Just finished The Restorer by Amanda Stevens.

Wow. what an amazing book. The first book of a series with a name like The Graveyard Queen, how can you not be intrigued.

This book captivated me from the very beginning. Amanda Stevens descriptions of the Lowcountry and Southerners like the Gullah, her ability to turn a sunset and the fragrance of flowers into something mystical and otherworldly is stunning. Her characters were ones I couldn't help falling in love with. Her writing so deliberate and her plots so intense that I had to actually slow myself down when I was reading. I didn't want to devour this book in one sitting, I wanted this book to never end and I took my time getting to the inevitable.

I can't wait for book 2 to come out.

tonight i'm starting on night float.

my first real "day" of being a "real" doctor.

yea, i'm only freaking out A LOT. o_o and by freaking out, i guess i mean just a little bit nervous is all.

can't help but love my parents.

who else would help me move out of my apartment to the house, and while jetlagged from Korea, help repack boxes, drive 6 hours to Columbus, move all my heavy/bulky items up to my 3rd floor apartment, help me unpack, drive 3 hours the next day to buy new furniture from IKEA, assemble said furniture, and then drive 6 hours back home that same day.

dad still going strong after 9 hours of driving/unpacking/assembling in the past 24 hours and ready to drive 6 hours more.

mom as happy as ever. i learned that pots are very multifunctional.

my parents.

amazing.

and when girls get married at the tender age of 16, they in literal sense leave their families and follow their husbands. and sometimes they're even proud of the blisters they develop on their hips from the hundreds of pounds of wedding dress with skirts so big they can't get out of cars/carriages or even get through the aisles of the church.

yup still talking about the traveller people.

starting to sound a little ethnocentric/ethnicist myself with all the they's in the past paragraph. the dangers of the inability to empathize.

i am so lame.

watched my big fat gypsy wedding last night, and it was so surprisingly crazy good. call it my social anthropology self, but couldn't help but get engrossed by the lives of traveller people in the UK. so completely different from what i expected. aka a girl staying in school until 16 is an achievement and getting married at 22 is considered old, but getting married to a guy she'd only met twice before and was literally her first boyfriend is normal. makes me reappreciate my own life a little more.

also, i find it hard that a second grader won the google doodling contest with this photo:

when i was in second grade, i could hardly hold a pencil, much less draw oddly beguiling alien G creatures with perfectly proportioned and spatially appropriate space persons. parents kids these days.

les paul google doodle aka me playing the guitar on google

didn't know google was so interactive. i think i found my other calling. google strumming.

obbaaaaaa. fyi, not whiny, just american.

American English is surprisingly a very sing songy language. People don't usually believe me, but try speaking the last couple of sentences and I'll argue that your tone changed over 10 times. Could American English rival Chinese Mandarin in the amount of intonation changes, just not as formalized?? shockingly possibly yes? take that ethnocentricity.

But back to whininess, Korean, compared to English, is a pretty flat language. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that until this past year, and as such my Korean undeniably sucks. My tones are all over the place. And after hearing your cousins and aunts giggling about how cute you sound while you try to bungle your way through some simple phrases like "thank you" or "can we please have more water," sounding American can get pretty tiring.

but at least i've figured out one of the biggest hurdles to korean fluency. hopefully in my quest to learn more about my heritage, I'll start sounding more Korean-Korean instead of Korean-American.

starting to gear up for another move, which makes me reminisce about my old apartment.

in the classic style of before and after:

"Before-ish" aka in the process of moving out

thank god for friends. while she may look very happy and energetic, it was probably around 1 am by the time we moved out the last few boxes.

and.. After!

chocolates courtesy of the boyfriend :) i believe they are german chocolates.

more gifts from the boyfriend!

one of my favorite sitting areas made.

i'll miss these views

aside from the smallness and the constant smell of smoke that permeated the air, this tiny furnished apartment did good for me for a little while. but i am oh so glad to finally move on!

goodbye chicago! hello columbus!

I. AM. DOCTOR.

only took 20 years of schooling to get here.

True Blood.

(pretty puny fang action if you ask me.)

Okay, I'll be honest, I've been avoiding this series for years. I know, I know, it's one of the most well known vampire romances out there. The television series is considered the X-rated, adult version of Twilight. And when you put together X-rated and Twilight, it's gotta be good, right??

But I thought I had already read most of it. And honesty, three's a company in the romance department for me. private investigator, vampire AND werewolf?? Hey, I may like my troll teenage romances, but even I've got to draw a line somewhere.

But then my boyfriend got me the True Blood box set for my birthday. And, frankly, that's one of the most thoughtful, heartfelt gifts I've ever gotten. Even after mercilessly teasing me about my slight obsession with the paranormal, he still went out to Amazon and checked out what other people with my.. condition were into.

So I decided to give it another chance. I tried reading the first book again. And failed. Apparently, taking the mystery and suspense out of mystery suspense paranormal romance is no fun at all.

But then I said, hey, why not, let's just start with the second book. See if I actually remember any of it.

And 1 day later, I have finished that entire second book.

True Blood is AWESOME. I love it!! I can't believe it took me so long to get to this series. Turns out I never even read past the first book. There isn't even a private investigator. The boyfriend chose his series well.

