Spirituality and Sutures

Nothing will remind you more as to how intellectually insignificant you are than starting your day at 6:45am, sitting in the middle of a table filled with neuro, GI and plastic surgeons. It's not so much the content of the information that was relayed back and forth for 2 hours this morning as it was the sheer confidence that backed the discussions that held me in awe. As I sat, drawing as little attention as possible to myself (for once), I was floored not only at how assiduous these men (yes, they were all men) of genius were, but also by how gracious and truly concerned they were for the patients whose cases we were discussing. Not that I needed any more convincing but nothing could have turned me on to the profession of surgery more than learning that you don't have to be a pompous, self-righteous prick in order to be a great surgeon.

"Mr. S is a truck driver who presented with more fatigue than usual and had lost a couple pounds this month. Upon CT of the abdomen and head yesterday, the poor guy, we discovered that he was suffering from metastatic esophageal cancer that's spread to 12 nodules in his brain and he unfortunately doesn't have more than a couple weeks to live. I couldn't stop thinking about his family, he has 3 little children..." the prominent neurosurgeon lamented.



Though it's only the first day, the Universe has already alerted me to coincidences that I'm convinced I'm not to leave at just that: No syncope with suturing for one (med talk for I didn't make an ass out of myself and pass out while sewing up a patient). My Attending practices yoga and meditation! And of all places, at the same studio I go to! And has an equally intimate relationship with the same teacher that I do. He was a chiropractor in California in his former occupational life and still holds true to the bio-psycho-social-spiritual model I am forever trying to rope others into as well. If that wasn't enough of a sign for me, while the rain poured relentlessly outside of his office during our lunch break, he broke out a secret stash of dark chocolate. While we shared the savory morsels, we divulged information about ourselves to each other that only dear friends and longtime lovers are privy to. 6 hours in and I was feeling more protected and nurtured by this man that I have by any other in a long time. I can't convey how deeply I feel a bond I can only describe as spiritual with him and it's only further intensified by my passion for the line of work that he does. I want to be in his position so badly one day, where I have the ability to not only discuss problems with my patients, but at the end of the day also have the satisfaction of physically being able to remove from their bodies what ails them in their heart as well. Though I'd love nothing more than to be able to sit around and talk about my emotions and the way people and situations make me feel, I for once feel that no amount of musing could adequately convey the relish with which I'm enjoying my newfound bond....as evidenced by my mother who, after I attempted to relay the same sentiments, questioned me in a worried voice, "he's not going to make you fall in love with him, is he?" No mom, totally inappropriate reaction. And he's also married with kids who are almost as old as I am but I pray to God that this kind of connection with someone doesn't just come once in a lifetime! I'm fully aware of how creepy I must sound right now and I need to take a moment to reassure you that no, I'm not by any means lusting after my attending. I'm simply enamored by the fact that someone so brilliant can have such an equally beautiful heart. He resonates an energy that is clearly palpable to the staff and patients as well, it's intoxicating! I think what i feel must be akin to the kind of devotion and adoration people feel towards God, or towards a spouse or towards some power they hold higher than themselves. It's a feeling that I know I'm capable of expressing, but I've long been searching for someone who I feel is worthy of receiving it. What better way to expend that energy on someone who's going to help me grow as a person and become someone who can positively impact society. Who is the person in your life whose brightness is really a reflection of the light burning inside of you? We've all got someone who is capable of giving and receiving the same intensity and matched frequency of the energy you are emitting...
So when you couple his promise to give me my first solo procedures this Friday along with the fact that he gives phenomenal bear hugs...I'm on professional Cloud Nine!!! It's safe to say that I'm now currently in the process of refashioning the plans I had for love, it's slowly being revealed that the intention i had for it was perhaps not the best direction for it anyways..yet.....

Persistence of Memory...and Time

First anecdote: Good news = Today I became a PRO at giving shots. Bad news = the reason why...the last patients of the day that came strolling into the office at 7:30pm would of course be the most complicated and sensitive. To make a very long story short, the husband had recently been abusing IV drugs and neglected to tell his wife of 10 years. The wife had recently been having 'casual', unprotected sex with a neighbor (or two) and neglected to inform her husband. The outcome? He gave her hepatitis B and she gave him chlamydia. NOT a pretty sight (or interview...) So thanks to their absolute disregard for each other I spent my evening loading them both up with preventative shots and immunizations in the hopes that neither contract any more diseases they are now susceptible to. The saddest part was that both husband and wife were extremely intelligent, attractive and successful individuals. And before the interview got started, I was actually admiring how caring they were acting about one another...If today's experience didn't completely shatter my faith in the meaning of relationships then I don't know what will! Moral of the story: Never take anyone's word for granted. Obviously all us unmarried folks should be regularly testing ourselves for STD's (read: after EVERY new encounter..those of you going back and forth between interests, please BE CAREFUL!!!!) but even those in monogamous relationships, take heed! Take measures to protect yourself because at the end of the day, no one is going to care about you as much as YOU care about you.


