s instincts were never wrong. There. It was there that the worst nightmare a mother could ever imagine started unfolding. The body that lied on the cold hard tiles next to the toilet. Still as a statue.  

There was no telling how long she was ‘down’ for. But nothing was looking good for her.

I tiptoed around the young woman much younger than me, checking her ventilator settings, making sure all the tubes were connected and functioning properly, while her mother lamented to me about how young she was and how unfathomable that she was in this vegetative state when she was still ‘normal’ the day before all this happened. Was she aware that we’re here in the room with her? Could she hear us? By the definition of brain death, I guess not. Still, I wonder if her spirit was there with us. She had been on the vent for more than a week now, being kept alive because her family needed time to process what had happened. I can only imagine how hard it is for the family. It was hard even for me, a total stranger, who waited for her in the ER ready to carry out our responsibilities, performing life-saving tasks and administering medications. Alas, it doesn’t always work; sometimes we lose patients too. Inevitably.

Hers was a story of trusting the wrong person. No one really knew what happened; but the deduction from bloodwork and family’s story was that she took what was thought to be marijuana, but which was likely contaminated with some synthetic or impure ingredients that led to her demise. In the two weeks I was taking care of her, I’ve gotten to know her family. One woman introduced herself as my patient’s second mother, because she practically raised her. She asked a lot of good questions, questions I was much more comfortable answering, the technical questions. But when she asked whether she’d ever wake up… there’s just no good way to break bad news. No matter how many times you’ve done it, it is still hard. Yet the most tragic part of it was she was kept alive until nothing can be done anymore. Her blood pressure continued to drop despite being maxed out on all pressors, all the chemistry labs were incompatible with life. When that happened, no family was there with her. That to me was the saddest part.

I do not know if other residents or doctors think or feel the same. But I felt somewhat responsible for that, even though I know I had no reason to. I felt a twinge of failure- failure for not being able to convince or persuade the family to let her go, and say their final goodbyes together at bedside before sending her off. That pained me, in a way that I couldn’t really express or share with anyone. Perhaps that is why I still think about it even now.

Foot Note: Details and names from the story above were made up or changed to protect their privacy.

—

As clinicians, we have the tasks to not only take care of patients with our tools of trade, but also to take care of their family members. In some ways I’d argue that the latter is even more important and could have long-lasting impact in their lives. How you say, what you say, matters to the recipient, because it directly affects how they feel and think at that critical moment. The ability to do so is what sets a stellar clinician apart from the rest.

I wrote that piece 3 years ago, about 3 years after the incident had happened. I still think about my patient sometimes. Since then, there have been patients like her (though thankfully not all are tragic stories or with similar outcomes), who managed to etch themselves in my mind, where during the quiet lull of moments would resurface, and I would revisit them. It’s a good reunion, albeit only in my mental space.

The End of a Chapter

The days are long, but the years are short. I was just here three years ago; thought I was going to be around for a few more years, yet life has other plans for me. In less than a month, I’ll be moving on to a different city, for a different job.

Honestly didn’t expect to be leaving this place so soon. A part of me feels a little wistful; another part of me needs to get out to save myself. I’ve tried to talk myself out of it, telling myself that I need to stick to what I initially chose, that persevering is good. That this is grit, I have the will to power on, things will get better, and I will eventually look back and be glad that I stuck around. But at which point do we know that persisting is no longer ‘grit’, and that it is time to move on?

There is no right answer, but I think this is the right time for me to move on. I’ll be taking a break from primary care, and will return to practicing hospital medicine, at least for now. I will miss my patients, some of whom have grown on me so much that it saddens me so much to say goodbye. But, it is what it is. Everything comes to an end eventually. I’m just thankful we’ve had all this time together.

Not all is lost. I’ve learned a lot from my patients, and gained a handful of good friends along the way. And I’m sure I’ll be back to this place to visit. That’s all for now. Off to start packing!

A cute little breakfast spot in Dover-Foxcroft, ME- Peace, Love & Waffles.