Next, an actual review of Book 2 in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse Series, Living Dead in Dallas.

i certainly try not to.

while clearing away dishes after helping cook a steak dinner for my mom for mother's day:

mom: you know, even though amy's mom (family friend) is really fashionable, she cooks really well.

me: hey i could cook well too!

mom: ..... but, i mean, you don't have a lot of time to cook...

must exploding garlic haunt me forever?!?

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

and just fyi, the steak dinner was delicious.

while driving on the freeway today from cincinnati back to chicago, i saw a girl driving a car in the fast lane at 60 mph, with a cat walking on her dash.

a cat. walking on her dash.

o_o

after a year of hemming and hawing and researching and lusting, i've found the one.

I've had a small obsession with tablets since they first came out. I got my first tablet, a refurbished toshiba portege m400, for medical school. with a 12.1" standard display and weight of 4.5 lbs, it was actually one of the smaller and better tablets out there. unfortunately, it died a premature death after only a year.

I vowed to get a smaller, lighter tablet with a built in camera for my next computer. Instead, I got the non-tablet IBM thinkpad r61 with a 14.1" widescreen display, without a camera, and weighing in at a hefty 5.7 lbs. It was a behemoth of a laptop, but I enjoyed the huge display and the expansive keyboard. I did miss the tablet function. But honestly, the tablet was more for fun and games than work.

But then, third year came around, and after killing a small glen of trees with my endless printouts of pdf''s in order to present the best evidence based medicine for rounds every day, I started to miss the tablet again. Unless I scanned in every pdf, I basically lost all my highlights and notes. I wanted a lightweight portable computer that could not only save pdf's, but also allow me to highlight it manually.

So I did some research, and I thought I found the one. The ASUS Eee Pad Slider. This piece of tech was mine.

(the pseudo-one) (the keyboard slides out! how cool is that)

But then I realized that it was a Droid. And Droids don't have any pdf highlighting tools like pdf xchanger. And Droids don't have Microsoft Office. And I need Microsoft Office almost as much as I need air.

So I needed windows (ipad = same probs as droids). I was back to square one.

But then I really found the one. The Asus Eee PC T101MT. It's a tablet with a 10.1" widescreen display and weighs only 2.9 lbs. It's a little on the weak side for processing power and also has a smaller harddrive, but it's got everything else I wanted and MORE.

in with the new.

I. AM. TABLET. pc.

The best part is the Multi-touch feature. You can't use a stylus on an iPad because iPads use a capacitive display (you need electricity aka your body). And you can't use your finger on a tablet pc because tablet pc's use a resistive display (resistives recognize pressure = stylus).

The T101MT combines the best of both worlds. It created a whole new display. a Capacitoresistor one might say. Or multi-touch. With a touch of a button, I can go from flipping a book on my Kindle PC to highlighting text on a PDF with a stylus. In three words. HOLY FREAKING AWESOME.

Look Ma, I'm capacitizing!

Resistizing. No smudges while highlighting!

I love this tablet. iPads are all the rage right now. But I gotta say, for the working young urban professional, I predict these Multi-Touch interfaces will steal the market soon. To Asus!

drove into Chicago yesterday to meet up with wishingonsatellite girl for dinner.

kept expecting pedestrians to suddenly dart into the highway, in dark clothing, at night. no such luck. south africa is hard to shake.

i love you modest mouse.

i love me my pnr.

been back in the country for 3 days and i've just been sleeping, eating and devouring my books. i just finished the Trylle trilogy by Amanda Hocking and it was amazing.

The Trylle trilogy is a young adult paranormal romance. about trolls.

I've read books about vampires, werewolves, faeries, elves, witches, valkyries, aliens, ghosts, immortals, etc etc. But, even to me, a coming of age story about a young teenage troll seems kinda ridiculous. And yet, 18 hours later with a smile on my face, I have to admit, this was one incredible story about trolls.

Meet Wendy Everly, a 17 year old girl whose never felt like she's quite fit in and incidentally whose own mother tried to kill her when she was 6. At the latest of her long string of schools from which she's been suspended/expelled, Wendy meets Finn Holmes, a tracker whose come to bring Wendy back to her true home and destiny. **insert epic music**

I really enjoyed this series. Amanda Hocking has a way of building not only an extremely detailed and believable world, but also filling it with characters with an incredible amount of depth that keep believably surprising me. From the very beginning, I felt like I could completely relate to Wendy, from when she meets Finn for the first time, to being thrown into a world with completely new rules and even more unbelievable expectations, from heartbreak, to finding love unexpectedly, from despair and then to ultimately triumphing in the end.

I never wanted the series to end. But it did. And if there was one thing that slightly marred the overall very satisfying experience, it was the HEA. I really do love my happily ever after's. But, this one was a little too happy, even for me. Wendy's whole journey was filled with conflicts and tough decisions, and even if she deserved all the happiness she got in the end, everything concluded a little too tidily. Okay, I admit it, it's because I have a soft spot for Finn. But also, since I respect how Amanda Hocking brought real life into paranormal fantasy, I will begrudgingly admit that Wendy made the right choice.

