Return to the United States

As of Thursday I'm back home now. If you followed the travel blog that Chris and I kept, Cape Town offered amazing weather for the last week of our trip and we were terribly sad to return to the bleak gray cold that is Michigan. Luckily we are warming up a bit. Here's hoping we'll warm up enough to have Meg and my wedding out of doors in two and a half weeks! Cross your fingers and pray really hard!
The jet lag seems minimal, thank goodness. Even though it was painful, I forced myself to stay up until almost midnight on Thursday (about 5am by South African time). Other than waking up multiple times in the night and forgetting random things I should not be blanking on, I'd say I'm adjusting well!
I'm starting my very last hospital rotation today for a mercifully short two weeks. There the upcoming graduation to think about, including turning in my logs from four months ago, and gobs of odds and ends to cover in preparation for the wedding! Yay!
Hopefully you all have been well these last couple of months. A few things have changed since I was gone. There are some new buildings around the Lansing area. What is up with the new Coke bottle tops? Why did they make them shorter? I bet it saves billions of tons of plastic or some unbelievable number like that.

Africa Updates

Hey! Check out my alternate blog that my friend Chris and I have set up to keep everyone up to speed on what is going on with us while we are in Malawi!

web.mac.com/collerch/

Marshall T. Steen

Marshall T. Steen passed away at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, on the morning of December 2, 2007. Marsh was 86 years old. Born in Superior, Wisconsin on July 8, 1921, he leaves behind his loving wife of 63 years, Cora, four children and their spouses, nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Marsh proudly served our country in the Pacific during World War II. He was loved not only by his family, but by all who knew him, including hundreds of students he taught as a public school teacher in Minnesota, Colorado and Arizona. Marsh taught science at Cocopah junior high school in Scottsdale for twenty years before retiring in 1986. He will also be greatly missed by his friends at Calvary Church of the Valley where he and Cora have been active and dedicated members for 36 years. A public memorial service will be held at Calvary Church of the Valley, 6107 N. Invergordon Road in Paradise Valley at 7:00 P.M. on Tuesday, December 4, 2007 . A family graveside service will be held at The National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona.

granddad will be missed

Marshall T. Steen passed away at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, on the morning of December 2, 2007. Marsh was 86 years old. Born in Superior, Wisconsin on July 8, 1921, he leaves behind his loving wife of 63 years, Cora, four children and their spouses, nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Marsh proudly served our country in the Pacific during World War II. He was loved not only by his family, but by all who knew him, including hundreds of students he taught as a public school teacher in Minnesota, Colorado and Arizona. Marsh taught science at Cocopah junior high school in Scottsdale for twenty years before retiring in 1986. He will also be greatly missed by his friends at Calvary Church of the Valley where he and Cora have been active and dedicated members for 36 years. A public memorial service will be held at Calvary Church of the Valley, 6107 N. Invergordon Road in Paradise Valley at 7:00 P.M. on Tuesday, December 4, 2007 . A family graveside service will be held at The National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona.

Decisions, decisions...

The time is rapidly approaching to start applying for residency. Why on earth is it so hard to figure out what I like? I like medicine; I like working with people. I've enjoyed just about every rotation I've done so far but no single one really jumps out at me as an area that gets me passionate. I could see myself as a surgeon, a pediatrician, an anesthesiologist, an internist, an obstetrician gynecologist, and a family doctor. Just about the only area that has been ruled out so far is radiology and that's mainly because I don't foresee having access to the technology on the medical mission field.

Certainly doing something in surgery seems the most obvious when it comes to medical missions. "A chance to cut is a chance to cure," as they say. You get definitive and nearly immediate results, which is great, and I am perpetually blown away by the fact that we are working on someone's insides! On the other hand (literally) my manual dexterity seems to be lacking, not something that couldn't be overcome with more practice, but it is disheartening when I'm trying to make a major career decision.

Anesthesia is really neat. Just about the only pharmacology I actually enjoy has to do with the autonomic system - sympathetics, parasympathetics, and the like - and it is really satisfying to see the immediate effect of pushing a liquid through a syringe to adjust the heart rate, blood pressure, consciousness level, etc... it's like magic! The downside is that you get relatively little interaction with conscious patients. To contrast with surgery, you see your patients in the office before and after the operation but, in anesthesia, you introduce yourself and then knock them out. As they say in anesthesia, "the best anesthesiologist is one the patient doesn't remember", because something likely didn't go so well if they do remember you.

