choice.

In my career as a physician, I do plan on becoming trained in how to perform abortions.

Do i condone abortions? no. but i will be damned if i do not do everything in my power to support what i believe is true freedom: the power of free will. the ability to choose.

i believe what i believe, but i also respect what other people believe and am fine with letting them alone to believe it. it is when they try to impose their version of the world and their morality on 300 million other people that i have a problem with it.

according to their version of the world, under no circumstances must a child be harmed, including time in utero, because to them what is in the womb is considered human. even in instances of rape, when the mother's life is in danger, of situations where the child will most likely be cruelly abandoned, or if the baby will be born so severely deformed that it will only live outside the womb for an hour or two -- this baby must be born no matter what the cost, because God sanctions all life.

the fetus is sacred. therefore, no matter at what stage, it is to be valued more than the mother carrying it.

very little attention is paid to the cost that women must pay. conception is a dual act between a man and a woman, and yet it is an undeniable biological fact that the woman must suffer the brunt of the consequences, intentional or not. all this not even taking into account the great physical duress of pregnancy and childbirth itself -- ligaments stretched out, muscles weakening, incontinence, hormones -- and all that in a normal pregnancy. in most of the U.S., if the pregnancy was a consequence of rape, the woman is expected to suck up the horrendous trauma she went through and have the baby anyway. if the woman was a twelve year old who barely has any idea of what sex really is besides what she sees on tv, she must have the baby anyway. if the woman is with a man who abuses her and her other children and will most likely abuse this baby also, if she lives in extreme poverty on the streets, if the fetus has a congenital defect so severe as to cripple it for the few years it will survive costing millions of dollars in care, she must deliver the baby all the same.

and in fact, many women do.

and in fact, many women who CAN CHOOSE this, DO choose this.

no woman in the history of civilization has ever sought to get pregnant just to get an abortion. no physician can honestly say they enjoy the procedure either, especially as gestational age increases. abortion is not fun, it is not joyful, it is never a matter taken lightly. even some pro-choice women opt not to have abortion.

but they have had that choice.

thanks to the hard work and far-sightedness of some of our fellow classmates, in our medical program we have been exposed to films and talks from doctors who have been at the front lines caring for women who were unfortunate enough to not have that choice. doctors who have seen the gruesome outcomes since the 1930s, 40s, 50s, when this discourse was nonexistent in our society. they have seen those women, left with no choice, who have resorted to taking matters into their own hands. hands that desperately unwind that rusty wire hanger, hands that insert caustic substances into their vaginas that burn through the peritoneum into their abdominal cavity, hands that push themselves down staircases. they have seen these women butchered, suffer, and die, needlessly.

the consensus from all these doctors who have been practicing for decades is the same.

to deny women the right to a medical procedure done correctly by a trained professional is an act of violence in itself.

banning abortion is the most misogynistic act of society there is.

you can ban abortion and write this into law, but it will still happen. it will still happen in the dark alleyways, in solitary suburban bathrooms, it will still happen in the shady, disease ridden parts of town. it will be performed by unskilled hands, by those whose grasp of human anatomy and sterile procedure is at grade-school level, at best. women will puncture holes in through their reproductive organs, they will bleed to death, they will languish in the hot fever of infection for days upon days. they will see the potential that could have been their life come to an end. watch a documentary with interviews of women who have attempted to end a pregnancy themselves, whose friends have died in the attempt. try to remain unmoved at their stories.

you may consider a woman ending her pregnancy to be "murdering her children." but it is not our choice to make. it is hers. the blood, the burden, the shame, the guilt, the horrific pain, the emotional torment, the shadows and ghosts haunting her until the end of her life -- that choice is hers. and hers alone.

how dare we sentence her to possible death because we, in our warm and comfortable homes, having seen none of this with our own eyes and having held no trembling and terrified hands in our own hands, enforce our pure white doctrine upon a woman who did not ask to receive it.

to see women promote policy that is so completely anti-woman breaks my heart.

as a physician, it is my duty above all else to protect my patient. if for whatever reason i cannot, i will find someone who can. i MUST be my patient's advocate, no matter what they believe, no matter if they are a moral or immoral person, an irresponsible or responsible person, a shining example to society or the most wretched sliver of a human being. i am not here to judge my patients. i cannot be, and still be a good doctor.

and so i choose to become that physician of last resort. regardless of what i personally believe, i choose to learn the skills that may one day save a young woman's life.
and many of my colleagues choose otherwise.
and we are all blessed, because we are able to make that choice.

three more semesters..forward and onward!

I'm trying to think of what I could possibly say about this past semester, and really the year of 2008 in general, as time draws to a close.
My times in school I have enjoyed for the most part. Like everyone has said time and time again, the material is not difficult, it is the amount of material. But I suppose you really don't understand what it's like in the middle of the deluge, breaking your face against that proverbial firehose, until you are waist-deep in that sh*t.
I think the thing that affected me the most has been location. Western University, while a competitive, challenging, supportive school, is located in...well...crap. Pomona is not all that safe, and in addition to that, Western does not have a traditional campus, with the rolling greens and tall dorm rooms and brick and ivy. Coming from a more urban surrounding, I felt that that would be cakewalk. In all honesty, I felt that location really would not bother me. In fact, I was excited that it seemed so similar to where I lived and worked before. I am a pretty adaptable person, and for the most part I made do, spending lots of time in the small library, spending more time in Starbucks and at home.
Come finals time, I discovered that I had lost the ability to focus at all these locations (although...home, really. what was i thinking) and was desperate. My roommate Linda turned me on to the Honnold-Mudd Library at the Claremont colleges, which were literally down the street from our house. The change in locale made an astounding change in my self-esteem as a student. At this point, I was really struggling, and was becoming depressed. The library was absolutely beautiful, spacious, well lit, and had a really old, historied feel. It was like, you couldn't help but feel proud to be a student again while studying there. It was sort of a case of "too little too late," but it made my last few weeks almost enjoyable.