In any case, because I loved Trylle so much, I can't wait to read more of Amanda Hocking's works.

when it's sleep vs food,

sleep will always win.

i only survived south africa on the goodwill of friends. thank god for friends.

it is as you say it is.

yesterday, we went to robben island, an island prison through the early 1990's for political activists including Nelson Mandela. It was a powerful experience. We had a bus tour tour and an ex-prisoner took us through the prison sharing his experiences and even showing us Nelson Mandela's ex cell.

i'd heard about apartheid in the past but only read up on it right before coming to South Africa. it was shocking to learn how the whites, which at their peak were around 20% of the population but are now only 9% of the population, oppressed 91% of the population. but, i wanted to know more.

i pulled the bus driver/tour guide aside to ask some questions after the tour. it did not start well. his first response was a joking protest since he'd already given us numerous opportunities for questions on the bus.

so i decided to ask him a hell of a question. "Since you were probably a young teenager when apartheid ended in 1994 (tour guide: 'how young do you think i am??'), what was your experience like during that time?"

i got a blank stare. alright, my question was too heavy. so i tried to regroup. "I mean, was it kinda like what we had in the US where blacks and whites were considered separate but equal until 1967? Did you also have segregated schools but were essentially worse off?"

another stare. but finally, he answered.

/o_o/ it is as you say it is. /o_o/

i'm not really sure how you can respond to that. a pat on the back for being so introspective and empathetic? or a kick in the ass for being so blunt that the other party can't even give you a coherent response in return? all i could do was forge ahead. i reviewed how the states still haven't corrected the the socioeconomic disparities between black Americans and white Americans even decades after our segregation laws were repealed. i asked if South Africans were also trying affirmative action like we do in the states.

the conversation ended abruptly and shortly. the tour guide had to make a phone call. but i did, at least, learn that (start negative inflection) some white South Africans (stop negative inflection) consider affirmative action a reverse apartheid.

robben island was intense. it reminded me a lot about the struggles we had in the states and how we still struggle. but i was ultimately disappointed. my sense of hope for South Africa's future after the ex-prisoner guide ended his tour with mention of reconciliation and friendships with the ex-guards was extinguished. history repeats. human nature is an unfortunate constant. and without drastic change, it looks like South Africa's set up for less than satisfactory states of equality, just like we have in the states.

if it looks like shit, and if it smells like shit, it's probably... shit.

i'm really loving our little gold VW 2000 chico. it may be small and without interior lights, power steering, power window rolling, remote locking or even a car alarm, but it starts up every day and hasn't stranded us yet.

we even used it last week to move wishingonsatellites girl's luggage to her container in Container City, aka temporary community of aluminum studio pods on the very periphery of campus for abandoned students without housing due to dorm remodeling. there were a few items to carry in and i grabbed a water bottle and a rolling luggage.

i'm not sure why wishingonsatellite's girl picked up the water bottle after we got into her container. maybe it was a really hot day. maybe she just wanted to put it away. but when she picked it up, it was smeared with brown mud.

i'm not sure why wishingonsatellite's girl decided to smell the mud either. but i'm glad she did. and her reaction was immediate, negative and unmistakable.

panicked, i looked down. yup, shit on my shirt. luckily wishingonsatellites girl had soap and an extra t shirt. but where the hell did the smelly nastiness come from?

turns out there's shit in the boot. also known as dog crap in our trunk. on inspection, there were unmistakable dark brown stains in the trunk carpet. we really don't know how it got there. we can only speculate that it hopefully involved just dogs and transport.

yesterday we visited the car dealer and they offered to have it "valeted"/cleaned for us the next day. and today it smells just like new. unfortunately, there's still shit stains in our boot. but at least we know it's clean crap instead of crap crap now.

i think i'm burning through my clutch.

so, in South Africa, and apparently the rest of the world outside of the US, everyone drives manual. we found out that renting an automatic is actually 3x more expensive than stick shift the first week we got to cape town. so manual it was.

we rented our little circa 1980's volkswagen chico car at a very reasonable price with the assurance that we could trade it in for an automatic if the manual proved to be too much for me since wishingonsatellite girl didn't have a license yet. i tried learning once 5 years ago from my cousin during study abroad. it probably lasted a full 15 minutes. but it was more than nothing.

luckily, one of my suite mates was a Toronto Canadian who was willing to teach me how to drive stick shift. We'd met him and his roommate the day before at orientation. One was going into ortho, the other into plastics. not that that's probably equivalent to AOA and intimidating in any way.

anyway, the orthopod Canadian was a great teacher. i didn't even stall once. i might have even gotten into second gear that day. confidence was inspired.

the next day i tried to drive to a supermarket. i don't know what i was smoking. all the starts and stops, the randomly road darting pedestrians and the cars that cut into your lane at 80 mph out of nowhere make local driving in South Africa. difficult.

but even before that, i stalled two times before i got to the campus gates. the third time the car sputtered menacingly and squatted stubbornly unresponsive, i was actually at the gate with a line of honking cars behind me. i'm ashamed to say it, but i panicked. and i begged mountain skipping German girl who was with us to take over. she was already at my door when i turned to get out. i kid. marginally.

we made it safely and back to the supermarket. but my self confidence was shot. mountain skipping girl offered to give me some tips afterwards and we drove for a bit together. then i went off on my own and just kept practicing.