I liked pediatrics because you are working for the most part with patients who are generally healthy save for whatever infection they are currently battling. You may give them medication but it is usually only temporary and they will go back to being their normal healthy selves before long. Also the pediatric population has not yet had a chance to cause their own medical issues through poor lifestyles. On the other hand, I have five fingers. :o) Seriously, though, I really dislike dealing with genetic diseases and most of them crop up in the pediatric population. I also don't know that I could emotionally handle the mortally ill children.

Obstetrics was a blast! I had so much fun and was so honored to be delivering babies. I enjoyed the variety of clinic, delivery, and surgery. However, I didn't get much exposure to the prenatal and gynecologic side of the profession and I don't think I would like that as much. Besides, here's a blinding glimpse of the obvious, being a guy I can't relate to my patients from personal experience. I can understand why the profession has so many female physicians although I have met a couple excellent male ob-gyn doctors.

I think, internal medicine probably exposed me to more consequences of poor lifestyles and got me to feeling more jaded about it all. The patient on oxygen who still smokes and the awful outcomes of unmanaged diabetes are just a few examples. Also, internists have a butt load of patients to see and do not seem to get much time to spend time with each.

Family medicine has the most potential for developing relationships with my patients. You get to take care of their overall health, which gives a nice broad subject matter. Unlike peds, I was frustrated though by how many troubles are caused by poor lifestyle habits. It seems like you are fighting an uphill battle with a mediocre arsenal of advice and drugs when the best cures are healthy eating and exercise. To be fair, I am probably honing in on a relatively smaller subset of patients with this complaint and most people really do take care of their bodies.

So, I'm still stuck. I like and dislike aspects of everything in medicine. Perhaps I should just stop waiting for that perfect area and pick one... perhaps God will give me some guidance soon!

If you read all of that, kudos for sticking with me and please send out a prayer for direction in this decision.

Starting third year medical school

This is the second month of my hospital rotations. Last month I was working in a family care clinic. It was a good place for me to start on as they simply threw me in with the patients and I got a lot of practice taking histories and physicals. One of the docs is scheduled as the attending physician each day that is in charge of the med students and residents. As a student, I would go meet my patient, gather information about why they are there, obtain other history, run through a review of systems to ferret out any other current problems, and a physical exam that seems appropriate to their visit. Then, armed with all the info I could think of asking, I would excuse myself and go present to my attending physician. Sometimes you have to wait in line but there were usually only a few of us and the residents require less of the attending's time anyway. My attending would then, without fail, ask a bunch of questions that I had not thought about. Then they would ask me what I think was going on and what should be done and finally they would go in the room to meet the patient with me to ask those questions I didn't think to ask and to repeat some of the physical exam themselves. They'd discuss whatever needed to be done with the patient and we would exit to go print out whatever prescriptions, lab orders, referrals, etc that were needed. I can't sign anything as a med student so the attending has to sign all those papers. Finally, I'd pop back in, give the patient the papers and sometimes some drug samples, and conclude the visit. Then I had the joy of charting the visit! Ugh, since I'm still figuring this all out, not only did the visits themselves almost invariably take at least an hour but I took another hour to write it all down. Usually I had my next patient scheduled and had to wait till the end of the day to finish charting. The charts I had to submit to my attending so they could check them over and sign them off. I was usually brain fried by the end of the day, which often went from 7am to 6pm, but I gained a lot of practical experience which I am glad for.

This month, I am working with a surgical urologist who has his office right by my hospital. He sees patients on Monday and Tuesday at his practice. The rest of the week is a mix of office visits with surgical procedures at the three hospitals in the area. My base hospital is actually made up of two hospital campuses, Mercy and General, that partnered together to form a single hospital system. Between the two campuses on the freeway is another hospital called Hackley. My doc sees patients at all three of them and he is a tall man so I am usually jogging to keep up with him in the hallways because I would most certainly get lost if I wasn't with him! It has been already a very interesting rotation working with my doc. I learned how to change catheters; I got to participate in a prostate biopsy and an inguinal hernia repair. I've watched some bladder scoping (thankfully they usually have a camera so I can see what's happening on screen), putting in ureter stents between the bladder and kidney and putting in a suprapubic catheter. A suprapubic catheter goes into a hole that the doc makes from below the belly button into the bladder to help drain if the usual catheter isn't doing the job. I even saw the process of breaking up kidney stones with shock wave treatment and how they put in the radioactive seeds for prostate cancer treatment. And this was all in the first week!

Well that kind of summarizes my third year experience so far. We have a lot of 7am lectures so I am often going to bed at 10pm. There are also a number of lunch meetings, afternoon lectures on Thursdays, and morning lectures on Fridays. Some of those meetings are journal clubs so we have articles to read beforehand and they expect us to be reading about everything we're seeing anyway. They keep us pretty busy but I've had the chance to go fishing a few times when we have nice weather!

