It's So Cute When They Try

“Gordon, why don’t you go and see Mr. M on your own and then we can discuss his case?"

Oh, thank you mystical powers above. It’s finally happening. My longitudinal clinic preceptor is throwing me the reins. I get to stroll in to a patient room with my white coat and my notebook and pretend I’m actually a somebody. I get to try my hand at diagnosing something real. I’m the boss. This must be how the NCAA men’s basketball national championship team feels when “One Shining Moment” blares as the players try to not choke on confetti.

Return to the Motherland, Part II: Conglom-O

Think of the one thing you absolutely cannot live without on a daily basis. It's a hard question, I know. (And no, this isn't the start to some awkward middle school personality test/eHarmony screening.) Is it your smartphone? Your contact lenses? Pepsi? Your morning venti skinny mocha Frappuccino?

Here in Taipei, it's 7-Eleven.

Return to the Motherland, Part I: Nineteen Mosquito Bites and Counting

My old man is sitting behind me, relaxing in his boxers and enjoying a riveting battle in Cowboys and Aliens on HBO. We're doing our best to keep cool in his relatively cramped apartment in the Tianmu neighborhood of the Shilin district in Taipei. The sounds of scooters revving past wailing ambulances and a symphony of cicadas float through the air outside the window.

Eat, Pray For Passing Classes, Love

It's supposed to be spring, and yet we've had four days of gorgeous, warm sunshine followed by a week of hail, sleet, and rain. Come on, Omaha. Pick a season. We can't give out clozapine like candy like the good ol' days anymore.

Summer after the first year of medical school is widely considered to be the last summer of our lives. Many of us will go abroad to do medical mission trips or work in clinics. Others will lock themselves in a lab doing research, gunning for that orthopaedic surgery or anesthesia residency. Some will actually be smart and take the summer off to just travel for fun and chill.

Along with the twilight of every summer, then, comes thoughts of finally cracking open those books that we've purchased but never had the chance (or, more likely, motivation) to read. The sad tomes sit on shelves, collecting dust while you tell yourself, "I'll start reading it tomorrow, I promise - I just have more important things to do." Next thing you know, you've marathoned every episode of Game of Thrones and eaten three quarters of a Domino's pizza. And, sadly, your books remain unread.

Here, then, is my recommended reading list for those of you looking to keep your brains active.

Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James. I personally haven't read it, but apparently it's about a colorblind artist who, despite the odds being stacked against her, manages to paint some of the world's most critically acclaimed works that the critics hail as the most brilliant use of color since Pocahontas did that thing with the wind. Unfortunately, the artist is unable to fully appreciate her own genius due to her condition, and, unable to cope with the stress of her new-found celebrity, eventually commits suicide by drowning herself in a bucket of paint, hand-mixed from various shades of grey lead paint. I think there are also some sex scenes.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Again, I haven't read it, but based on the title, it sounds like it's fairly light reading, perfect for a sunny day at the park. If what the drunk man at the bus stop last week told me is accurate, it's a short novella in two parts. First, Tolstoy describes in intricate yet mundane detail about various weapons of the 19th century. (Now's your chance to learn how to build an old-school crossbow and play The Medieval Walking Dead in your own backyard!) In the second part, he talks about married life in white picket fence suburban Ohio. People walk their dogs in the morning and cordially yet insincerely greet each other as they rush in and out of their houses in their bathrobes to collect the paper. Nothing dramatic happens, everyone is generally happy, and life is peaceful. The end.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. In a wildly creative re-imagining of the popular children's tabletop game Hungry Hungry Hippos, Collins creates a flowing, vivid world of lush jungle green in which intelligent, anthropomorphic hippopotami (hippopotamuses?) with immeasurably high rates of metabolism must eat as quickly as possible on a constant basis. This need for consistent sustenance has created warring tribes of hippos. With gold being a meaningless mineral, currency has boiled down to the number of calories per food item. Underground hippopotamus scientists have found ways to skew the caloric values of certain food items, thus creating a disparate bartering system in which the poor get poorer and the rich get morbidly obese. Among such turmoil and mistrust, two particularly aggressive factions have risen up and begun a war for food unlike any before. Brace yourself for the most thrilling, heart-pounding adventure of this summer as Collins describes in vivid, gory detail of the First Great War of Feasts between the Zimmernians and the Acolytes of Bourdain and their never-ending quest for caloric dominance.

Gluttony: The Greatest Virtue of All

The following is my article that was published in the Winter 2012 issue of the Wellness Chronicle, Creighton Medicine's newspaper of record. Shut up, it's 20 degrees outside and I'm being lazy.
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"Hey guys. Do you realize that we're actually sitting down for dinner? And actually having a four-course meal? What is this nonsense?

I guess that's one way to say grace.

I looked down at our salads of radicchio, frisée, and sliced carrots, topped with dried cranberries and honey-roasted almonds. To the left of my plate sat a Pittsburgh Steelers shot glass, topped off with a honey dijon mustard and champagne vinaigrette. Each of my five guests had a similar arrangement, only their glasses came from various academic institutions I had visited.

