Some days I'm very reluctant to tell people that I'm a doctor. Not because they're liable to ask me about some embarrassing health problem they don't want to talk to their family doctor about (because they don't like him/her, because they can never get in to see them, because they don't feel they're doing enough etc.) but because of the assumption that I must know all that there could be to know about the human body and sometimes about things that are not at all related to the human body.

Case in point, I booked my first session with a personal trainer today. And she was lovely and so very nice. But the second she found out that I was a doctor, she got incredibly nervous in front of me and started justifying everything that she was doing. Like the fact that she had taken blood pressure measurements for hundreds of people and was therefore qualified to take mine. Or that as she's sure I'm aware of 'when you suck your belly button in towards your spine, only 3% of athletes are engaging transversus abdominis'. When really, I had no idea because exercise physiology forms zero part of my training and is a totally separate field in itself and honestly, it wouldn't matter whether I did know or not because she's a professional and I trust her to know her job better than I know her job. So yes, I do wish that in that space beside the word 'occupation' on forms, one could write: 'Doctor, but not one who oversteps their boundaries' or 'Doctor, who won't think less of you if you don't read every significant journal in your field because Lord knows, she doesn't' or 'Doctor, but too worried about how she's performing to criticize your performance' or lastly 'Doctor, but stupid about all things not directly related to the health of children and even then, knowledge is very patchy in certain areas'.

Should I still label as NaBloPoMo if I'm averaging a post every 3 days?

Labels: NaBloPoMo

I suck at blogging daily.

They closed my friendly neighborhood coffee shop and a liquor store is moving in. I had driven to that shopping complex ostensibly to go to the bank, and since there's a coffee shop there I thought I might as well pick one up; but in my heart of hearts I was on the prowl for coffee. I'm on a research block and woke up this morning determined to make a serious dent in the background section for my proposal. But what fuels all this industry? Coffee. And now I will spend the rest of the day debating at the back of my mind whether I should just go back out and buy one so I'll stop thinking about it, or go downstairs and make myself a lukewarm cup on our slightly less than satisfactory machine or whether I should just suck it up and drink water.

Labels: NaBloPoMo

Oops I missed a day and I'm feeling too lazy to write anything of substance. But I will say this, few things in life can compare with the joy of having a new agenda. The year still lies ahead waiting to be filled with delightful events and crappy things have yet to happen. The 4 hour ritual that is taking my brand new agenda and starting to schedule is one that I look forward to every year.

Labels: NaBloPoMo

Not much energy to post today so I'll just say this. A little while ago I wrote about a small incident I had with Bell Mobility which cost me about 45 minutes worth of my time and no small amount of frustration. But today I emerge victorious because there was a $100 credit on my last bill which I can attribute to nothing other than my raising the biggest stink I know how.

Labels: NaBloPoMo

Today is the first day it really FEELS like winter and it makes it that much harder to motivate myself to do things. Every now and then the stress level in my life dies right down. I appreciate it for the first 2 or 3 days, catch up on TV shows, go shopping, read an article or two I've been putting off, read a book for fun. Then I get apathetic, wake up later, spend inordinate amounts of time surfing the net and flat-ironing my hair until it's just so. Then I get depressed, start feeling like I lack purpose. Then I tell myself that enough is enough and if I don't make myself do things, call people, go out, wake up with my alarm, a whole month of my life will have gone by with nothing to show.

Well, I'm just starting to kick my self into that last phase and that said, it's now time to get my ass to the gym.

Labels: NaBloPoMo

This blog has been a tad depressing for the last few months.

One of my favorite blogs to stalk has signed up for something called NaBloPoMo in which you vow to blog every day for a month. And although I'm a few days late, the sentiment is admirable and worth jumping on the bandwagon for.

So to kick it off: scientific research is something which I support in principle but which is slow and unbelievably frustrating in practice. The urge to use research block as a means to getting a headstart on my Christmas shopping is overwhelming. More on the joys and wonders of designing your first study to come in the next month!