Update continued...

The next morning, Wednesday, Meg and I set out to drive to New York where we'd be taking a flight out to Paris. This went, of course, not without a catch. I had taken my car in for an oil change and tune up in preparation for the trip a week prior. They suggested the power steering and transmission be flushed as well so I had them do that. Later we realized they hadn't changed the oil we had originally gone to have done, however, exams and packing put it out of my mind until just as we were finally ready to leave for NY. We looked up the earliest oil change place that would be open and stopped there on our way out of town. Lo and behold, as we waited the guy doing the oil change came in holding a palette with a sample of my power steering fluid (black) next to a sample of what it should look like (pink). What gives?! I just had that flushed less than a week ago! When we get back into town I will have to go ask the first car place about this but it seems awfully suspicious to me.

Besides the catch with which we started our trip, the rest of the way was a rather uneventful but enjoyable ride listening to audiobooks. Those things are the friend of any long car ride!

We actually didn't go straight to New York but stayed with Meg's uncle's family in New Jersey. They dropped us off in NY the next day so we could catch a bus to the airport. It took us an hour wait just to get into the city! Couple the traffic with how expensive everything is and I am not sure why anyone would want to live there. I think I am a medium town kind of guy. Phoenix may be big but at least it isn't crowded like NYC!

I have a definite allergy to dust or whatever is related to dust, like dust mites. As soon as we sat down on the plane I couldn't stop coughing because of a tickle in my throat. At first I thought it was the heavy cologne from one of our fellow passengers but finally zeroed in on the airplane blanket I had already draped on myself. As sooon as I took it off, the coughing ceased! That's happened to me before trying to sleep on old carpet and I think it is the same reason.

Update (boards, school, moving, travel)

Okay, so I admit I haven't been posting much on my blog for the last few months - even though things have been happening that are blog-worthy!

To start with, I spent the entire month of June sitting in a coffee shop studying for Step 1 of the D.O. and M.D. board exams (COMLEX and USMLE respectively), which represent the cumulative knowledge I supposedly gained during my two years in medical school. I took my USMLE exam on July 8th and the COMLEX on the 14th of July -I passed USMLE!!! However, this being the first year that COMLEX was administered electronically, they will not be getting us our results until the end of August so that they can have a good enough sampling of exams to calculate percentile scores. The rumor is that people who took their COMLEX at the end of July were scoring much higher than those who took theirs in early July (where does that put me?) - whether they simply had more time to study or because there was too much communication with those who had just taken the exam, I don't know. Sounds like they have a very complex system to score these things.

Because they gave us a month to study for said board exams, our summer semester was VERY short (although not short enough most of us would say). Our class is the last of our kind, as starting with next year's class, they now commence medical school during the summer and are done with the sitting for boards - none of this mucking about for an extra month afterward! ;o)
Nonetheless, even with full blow senioritis, I managed to pass my short summer classes. It helps that I had already learned some of the material seeing as how we had to study it for the boards we already took... that's a definite plus to the next generation of med students after us at our school; they will have finished all their courses and will have covered all that material BEFORE boards.

We took our last exam and I turned in my school mailbox key last Tuesday. Then I went back to my apartment to hurriedly pack up all my stuff (during the hottest day of the year so far in Lansing, much like their winter days are not) and move so that I could check out before the rental office closed for the night. We piled boxes of my stuff in Meg's parent's garage as they were kind enough to let me keep it there for a few weeks and so ended this two-year chapter in my life.

Spring break in Death Valley

I got to enjoy a full week of camping in Death Valley for our Spring Break with some of my friends at school. We had a great time! You wouldn't think it from the name, but Death Valley National Park is really beautiful and has a lot to offer in terms of things to see. Here's some pics from the trip.

Hoover Dam (left to right): Chris, Zheng,
Eric, Jon, Prasanth, and Mike

Zabriskie Point

Panamint Springs

Death Valley Buttes

Happy Valentine's Day!