the rest is kinda a blur. on Day 3, i got into Cape Town via the highway and managed to parallel park on a down slope. on Day 4, we got all the way to Stellenbosch amidst winding mountain roads. and now, i feel like i've been driving a manual my whole life.

but then today, on Day 8, on a really steep incline, i used my parking brake and clutch to help me get into first from a complete stop, and i definitely peeled out and inhaled the scent of burning car deposit. i know via the internet that one of the fastest way to ruin a clutch is to abuse it when going into first on a bad incline. and you can tell when your clutch is feeling more "spongy." and with my n of 1, i'm kinda certain that my clutch is feeling more spongy. or maybe i'm just getting better at using the clutch?

here's to hoping it's the latter.

cape town is surreally beautiful in scenery but the personal experience is still jarring.

there's the majestic landscape with magnificent/craggy mountains and lush green fields of vineyards in the Stellenbosch wine country. there's the obvious whites vs coloreds vs blacks even 16 years post apartheid. there's the experience of feeling like i'm back in the states with beautiful malls and tourist traps but at the next moment encountering the dirty unofficial parking black attendant who lives in a shanty town down the road asking you for money while you're trying to desperately get back into your car hoping you won't get robbed on the street.

we've done a lot here already. learned to how to drive stick shift/watched an accident in front of us in slow motion/went wine tasting/attempted to hike a mountain in flip flops and bad shoes/successfully hiked up that damn mountain with the right shoes/met some cute Nickelback like band members at a concert/had afternoon tea at a really nice hotel/went grocery shopping at a Navy Pier like monstrosity full of touristy stores and restaurants.

we've also met the Canadian boys and the Belgium girls and a whole host of other peoples. i think i'll call our little group of wishingonsatellite girl and spicy chick the American girls.

just fyi, i'm in cape town!! just got here 11 days ago :)

PNR voting!!

I really like Meljean Brooks. and Nalini Singh. But have to say, Meljean hasn't gotten the publicity she deserves. This is also a shameless bid to win an ipad2 as well.

Where are you from?

I'd bristle whenever I heard that question. My answer was always a drawn out, Chicago IL, while I pointedly stared at the offenders and dared them to question me even further.

No.. (indulging smile) you know what I mean, where are you really from?

Making me admit my ethnicity was like pulling teeth. I prefer the direct, "What are you?" approach then the "Where are you from?" which implies that I'm still considered an outsider.

But, this year, I've stopped caring. Part of it was the boyfriend who's also Asian-American and who's never been bothered by the question himself. Most of it was that during interview season, my most hated phrase was the one question you could count on being asked by every applicant at least once.

I asked it myself more times than I could count. And ethnicity was the farthest from our minds. We wanted to know about which medical schools we were from and the places we called home. When we talked about programs, I was part of a new group, the American Medical Graduates. I was an "us" and the International Medical Graduates were the "them." And it felt good.

When I came home, I ran into an Asian-American MS2 on the streets. We started talking about food and he mentioned Chinatown.

Curious, I asked him, "Where are you from?" He look shocked. He spluttered. I could see his mind trying to wrap around the fact that another Asian-American, someone who should understand, was making him feel like he didn't belong.

I clarified, "I mean, are you like from California? Because Chicago's Asian food is pretty good, but Californian Asian food is probably a lot better."

I felt pretty good about myself. I had moved on. I was now just plain American and clearly this MS2 still had some ways to go before he could put together his fractured self-identity into something whole.

Then today, when I was purchasing the green book at the bookstore, the clerk asked me, "Where are you from?" I answered automatically, "Hometown, IL."

"haha no seriously, I mean, like where are you from?" I could literally hear the bubble burst. I felt like I was back at square one. But now that I think about, I've probably moved a few steps forward.

Since the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed only in 1965, Asians are a new immigrant population. It might take a couple generations before we're considered an integral part of the whole. But, I have hope because while there are a lot of people who still consider me foreign, I've met a lot of other people who already consider me part of that whole. And when I automatically answered "Hometown, IL" instead of raising my hackles, I realized I considered myself part of that whole too.

Ohio State bitches!

oh my god. Is it 1130 yet???

Empathy is a joke.

The ability to truly understand another human being, whether in joys or ills, is humanly impossible. In fact, outside of our own close family and friends, other human beings are simply not real people.

My perspective on empathy changed when I became a patient myself a couple years back. Before undergoing a vascular Interventional Radiology procedure, I remember the fellow asked me if I wanted pain medications or not. Since she reassured me that there should be very little pain, I politely declined any analgesics. But when the fellow started to forcefully push the stiff catheter device into my arm, I had to stop the procedure. No pain?? This was fucking pain. Sharp, agonizing pain. I cried and I was embarrassed. and then I asked for some real pain meds.

The next time I went to IR again, I had a different fellow. I asked him to wait a few more seconds after numbing the catheter insertion site with lidocaine before proceeding. His impatience and frustration was obvious. Even though he "understood" the pain I would soon experience, finishing the procedure was a higher priority. I wasn't a real person to him. He waited a few more seconds than what was probably usual for him, and started anyway amidst my weak protests.

And then, I started to realize that the problem with empathy is not isolated to medical professionals and their patients. It's rampant, and it's everywhere. I've even blogged about it before.