Labels: NaBloPoMo

Some days I'm just too lazy to come up with original material so I pilfer from some of my favorite blogs. I love stuff like this because I always end up adding a few more books to my wish list. And I recently re-discovered the public library and have been making good use of my card while my schedule's still relatively light. Plus, I'm now inspired to pick up some of those classics that I couldn't quite get through the first time =)

Books I've read are in bold; books I started but never quite finished are in italics.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I'll be honest, I just could not make it through certain sections. Numbers being a big one)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Trod, I think this one was put on the list just for you...and my mom =)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Isn't this part of No. 33, why have both on the list?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (I gave in to peer pressure)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (The whole series, multiple times)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (I've ready almost all his other books but not this particular one)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (in the process of reading right now, but so far I love it)
80 Possession - AS Byatt (one of those rare ones where I liked the movie better than the book)
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (they forced me to in English 30)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (loved it)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (another repeat, this time of No. 14)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

My Bell-related wrath has died down and the very bitter/frustrated post has vanished into the ether of the Internet, hopefully never to haunt me when future patients Google my name.

Last night was my first night on call as a resident. And while I'm definitely no stranger to my pager going off, being asked questions by parents/nurses/unit clerks, admitting patients and writing orders; I'm very new to the word 'doctor' and all that comes along with it. The first few hours were truly terrifying. I second-guessed every single thing that I did and every single thing I thought that I knew. I looked up ridiculously simple things and it took me eons to accomplish anything. But I got through. And my patients got through. And no one was in direct danger of dying as a result of my mistakes when I left the hospital this morning. So one night down, many more to go, and each night goes a little easier.

Labels: Doctor stuff

I recall a conversation Trudy and I had during the New Year, it was about 2008. She was saying how she just felt that this was going to be a life-changing year for all of us, that there would be exciting, momentous things ahead. She was right. Between the four of us we've convocated, gotten fellowships, been accepted into graduate school, experienced the first year of married life and oh yes, I got engaged last Saturday =)

On the night of summer solstice, Kev, his good friend John and I sat around a campfire for hours not needing to say anything. We just sat there, stirred the fire every now and then, made a s'more or two and drank our tea. That night the rain woke us all up from sleep and we lay there for a good half hour just listening to it come down on our tent, safe in the knowledge that the boys had done a good job of putting up our tarp and we'd stay dry. There's a feeling deeper than happiness; there's contentment and peace and satisfaction with how your life is unfolding. Trust and hope that the future will bring more of the same.

In the midst of wedding planning: venues, dresses, flowers, favours, invitations, guest lists and the accompanying chaos, what I'd like to remember most is this. That the point is not one day. That the end goal cannot be circled on your daytimer. That what is beautiful is not the way in which the church will be decorated, but the sight unseen, non-exchangeable, non-refundable commitment to the life ahead.

Returning to Edmonton, convocation, packing up and moving down. Life has been a little nuts and maybe later, I will take the time to stop, breathe and think about how different it'll all be from now on.

For now, I would like to say that while cleaning out my room today, I found my sticker book!!! And it brought back happy memories of bartering and begging my mom/piano teacher/aunties for stickers and counting my pennies and trying to decide whether I really could afford to spend 99 cents for a set of fuzzy panda stickers. And that made me happy.

Labels: No deep thoughts here

This is absolutely my favorite picture from the wedding =) Once again, congrats to Lindy and Sumeet (who we somehow managed to leave out of the picture despite him being the second most important person there because everyone knows that it's the bride who is the REAL star)!!!

Labels: Yay (exclamation mark x 3)

Life often seems to revolve around those big events in our life: graduations, weddings, deaths. So many times, my best friends and I have said that what we really want to be there for, what makes a best friendship work is being there for the small events. The ones that you would never take a picture of but which are equally importance nonetheless.

This last week and the one ahead are 'big event' weeks for me. One friend had a beautiful wedding ceremony on Saturday, and after 4 years I will convocate alongside 129 other classmates this coming Friday. But today was filled with so many other little moments that I wish would I could hold in my memory alongside the big ones. The world's most evil email in all its evil glory=) All the laughter which ensues when you are not the recipient of evil email. Knowing that a friendship can go through some pretty awful rough patches and come out bruised but intact enough to have a conversation like today's, that means something and deserves to be memorialized as much as any other event. I love my girls.