2023 Year End Reflections

Sometimes life has a way of surprising you, throwing you rotten lemons at the speed of light, that you don’t even realize you got hit. This one hit me hard. For a while, the pain was so intense I almost lost sight of the big picture. I thought about whether to write about it here, but decided now is not the time to share. Perhaps one day, when the pain and trauma has subsided enough for me to talk and joke about it, I will write more.

What is the big picture, though? We, mere humans, Homo sapiens, this insignificant species in the ever-expanding universe (or multiverse)–what are we doing? We wake up, go to work, consume, excrete, sleep, repeat. Some days I do wonder if any of what we do matters at all. But such thoughts are too depressing, so I try not to go there. Yet these days, I find myself thinking a lot about existential questions as such: Is this all there is? What is there to look forward to?

Perhaps because I’m reaching midlife, I find myself pondering all these midlife questions. Am I in what they call “a midlife crisis”? A crisis doesn’t have to be an imminent situation; it could mean “a turning point”. I think… this is where I’m at- at life’s intersection, trying to decide how to move forward, when ahead of me seems to be a thick fog that refuses to lift.

This year started off great. Was able to go home for a few weeks, spend some quality family time together, visited relatives, some of whom I haven’t seen in years. I celebrated CNY back home- the first since 2015. The following months went by so quickly: I got to see my bestie at a conference, visited a dear friend in NC, have a friend visit me in Maine. I then visited another BFF for a short weekend trip for her child’s birthday, had a reunion with a childhood BFF and her family, spent thanksgiving with my adopted family, sat for and passed the obesity medicine’s board exam. All in all a great year- I can’t complain. All good, except for the above said ‘incident’.

As I work to maneuver life and get past this fog, I hang on to the few things I know. I know I’m quite lucky; and I’m immensely thankful for all that I have- fairly good health, family and friends who will be there for me, the ability to think, work, and help people through my job. The acute awareness that none of this is guaranteed, and that any of it can dissipate at any moment, is not lost on me. And so on this Christmas, I pray for peace, love, and that the ongoing wars will end. I pray for more kindness, decency, honesty, generosity, and tolerance amongst each other.

Here’s hoping that 2024 will be a good year for all. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

I’m Back!

It’s been more than year since I last wrote anything here. If this was a room, it’d be full of dust and cobweb right now. An abandoned space. Makes me a little sad when I think about all the lost time that I could’ve shared something with you. Whoever ‘you’ are.

How did everyone else live their last year and a half? I’ve been thinking a lot, doing a lot of growing. My cactus has grown big enough to be cut off into a few segments and transplanted into other pots. For a while they looked like they weren’t going to survive the winter. I cried a little looking at them; thought I had to dispose them. In the end though I decided I’d just leave them in and keep watering them, talking to them. Eventually winter became spring, and then summer came, and they started growing. I think I have grown along with them too.

Some days there’s a voice in me that wants to just whine and rant, about how hard life is. But I won’t do that. Only the living gets to whine. And being alive is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present. No matter how hard life is, it still can be beautiful, and if we choose to, we will be able to find glimmers of joy, hope, peace. I will focus on those glimmers, whenever I find them.

With that, shall I share some stories with you all starting next post? All the stories I’ve collected over the last 2+ years need a place to call home. Otherwise, carrying them with me everywhere will weigh be down too much.

Love from home

Remembering

“Death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it. 
And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.” 
― Steve Jobs

When there is life, there is death. Every new life that comes to this world is guaranteed nothing but death that will ensue, albeit it being just a far-off concept that no one ever thought of at the present moment. But of course. Why would anyone think about that when they’re too busy rejoicing in the beauty of this bundle of joy in their arms, their mini-selves. Unless you’re like me, who’s weird and morbid at times. It’s a good thing then, that I’m not in the position where I have to deal with the contradictory emotions.