Inability to empathize is why we can talk shit about each other. It's why we can conduct heinous acts of violence/racist crimes against each other. Because, even though we know that our victims are human beings, until we've been in their shoes, they are not real persons. We've all got a little antisocial personality disorder in us.

I've brought up my theories to friends/families and at first, there is reluctance to agree with me. People like to think of themselves as nice. That if they saw suffering of any sort, they would be able to relate and help in some way. But frankly, if we were able to empathize with the world, we would be frozen in terror and grief while we truly comprehended the effects of natural disasters and human tragedies.

Empathy really is a joke. And that's a good thing. It allows us to function when the rest of the world might be falling apart. Understanding the truth behind empathy can even make you a better sympathizer. People can tell when you're bullshitting, even if you can't yourself. But, when you realize your own limits, others start to appreciate that you do care, even if you still can't honestly relate.

And also, when more of us start to realize that it's so easy to hurt others because we view non family/friend peoples as objects instead of persons, the world might even become a better place.

Today I really regretted taking Claritin-D.

For most of my life, I have suffered from a nonrelenting case of allergic rhinitis. I have never been able to breathe through my nose. My sense of smell was shot and my sense of taste wasn't far behind. I remember as a kid being ridiculed when I brought my nasal spray to school in my lunch box. My mom also used to mercilessly tease me by asking me what I thought about her soups and when my answers were always a disappointingly, "I don't know," she'd scoff in my face and say, "Why did I even ask? You could eat dog $%@# and it would still taste the same!" (obvious exaggeration)

At the same time, there were some benefits. Whenever we went camping, I could tolerate outhouses for longer. During anatomy, I could dissect into the GI system without blinking an eye. When I visited a neighbor's house in Paraguay and they offered pig skin soup with the bristle still attached, I chewed the furry mess and was honestly able to say that it was a good meal.

But then I discovered Claritin-D and my world changed. I could breathe! I could smell! I could taste! It was amazing. It was a miracle. Did you know that flowers actually smell sweet? All this time, I never understood why people would stuff their noses in bouquets and sigh in bliss. Now I know. I became addicted to experiencing the world through my missing fifth sense. I gladly endured the daily pseudoephedrine inspired headaches and palpitations. I looked forward to the withdrawal fatigues and depression because I knew that the next day would be filled with exciting and wonderful fragrances.

But little by little, I've started to wonder if my new olfactory world may have some draw backs. The streets of Chicago have become more pungent than I remember. and the subways and buses are definitely more aromatic.

And today, after performing my first real drainage of an abscess pilonidal style, I discovered the smell of bodily fluids. and it stinks. At first, cleaning the abscess out was satisfying. There's nothing like squeezing out the badness from the skin and knowing that the patient was going to feel a lot better afterwards. But then it hit me. The smell. The disgusting, putrid smell of anaerobes gone wild. It was horrifying. I gagged a little into my mouth. While I kept a straight face and kept expressing the badness now with a completely new dimension of badness, I thought longingly back to the days where I could have remained blissfully ignorant of the foul odors that now surrounded me.

But then I ended my shift and came back home. And realized I still really loved breathing. And maybe the world didn't smell quite as bad as I thought. Now all I have to figure out is how to obtain a 30-day supply of my heavily regulated miracle drug without a prescription before I leave the country in two weeks. all in a perfectly legal way. i promise.

If you died, do you want us to bring you back?

Yesterday was my first day on the trauma team at the ED. Around 8 am, we received a call that a 60-something year old man had had a witnessed cardiac arrest and the ambulance was already on its way.

We gathered in trauma bay 1 for the arrival and I started shivering. It was freezing and the adrenaline was pumping. This was my first real code. As we waited, our attending took us through different diagnoses, how the code would set up, who would do what, etc. My student partner and I looked at her with hopeful expressions. Yes! we were assigned to chest compressions.

The ambulance pulled into the bay and soon the EMT's quickly walked in and rolled the patient into the room. They weren't doing chest compressions. I blinked. I expected to see someone sitting on top of the patient, precariously balanced on the gurney, giving him frantic chest compressions and shouting, "Come on, damn it! Come back to us!!" Was the patient already gone?

We shoved the overweight white male onto the table. and it was momentary chaos. the patient wasn't all the way onto the table. no one knew how to detach the EMT's ambu bag to check his airway. the iv's were going in. chest pads were being placed. we still couldn't see the airway. then my resident yelled out,

Start chest compressions!

We formed an organized line and got to work. Someone joked that maybe tonight we would break the 96 minute record set in Minnesota where someone actually made it.

My turn was quickly up. I stepped up on the stool and put my right hand over my left with my elbows locked and started singing staying alive in my head. It was hard. Really hard. My arms and abs were burning and my calves were cramping. I had to tap out at a shameful 1 minute.

I couldn't believe I was so weak. The dummies were always so easy to resuscitate. Were my weak compressions killing the patient?

While waiting for my turn again, I hesitantly reached out and touched the patient's skin. He was warm. I was hopeful. Maybe we were breathing and pumping enough blood to keep him going.

My partner got him into VFib after the 4th cycle of CPR. We all cheered and shocked him a couple times. He went back into asystole. With each cycle, I was getting more and more confident of my chest compressive abilities. I was lasting the full 2 minutes. My compressions were fast enough and hard enough. But the patient kept getting cooler and cooler.