Fiction

I have just been deeply moved to discover that one of the reasons an old and dear friend of mine is now such an amazing writer and lover of literature is because he saw how much I loved to read when we were children. I remember the stories we told late into the night, often recorded on tape, on the adventures of Jonathan and Jony. He was always the better speaker, by the way. What I did not remember was retelling the books I had been reading. In the winter of 1990 (I was nine at that time) I wish I had been able to better replicate the adventures that colored my imagination but, then again, had I been able to satisfy his ear maybe he never would have read them for himself! The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis is an outstanding set of books. Even though they are classified as children's literature, one of my post-graduate roommates just read them for himself, which goes to prove they can capture the mind of the adult as well as the mind of a child. I hope Disney does the first book justice in their movie coming out soon. A forest that connects worlds, meeting Aslan, wandering through a desert with a talking horse, sailing to the end of the earth, traveling underground, passing into heaven and more - all with Christian life lessons tied into the story. C.S. Lewis believed there are truths that cannot be learned by the heart unless they are told as a story. I agree; didn't Jesus teach mostly through stories too?
Now that my old friend has shared why he became an avid reader, I may as well reveal the sources of my inspiration too - my parents. Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of them reading an illustrated children's Bible to my sister and myself. Later I recall my mom reading books to me at night and transporting me into the lives of people in other times and other places. I still remember the stories she read but the one that stuck the most was the Island of the Blue Dolphins (of a girl who got left behind when her family abandoned their island home). In the oral tradition, my dad used his memories of the Lord of the Rings as a framework to telling the adventures of Jonathan and Kristin. When I discovered where he got his ideas, I read most of The Hobbit by Tolkien in a single night - well, not just because it was good, but because I was making regular visits to the bathroom all night that night anyway.
Books are an excellent tool for sharing imaginations and adventures. Humankind used to have oral traditions to pass on stories. Then came the printed word and stories were kept on paper to remain unchanged for the ages. Now, we've entered an age of telling stories by film. Don't get me wrong, I love watching movies more than most, but you have to realize movies don't inspire the imagination like books do. Why use your imagination when you are seeing the story as it has been imagined for you by a team of professionals? When I read a good book, I'm not looking at a page full of words. Though my eye may be following the black and white lines on paper, my mind's eye sees only the story unfold before my imagination and I become the characters in the tale. I'm so thankful God gave us imaginations.
Jony, I'm so glad you love books too. Have you read some of C.S. Lewis' other works of fiction? My absolute favorite book of his is Till We Have Faces, which I didn't discover till after leaving Mexico. You should read it sometime; I've read it many times and still learn new things every time through. Thanks for sharing your story with me.

Whitewater Rafting on the Gauley, WV

What's left to say? We did the Gauley Marathon - the whole gorgeous river in one incredible day! From the put-in at Summersville Dam to the take-out at Sugar Creek 23 miles (and over 7 hours) later, we ran more than a 100 named rapids...over 60 are Class III or better, including 6 Class V+ monsters! I got tossed from the raft four very exciting times and didn't get hurt once! As far as accidents go, I can't say the same for the rest of our troop, though... multiple bruises and one swollen knee... but this is still too much fun for one single day of thrills and spills!

Thailand Travelogue: Continued

Yeah, tonsillectomy... hm. Not exactly a walk in the park. You're VERY uncomfortable for the first five days. You're dehydrated because it hurts like heck to swallow anything at all for the first three days. You force yourself to eat something soft by the fourth day because the doc said you should, only to find out that he actually knew what he was talking about; I think all the muscles in my mouth and throat had atrophied from disuse! Those first couple bites were a major workout and, even now that I've been getting some food down for a few days, I still have a limit on how much chewing I can do before I'm worn out! Good thing my stomach shrank or I would be perpetually hungry. Funny thing is that I could only tolerate super cold stuff the first couple days (e.g. popsicles, even an iced coffee) but suddenly by about the third day anything cold hurt too much. Weird, huh? Now I can have nothing but lukewarm, non-spicy, and not too chewy stuff (mm-mmm... yum!). I better have lost some weight for all this effort!

My mom and I, and sometimes my dad, have been doing some touring around Bangkok the last few days now that I am able to handle being out and about all day again. We've been seeing mostly old Bangkok lately which is a welcome change from the incredible traffic and smog of the rest of the city. Traveling by river taxi is fun! Traveling by the smaller long-tailed taxis is much faster but rather painful for the person sitting in front. That was me the first time, by the way. Every jolt across the wakes left by other boats made me think my innards were going to disconnect! Sunday we went to an island where they specialize in making pottery and got to see the process which is mesmerizing. I watched one fellow make a simple pot about ten times! They must have very strong hands to handle that heavy clay so easily.

Today, my mom and I ventured into Chinatown. That gave a newer definition to my recently redefined concept of walking in tight spaces with a bustling crowd! We walked down Sampaeng Lane (really more of an alley) and browsed around the different stalls for a while, which consisted mostly of beads, textiles, and nail clippers. Every so often a courier on a motorcycle or delivery trolley would rush by as everybody jumped out of the way. One fellow there really struck a chord with me. He was hopping around on a pair of crutches and one good leg, selling nail clippers, scissors, etcetera which dangled from his hat, shirt, belt, and pants. Instead of trying to look as pitiful as possible like most of the handicapped beggars I've seen, he had a smile on his face and sang whenever he wasn't selling something. I liked him a lot.

