Soundtrack to my life

Can't help, but procrastinate (I wonder if there's a song for that??)
Disclaimer: I have a very limited music selection!

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?

So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend youre cool...

-Opening Credits: "Does that Blue Moon Ever Shine On You" Toby Keith

-Waking Up: "Unwell" Matchbox Twenty
(Hopefully, not too sick of a day)

-Falling In Love: "You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like That" Toby Keith
(I swear that's what came up. No cheating, really. And if you know me at all, you konw that I absolutely love this song)

-Fight Song: "But I do Love You" LeAnn Rimes
(That's some fight)

-Breaking Up: "Algo Tienes" Paulina Rubio
(This song is not about breaking up at all, just the opposite. Grr to the shuffle on this thing)

-Prom: "Big Ole'Truck" Toby Keith
(I know I grew up in Texas and I love trucks, but seriously...)

-Life: "Somebody Else's Song" LifeHouse
(That's my luck today)

-Mental Breakdown: "Shake Shake" OV7
(no, you've never heard of this group, they are a mexican pop group that doesn't exist anymore)

-Driving: "Que Quede Claro" OV7
(it's an ok song, but Scarlet (my car) would disagree and quite possibly protest)

-Flashback: "'Cause I Like It That Way" SheDaisy
(This shuffle thing is not particularly funny nor makes any sense)

-Getting Back Together: "Bright Lights" Matchbox Twenty
(I like this song, that's all I can say)

-Wedding: "Changes" Three Doors Down
(Pseudo-Appropriate, this song should be in my soundtrack, but I would have picked somewhere else, but it works)

-Birth of Child: "Feel It Comin' Out" Sara Evans
(I hope that's not too literal)

-Final Battle: "You Get Me" Michelle Branch
(I suck at fighting)

-Death Scene: "Going Down in Flames" Three Doors Down
(Now that's a good song)

-Funeral Song: "All You Wanted" Michelle Branch
(Guess I'll try to make someone feel guilty or maybe I'll be a ghost when I die)

-End Credits: "Not Coming Home" Maroon 5
(That's one way to end)

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That was fun, but I'll admit my shuffle didn't do a very good job. Some were good, but I could have done a better job ;)

Science Times on Tuesday

I love Tuesday mornings, mostly because they have been peaceful in the last couple of weeks, giving me time to catch up on my reading and thinking. Lucky for me the Science Times comes out on Tuesdays and I find myself all caught up in articles about medicine and health. My favorite to read are those essays submitted by doctors. Here are two examples.


Cases: A Favorite Charity That Won’t Accept Donations

-Even as a student, you always find yourself on the line of getting too close to your patients (mostly in ways that don't involve money). We are the ones that spend the most time with our patients. It's difficult to not get caught up in conversation and get a little attached. So you start creating this separation between "doctor" and "person." Then there's the "I can save the world" philosophy that many of us have when we go into this field. At first you can't do much, well because you don't have the knowledge or the means. But once you have been practicing for a while, you look back and realize you haven't been doing what you set out to do and a patient's story touches you and you start thinking you can save them. All good intentions, just a little misguided.

Why Hospitals Are Cold, and Doctors Don’t Cry (in Public)

-The separation between doctor and patient I think is sometimes due to the fact that doctors have to protect themselves. There is a reason why doctors, ethically, shouldn't treat family and friends. You get emotionally attached. You take unnecessary risks. You take the numbers too personally. And while I am one of those people that believes that doctors need to be human, there is no way that a person can survive, being surrounded by death, and remain human, without some detachment ahead of time.



It's all a delicate balance. Few doctors are actually good at it, but the struggle is there. How much do you get involved? Where do you draw the line? Is it a job, is it personal? There are so many questions everyday. And to top it off, there isn't time to answer them and see your patients.

A bit of Reading from NYTimes

A follow up article to education:
What It Takes to Make a Student

Warning: it does take time to read, but it's good. a little biased, but good.

The rule, not the exception

Random thoughts this morning:

As I was reading the newpaper this morning there was an article about the reality of closing the gap between races when it comes to education and it got me thinking about my education and my future. So, most of my exposure to the education system is having gone through it. One of my best friends is a teacher and she is much more knowledgeable about what actually goes on inside of our public schools from a non-student point of view, so I'll keep my judgements on the system down to a minimum.

I'll start off by saying that there are many factors that influence where a person ends up: family, socioeconomic status, geographic location, exposure to good role models, internal/external motivation, opportunities, encouragement/support system, and to a certain extent, intelligence/talent (I am sure I have forgotten others, but I'll focus on some of these). It's a very complicated equation and I would be silly if I thought I could make blanket statments about education. What I will address is that at this point in my life, I look around and there just aren't that many people that look like me or come from backgrounds like mine. That's just a fact. I thought back on my experiences and all I can say is that I was lucky to have the right combination of opportunities.

Problem is I just believe that we should be able to control for certain of those factors like location, exposures to good role models, opportunities, and support systems (other than family). There are few ways to change who your family is, how much they support you, how much you are pushed or encouraged to pursue what draws your attention and how much talent or "intelligence" you have. Everyone should have an opportunity and access to a good, well-rounded education regardless of sex, race, creed, etc (you know all those good things that have been added to our constitution). Ok, so that's an easy statement to agree with. But that just isn't the way the world works, or at least that's not how I have seen it grow. Question is how do we teach our children to work hard and be self-sufficient, in spite of the obstacles that life presents? And what about those children whose parents are gone or just don't get it, how do we help them? How do we survive in a world where it's about who you know and not always about how hard you work? Unfortunately my commentary doesn't offer any answers to all the questions that our government leaders have been pondering for years.