In medicine, it’s hard not to think about death, when you’re dancing around it on most days, if not all the time. Fact is, mortality stares at you all the time. Healthcare folks somehow learned not to be bothered by it, and just kept an arms’ length from it, I suspect to protect themselves from being too emotional or overwhelmed, and also to be able to function and carry out their tasks. It’s a matter of habit, and one can usually go about his/her daily business, focusing on the science/medical aspects of the job, instead of the life and death that is the core of what we do every day. But– when it comes to someone we love or care about, it’d be tough, if not impossible, to ignore this aspect at all.

In all honesty, I only knew her personally for a short while, so I don’t think I have the right to be tremendously affected when I heard of the news. And yet, I felt disproportionally affected- more than I think I should, because in that short period of time I’ve grown to care for her. She was this amazing, extremely capable, independent woman, who had accomplished so much both in her professional and personal lives, always positive, generous, caring, selfless, and determined. So when she found out she had this terminal illness, her personality and character didn’t allow her any other way to deal with it other than facing it head on, with that fierce determination to beat it. Her grit, her strength, even at her weakest moment, amazed me, and touched me to my core, and I wished I could’ve done more for her. I almost believed that if anyone deserved a reprieve from a terminal illness, it would be her. It has to be her. I want it to be her. But alas, cancer is a b–ch, and there’s a reason why terminal illness is called a terminal illness. And so when I heard, though it wasn’t completely surprising, it was still a shock (that it happened sooner than I thought).

I want to be mad at God (if there is one), for taking a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, and a friend away from those of us whose lives she had touched. But my upbringing and beliefs also taught me that: 1) death is inevitable, and 2) life is unfair.  Couldn’t exactly get angry at impermanence of life now, could we. As for the second point, I don’t think anyone has come up with a solution for that yet.

Sigh.

I will always remember her as the beautiful person that she was, inside and out.

To those reading this, it seems cheesy or cliché to say it, but really– cherish every moment of your life, and those around you, for you never know…  Tomorrow is promised to no one, today is all we have.

Taboo

Preamble

I’ve been saving this draft I wrote long ago towards the end of my fourth year of med school, uncertain if I should share it. Was worried that I’d get in trouble for sharing something like that. It’s probably unlikely, given that I’m not sharing any identifiable information about the patient or the personnel taking care of the patient. Plus, it’s been so long ago… I doubt anyone other than myself remembered this incident. I’ve considered deleting it and just move on, but some things are hard to let go, and this is one of them. Sharing it now because it was so hard to talk about it when it happened then. Perhaps sharing it here now will allow me to see it in a new light, and put it to rest. So… here goes.

—–

My Emergency Medicine rotation was a memorable one, one that gave me some of the best and worst experiences in my clinical years as a med student. One particular incident left a deep impression on me, and I had to pen it down while it’s still fresh in my head. On one of our on-call nights, my friend and I returned to the ED (Emergency Department) from a quick dinner break, only to find the red zone to be almost empty save for this one patient with the attending and a house officer huddling around him. The ED was divided into 3 zones – red, yellow and green (like the traffic light) – and patients were triaged to a zone depending on the severity/urgency of their condition: red being the most urgent/severe and green the least like a cold or a minor cut, with yellow in between with the potential of escalating to the red zone. As most med students can attest to, we usually like to be where the ‘action’ is, if not actually making ourselves useful during such occasions, at least watching and observing to learn a thing or two. And on that fateful night, a thing or two we did learn, indeed, albeit not what we expected.