The patient stayed in asystole. My attending turned to all of us and asked, does anyone have any more ideas? we silently shook our heads. ..Does anyone have any objections? We shook our heads again. Time of death, 8:59 am.

The patient wasn't coming back. I snapped off my gloves. Poor guy, he probably never had a chance. He'd been popping nitrates all weekend. He had a history of congestive heart failure. He probably wouldn't have made it even if the ambulance was right there when he collapsed. But at least we did something. We didn't save him, but we tried. and I actually helped.

We left the room to get our coats and I saw a quiet older woman with a strained, pale face staring at us while we filed out. I froze. It was the coworker who had called 911. Did she know? How could she not know? She was sitting right outside.

I kept staring at her. Slow seconds passed. One of the attendings came out and bent down with a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry"

She started crying. Large wailing cries of grief and denial. And I suddenly realized, this man is really dead. He's not coming back. We didn't accomplish anything. He was dead dead.

My attending took us students aside to help us sort our feelings. She was crying a little herself. We talked about the morbid excitement and feeling of accomplishment. Feeling the patient getting cooler and his face get more purple. The moment when you realize the patient wasn't coming back. The moment you realize that this patient was an actual person when you witness the grief from a friend/loved one/coworker. And then my attending took it farther and started talking about code status. She said you have to be honest.

It's not, if your heart stops, do you want us to do everything we can to help you? It's, if you die. if nature takes its course, and if you DIE. do you want us to bring you back? Don't fool yourself. The patient had been dead for 30 minutes before he arrived. He was not alive. He was not barely alive. He was dead. And we tried our best to resuscitate a dead man for another 30-40 minutes. He had been dead, and he stayed dead.

I'll never forget looking into an unresponsive face with eyes barely open that looked like he could wake up any moment. I'll never forget staring at the coworker in her chair, anxiously following our exits with denial in her eyes. I'll always remember this. Feeling like a hero. And a patient who was still dead.

Until society looks down on men who choose careers over families, more women than men will choose families over careers.

Women are different from men. There is no doubt that we are biologically different. And biology plays a large role in how we act.

Since women are the only gender that can get pregnant, naturally one can conclude that women should be the primary caretaker of their children.

I argue that women choose to be stay at home moms because society praises them for it. When I had to choose my medical specialty, I noticed that more females than males were discussing the conflicts between careers and families. In fact, I know of several female students who intentionally chose their medical specialty because they wanted to have a family. But why do women still have to choose between success in their careers and success in their families in the 21st century??

Obviously, the fact that fertility decreases dramatically after women turn 35 years old plays a huge part in our decision making. But, assuming the average age difference between married couples is 2 years, I would also assume a large proportion of single male students should also be worrying about having enough time to raise their children.

But they don't. Because society does not expect them to spend more than a couple hours each evening with their kids. Men work. Women raise kids. In fact, society looks down on females who choose careers over families. They are portrayed as the lonely workaholics who have little to show for their lives except for their careers.

If our culture looked down on males who choose careers over families, if we start calling all males who choose to pursue a highly competitive career Mr. Scrooges, men would spend more time with their families. And women could finally have equal opportunities for success.

I strongly believe that an equal proportion of genders/ethnicities/etc should be in an equal proportion of non-physically dominated successful positions such as ceo's/presidents/thursday night comedy stars/etc. That means an equal number of men should be able to become stay at home dads. An equal number of men should be expected to pursue careers that are more family friendly. And an equal number of men and women should be able to pursue careers that are less family freindly.

Women can succeed in formally considered "male-only" roles. Just look at physicians. 50 years ago, there were no women in the profession. Now each class is made up of 50% women. And surprisingly enough, the world has not ended. I would even argue that doctors have benefited from having another perspective since half of our patient population is incidentally female.

In fact, I really wish dads were expected/given the opportunity to spend as much time with their kids as moms. I love our moms. They are strong, wonderful women. But, who knows, maybe having a stronger dad perspective since half our children are males would benefit us in some way. At the least, I'm pretty sure the world won't end.

lady gaga's new music video.

cool.

it started off.. different.. but with potential for quirky fun. and then, see above.

i went through obgyn, but i'm still not okay with that whole birthing of good/evil graphicness. i know there's lots of references that are going over my head and it was probably well thought out and all that. seriously though, not what i want to see first thing in the morning.

ranking sucks.

i finally put in my finalized list the last morning i could and how i got there is a foggy haze. but in the end, like so many of our predecessors, the decision was mostly gut and some part brain.

i made a list with the most rational career decisions. it was clearly a black and white issue. but then i was reminded of personal needs and wants. and then i was reminded that maybe what i want now will be the exact opposite of what i want later. and then i realized i had no freaking idea what i even wanted now.

that was 10 days ago.

so then i made a new list. i agonized over it. i considered the actuals and then the potentials. i struggled over how to measure a potential future/happiness/pain to the actual possibilities of future/happiness/pain i had in front of me.

i agonized more.

so then i started asking for advice from every single person i knew. all the while, i knew that everyone's advice came from their own life experiences. that the regrets/happiness they had experienced and the happiness they wanted me to experience would color their thoughts on my own rank list. and i knew that my own hopes and dreams were preventing me from seeing myself in a clear light.

but can anyone really see me in a completely objective light? who knows more about all the personal subtleties involved with placing one program/location over another than me?

i just finalized my list this morning. and i feel well. my brain keeps running in circles but my gut is calm. and since my gut has as many neurons as my brain, i feel like this is the right choice.

that's the beauty of being human. we can rationalize all we want. we can assign percentages and make enormous spreadsheet charts. but really, isn't the future what we make of it? if you want to be happy, you WILL be happy. if you want to be disappointed, you ultimately will. whatever happens on match day, i'm going to choose the former. i can't wait.