However, things that I can't change, like my gender and my ethnic background, make me stick out like a sore thumb among my collegues. Most don't place importance on it all. And it might not make any difference on a grand scale, but it does on the small scale. More than one dean or attending has said to me in a variety of different ways that I have an uphill battle in the field of surgery, both because of my gender and my race. They point it out to be encouraging and to say that it's good that those things don't deter me. Of course those comments mostly come from attendings that are either women or minorities. But white males also notice, but are more hesitant to point it out.

People have paid attention to me before because I have been "successful" in my field of choice. I have been used to point out that "the system" is working. But it is incredibly difficult to actually grow up a little bit and realize that things aren't quite as easy as they make you think when you're little (but that goes for a bunch of stuff). I remember not wanting people (my interviewers at medical school) to know that I was a minority or grew up in a low socioeconomic status. I was tired that those made a difference in how people saw who I was and what I had achieved. I wanted to be judged solely on my academic achievements. My advisor told me that those pieces of information were not used to judge me or hold me to a different standard, but rather to utilize resources that were available to help me succeed. I'm not sure that I actually believe that is true. I do think people look at me different. But, I can't deny that I am different.

Now that I have the opportunity to be a role model and a mentor, I see how difficult it is to find people that can relate to you. We try to facilitate that by creating programs that exposes kids to professionals with backgrounds similar to theirs and it works for those kids who get that opportunity. I just hope one day that role models and mentors will be easily recognizable regardless of race, gender, creed, etc. Even now I still have that small desire to find someone that understands how deeply rooted my motivations and career goals are in the way I grew up. There just aren't enough people like me in this profession.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm still the exception and I may never live long enough to see people like me become part of the norm. I remember knowing that I was part of a small group of people that by chance alone had been giving the very special opportunity to carry a torch and use the trails built by others to make them more permanent and concrete paths. Over the course of my education, I just so tired of being highlighted that I decided to do just enough to get by. I was ready to pass on the torch and let others extend the paths that had already been built. I figured I had done enough for "the cause." The problem now is that there is just soo much more work to be done that it isn't enough to just hang out and wait for the next generation to do more than I did. I still have work to do myself. And if that means carrying the torch into uncharted waters, so be it. I know I won't be completely alone, but it will be lonely nevertheless. Trust me, I don't think that I am some poor martyr that will carry the weight of an entire movement alone on my shoulders, but I just might as well get used to people pointing at me and saying either, "how did she get her" or "look, even she's here" or "see, it is totally possible" or hopefully, "I want to be like her."

that's me, wanting to make a difference. It's nice to have rediscovered the ability dream like I did when I was little. =)

"A waste of your personality"

This is what one of my classmates told me yesterday after I mentioned that I wanted to be a surgeon.

Oh, by the way, just in case you had not heard it from me yet, I want to be a surgeon. So, for some reason, I got it stuck in my head that I can't live the rest of my life without being in an OR with a "knife" in my hand.

But back to the waste of my personality... I just find it fascinating that most people pin me as the pediatrician, even though I always verbalize my dislike for children. Something about being happy and bubbly all the time and acting like a little kid that makes people think that I want to be around sick children. It just makes me think of the discrpancies between how we view ourselves and how the world sees us. My response to my classmate was, "I don't think it's a waste of my personality. I actually think it is a great use of it." The problem is that she's not the only one that has either been surprised by my decision or completely thrown off by it. The most responsive/supportive are those that are also intrested in surgical specialties. I am not sure if it is an actual pattern or just a coincidence, but it was enough to make me think about it for prolonged periods of time.

I can understand why some people are surprised. There is this stereotype of surgeons beyond most of them being white males (both of which I am not). Most are egotistical, tyrannical, pompous, arrogant, controlling, rude, opinionated, stubborn, jerks that get that way because 1. that's how they are treated 2. the pressures of the profession (no sleep, very little food, dehydration, the stress of having someone's life literally in the palm of your hand) 3. it's a way to get things done (aka: being assertive, effective and making sure your team doesn't doubt you during those critical times, even if you are sometimes wrong.) I'm not defending their attitudes nor am I saying it's justified, but it does make some sense. I may not be all of those things, but not all surgeons are like that all the time. Some of the surgeons I have met have excellent relationships with their patients and, even more importantly, with their nurses. They are polite, eloquent, and exude this confidence that I hope to obtain with experience. But what I find most appealing about them is that they respect your time (only because they expect you to be considerate of only their time), and are effective in getting things done. As a med student, I rarely got stuck doing scut work like I have for my other clerkships. And they are great about making the most about teaching moments.

There are a lot of things about the profession that draw me to it: the mix of complexity and simplicity, the surgical options plus medical management, the depth of knowledge AND skills. There's very little about medicine that isn't part artform and surgery is no different. Surgeons know the problem, the medicine behind it, and how to treat effectively. You have to be able to diagnosis and differentiate between true emergencies and emergent problems. Surgeons have the very special privilage to actually go inside someone's body and try to fix something. So many things can go wrong, there is so much to be aware of and it is just one of the most exhilarating experiences ever.


And while there are a number of professions that I could eventually be happying doing, I want to have a job that I wake up every morning excited about. I want to be able to come home at night and learn more about a pt and their disease without it being an extra burden. I want to get up in the morning and have something to look foward to. There's just so much more that I can't put into words, but I do know this: I have yet to be as excited about anything or sleep as little w/o whining about it too much, like I did while I was in surgery. I see the surgeons around the hospital or my classmates doing their surgery clerkship and I just want to be one of them and stray into an OR.


So while superficially I may not be the typical surgeon, as long as I love what I'm doing, and I'm good at it, screw what everyone else thinks!