Labels: Big and small

What a difference a week makes =) From cramming and stressing, I am now definitely done med school and just waiting for the results of my licensing exam before i add a 'D' and an 'r' and a little '.' onto my credit card =) Meanwhile there's been lots of food, a mani/pedi/massage (which was worth every penny) and lots and lots of Wii to keep me occupied. Come Saturday, a trip back to the old country to visit relatives.

While soaking my toes in a tub of warm water at the spa today, I read an article on living mindfully, something that's come up a few times this year. To be, not just to do. Maybe tomorrow I will stop for a second and reflect on how the last 4 years have changed me, but for now, I'm still enjoying the hedonism of post-exam celebrations.

Labels: Not so deep thoughts

I'm done!!! I'm done!!!

Eating and parties and shopping, oh my!

Labels: Freedom

Life is full of tough choices.
Option A (in coffee):


Option B (I like it better in blueberry):

Hm...

The end is nigh. My post-exam mani/pedi/massage is booked.

4 more days...

Labels: Countdown to Freedom...

My attention span is starting to resemble that of a gnat. If you email me now, you are guaranteed a reply within 15 minutes because that is how often I've been checking my email/globeandmail.com/
facebook.

In other news, this is the 4th day in a row that I will not be leaving my apartment except to buy coffee.

7 more days...

Labels: Countdown to Freedom...

Happy happy happy birthday Andrea =)

I'm sending the love through the blizzards of Alberta, across the prairies, out to Toronto where the weather has hopefully been beautiful and sunny for your birthday.

The to-do list for the next 8 days (I believe in public accountability):

• Hematology
• Rheumatology
• Endocrinology
• Ortho
• Urology
• Public Health
• Review, review, review everything else.

8 more days.

Labels: Countdown to Freedom...

The blizzard outside my window leaves me no choice but to study. I can't even reward myself with slurpees. In other news, yet another highlighter has given its life for my education.

9 more days...

Labels: Countdown to Freedom...

Cabin fever is setting in.

10 more days until the LMCCs.

Labels: Let the countdown to freedom begin...

Tomorrow is the last day of medical school. It's been four years and tomorrow is the last time I wake up, grab a coffee and trudge over to the hospital. In the future, I will wake up, grab coffee and trudge over to another hospital, it doesn't really mater which one. But tomorrow will be the last day for this hospital.

Today, my friend and I fought over whether or not a juice box should go into a recycling container marked 'cans and bottles only'. She was stressed out over our exams and was physically bruised and tired after a rough soccer game. I was stressed out over our exams and was cranky after 3 hours of lecture that reminded me how little I know. We both are unable to put words to what tomorrow and the next few weeks means to us, in terms of accomplishments and sacrifices and milestones in our life. We will leave each other next year for our respective residency programs after having studied together, dissected a cadaver together, sat beside each other for countless hours during lecture, celebrated birthdays and engagements and passed tests. Instead of crying, we fight over juice boxes. I yell at my sister and play silly online games. She yells at her boyfriend and makes homemade cards. Our other friend withdraws into cartoons. Another friend, Korean soap operas. Words that are unable to find their way out of my mouth.

Labels: Sad

Becoming an adult and a 'real' doctor is expensive =(

The money I had to pay to write the exam should be enough motivation not to have to do it again. I need to study.

Can life please just leave me alone for a month? I would really like to study.

No more life planning - no more vacations that might or might not occur 18 months from now, weddings that might or might not take place, buying a house, getting a mortgage, signing up for disability insurance, career planning, grad planning, grad trip planning, signing up for high interest savings accounts, canceling low interest savings accounts, signing up for value plus accounts as opposed to value accounts, sublet my apartment, move my stuff, pack my stuff, sell my stuff, choose a paint color for my room, re-design my room, purge my room, cancel utilities, transfer utilities etc. etc. etc.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!

Labels: Stressssssssssed...