Second anecdote: Day 1 in my Family Med doctor's office I noticed that every single clock in his establishment was broken. Every single clock (between the waiting room, lobby and 4 patient rooms there were at least 7 clocks) had picked its own, individual time to hover around, second hand futilely trying to click forward but being thrown back to just the second before by some magical battery that had enough juice to keep the hand eternally struggling to reach its desired moment but not enough juice to ever allow resolution. My first few days I mused over how the situation as it stood so beautifully demonstrated the attitude we should exude in our chosen professions and in our personal relationships. There should always be that feeling that what we are striving for is within arm's reach, but always just a bit out of grasp. Allow that longing to move you towards that or whom which you desire to be the energy that will forever propel you. However, I understand that this spiel would be ineffective if the conclusion ended with this philosophy since it would imply that while we may work hard we will never reach our goals but herein lies the denouement...Today when at 7:15am I walked into my first diabetic patient's room, I wasn't as surprised to see his bloody toe nails that his chihuahua tore off in the middle of the night hanging off his foot as I was to see that all the clocks in the rooms were miraculously once again in working order. So toil forth, my weary friends...and should you fatigue, have faith too that the mysterious maintenance man of your inner being will soon replace your batteries to give you the strength to keep on going as well :)


GO GET TESTED! Trust me, it's MUCH better to find out what you have now and get it treated than to have an awkward, 3rd year medical student have to explain to you and your significant other the activities which precipitate contraction of diseases you now have and will be susceptible to in the future, sexually transmitted and otherwise.

I WISH I had this kind of confidence

While at a family Puja a couple weekends ago I ran into a man who happened to stop by the temple. Now while I could plainly see what his intentions were, I thought I did a marvelous job of simultaneously being charming but also keeping the vibe strictly very friendly. When I got home that night, I found this little surprise in my inbox:

It was a pleasure meeting you and your family today at the temple and Krsna has made you very beautiful, I am sharing a nice spiritual story for you on beauty, Hope you like it and find it enlightening,

LIQUID BEAUTY
Once upon a time a prince met very beautiful young girl. He visited her house to see her but she was very chaste. The prince wanted to marry this beautiful girl but she didn’t want to marry him. So she said to him, You want to marry me, you are attracted by my beauty, so I will distill my beauty in the next ten days. So the prince agreed. Then the beautiful girl said, “If you still want to take me as your wife then you can take me.” The prince replied, “All right, that’s fine, I’ll come back in ten days and certainly I’ll take you as my wife my beautiful young maiden.” As soon he left the beautiful young girl started to take very strong purgatives [medicine which would cause her to vomit and pass stool]. She kept all the vomit and stool in a big pot. She didn’t eat anything, she was simply passing stool and vomiting, so within ten days her whole beautiful body was destroyed. She was a gray color, she was very skinny, very weak, you couldn’t recognize her as the same person. After ten days the prince came back to visit the beautiful young girl. She opened the door for him. When the prince saw her he said, “I have come to see one very beautiful lady who I am about to marry.” So the girl said, “I am that beautiful young lady.” He replied, “No it isn’t true. How could it be possible?” She said, “Yes I am that beautiful young lady, I have distilled my beauty, come and see it.” She took the prince to the place where she was keeping the big pot containing all of her stool, vomit and urine and she said, “Here is my beauty.” This is the story of liquid beauty. In reality the material body is simply a bag of pus, stool, urine, blood, mucus, so many horrible things. And we are simply attracted to the beautiful skin and as soon as the skin is no longer beautiful we are not attracted any more.

Our society is simply going on the basis of this “skin disease.” So we see so many divorces and so many marriages. A man is being attracted to a woman on the basis of the skin. He thinks, “Oh, here is a very nice woman. She has very nice hair, a very beautiful complexion, a very nice bodily structure. She is a very beautiful woman.” The woman is thinking in the same way, “This is a very handsome man, he is very strong, very beautiful, a very attractive man.” Then they come together and for a short time enjoy sex life and soon there is some problem with the sex life, some difficulty, so they say, “I’m sorry it’s just not working any more, the magic has gone from our relationship. I have to find somebody else.” Then there is a divorce.