While you're in medical school, it becomes your whole life. Some people don't understand why I can't drive all the way to LA to hang out, drive all the way to Irvine and Torrance to dance; but it literally consumes you. Every waking minute becomes all about studying. Perhaps save for those few who are either really quick at memorizing, or actually taught the subject material before in a previous career and thus don't have to study as hard for that course. Those who are trying to handle marriages, families, and even jobs while simultaneously doing this -- I hold them in even higher regard than I did previously. This is the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. ...And rightly so. I would never want to be treated by a physician who had it easy during their medical training.

I am quite eager to go to back to school at this point. I've analyzed myself to the point of nausea, I feel like I've finally hit my stride (though too little too late) as a student. Come to think of it, I've had very little experience in academics at this level. I took mostly liberal arts classes at Cal, and in addition, was cripplingly depressed for most of that time. This whole semester has been a learning experience in more ways than one. But I've meditated, and for the first time I feel like I've broken this twisted destructive cycle I fall into, and in addition, I did it all by myself. So...I am a little glad for that.

Still, there's a lot to do, and I am praying to all the energies of the universe that this next year will be even more different, challenging, and joyful than the last, and that throughout all the journeying, the spark is never lost.

They should make this a holiday

My favorite day of the year! Daylight savings.

I spent my extra hour catching up on House. Wow, that last episode where House and Cuddy....just, whoa, hello!

Merry daylight savings to one and all.

farewell, cadaver #1

Anatomy dissection was one of those things where you are so afraid of what it means, and when you are actually doing it, the blinders go on and you push it all away to do what needs to be done. And then in the end, you get a second to breathe again and you realize, you will never get an opportunity like that again in your life.

They gave us a body, so that we might learn, so that we might uncover the mysteries of the human form. This body yielded to us so much more.

We called him Bruce, as in Bruce Banner, because his musculature was so pronounced and hefty. His muscles shined pink and robust with formaldehyde like Christmas ham. He hardly smelled at all. When we arrive at his lower abdomen, he yielded us a great treasure of a massive direct hernia. We found a spleen bordering on splenomegaly, and gold teeth. I called him a pirate, a swashbuckler, an adventurer, climber of mountains, sailer of ships. He must have died in a short amount of time, because next to the emaciated, wasted bodies elsewhere in the dissecting room, his crevasses were overflowing with slippery fat, his body toned. When we got to his face, we marveled at how much he resembled Danny Devito. We were proud of our Bruce. He was good to us.

Though it may seem morbid to the outsider, it seemed only natural to derive our own narrative. Here were so many clues to where he came from and how he died. We would make up stories to try to fill in the crazy mad-libs of his body. How could we not wonder about what lay beyond, backwards into the time-space continuum? With so many secrets yielded, how could we not be curious about his story?

Some say there is a danger here, of objectifying the body, forgetting its human roots, disrespecting it by operating with a lack of gravitas, being too cavalier. In practice I found that the contrary was true: dissection only whet our appetites for the stories of our "patient," and for our future patients -- the narratives of human lives.

And in that I believe was Bruce's greatest gift to us. That despite the stress and deadlines and quizzes and tests, we never lose our sense of wonder.

Thank you, cadaver #1.

gchat is ruining my life

things aren't so bad.

kpeng127: so.... how many genitals will we see in our life time?

so embarassing.

me: oh wow

i never thought of it that way before

that's insane

kpeng127: yup.

yay doctors.

Adam: haha

THATs a cool roomy

i was just watching a buffy episode (yeah yeah), about her roommate who is actually a demon

so i think youre doing ok

if the Hadron Collider creates a black hole and the universe as we know it ends today,

what would you do with your last few hours?

i would eat a butt-load of ice cream and dim sum and fatty foods.
i would call anyone special who was not in my life anymore and tell them i miss them and that i'm sorry.
i would would lay face-down in the grass to hug the earth and listen to the insects and worms and plants one last time.

hm.

i could do all these things...today.

....mm. donuts.

famous last words

week 4.

our first major test as a class has come and gone. it feels like it has already been 6 months. it feels like my entire life is anatomy. i don't hate anatomy, but it's freakin dry and boring.

it seems like the extracurriculars are getting under way. we're constantly having our classroom occupied by informational sessions (well it comes with free lunch often so i'm not complaining). but there's hardly any room in the brain to think about them, much less plan on doing them.

i am pretty adamant in my decision to not devote my entire goddamn life to getting that 100% in anatomy. even though it's crucial to what i want to do later on as a physician, i feel as though i have such a tenuous hold on myself as a person that i refuse to alter some of my older habits in order to accommodate my studies, including making sure i read every article (title at the very least) of the front page of the news, finding stuff online that makes me laugh, and dancing. so no, i'm not studying as hard as my peers right now. but these are things that i really need to do.

i mean, i'm passing so far. it should be do-able. right?


(...the shadows under my eyes are twice as big as they were 4 weeks ago.)