Instead of studying for step 2 ck, I got sucked into the behemoth known as American Idol.

Group day is one of the most stressful things I have ever lived through vicariously. The emotions are frightening and the amount of needless dramatics is very whelming.

But you always have that one cute kid/heartbreaking story that the producers want you to root for. On this episode, that kid was JC Badoo.

(i could not find a better picture. picture above with a sweet smile and a good voice.)

He's a 15 year old kid with a talented voice, but with his size and general niceness, he undoubtedly had a rough history of bullying and being the odd one out. ie He got kicked off his original team for not being "the right fit" aka "you will bring us down" aka "you don't act like us/are not the same age as us/are not the same ethnicity" (pretty much the only types of groups formed). I was outraged. How can a group of individuals gang up against a poor defenseless kid like that? and the worse part was JC just accepted it and moved on. He didn't rale against the injustice of it or even shed one tear. He was so used to rejection that this latest incident was just one of many.

He eventually found a new team and they welcomed him with open arms. But it was already so late into the night, I wondered if he was going to do well.

JC's 2nd team performed well and they all passed and JC finally broke down. He had finally received the affirmation that he deserved. He WAS good enough. He IS talented. He really could become a star.

And then the absolute evilness that was JC's 1st team was called to the stage. I was ready for blood. But, after their own dazzling performance, filled with suave moves and even stronger voices, I had to admit, maybe they were right. If soft singing JC had performed with his first team, he would not have made the cut.

I'm still glad he made it this far. Even if it was through unfortunate circumstances and serendipitous chances. But who cares? Luck is about taking advantage of opportunities no matter how they come by. Good luck JC! I'll be rooting for you until the cameras give me a new cause to fight for next week.

grammy's was on last night and there's one performance that i know everyone can't stop talking about:

(i missed lady gaga's egg)

this is joe kwon, 1.9 generation korean-american. he was the cellist playing in the hidden camera angles and shadows of the avett brothers during the grammys. but i saw him.

a freaking asian! on television! actually asian-americans on television is kinda old news now. something about this cycle of popular minority in media is asian? hopefully it'll be more than a cycle.

anyway, joe kwon is a recent recruit to the Avett Brothers (folk triplet/trio/terzet). according to charlotte observer.com he's a math major who worked for ibm with a passion for classic cello that through some diligent hard work led to his loose crazy improvisational style with the Avett Brothers.

he's also a culinary genius. math whiz+cellist whiz+actual cook? sometimes i feel like i fail at being asian. (to those who don't know, i don't cook. my last scarring experience with exploding garlic in a pot of boiling oil is an experience i don't want to repeat.)

here are some fairer pictures of the cellist:

i'm just glad he can grow some decent facial hair. then he won't feel like the odd man out next to all those long haired/long bearded folksy folk.

source. joe kwon food blog.

Compromise ruins relationships.

is what I learned while waiting at the dentist's office yesterday. and i absolutely agree.

i was reading an article about married couples who were at the breaking point of their relationships. these were people who had married for love but either because of an accumulation of small daily stresses or the big decisions of whether or not to have a child were tearing them apart.

Example 1: Mary and Todd

They had 3 children from 8-13 years of age. and every morning was a battle between them to get their kids ready for school. Todd wanted them to learn that actions had consequences, so if they didn't wake up on time with their alarm clocks or missed the school bus, they had to walk to school. Mary wanted them to just get to school, so she would personally wake them up even if they had overslept and drive them to school if they missed the school bus. The kids took full advantage of their parents' arguments and ended up sleeping in and more often than not getting a ride to school.

Both Mary and Todd thought that theirs was the right way. And both felt like they were getting the short end of the stick when it came to the morning routine.

Example 2: Chris and Jill

This was Chris' 2nd marriage and Jill's 1st. Chris already had a 14 year old daughter from his first marriage. Jill had no children of her own. Jill wanted to have kids. Chris, seeing how distraught his daughter was over her dad having another kid, didn't. They were at an impasse. Jill even said that if she knew Chris would have changed his mind about having kids after they were married, she wouldn't have married him in the first place.

In argument over argument, Chris and Jill became more and more polarized. Chris listed all the reasons why they shouldn't have kids. Jill listed all the reasons why they should have kids. If either gave an inch, the other would use it as ammo for their own cause.

Solutions:

I thought the therapist was brilliant. She basically recommended that both couples try the other side for a week at a time and see what happened.

For Mary and Todd, she told them that ONE person should be in charge for a week and the other should just observe. For Chris and Jill, she said that they BOTH should talk about the pros of having kids once and then the cons of having children another time.

And apparently both worked.