We also saw the Erawan Shrine before the evening was over. It was built right on a busy intersection in the middle of town because some astrologer told the people building a hotel that they had begun on a bad day according to the celestial bodies. In order not to bring upon themselves a curse they were required to set up this shrine on the corner as well as a spirit house within the hotel. The shrine is unique because not only are there the usual people offering prayer and incense but also some Thai dancers and a band of musicians. You can buy dances of different duration from the troop as your offering to the shrine. We watched a few of them. The person who bought the dance offering would kneel in front of the troop facing the shrine. The dancers knelt and sang a prayer before performing a traditional dance. The dancing was pretty but kind of weird too to have this Buddhist idol on a street corner for worship. Some of the people who bought the prayers were serious about their offering but a couple of them did it more for the photo opportunity than anything.

This Friday I fly back to Michigan. Then I have the weekend to recover from jet lag and move to my new apartment before school starts again on Monday. Sound like fun? You betcha. I can't believe my visit is almost over. It has been nice to spend so much time with my parents even if a third of it was spent in major discomfort.

Thailand Travelogue: Of Summaries and Surgeries

I write to you a smaller man than I was a couple nights ago - two tonsils smaller to be precise. My parents decided Thailand was probably as good a place as any to get them out so we did it. With the amount of discomfort I'm in right now though, I'm not yet convinced it was worth it. It seems like I just traded a bunch of little crypts for a couple of painfully sore gaping caverns in the back of my mouth. I hope it was worth it.
We spent most of last week in Chiangmai, northern Thailand, which is definitely the idyllic and beautiful part of Thailand I had hoped to see - even if it is a big tourist trap! The area was rural, lush, and green, the air was much cooler and of course we were outside of big busy ol' Bangkok (which I may have taken a slight disliking to - it's so noisy and full of smog). In fact we couldn't have timed it better because their annual floods came early this year and took everyone by surprise with chest high water just the day after we left. Turns it this year was the worst flood they've had in over eighty years. The guest house where we stayed must have gotten flooded too as the night market was just down the way from us and they were on the news for the flooding. Sadly, though, there have been some casualties and they are still underwater out there.
While we were there though we did the whole thing, we: visited Buddhist temples on the top of mountains, saw traditional dance presentations, rode elephants and bamboo rafts, saw people working the rice fields, hiked through forest and saw some rural villages, cruised the river by our guest house, watched jewelry, paper fans, and silk being made, bargained at the night market, etc. I was so worn out by the time we came back to Bangkok! But that evidently wasn't enough as my mom and I shopped ALL DAY Saturday at the biggest marketplace I have every seen (maybe the biggest in the world).
This week there is a Harvest conference for some Burmese students here in Bangkok. We attended a couple hours on Monday. My mom and I tried attending today, Wednesday, as my dad starts his portion of the teaching but I didn't make it past noon before I was in major discomfort from the tonsillectomy and just had to go home. I wish I could have heard more of the guy Monday and Tuesday as he was from FHI (Food for the Hungry International) and apparently discussed stuff that could have been applicable to medical missions but I had a small bout with traveler's diarrhea which gave us the idea to pay the hospital a visit about the tonsils, where I ended up staying Monday night for in-patient surgery. The hospital is huge and feels almost more like a mall in that they have a huge food court and you have to go to different sections to see doctors that specialize in what you need. They have a lot of people who come to Thailand from the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere expressly for the purpose of getting cheap(er) medical care. I think it is called medical tourism - where you can get a package deal for plane tickets, hotel, and hospital visit. The waiting areas were full of ladies with all but their eyes covered in pitch black fabric. I shared my room with an older Arab fellow who wasn't coherent while I was there but his son, however, was rather friendly and chatted with me a bit before my surgery. This was my first experience getting full anesthesia... I guess there isn't much to it: the first drugs go into your IV, your eyes cross, they put the mask over your face and you wake up in the OR recovery room unable to lift a finger and choking on a breathing tube! Not really pretty either as my throat was paralyzed for quite a while and I couldn't swallow. I went twenty four hours without food and am on nothing but liquids now for another couple of days. Sniff... poor me...

Thailand Travelogue: First Impressions

No, I have not recovered from jet lag yet. It is almost 8pm right now and I feel like I've been up all night! My parents and I have been doing a lot of shopping these first couple of days for office odds and ends. Bangkok has an entire 5-story mall dedicated to computers and related paraphernalia; I think Asians like technology more than even we westerners do! One thing I keep noticing is that most people here in the city wear earbuds. I can’t tell whether they like to be connected to their cell phones at all times (everybody has cell phones and they use them often) or they are listening to music. Maybe both – aren’t some cell phones able to double as mp3 players now?