A 60 year-old pedestrian was hit by a motorcycle, and was found unconscious on the ground for an unknown period of time. Upon arrival, he was found to have GCS of 8, with an active bleeding somewhere in the oropharnygeal region. He had no external wounds, no broken bones. His condition warranted a tracheal intubation to secure his airway before being sent for a CT scan of the head to rule out an intracranial hemorrhage. Unfortunately, none of these happened and he was not intubated until two hours later. Meanwhile, this man was bleeding quite profusely and we were tasked to suction the blood out of the cavity, as they tried to intubate him. I watched helplessly, worrying about him bleeding out. At the rate that he was bleeding, I was almost certain the blood being transfused could not keep up. It took another two hours to send him for the CT scan, because while all this was happening, his abdomen became increasingly tensed and swollen. The consensus was that there might be internal hemorrhage, but they couldn’t seem to agree with the next step. It was between sending him for head CT only, or whole body CT scan. At this point it was close to midnight, the red zone started to get busy, the surgical residents who were called for consultation were reluctant to bring the patient to the operating room for an exploratory laparotomy to potentially stop the hemorrhage in the abdomen. Deliberate discussion took place, and then some, and in the end they decided they wanted a whole body scan. As all those were happening, patient’s BP kept going down, his pupils fixed and dilated, and all we did was keep giving fluids and blood products. Bad luck had it that the CT machine in the ED wasn’t working, so he had to be brought to the radiology department at another site, which was a long way away. It took us at least another 30 minutes to gear up before we were finally on the move to the other side of the building. Alas, as soon as we got there, the man coded, test was aborted, CPR was started while we wheeled the patient back to where we were 10-15 minutes ago.

It was of no surprise that this man died after an unsuccessful resuscitation; and everyone carried on with other tasks and patients as if it was just another death. Everyone except me. I was bewildered, stupefied, but most of all I felt helpless. Perchance when he came in he was already a lost cause, perhaps death was inevitable with the severity of his injuries, but we didn’t know that for sure. Even if we did, shouldn’t our job be to do our best to save his life, the emphasis here being ‘to do our best’? I was upset not just because a person died that night, but that in every step of the way I felt we as providers could’ve done so much better. I didn’t (couldn’t) understand why everyone acted as if it was just another green-zone case, why there was zero sense of urgency, why certain decisions were made (and took so long at that), and why everyone appeared to be emotionless and moved on so quickly. Throughout the entire time no one contacted his family members, no attempt was made, or at least none that I know of.

I tried to understand what happened, and what could’ve been done differently to prevent this from happening, but I was stumped. This to me should be a case to be brought up during Morbidity and Mortality meeting, but when I asked the attending about it at the end of our shift, her reply to me was this, and I paraphrased: “… you will see things that are done correctly, and things that are handled poorly. Good and bad decisions, and behaviors/attitudes. Just learn the good ones, and ignore the bad ones…” For the second time that shift, I was baffled. Sure, yes learn the good and leave the bad behind. But what about the patients?! By not doing anything, aren’t we silently consenting to the wrongful actions or behaviors? Does that not make us complicit? That morning I had trouble sleeping. I felt I’ve failed the patient, and I couldn’t get rid of the guilt. As I eventually dozed off, I think I died a little inside.

—–

Afterthought
I still think about this man once in a while. I wonder if it’s just me being the med student who was ‘young’ and ‘innocent’ and this was some kind of rude awakening to ‘how things are’ in real life. An initiation of sorts. Because how else do you explain why everyone who was working there acted so nonchalantly and went about their business? Maybe they felt something too, but had to hide it to be able to function. If everyone dwelled, then no work could get done. Maybe it’s the culture to act tough and move on. Maybe like me, initially it got to them, but after a while if this kept happening, they just had to wall their emotions off, toughen up and learn to shut up and move on. Maybe they all felt helpless at some point, but believed that nothing could be done to change this and so they just accepted the way things were and learned to live with it. I don’t know. These are just my speculations, because we weren’t allowed to talk about it. Because pointing out some behaviors, actions, or decisions that might be questionable is forbidden, I didn’t get to understand the root cause in that context. I doubt they really understood it either. It’s such a taboo that you just learn to sweep everything under the rug and do your thing. If you want to survive, that’s the modus operandi. 