For Mary and Todd, they each saw how some of their own routines worked and didn't. Mary saw that by driving the kids to school, the kids would try harder to be late. Todd saw that actually waking up the kids made the whole morning routine less stressful and more efficient.

For Chris and Jill, they may not have come to an agreement, but they were able to see another aspect of their spouses. Rather than the bastard who won't have kids and the incredibly selfish bitch, they saw the husband who was torn between love for his daughter and wife and they saw the wife who wanted a child of her own and was hurt her husband didn't want to share such an important experience.

They say give a little, take a little. But, it might be better to give a lot and take a lot. If one person is in New York and the other in California, it doesn't make sense to live in Montana. Both would feel like they had compromised, both would feel like the other owed them in some way, both would feel like they had been screwed. Rather, it might work better if they both lived in New York, then it's clear who gave/took and when it comes to the next big decision, it'll be on the other person's terms.

Clearly one reason the therapist sessions worked was because she forced the partners to really step into the other's shoes. It's easy to criticize when you're just watching someone. It's harder to bitch when you actually had to stand up for them/actually tried to do things their way for once because you end up criticizing yourself.

If you think of one partner as black and the other white, where they meet shouldn't be just a mix of the two and plain gray. Maybe, it should look more like a checkerboard but when you step back and look at the big picture, it still turns out to be one happy solid color.

i love tablets, but i hate the virtual keyboard. mostly because you can't rest your hands on it unless you want to write pure crazy gibberish. and whenever i use one, i feel the bones creaking as i slowly type and look on in envy as teenagers' fingers blur effortlessly and confidently over new technology.

but i am still in serious want. for tablets. i need something i can write on, read on, internet on and still carry around without risking another upper extremity DVT. i even blogged about it a couple weeks ago: my ultimate portable computing machine: ipad + bluetooth keyboard + magic mouse.

and now. i've found it.

Behold, the Asus EEE Pad Slider.

Apparently, there's this huge thing called CES aka Consumer Electronics Show that takes place annually and debuts the newest and hottest electronics for the year. And Asus debuted not one, but FOUR tablet alternatives.

(1) Asus EEE Pad Slider: 10.1" Tablet + sliding keyboard + Android 3.0

(2) ASUS EEE Slate EP 121: 12" Tablet + wireless keyboard + Windows 7

(3) ASUS EEE Pad MeMO: 7" Handheld Tablet + Stylus + Android 3.0

(4) ASUS EEE Pad Transformer: 10.1" Tablet + dockable Keyboard + Android 3.0

And all of them have cameras. And except for the slider, they have some type of HDMI output as well. Pricetags are $499 to $1099. More info here.

I may have discovered them a month after the official techie community, but my inner poser geek CANNOT WAIT.

i hate the term, "no offense."

people use "no offense" to blunt the blow of a below the belt comment. for example (actual comments heard, may be exaggerated), "I just don't like those kids who get into medical school from college, in fact, i just hate them all, no offense." (it's called we thought ahead) or "sorry, your car just looked like something a $%@# would drive, no offense." etc etc OFFENSE TAKEN, jackass.

if you're going to be rude and impolite, just say it. better yet, keep your offensive mouth shut and don't say anything at all. you're a coward if you think "no offenses," "sorry but," "i'm not judging!" make you blameless. NO OFFENSE.

this was the craziest storm. ever.

this storm, aka 2011 blizzard/ ground hog day blizzard/most exciting day of my life! blizzard, dumped 20.2" of snow in a period of 24 hours. it inspired words like thunder-snow (there really was lightening) from legendary chicago weather announcer Tom Skilling. It trapped hundreds of motorists on lake shore drive. it was furious, frightening and unforgettable.

i woke up this morning (late of course, who the hell would go to class in this weather) and all i could see was white out of my windows.

Normal view outside:

This morning's view outside:

The storm was too incredible to miss. I had to get out and explore. With winds up to 60 mph, and visibility down to 20 feet sometimes, this was the opportunity of a lifetime!! The last time a storm this big hit was '67, I could possibly never see a weather event of this magnitude again.

I trekked over to Lake shore drive first.

(the lake)

It was completely barren except for the occasional pedestrians/snow trucks/squad cars. I saw a group of up to no good guys wandering down the middle of auxiliary LSD (main LSD was shut down). and by no good guys, i mean fellow classmates ;) They'd braved the weather all the way from Lincoln Park.

punch the hurricane steve!

(http://www.hulu.com/watch/180975/saturday-night-live-jay-as-will-smith)

They told me that the lake was really awful. Truly the only words that would make me want to see the lake up close and personal. Tom Skilling told me that the waves went up to 25 feet during the storms because of the winds. From the words awful and 25 feet waves, I was destined to check it out.

I took the tunnel down, although safety may have been questionable what with the security tape/barricades. But hey, the policeman on patrol didn't say anything when a dad/son pair went down, so I took my chances. Needless to say, the drifts were impressive. I tried to get a quick shot of the lake, but the police man started hollering and I had to head back. Basically, imagine the lake pic from above, but 50 feet closer.

Shots of Mich Ave:

I stopped by Walgreens to get some more batteries for my dead camera, when who would you know, the same classmate peeps showed up at the same time. Serendipitous indeed.

All in all, since I don't have a job/didn't have a medical emergency/didn't get stuck on LSD/still had power, it was an awesome day.