To say that Bangkok is a bustling metropolis doesn’t cut it. The city is packed - bursting at the seams! I could never drive here. Today our taxi got in a fender bender with another taxi. This must happen often enough though because they simply pulled over, inspected the damage, and our driver flagged down another taxi to take us while they figured it out. No one seemed very upset. If I were driving, on the other hand, I would have a nervous breakdown just trying to take a turn! Of course, such fear and hesitation would guarantee me an accident right then and there anyway so I’d have good reason to be scared spitless.

And boy is there a lot of people. You feel too large and clumsy to walk around without bumping into stuff or people. One can be overly courteous too; I quickly found that letting someone by means I can’t move for a couple minutes as fifty people stream by. You simply assert yourself – walk wherever you’re going to walk and it all starts to work so much better! Don’t even think about wanting personal space.

As can be expected when so many people live in such close proximity, there is an assortment of smells to assault the senses everywhere you go, such as: dirty dogs, food, sewer, flowers, body odor, perfume, car exhaust, etc. I’m amazed that the street food vendors can make a living. I'd have a hard time being interested in even the best looking food when I can smell the sewer near by but people either don’t care or are used to it. But they also don’t seem to mind eating right next to a busy street! Sometimes you can feel the grit from car exhausts hit you in the eyes yet you see people calmly eating away right next to traffic. Amazing. Some people do care about the fumes though. Most of the street policemen and other people who have to work by the road all the time wear those white face masks that you always see in the pictures. The ones I don't get are the nose masks! How on earth is a little piece of paper that isn't even sealed well over your nose going to help filter out the air you breathe?
And they like to keep everything open too. E.g. the stores aren't sectioned off by walls - you're walking a long through the mall and next thing you know, you're in one of the stores. And the restaurants are often just sectioned off spaces. We ate lunch literally at a table on the walkway right next to shoppers passing by.

Yeah, Bangkok is neither green nor romantic. It is a bustling city; foreign and Asian in many ways but familiar to experiences I've had in others. They took a lot of ideas from Britain I think, even though they never were a British colony. E.g. driver on the right side of the car (and drive on the left side of the road). Plugs and electricity same as England also. Surprisingly, my brain hasn't tried to speak Spanish (my mom keeps saying pesos instead of baht when referring to money); instead I keep trying to speak what little Hungarian I learned last summer!! Weird, don't you think? Or not, I guess, as that was my last international experience. Well, that is all for now. My parents are waiting to play scrabble (if I can stay awake).
Ever seen a squat pot before?

Thailand Travelogue: The Beginnings

Here begins a travel log of my first visit to Thailand on the pretense of seeing my parents during an all-too-short (three week) summer break from school. Thailand has been at the top of my list of places to go in this lifetime for quite some time now probably thanks to the 1999 film, Anna and the King, as well as thanks to a couple of my friends who got to go at about that time and told enough stories to awaken anyone’s curiosity!
Let me begin my tale with a pre-flight anecdote. As many of you know, I am a master procrastinator. Therefore one cannot be surprised this outing was preceded by the usual problem that plagues last minute air travel: a dearth of reasonably priced flights. In fact, three grand was the first rate I saw! After some casting about though, I discovered a gem that I think is worthy of sharing with all of you: hotwire.com. They beat the next lowest quote I could find for a round trip to Bangkok by a few hundred dollars! What’s the catch, you ask? Well, they do not tell you what airline you get or the flight time until after you purchase the tickets. They do, however, have a list of the airlines they use so at least you know what you won’t get; plus they let you know whether you fly AM, PM or redeye as well as the number of stops. Armed with those clues and my clever powers of deduction, I figured out the airline and the times from flights given on other travel websites. Pretty clever bit of detective work, eh? :o) WHAT?! No? Oh, fine. Say what you may, I still think it was a stroke of genius – and I bought the ticket.
So with my bank account not as badly drained as it could have been, with my bags not packed to the hilt, and with myself most definitely not unexcited, this adventure begins on the 4th of August with the 22 hour sitting marathon that is the transpacific flight to Thailand via a layover in Tokyo. Of that entire episode all I have to say is, why on earth does it have to be so grueling to sit all day? You’d think your body would conserve its resources with all that rest so that you can be a fountain of energy when you finally arrive. I mean, it works with kids during car travel doesn’t it? Sadly, we all know such is not the case with anyone older than eleven and, by the time I arrived at the Bangkok airport at midnight on the 5th, I definitely suffered the effects of sitting for so long. You know what nerdy thought kind of redeems it all though? The fact that after a year of medical school I actually have a decently thorough understanding of the body dynamics involved in leaving me feeling so crumby! The waning novelty of that thought will most likely not buoy me patiently through the return flight though; some other measures possibly involving chemical substances will have to be taken at that point in time. For now I am excited to see my parents again and to be in Thailand, the land of “Anna and the King”!

News, updates, etc.

Life has been hectic this summer and I don't think I'm the only one who feels that way. We were told the summer load at our medical school was going to be lighter than the fall and spring semesters but they LIED!! This is the closest I've come to failing one of my courses so far. I'm getting tired, burned out, whatever you want to call it. Yet I can't look my professors in the eye and complain we don't really need to know this stuff like I used to be able to do before medical school. As much as I may dislike memorizing lists of drugs, they matter to my future career and to the lives of my future patients. The responsibility that doctors shoulder is a bit frightening. Our mistakes could have dire consequences... but that's why they keep us in school for so long!
Now I can say I have tried acupuncture! One of our professors and some classmates are doing a study on whether acupuncture can relieve stress. So they ask us volunteer subjects some survey questions every week before taking us into a quiet room where we each get needles stuck in our head, hands, and feet and we lay still for twenty minutes. I'm not sure I'm sold on it yet. Yes, I feel very relaxed during those twenty minutes and usually feel stress free the rest of the day but the needles kind of hurt! The one at the top of my head I don't even notice but the spots where the needles are in my hands ache for about five minutes after they're put in and sometimes they itch the entire time. Still, it's an interesting experience.
I moved to a new place before the summer semester started. The third floor condo I live in now is a huge step up from living in a basement. I liked the landlords at the last place but my new landlords aren't too bad either. I live by a river now! I can look out on crew teams training in the morning and on water skiers in the afternoon right from our deck. I've attached a picture of what the river view looks like early in the morning just to make you jealous! Michigan may spend more than half its year in a dark, cold, miserable winter but the summers are really spectacular.

Grand River from our deck

A Memorial Weekend Spent in Montreal

Chris and Anne

So Chris has been happily married to the girl of his dreams since one-thirty in the afternoon on the twenty-eighth of May, two thousand five. Theirs was a lovely wedding held inside Birks Chapel at the majestic McGill University, where they met. Cameras rolled and tears flowed as the vows were exchanged. Chris' unique creativity was invested in the ceremony, instantly recognizable in the music of the processional but moreso it was felt during the reception that followed. Joy and fellowship filled the air as the festivities... Wait a minute, WHAT HAPPENED?? I am a whole stinking day older than the guy!! My parents were already pregnant with me at my age! Some of my peers are already siring their own offspring! Where does that leave me? Sheesh, well, be that as it may, I am very happy for Chris and Anne and I know God has blessed their union. In turn, may they together be a blessing to everyone in their lives as well.
I enjoyed much more over the weekend than just the few hours we celebrated Chris and Anne, however, because Michal, Christopher and I not only represented the contingent of old buddies from Arizona at the wedding, we were released upon Montreal to wreak havoc as we saw fit. Boy did we do our job well! I believe much credit is due to the excellent breakfasts we ate every morning at Chez Cora Dejeuners which held us through to dinner every evening. We spent much of our time at the Old Pier juggling fire batons with the street performers; sneaking into the Cirque du Soleil; shooting tourists in the clock tower; ramming paddleboats and leaving them to sink in two feet of water; kicking down signboards; knocking over pedestrians in our rented skates and bike; charming the waitresses into serving us food not on the menu; and, most importantly, giving the local drivers a few really good scares. Well, you tell me how we were supposed to know the red octagonal signs that said 'ARREZ' meant 'STOP'!
We also spent a few hours in Montreal's very own Notre Dame first scandalizing fellow patrons by pointing out the horns protruding from Moses' head and then going to confession for the aforementioned crimes. Once our consciences were cleared by reciting Hail Maries and attending French mass, we moved on to Saint Joseph's Oratory, which is perched on a hillside and overlooks the city. We tried to be good but it wasn't long before we raided a Father's chapel-turned-museum to read a few of the prayers people left for him. Most of them were in French so I won't repeat them here. We thought our rampage was to meet an early demise at dusk when what appeared to be a crowd of zombies filed toward us from across the plaza, but it turned out they were just the local parishioners holding a candle vigil for the Father whose chapel we had just, uh, inspected. In order not to arouse any suspicions, I covered up the skull and crossbones shirt I was wearing, Christopher hid his camera and Michal tried to look nonchalant as we chanted along with the crowd all the way down to their underground sanctuary where we accidentally signed to have someone canonized thinking it was a guest book.
Ah but it wasn't all fun and games as I have since paid dearly for that weekend in Montreal. My car died from the journey. She blew out her engine on the freeway but held together long enough for me to make it home before giving up the ghost in the school parking lot. I had to have her towed to the mechanic who took a look under her hood and concluded she needs an engine transplant. As she is getting on in years and we have only been together for ten months and my insurance does not cover the procedure, I think I may let her rest in peace while I find a new vehicle to take her place.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about my weekend as much as I enjoyed retelling it. As a disclaimer, however, this is my blog and my story so the facts may have been embellished just a tad and the truth may have been twisted just a teensy bit. It's more exciting that way.

Re: gliding over pavement

Considering the sun likes to peek out from behind the rain clouds every so often and I don't have to wear a heavy jacket to venture outdoors anymore, it's high time I took up inline skating!!!
Now I know what you're thinking; rest assured the rolling blades will probably never replace the mountain bike as my first love (sports-wise that is). It's just that, well, hm, how do I state this... there are no mountains here! Sure, there are dirt roads I hope to ride soon enough but that won't be happening on a regular enough basis to call it exercise - ergo the wheels on my heels. Besides, once I combine the skates with a sporty outfit, a pair of shades and a tan, there will be one very cool cat painting the trails in this town!
Ok, here's the catch. I can count the number of times my feet have been strapped to rubber wheels on the fingers of both hands, maybe even on just the fingers of one hand if you've got six fingers. When wearing the rollers I kind of look like Frankenstein's monster trying out a new dance and I am attracted to the ground much like a large helium-filled balloon is not.
Also, I don't own a pair of skates - well, at least not yet. Are any of my avid readers an authority on the matter of inlines? Would you like to impart some of your knowledge to me? What should I keep in mind when purchasing the means to release myself from the grip of static friction? Is there a good brand name I should choose? How about durometer? bearings? flat-rocker? hard or soft boot? Is it really not possible, as I've been told, to get those cool clip-on blades in the United States? And finally, that burning question, should I get soul plates?
BTW, FYI, a full five minutes into my exhaustive research on the matter I discovered a couple interesting facts. First, inline skates where invented long before some square decided to arrange the rolleys in a rectangle. Second, did you know that, like Kleenex, Rollerblade is a registered trademark? Sure it is. Why the Rollerblade website even has a fascinating grammar lesson on the proper use of trademarks. Who would have thunk it? Well, it was enough to get me to edit out of this post any incorrect use of a trademark as an improper adjective, a noun or a verb, but nobody owns slang so the blade lingo stays!

On being an encourager

You know those people who always leave you feeling better every time you talk to them? They seem to know just what to say to let you know you're loved and you're worth something; they give you confidence, hope and courage to face your day. How did these people get to be like that? Were they born this way or did they learn to become who they are? In other words, does encouragement come naturally or is it something you have to work at? Maybe it's both? I'm not sure; I just know I want to be more like one of them. My poor girlfriend is already well aware I'd rather point out the negative than praise the positive.
We discussed encouragement a few weeks ago at a Bible study. As people were noting character traits of truly encouraging people they know, I realized they were listing the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) almost word for word: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Now that caught my interest. Does that mean that I, who claim to be a Christian living by the Spirit of God, should be a natural encourager already? Well I'm not, so ouch.
In that dialogue, we also noted the absence of a character trait in encouragers - the trait that C.S. Lewis detests the most - pride. A truly encouraging person is a humble person. Proud people can't see past themselves (whether they like what they see notwithstanding) to find the beauty in others. I'm not talking about simply the capacity to see the good things but rather to appreciate others for who they are without dwelling on how that reflects on yourself, i.e. selfish jealousy. Thinking about this, I realize I've hurt a lot of wonderful people by learning to dislike them for being able do something I can't do equally well, if even at all! How awful is that - being nasty to someone because of their good qualities?! Talk about skewed thinking; if we were all the same what would make any of us special? Our different strengths need to be celebrated, not envied!
So how can I get rid of my pride? That's where God's ways are not my ways because I can't! If I could then that would be a source of pride in and of itself. God can change me at the core of my being but I must make myself available to Him first. I am the hard ground that can't grow any life until it's been broken up, seeded and watered. Like that quote from Isaiah I mentioned last week, water doesn't return to the sky without making the earth flourish first. So this is my prayer: to love people simply for who they are. Please forgive me if my selfishness has ever hurt you. There's no need to compare your gifts to those of others. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. There is Someone who loves you literally more than life itself. That Person has given you special gifts that are part of who you are - take joy in using them!