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Hysterical and I think I might be part white. One day I will go through and tick off the things I am guilty of. But right now I'm about to go downstairs and buy an overpriced organic fair-trade chai (at least it's not with soy milk).

I'm moving home but the initial euphoria has given way to realism. Who I am is not who I was when I left. The people that were there have gone. The people who are there are not who they were. Yet I'm going back and it feels exactly like that, going back when I would rather go forward.

In Lloyd for my pre-CaRMS training camp. On the to-do list:
1) Sleep lots
2) Eat better. Spent the last 2 weeks in Halifax and as usual when on my own, I revert to my staple diet of pasta and shake-and-bake. For once, I was better off than my housemate who as far as I could tell only ever ate bacon and eggs, macaroni and cheese and hamburger helper. Still, I was feeling ill by the end. All hail the return of the vegetables!
3) Stop worrying about things that don't matter like whether the brown of my suit jacket matches the brown of my suit pants and start worrying about how I'll reply to interview questions.
4) Re-visit my research AGAIN.
5) Watch lots of Food Network.
6) Finalize CaRMS tour planning. Hotels are mostly booked. Buses are mostly booked. I have nightmares about losing my luggage, losing my laptop, missing a flight, getting lost in the ghetto of numerous cities. Why do I worry about these things and not about my actual interview?
7) Start LMCC studying. It's so close and yet so far.

Labels: CaRMSCaRMSCaRMS

Happy New Year to you and yours!

This is how I spent mine. Finally decided that after 3.5 years of dating, it was time to go down with Kev and his family to their vacation home. Spent 2 days in Vegas. BLECH! Really not my style. Mystere and the Bellagio were beautiful. Everything else was tacky-gaudy-noisy-consumerist-too-much-bad-cheap-food. Was very happy to get out of there.

Spent my New Year's Eve playing board games, my New Year's Day doing a beautiful hike and the next 2 days golfing and working on my golf swing, sleeping 9 hrs/day, reading some books, playing pickle ball, watching silly TV shows and just enjoying the quiet life. We had a 7AM flight out of Vegas today so we drove in last night. Made one last stop at Bellagio for beautiful pastries, ordered some amazing Thai food. Camped out that night in the airport with movies, books, snacks and lots of Coke. Won $4 at the penny slots and splurged on Starbucks. Stumbled our way onto 2 airplanes. Arrived home to discover my luggage had not accompanied us and finally this...bleary-eyed trying to cram the last week into one post but desperately, desperately needing my bed =)

Labels: Happy New Year *exclamation mark*

With this post, I resolve never to leave my Christmas shopping to the last minute ever again.

I knew today would be madness at the mall so I treated myself to an Organic Roots lunch and coffee to start my day with a little zen. Then went to Tin Box on Whyte Avenue. Happenstance led me to Holt Renfrew on 25% off day. And while I now have half of my CaRMS interview outfit, I also have bruises from a few errant elbows. Self-preservation kept me far away from the Louis Vuitton and Tiffany counters. Needed to get away from the craziness for a while so escaped to find a cup of tea and ended up finding a blend very similar to the one I loved in SF. Returned to Whyte Ave to visit one of the music stores (where my sister also happens to have an employee discount) and ended up chancing upon some period jewelry. I am undoubtedly poorer but it was the kind of shopping day that brings maximum satisfaction, you got almost everyone on your list and you can still afford to pay your rent this month and best of all, you didn't have to step anywhere near the war zone that is West Edmonton Mall.

Shopping -> over
Eating -> just begun
5 more days of work and I'm free!!

It's a tough time. But friends are good, food is good, wine is good. And my boyfriend rocks. And I'll be ok.

Days 6 and 7: Parting is such sweet sorrow...

So following the Golden Gate Bridge, we were frozen right through and needed to head back to our hotel to re-charge. Like 80 year-old grandmothers, one of the things we loved most about this place were the afternoon tea & cookies. One day I'll have to hunt down that particular tea that they brewed, very dark and strong with just a hint of berry. Following this, we'd usually nap, surf the net or shower and rest before we headed out for dinner.