Everything is based on the skin, and the skin is temporary. We can never be satisfied, we can never be happy with a relationship based on the skin because our skin is a very temporary thing.

A beautiful girl is beautiful for a few years only, it is a fleeting moment only. Every body gets old, every body gets sick, every body dies. But we are not the body we are the spirit, the soul. The soul is eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss (sat cit ananda). But currently the soul is covered by the material body and we are misidentifying the body with the self. We think if we satisfy the body we will become satisfied. But, no matter how hard we try to satisfy the body, the soul, the spirit is never satisfied by any amount of material so-called “pleasure.”

If we are attracted by the skin only, the beauty of the skin, we’re bound to be dissatisfied because the person, I, the self, is different from the body. Krishna describes in the Bhagavad-gita (2.13):

dehino ’smin yatha dehe kaumaram yauvanam jara
tatha dehantara-praptir dhiras tatra na muhyati

Here Krishna says the soul, even in this life, is changing bodies. In the beginning we have a child’s body, then we get a boy’s body, then a man’s body then we get an old man’s body, so the time of death is simply another change of body. A self-realized soul can understand this, he can see this.

Our bodies are always changing. You can see. No one can argue with this. It’s a statement of a very plain fact. I have this man’s body now, previously I had a boy’s body, prior to that I had a child’s body and before that a babies body. They are all different bodies.

I can see, my parents have the pictures and they can show you I had these different bodies. Now those bodies have gone. Now I have this man’s body and in due course it will also be finished and I’ll have an old man’s body and ultimately that old mans body will be gone and I will be taken away to another body at the time of death.

This is the process of life and death in the material world. The bodies are changing but the soul is not changing. I the person am the same person I was in the babies body, I’m the same person I was in the child’s body, I’m the same person I was in the boys body. I can remember things, I can remember my childhood body, I can remember my boys body. I can remember the activities I performed in these bodies. These activities are performed by me, but the body I had then is gone. So we can understand that I, the self, the person, I am permanent, I am eternal, but the body is always changing. I am not this body, I am the occupier of this body, I am the driver of this body, I am the controller of this body, but I am not the body. The body is a machine.



I don't know, but I feel like that was a bit too forward, even for me. I understand the sentiment he was trying to express, but really?? Men of the world take note: I would not recommend that your first leap of communication with a love interest be that you tell her that her beauty is only as good as the vomit and fecal matter that's inside her...Needless to say, I wish I had the gonads to be that blunt!

This did get me to thinking though...While I agree that beauty is only skin deep, I don't see any error in keeping self-preservation as part of a spouse hunt pre-requisite. After all, Darwin's entire theory of evolution is based on the principle of survival of the fittest and let's face it, in today's society self-maintenance and the image you portray have almost an equal bearing on your level of success as the amount of raw talent you possess. On the flip side, none of us want a partner who's too in love with themselves so like everything else, it boils down to BALANCE: intellectual, in great form but also with good heart so you dont have to worry about their actions every time they leave the house.

Well Over-Exuberant-Mandir-Man, though I did not respond to your e-mail and probably never will, weeks later I am still sitting here thinking about you so I guess...You win!

Seeking the reassurance of others tonight...

I'm a strong believer that all things come in threes:

1). Somehow, September 1st never registered in my mental calendar...nor did the 2nd or the 3rd or the 8th...and now i owe my apartment complex the monetary equivalent of a business class plane ticket to a remote, exotic country. And trust me, I'd much rather be spending the money on just that. How ironic that I come to find out that I'm to incur such a huge dent in my pocket the day that we have an entire evening of presentations pertaining to money management in medical school. That's it. I'm definitely going to die poor and alone.

2). I did HORRIBLY on a surgery quiz today...and this is the field I want to go into?!?! Sometimes I wonder why I get such a sick pleasure out of chasing the things that are always going to be just a bit out of reach for me. People, situations, you name it. I embody the psychiatric diagnosis of Narcissism; always thinking I deserve the best of the best and then beating myself up when I fall short. The self-worthlessness has been propagated by a wave of negative energy that hit yesterday when I realized that though I may feel like most of the time i have it completely together, the reality is I don't and I won't for a long time. Which wouldn't be disconcerting if I hadn't started to take note recently of the people who are doing the things and being the people that I think I want and want to be.

