July 2011
1 post
words and recipes
i learned the word for lemon in chichewa. i went to the market. i saw what looked like lemons, which i never remember seeing before, as if the word had made them appear. the man selling them said ‘mandinu.’ and i said ‘mandinu!’ and then i bought four. then i found i recipe i liked, of course there are no measuring devices and i’d never made this particular recipe...
May 2011
3 posts
“It’s not pretty, exactly. It’s astonishing. It fills the eye. It...”
– Tim O’Brien, How To Tell A True War Story
“If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small...”
– Tim O’Brien, How To Tell A True War Story
Trying hard to do so, in a way.
April 2011
1 post
“I know you never believed those Sisters,
When they told you about those patent...”
– ‘Safer Than Love’ by Bell X1
These few lines have to be my favorite song lyrics in a long, long time.
March 2011
5 posts
This is why I love my friends.
Premad: You're like the Dawson of the older kids in our class.
Friend: The docent?
Premad: ...Dawson...the...nevermind.
Better that this all happened at a rotating bar in the French Quarter? Yes, it is.
January 2011
5 posts
Smiling again for no reason
Is really the sum total of an impromptu trip to Puerto Rico in the dead of Boston winter. I laughed for 45 minutes at an airline safety card. I was on a boat. I ‘played’ guitar on a ferry dock, bumped PR radio, sang in the ocean. I roasted marshmallows until they were brown golden, wearing the colorful vestments of summer. I wore borrowed sunglasses a few sizes too big. I camped in the...
Apparently I have no final answer, ever.
Premad: (Outlines decision about complicated issue). So, yeah, that's what I'm going to do.
Friend: Great. So, do you want me to hold you to that?
Premad: ...No.
I decided I would reply
To the emotive, ostensibly happy new year text when we reached Providence. We have almost reached Providence, and I still can’t think of something genuine and not evasive.
December 2010
4 posts
WatchTammy would be so proud of me for playing a baby David song. Badly. Too bad she is not on Tumblr.
This is too embarrassingly emo for Facebook.
“My patient is listless and so am I!”
– Fake Atul Gawande, as portrayed in the HMS Second Year Show
November 2010
4 posts
Beyond Mountains, there are good-hearted but...
I think we’re already having what I will call Mountains Beyond Mountains problems, and school has been in session, what, three months only? As cool as she is, I will not be your Ophelia Dahl, so probably let’s make sure we have that sorted now.
“We cruise the neighborhood, but it’s not supposed to feel this good.”
– Darwin Deez, Radar Detector
My classmates love my impromptu and compulsive neighborhood narrations, instead of finding them annoying. Have made people fall in love with the South End, Jamaica Plain, Inman Square, and Somerville. Fenway…I would have to fall in love first.
October 2010
13 posts
I would make a flow chart, but it's pretty simple
Life is actually, accurately, unambiguously and totally described by a Katy Perry song? -> Yes -> I’m sorry, this flow chart is over.
“Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Look, how tiny down
there,
look: the...”
– Exposed on the Cliffs of the Heart
Rainer Maria Rilke
Goodnight!
Tomorrow is not a gross lab day. This means that I can bring coffee to sip while looking at histology slide, i.e. ‘operation pretend pathologist.’ And, it also means that I can wear my new ‘where’s waldo’ type dress and bright blue tights. And try to forget that I have to learn most everything in the human body by Monday, just by taking a little time to sit outside...
Insert Anatomy Joke Here
I unintentionally hosted a rager last night. And I think I have a little crush. My 28 year old self is very different in crushing than my 22 year old self or my 18 year old self, but also totally the same.
This is all to say: after months and months of being much more concerned with the next treatment or lab test, it feels so great to be enmeshed in mundane matters like cocktails and coeds....
See you on the other side
Tomorrow at 8:00am, I will begin the process of dismantling a fellow human being who, in life, donated their body in death so that I could begin winding my way toward being a good doctor.
On a tour of Brown’s medical school, a student told me that on her first day of anatomy, she cried behind her goggles as she made the first cuts and stripped away the first skin from fascia. We will all...
Aubade by Phillip Larkin →
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anasthetic from which...
How I Became A Surgeon (HIBAS)
Premad: I have a question, which is probably silly (proceeds to try to ask question about dorsal plexus and spinal nerve)...
Anatomy Teacher: Are you...
Premad: (Realizes that she knows I bought her most prized surgery book at a charity auction on campus) I bought your book.
Anatomy Teacher: YES! That's great. It's one edition old. We're like family, now!
Because Cancer sucks most because you are bald,... →
Not because you have CANCER. Um, yeah. File this under things that are stupid that you would probably realize were stupid if you painted a picture of it in your mind, and were like, “Hmm.” How do I tell them that this is stupid?
My classmates converse with Secretary of Labor... →
Proud Frown. Wish I could have joined, but I was en route in NYC.
September 2010
15 posts
Your patients probably won't have collagen,...
Classmate: We don't need to know anything about collagen anymore, do we?
Premad: ...
Classmate: The exam is over, right?
Premad: ...
Classmate: ...
Premad: I don't know what to tell you.
“To most physicians, my illness is a routine incident in their rounds, while for...”
– Anatole Broyard (via semperjeff)
Spicing up patient presentations
They all start DW is a 45 year old blah blah with a history of blah blah blah presenting with meh.
They should start DW is a 45 year old cyborg with a case of AWESOME!
“Well I met you at the blood bank
We were looking at the bags
Wondering if any...”
– Bon Iver, Blood Bank
Mobility & HIV in the South End
My medical school paper. I’m kind of proud of it, because I did lots of ‘work’ on it, in the form of walking and talking to academic and street-corner experts. And, it’s a MED SCHOOL PAPER. Proud that I’m not just doing basic science (yet). To quote me:
A number of questions are raised for neighborhood mapping and health in the 21st century, American city. How do we...
Science Defines 'Bad Dancers' & 'Good Dancers.'... →
“If anyone I’m ever engaged to suggests we get engagement photos, engagement...”
– Partypants
Sorry, engaged friends, but this is truth. Have someone take a picture of you, like, one picture. Or, go to Cinderella City in Westminster, CO, and dress up like old west saloon patrons and get sepia pictures of yourselves done. Ok, wait, I’m doing the latter.
WatchOh, you know, just Paul Farmer addressing my medical school class. Sending his regrets because he’s on his way to Rwanda. So wonderful. I feel extraordinarily lucky.