My writing this and sharing it here wasn’t intended to criticise or to let known how bad things are back home. Situations like these happen everywhere. The point is, there is a need to talk about it, to discuss and address the issues so that we can improve. Pretending as if it didn’t happen won’t prevent it from happening in the future, and then it’s just going to happen again, and again, and again… We owe it to our patients to do our best, and make sure we do not repeat mistakes that can potentially cost lives. Primum non nocere, in English, means ‘first, do no harm’. To do that, we’ve got to set aside the ego, and be willing to take the first step to talk about things that went wrong. I do not know if things will ever change back home, but I sure hope it will. One can only hope. 

A Wrong Diagnosis

If you ever had that passing thought that “things couldn’t go any worse than this right now“, my advice to you is: please, stop. Stop that thought right now and switch it to something else, whatever that may be. Think of mockingbirds, ice-cream, the cute guy/girl you saw yesterday, your pet. Anything. Anything but that. Experiences prove, time and again, that every time that thought comes into mind, things will inevitably become worse. You may say, well maybe that’s just my selective recall bias, an anecdotal fallacy, and not truth. Fine. Have it your way, but don’t say I never warned you.

For the past few weeks I’ve been obsessed with rashes. Found every article I could and read about the differentials, examined for hours the images of each rash, read more than once about varicella, scabies, PLEVA, and a few others on the differentials. I’d wake up in the middle of the night from the itch, reached out to my phone and looked up other causes of rashes, or read up on one of the many skin diseases. I really shouldn’t be going down the rabbit hole when I should be studying for boards, but I can’t help it!! I can’t stand not knowing what it is and why it’s getting worse when it should be better! Arggghhhhhhwwarrrrghhhuuuurgggh!!! [That’s me turning into Hulk, in my head.] 
So. As you can tell from the title of this post, turns out the rash wasn’t chicken pox after all. Here’s what happened. 
About two weeks after it started, when it didn’t get better as expected for varicella, but in fact got worse, I started questioning the diagnosis. I would’ve got to the bottom of it all sooner if I wasn’t so reluctant to see a doctor, or if I didn’t hold on so tightly to the wishful thinking that it is the easier, simpler diagnosis. Because even though it’s absurd that one could get varicella twice, it’s still a shorter course of disease, self-limiting, and- I was banking on the probability of it being milder since it’d be a recurrent infection. I was really hoping it was “just” that, and be done with it. So when the rash started to spread, I convinced myself that I’m seeing things, that it’s all in my head. Sigh. “For someone who studied so much, this type of reasoning was downright stupid,” I can almost hear my dad say that to me. 🙁
And so it got to a point where I just couldn’t lie to myself anymore and had to go to the university health center to get it looked at. The doctor being uncertain of what it was, referred me to dermatology. And with just two words, a huge portion of my anxiety melted away: pityriasis rosea. UGHHH. Really? I never thought bout it because there’s no herald patch! And no christmas tree pattern as well! Here’s another lesson learned, just because something is pathognomonic of a disease doesn’t mean the absence of it precludes the diagnosis. I guess my frustration was noticeable, when I asked the dermatology resident: “How on earth did I get it?!” To which he calmly responded, as if trying to placate me, “It’s nothing that you did or could’ve done to get this. It’s a really common disease and a lot of people get it, but we still don’t really know why it happens or what causes it.” Great. Just great. Isn’t this the majority of the case for almost 80% of the diseases out there?! That we don’t know what the heck we’re dealing with most of the time.  If I weren’t in the medical field and could understand the unpleasantness of having to tell a patient that, I’d have rolled my eyes and stopped listening. But I get it, so I didn’t pursue further.  Yes- I get it now, more so than ever, because now I don’t only understand it from the physician’s point of view, but also from the patient’s. I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of that statement- and it sucked. 
Sure, I understand that a lot of medicine is still in the grey area, and that there are a lot that have yet to be discovered. But the simple truth is that logic never does make anyone feel better. It also makes me realise something about myself, which is probably also the nature of most human beings: that we always attempt to explain everything that happens to us (that’s how the age-old adage of “everything happens for a reason” reasoning came along, isn’t it? To make us feel better?), and we also try to do so in a way that attribute the cause upon something other than ourselves. In other words, we’re always inclined to blame it on something else, anything but ourselves or our own deed. But when push comes to shove, we’d take the blame too, as long as there’s a logical reason to it. We don’t handle the “unknown” very well though. Indeed, it’s the shrugged “I-don’t-know-why-it-happened-it-just-does-and-I’m-sorry” explanation that makes us feel the worst. But why??? Why did it happen to me? What have I done to deserve this?!  Those are the thoughts that would plague one’s mind, because one usually cannot fathom how a bad outcome could befall oneself when one has done everything by the books. Think of all the people who got lung cancer but never smoked a cigarette or anything in their entire lives. Or substitute it with any cancer that happened without a known risk factor in someone who had lived a perfect life up till that point. Think about the 30-something neurosurgeon who was about the complete his decade-long training only to find out he had terminal lung cancer. It’s atrocious! How vile to have been sentenced to such fate when a 90-year old man a stone’s throw away was probably happily puffing his cigarette celebrating his 70th-pack-year! But what can one do but throw up his hands and surrender to this thing called Life??! 
And when the initial emotions has passed and the dust settled, how does one cope with this kind of horrible outcome? Ironically, one tends to circle back to the “everything happens for a reason” argument to cope with it, or chose to accept and entrust one’s faith to the higher beings. That, or one could go into self-destruction mode and start hating everything and everyone with the “fuck god, fuck the disease, fuck the world” mentality. 
Now I’m not being melodramatic, I don’t have a terminal illness, I just have a skin condition that is also self-limiting, albeit one that will last 6-8 weeks. In the bigger scheme of things, I am thankful for being alive, for having “just” a skin disease. But being unwell is hard, especially for someone who’s spent most of her adult life working towards being the person who provides care. Now that table has turned, it’s a hard pill to swallow. I don’t want or like to be reminded that I too am mortal, that I’m completely susceptible to any disease, and that the medical degree earned is not an immunity to any or all sickness at all. Alas, I, and all the other physicians who may share my sentiments, are just humans too. We too can die, can get heart attacks, dementias, stroke, or [insert your disease of choice here]. It’s a silly, not-worth-mentioning known fact, but we don’t really think about it until we have to. (One could argue that some deliberately avoid thinking about it, but that’s a topic for another day.) The truth is, we all have to face mortality at some point, and we will all do so on our own terms. One way or another, eventually. (Unless you happened to be in a plane that miraculously disappear into thin air. Then sorry, no time for you to think about dying and death because your brain cells and every bit of you will be blown up into ashes before you could even conceive of what just happened.)
I write this before I had the chance to read Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, or Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air (that’s the neurosurgeon who had terminal lung cancer I mentioned above), even though those books are just sitting on the shelf two feet away from me. When I’m done with exam, I’ll read them. Perhaps I will have additional thoughts on mortality then. But at this moment, as I’m writing this pondering upon mortality, grateful that I’m alive yet slightly (only slightly) resenting the cards I’m dealt with, I still think it’s a good thing over all. I see some good coming from it, not because I’m a masochist, but because through this ordeal I had a taste of being a patient, of being unwell, without having to go through chemo or radiation (or worse- to die!).  Empathy and compassion often grow exponentially from first-hand experience. So hopefully this experience will help me be a better doctor. Then again- one could only hope, eh. 😛 
Peace. xoxo.

Barry Schwartz: Our Loss of Wisdom [video]

Was talking to a friend about the current state of Malaysia, and it just depresses me. Yes. It has that effect on me. And then I chanced upon this video and though it’s only loosely related, it’s inspiring. Sharing this here so I, too, can re-watch it another day, when I need it. Enjoy!

