Live life… that kinda thing

Perhaps it is because i am going through the fires of hell right now, I think I should be living my life instead of running this seemingly endless med school race. Ok ok ignore me, caffeine, little sleep, cramming like hell and remembering f**k all does this to you. Anyway, on to more happy, inspiring, fluffy bunnies, rainbows in sky sorta thing…

By way of Amri.

This speech was made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anna Quindlen, at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.

“I’m a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.

People don’t talk about the soul very much anymore. It’s so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter’s night, or when you’re sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you’ve received your test results and they’re not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here’s what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you’d care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids’ eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby’s ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.

Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived”.

October 18, 2009. Med School, Think, Thunk, Thought. 3 comments.

I write

It is becoming clear to me that physicians’ bad handwriting is a by product of the demands of their occupation, it starts from medical school, where there are just too many notes to be made and your hand cannot keep up with the speed at which you need those notes to be produced. Where you are taught that it is paramount to abbreviate doctor terms to help cut down writing time, time is of the essence, yes even when scribing case notes on the white board during your weekly problem based learning case. Rx, Tx, Hx, Dx, ADR, SOB (a personal favourite, because some young intern- a position which I will find myself in in the not too distant future so I best not say anything mean, used this term while hurriedly talking to my mother when she brought my granny into the ED, “Son of a bitch?!”, no, no… shortness of breath ma’am…)

I used to be the kind of girl who wrote lengthy journal entries in cursive, complete with different coloured pens and the meticulous dotting of ‘i’s and crossing of ‘t’s, penmanship was and still is a huge emphasis in our household. Memories of my father endlessly berating my brother for his ‘chicken scratching’ handwriting still haunt me to this very day, having said that, my father’s militant indoctrination has done a world of good for my brother who now appreciates the fine art of calligraphy and purchases exquisite calligraphy and wax seal sets as a little hobby. His writing is still shit though :p

As I look at my stack of notes, I realise how much my writing has regressed, everything is hurried, scribbles everywhere as long as I put the pertinent information down in ink, but do I care? Not really, function over form, no time to make things pretty anymore. Then I read an article in TIME about the many deaths caused every year by healthcare workers misinterpreting the multitude of prescription forms or charts written by doctors too hard pressed for time and too frazzled to write legibly, and as a result, administer doses of drugs which are too high or completely wrong, I think to myself, no, I can’t let things slip, my bad writing may cause someone’s life one day.

So yes, I must and will improve on my handwriting, but maybe in about 12 days, when the finals are over

October 9, 2009. Med School, Think, Thunk, Thought. 6 comments.