Hippocrates In San Diego

Bubble News

An interesting series from James Fallows of The Atlantic covers Obama’s trip to Asia, or more specifically the US media’s coverage of the trip. It is making me reconsider some of yesterday’s criticisms of how the Obama administration has been handling human rights issues.

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Europe leads on human rights, exposes US shortcomings

I came across this post on Thich Nhat Hanh’s site for the Bat Nha Monastery in Báo Lôc, Vietnam. This appears to be the second statement to come out of the EP concerning the events at Bat Nha over the last several months, covered early on by Matt Steinglass of GlobalPost. In its resolution, the EP unequivocally lays blame for the violence (and the failure to stop it) on the government of Vietnam, and links support for human rights to current negotiations meant to reestablish ties between Vietnam and Europe.

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Sunshining

I’m sitting outside at the hospital, having already had my fill of caffeine and lunch, in the sunshine. My mind has been on events in Iran; popular uprisings like this always capture my attention, but this one is quite personal. I wonder if my many cousins in Iran — in Tehran, Ahwaz, and elsewhere — are out on the streets, putting their lives at risk for an ideal.

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Don’t make me twist your arm…

Don’t ever lie to your doctor. I can tell when you’re lying and I usually know why you are lying. There are few things that will make providing good care more difficult than a dishonest patient.

It can suck

You have to think about what you’re doing every single day. There’s rarely a time when you can be lax, or not care about the quality of your work, or ignore its results. And that is true whether you’re tired, ill, distracted, or bored. That’s why it can suck sometimes. Why somedays you wonder if people slinging coffee at Starbucks or fixing cars have to be on all the time, “bringing their A Game” every day. I’m sure most do routinely, but do they have to? Do they feel the same obligation? Right now an occasional day requiring only my B Game sounds fantastic. I’m envious.

Here’s hoping for some stimulation

N. and I have put an offer on a house in E [city].; the chaos of the last few weeks is what’s made putting up new posts lower on my to-do list. The offer has been accepted, and since it’s a short-sell (the current owner owes more than they can sell the home for) their bank needs to approve the offer before it can be accepted and move into escrow. We expect that to happen in the next couple of weeks.

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Live From Boston

N. and I just arrived in this other city by the bay. She has a Psychiatry board review course this week, and I decided to join her for part of the week. Since I booked my trip well after her, we had separate flights. Mine left earlier and arrived later (hers being a direct flight). After spending Saturday evening with friends at our monthly International Dinner (this time at the beautiful Blue Bohéme) we stayed up until two o’clock packing. Of course I missed my 6⁴⁵ AM flight later that day, as we, both exhausted, slept through both alarm clocks. Fortunately N.’s flight was later in the morning and I was able to book a flight only four hours after the original, so we both arrived in this wonderful metropolis without further delay.

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Georgetown Book Shop

Through an acquaintance, I’ve just discovered the Georgetown Book Shop, which appears to have a great collection of American propaganda posters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The true fascination comes when looking at posters that reflect the major political issues of the day; they sound remarkably familiar. I especially recommend the section of immigration posters. Many of the arguments used by anti-immigration forces back then (and much of the imagery in the posters) is still in use today, albeit in different forms.

Lacking Drive

Let me make one thing clear before getting too deeply into this: I love my profession. It is difficult to imagine my life if I hadn’t become a doctor. I think my skills and temperament are well suited to the craft. To top it off, I also probably wouldn’t have met my future wife if I had chosen otherwise. There are days however, when I wish I had chosen a different, more easy-going, less responsible tack in life. Sometimes working in a toll booth or even being a traveling itinerant worker has great appeal. This often happens early after waking or as I drive into work. Clearly I hate mornings.

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Loss of Sensation

Some people still are impacted when they encounter death or other morbid events in their lives. In medical school they beat that feeling out of you. They start you early, doing anatomical dissections of donated cadavers at the beginning of the second year. I think everyone who has been through it remembers the feeling of that first day, when we were introduced to the people that would become our anatomy “partners” for the next several weeks. I remember walking down the hall outside the anatomy lab, seeing one of my classmates running for the bathroom with her hand over her mouth. My own heart rate was rapid that day - a strange combination of anxiety, anticipation, and fear. I remember seeing the phrase painted on one wall of the lab — some saying by some old Greek physician that escapes me now. I remember the stink of formaldehyde, how my scrubs reeked for weeks, how my skin was scrubbed raw trying to remove the smell. I remember those damned exams - one nerve buried deep in a limb or cavity somewhere was tagged with a piece of string — give the name, the insertion point of the muscle it innervates, and the name of the nucleus that modifies its function. Huh?

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