Mindless Babble

the world does not stop spinning it doesn’t care if you have exams tomorrow or the day after or whenever, it doesn’t care if you can’t finish studying or if you need more time to study because you waste too much time lingering on social media/news sites or because you are ill. it doesn’t care if you’re bleeding to death and you need more blood for transfusion- blood that better match your ABO blood group and best be HLA-matched as well. it doesn’t care if you’re a genius or a janitor when it comes to accidents, diseases, or cancers. it doesn’t care if you’ve been hurt by someone you thought you loved and needed time to heal. all this, just points us to one brutal truth- that the world waits for no one. there is no time to spare. doesn’t matter if you’re a bazillionaire, a president, a king, or a holy man. you’re not getting any extra time that any others do. if there is anything that is fair in this world, it is the time given to us at any living moment.

here’s the million-dollar question: how would you spend your time at this very moment? or, how are you spending you time at this very moment?

《那些年》感言

平时很少用中文写部落格的我 （uh 不对，是 从来 没用过中文写的我）
那晚 看了《那些年，我们一起追的女孩》之后，突然好像在这儿乱涂一两句
别人说， 拥有过类似暧昧的感觉的人，都会深同感触
而我，却因为没有属于我自己的故事而深深的感慨
想想当年 17 岁的我，好像缺少了什么
是我让青春白白溜走了吗？是我在很想闯入成人的世
界里的当时，失去了那一点点容许我天真无知的时空么？
有人明白我在写什么吗？

＊＊＊

时光是一去不回头
但就算时间真的能倒流
我想，凭我了解自己性格的我
应该也不会改变我所做过的选择
所以其实 也没什么好感慨的
虽然，有过一段自己的 “沈佳宜” 或是 “柯腾” 的故事
好像蛮令人羡慕的
但错过了，也不差啦

毕竟，每个人都有自己精彩的故事
我的故事，少了这么一个特别的人
但却多了更多很特别，要好的朋友
也让我有更多的精神和时间去关心其他对我非常重要的人事物
做人嘛，开心就好！:)

Mulling

Have you ever encountered a situation whereby you wish to keep certain things to yourself because, technically speaking, you can and you have the right to: it’s your personal life and your ultimate decision to let it be known, or not. Yet, the reality that we live in, governed by certain societal norms, has it that we should share with others our personal stories or incidents or what-have-you’s – because we live in a society, and we’re all connected to each other, no (wo)man is an island, or whatever reasons to justify such sharing. And perhaps there is a physiologic explanation to it too: we humans can never keep secrets. We just can’t. We are not built that way. We are social animals bound to share and communicate with others, and so, in that regard, you can almost argue that there is no such thing as privacy!

Indeed, in the past, our grandparents or great-grandparents used to know everyone in the village or town. Everyone knew everyone and everything everyone was doing, and I doubt the word “privacy” existed in their daily vocabulary. So what then, brought about the concept of privacy? When exactly, in the history of mankind, did the idea of separating private from public life spring to existence? I have no answer to that, but my “guestimate” is – and I may well be wrong about this – it probably occurred some time around when paper was invented. When paper technology was invented, it gave us an avenue to jot down whatever ideas, thoughts, opinions, secrets, etc., that we wished to tell others, and pass it down in written form. In the case of which we do not wish to tell others yet needed a way to “get it out of our system”, it allows us to do that too, as long as the written words are hidden from others. It is most likely that it goes a lot deeper and is more complicated than this, but for what I’m referring to in this post, this simplistic view should suffice.

My question is, where do you draw the line with regard to when it is appropriate to tell and when it’s okay to not tell? Here I’m not talking about those apparent choices that involve legal actions or moral values. I’m referring to those grey areas between friends, family, relatives, coworkers, bosses etc. There’s probably no significant impact if you make the “wrong” choice (if there’s such a thing as the wrong choice), so it probably doesn’t matter much what we choose to do. Indeed, this is more like a rhetorical question. I’m just wondering out loud, if there is a moral implication when we choose not to share some information we believe is rightly ours and which is part of our private lives, whilst the majority of the outside world believe otherwise. Is there?

Pondering. 😛