Course by course, we worked through the salad, the butternut squash soup (which, frankly, was ten bricks of caseous necrosis cream cheese with a side of squash), the beef stew with gravy over rice, and the Thomas Keller simple roast chicken. Along the way, bottle after bottle of wine mysteriously disappeared. Before any of us could get to the apple pie, a tidal wave of lethargy and guilt swept over us. As if at a Passover Seder, we all leaned back in our chairs, content yet fearfully debating whether Acute Onset Diabetes was a real thing and if we all had it right then.

Then we all thought back to the rhetorical question that kicked off our meal. Being busy medical students, cramming knowledge into our skulls faster than we can produce the tears to cope, seriously, how often do we get to do this?

This scene is fairly common in my apartment on Saturday nights. Change around the menu and the guest list a bit each week, sure, but my drive to entertain friends via dinners (and, more recently, brunches) has been one of my constant pillars since my college years.

One of my guests once asked, "How in the world do you have time to do this almost every week?"

The short answer: let's just say I'm not Honoring in any classes anytime soon.

The long answer is love.

A few months ago, Dr. Mark Goodman here at Creighton gave us a lecture in our Ethics and Legal Topics in Clinical Medicine course entitled "Care of the Dying Patient." One point he made in the lecture was regarding the difficulty in deciding to feed a loved one through a gastric tube instead of by mouth.

"Food isn't just about getting the nutrition you need. That's not why we cook for each other or get together for a meal. It's about sharing and being around each other. Food is love."

That darn line - "food is love" - hit me in the chest and stuck to me like Snooki's mouth sticks to pickles. As soon as I got home that night, I dug up my old Bittman cookbook and started creating a menu to feed eight that weekend.

As medical students, we stress ourselves out non-stop trying to handle the constant barrage of information presented to us daily. Selective decompression has now become more a survival mechanism than mere fun for the sake of having fun. We run, we lift, we climb, we read, we drink - we do whatever is necessary to take our minds off of cranial nerves and autosomal dominant traits, if even for an hour. Experimenting with new recipes, mastering old warhorses, and making sure my guests leave my home fat and happy is how I prefer to unwind.

More importantly, however, I would like to think that I'm also helping my peers relax by providing a hot meal that they otherwise wouldn't have the time to prepare. A Big Mac may be cheap and fast, but you and I both know that the McBrick sitting in your stomach and the inevitable McSweats are no substitute for the care that goes into a homemade dish. Taking the time and energy to cook for others is about letting them know that you love them. (I'd like to think that's why my Tiger Mom always asks me "What did you eat today?" instead of "How are you doing?" But I'm positive that she's just looking for more reasons to criticize me.)

Creighton has tried to instill in us the idea that medicine is not just about slapping a bandage on the wound and walking away. Hell, a robot could do that. But until Skynet Google Facebook takes over the world, we're going to have people doctors for the foreseeable future. The need for human input is exactly why the practice of medicine is commonly described as the art of healing. Compassion, empathy, and yes, love - these attributes matter. It's why we're here, learning to do what we want to do. We chose medicine because we all house that flame to reach out to others.

The upperclassmen reading this are probably already calling me naive and spooling up the hate mail. "Come on, M1. When you're on the wards, running on only two hours of sleep, trying to figure out why Mr. Smith's GFR suddenly dropped like a rock, do you really think you have time for compassion? You'll be lucky if you don't kill your patient first." True, in the real world, we probably won't have the time to sit down and do a full exploration of all the touchy-feely stuff. But that means that the little things that we can squeeze in matter even more. Working in a busy emergency department in Maryland last year taught me that a positive comment here or a smile there can really turn a patient's day around. Love matters.

So as I sit here, polishing off my Jameson in one hand while poking at Netter with the other, I leave you with my central philosophy: life is too short to not eat well, atherosclerosis be damned. YOLO, as it were.

Food is love. Stay hungry, my friends.

"I'm fairly certain that YOLO is just 'carpe diem' for stupid people." - Jack Black

I'd Like My Oscar, Please

Dang it, the Mayans were wrong after all. I guess that means it's time to put down the CapMo and learn about bacteria or something. Sigh.

I apologize for the months-long hiatus, but between burning out my nose hairs with formaldehyde in the anatomy lab and re-learning (and re-forgetting) metabolism for the third time, it's been difficult to find the precious hours for writing. I've never been good at keeping New Year's resolutions, which is why I rarely make them in the first place, but writing more frequently is my one resolution this year. So...um...hi.
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As future health care professionals, we medical students have a certain perversion with things most other people find appalling. A budding medical student's most carnal cravings are usually satisfied during cadaveric dissection labs in the first year. Exploring the nasal cavities? Twenty-inch hacksaw to the skull, please. Leftover green poop falling out of the colon? Tie that bad boy up like a Christmas roast, and then let's cut it out to take a look! Slicing the penis in half? ...Yeah, I'll be in the corner over there. That's just sick. What's wrong with you?