3). I'm still reeling from the guilt generated by almost killing Captain Ruffles after I left him alone in Daytona for 5 days while I traipsed about Florida. He managed to knock over his food dish at some point and was near death by starvation when I returned on Tuesday.

So moral of the post is: I'm hoping I've exhausted my streak of bad luck?? What a miserable week. Morale is low and for once I have absolutely nothing to look forward to in the near future. Wondering how I'll make it through this one....We've now reached the point where I'm pathetically going to sit back and wait for the comfort from the ones I love to arrive. Come quickly! I need you tonight... :*(

Fruit Detox Follow-Up

Right off the bat I would like to take a moment to lament the sometimes deplorable condition of being female. As I watched 3lbs melt off the first day followed by another 4lbs with the second day of the detox, I realized that mostly what had happened was due to water retention, or what my fellow ladies will attest to as the common ailment of 'bloating'. And lo and behold, upon consultation with my pill pack and realizing that Mother Nature was indeed to pay a visit in the near future, I begrudgingly once again accepted that along with the mood swings, exhaustion and weight gain, what I had just incurred was merely another bout of PMS. Excellent.

Although, I will say I am grateful for following through with my impulsive desire to detox because once again, I found myself bestowed with gems of wisdom along this journey:

#1. Mind Over Matter is only a saying until you put it into practice: 3 days of just fruits was a stretch, even for a fastidious health nut like myself. But once you commit to making a lifestyle change and make it your own decision, that's exactly what it becomes. It's not a fast, it's simply a way of life. I think too often we get caught up in going with the flow, just blindly following those around us because we haven't decided for ourselves how we feel about a particular situation. I encourage you all tonight to find one aspect of your life that you have no strong feelings towards and just try to assess how you really feel about it, free from the constraints of what impressions may have been left by others. Do you really feel that Obama will be able to create peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians? What can YOU do RIGHT NOW to make an impact on global warming? What do you really feel like eating for breakfast tomorrow?

#2. No matter how difficult the situation, always embrace it with open arms: Family medicine is still the bane of my existence, but I've found ways to make the experience my own and grow from it. So I hate treating boring chronic illnesses like hypertension, diabetes and hyperlipidemia. Ok, but I love talking to people and most of the time, getting people to make the changes necessary to live a healthier life comes from somewhere deeper than prescribing the right medications anyway. So I sit and spend at least 45 mins with my patients and get detailed histories of everything about them, their past, present and future. And more often than not we are able to identify together certain instances that have shaped their ideas of themselves and the world around them and when we address those issues, sometimes we can make headway in improving their outlook and actions on their health. And I've also effectively just killed off about 1/9th of my day.

#3. There is no such thing as failure. It just means that you haven't devoted enough time or the right kind of energy to the problem yet: No one was as surprised as I was tonight when in my yoga class I was able to lift up into Eka Pada Koundiyasana. I have been painstakingly (and i mean PAIN) working on this pose for my entire yoga practicing existence and have never gotten more than some bruises on my arms out of it. But today, despite consuming only fruits for the past 68 hours I took a deep breath, whispered a prayer and then took flight!

I really hope this is what falling in love feels like. You spend all your time sort of taking a stab at it but it's not until you're physically and mentally ready (and you probably will have no idea when that is either) and then there you go! Knight In Shining Armor with a 5 carat ring is executing the most perfectly romantic (and well documented) proposal in front of you, just like you've always imagined but never needed to vocalize, and you have almost no idea how you both got to that moment.

I'm feeling good. There was some awesome Qi generated throughout the past 3 days and even though I was at times wrought with exhaustion, I'm happy to report that there was nothing but more positive personal growth and happy self-identification that took place over the past 72 hours. I'm thinking about trying to stick to just fresh veggies the rest of the week to balance out the nutrients I've been lacking since Monday. And then it's off to Miami to spend a wondrous weekend with one of my dearest friends....and hopefully will be making some new ones as well ;)

I think it would be wise to call it a night soon. Tomorrow is another full 12 hour day in Palm Coast so off to bed I go. Considering the plethora of insightful dreams I've been having the past few nights I feel it appropriate to now quote Shakespeare, for as I head off to bed and towards hopeful enlightenment via the vehicle of the subconscious, I'm off to "unpathed waters, undreamed shores..."