Lessons from the ER, Part II: Keep Your Mouth Shut

3:08am. Lord.

I sat there in my chair, constantly pushing F5, hoping that new test results would come back from the lab so I could update them in my chart and get rid of the patient. I felt my eyes start to droop.

Lessons from the ER, Part I: Leave Your Jimmy Choos at home

I sat at my computer station, staring at the ER patient status board on the screen.

Twelve patients in the entire ED. Twelve. Out of thirty-four beds, fewer than half of them had bodies. And about a third of those weren’t even real emergency cases, just whiny twenty-somethings with itchy va-jay-jays and blood in their urine.

The Mayans Got It Totally Wrong

I live in a state of perpetual fear.

I can’t help it. I grew up in a stereotypically science-based Chinese family, surrounded by doctors and nurses and scientists. As a child, I was always bombarded with warnings of “don’t touch that, it’s dangerous” or “if you put that in your mouth, you’ll get cancer.” Apparently, with the exception of fruits, vegetables, and twice-boiled water, every single thing in the world was bad for me.

Growing in California certainly didn’t help things.

An Open Letter to Posterity, or, Why I Shouldn’t Be Allowed Near Minors

Dear high school kids I met in the Georgetown Summer Medicine Institute,

You scare the crap out of me.

I Am a Menace to Sobriety

I turned 24 in Dahlgren Memorial Library. Fitting that the first random article Wikipedia took me to that day was on Ammit, the Egyptian female funerary symbol, a demon known as the “Eater of Hearts.”