Resolutions for the rest of 2012

Well, better late than never. 

I wouldn't have thought 10 years ago that I'd find myself needing reminders like this. What does a 15 year-old really know though? Life seems to be a constant process of re-learning things you may once have thought you knew. The good news is, as someone close recently pointed out - Life is long.

One week ago, that seemed like a terrible fact to be faced with. No doubt, I'l find myself contemplating this same thought with too much seriousness more than once again.

The key seems to lie in figuring out what you want, and what it is that makes you tick. For some of us who don't have that luxury of utter focus and obsession over a dedicated cause, it probably is good news after all that the end of the world isn't here yet.

 I have time to figure things out, and enjoy the endless possibilities that one way may lead to over another. How terribly exciting.

So, resolutions for the current year:

1. Strive to be a creator - of, anything but always

2. Surround myself with good energy

3. Not blame myself, or think that I'm any less than

Snapshots

I've been tossing and toying with the idea of getting myself an entry level DSLR for ever now.

 Before graduating, it was going to be my reward to myself for surviving (no exaggeration there) medical school. When the time came though, I had convinced myself that life was not worth the pictures of it, and the completion of the endeavour fell flatly in anticlimax.

Sitting at my home computer, going through yet another spell of the blues - probably self inflicted and perpetuated as always - I find myself browsing through old pictures on the hard drive. It's funny what slips from memory when you don't pay it enough attention. I for one, have taught myself to forget bad things but at the very dear price of now losing the good ones too.

Perhaps I'm setting myself up to not learn from mistakes, or perhaps I'm doing even worse by not opening myself up to taking risks to avoid making them all together.

Maybe I should get a camera today, before I leave, as a reminder that life consists of both good and bad experiences and memories - all worth living and remembering.

Guilty pleasures on a Monday before an exam

There has been no sense of completion, as I have failed to believe that it could be. The little succeses I have had seem like jokes, non- achievements. Therefore there has been no motivation to achieve - and with that no real endeavour, nor true confidence in my aptitude or worth.
Where does change start now?

A little reverse doctoring

We're not supposed to take the things our patients tell us too seriously as doctors. After all, there are the regular sleaze bags, racists, bigots and plain morons - each with their own principles and opinions which differ greatly from your own.

I must admit though, it's always nice when you have patients who understand that you don't ENJOY stabbing them with needles of every size and shape in any available free surface area because of generalized oedema, that you're just as frustrated with poor healing wounds, that you have better things to do than to fill out an endless stream of paperwork for sick leave/compensation; patients who understand that things are a little more complicated some times than they seem and are happy to give you a little breathing space to figure things out.

And then, there are patients like the 72 year old gentleman on the ward today whom all the nurses and wardies love for good reason. "My favourite little doctor," he smiles, " Has anyone told you just how pretty you are? I sure hope they have," as attempt to stab his thigh with an 18G needle and a nurse changes the fourth bag draining bilious green fluid from his nasogastic tube. How could you not take a patient like that personally? It is hard to be completely objective sometimes.

comma

yet, more often than not, since I was perhaps about 6 or so, I've felt that a long life isn't one I"m going to have.

La Grande Odalisque - Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres 1814

...For Solar Bear

en.wikipedia.org

With her five additional vertebrae, the "odalisque" (concubine) depicted in this painting is meant to convey sensuality, and departs from anatomical realism which was asserted at the time.

I especially like the quote on wikipedia that suggests that the distance between her (difficult to decipher) gaze and pelvic region are a "physical representation of the depth of thought and complex emotions of a woman's thoughts and feelings"; taken from a 1997 edition of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Maybe some men do get it after all.