On that particular night, we wanted to go to Cow Hollow to a little Mexican place we'd read loads about, Andale Taqueria. It was fish burrito time, and I was not disappointed. We were stuffed like turkeys and next to the world's greatest Chinese meal at Chef Jia's it was the least expensive meal we had. Plus, the fresh fruit juice is only $2 and bottomless!


Next day, once again was dark, foggy and gloomy. We had planned to go to see the Redwoods, but the bus we had planned to take wasn't running that particular day, we didn't have a rental car and we were too late to join any tours. Boo =( Instead, we went to the Land's End Trail. A quick 2.5 km hike along the edge of the Pacific. And this time, the weather added to the beauty of the trail. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:



Once again, frozen right through, we went in search of some grub. In all my research beforehand, there was one place that came up over and over and over again, Swan Oyster Depot. They promised us it was absolutely the freshest seafood to be found in San Francisco, caught that morning, served that afternoon and gone by the time the shop closed in the evening. So we ordered a clam chowder to warm up, a HUGE seafood salad and some oysters on the half shell. And they were right, it really was the best seafood I've had in a long, long time. It will continue to be the seafood I dream about for a long time, the standard to which all other seafood will be compared. It has ruined mediocre Edmonton food forever.


We were lazy that afternoon and lounged all day in the hotel by the fire with our tea & cookies. That night we got ourselves another good seafood meal in Chinatown. Normally, I would rave about it, but I had just eaten at Swan Oyster Depot.

Last day. We went to the Exploratorium, billed as the 'best science centre in the world' according to Scientific American. We took turns being geeks. We ate one last burrito (shrimp this time) at Andale Taqueria and then it was time to return home. Until our next adventures in Las Vegas later this month!!! Muahaha!!!

Labels: San Francisco Trip

Day 4 (con't) and Day 5: Chinatown and Golden Gate Park/Bridge

Hm...so when we last left our heroes, we were all shopped out and about to go sushi-ing. So we made our way down to Cow Hollow (the 17th Ave/Whyte Ave of San Francisco) to a place called Ace Wasabi's Rock 'n Roll Sushi. We were not disappointed =) The roll on top is their scorpion roll: mango, avocado, rock shrimp, pecans, very tasty. The one below was their Ozzy: jalapenos, tobiko, crab, avocado, spicy mustard. This one was a little too hot for our tastes, with all the chilies you could barely breathe never mind taste, so we picked off all the jalapenos and it was very good after that.


Next day, we used the morning to explore Golden Gate Park. The weather was finally nice and the gardens were really beautiful. The rest of the park is just as beautiful, just as interesting as the Japanese Tea Garden but for whatever reason, that's the only part of the park they charge admission for. And then they charge you even more for their over-priced jasmine tea. All so you can pretend to be living in samurai-era Japan while dressed in your hiking boots, khaki shorts, San Francisco T-shirt and visor and imitation Chanel sunglasses. Aiy.

Next we hit Chinatown. Dim sum with two people is always a challenge. The perfect number is 4. When we were little, my family would dim sum and because there are 5 of us, each of us would cut a small morself off each one of our dumplings and give them to my little sister as her share. The dim sum was really decent. Hot, fresh char siu baos, where the white dough is just sweet enough and not at all soggy and the filling was just right. The lo bak gao was to die for! We browsed Chinatown a little, then decided that seeing as the weather was right, we would try to walk the Golden Gate Bridge.

We tend to travel a fair bit and use transit a lot when we travel, so we were getting kinda cocky about how good we were at using the transit system. Little did we realize that getting to the Golden Gate Bridge would be a very different affair. It's a separate transit system that wouldn't accept our passes, required cash only and provided no change. And of course, I had no small bills. Unlike the municipal system it doesn't list the stops at the front of the bus and the driver was MEAN! So yes, we ended up going over the bridge and being afraid to get off until we hit a small town (all the other stops were at the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere) so we could change buses and go in the opposite direction.

Never mind, 45 minutes and many large billls later, we had made it. The weather unfortunately looked like this:



So picture-taking opportunities of San Francisco and the bay were limited and instead, we occupied ourselves like this: