what it is to...

It seems like the busier I become, the more things I have that I want to write about.  During the last couple of days, my mother told me a couple of interesting things and I wanted to write it down.

1. What it is to be a professional

I've written before that my mother goes to Curves, a female-only gym where she works out every day.  She isn't happy with the service she gets there, and has complained (politely) about it to the staffs.  But they haven't improved -- they even have a little notice on the wall asking the members to be patient if their service isn't good enough because some staffs are in the process of learning.  My mother thinks their problem is that they lack the sense of pride in what they do.  "They don't understand what it is to be a professional."

I wonder what patients will say if a new doctor asked them to be patient or toloerant if his service wasn't good enough because he was in the process of learning.  It doesn't sound like a good excuse, though I guess patients are called patients because they're supposed to be patient.

It's slightly different but it reminds me of what a famous cram school teacher said to his students.  "It doesn't matter whether you like your job or not.  You're being paid for it, and when someone pays you, they don't care if you like your job.  All that matters is that you take responsibility in what you do.  Having pride in your job doesn't mean you like it; it means you take full responsibility and provide the best service."

2. What it is to find a partner

My mother had a shocking moment when she visited me last autumn.  After taking a shower, she dried her hair and was tidying up the hair-dryer when I came in and took it away from her.  I told her furiously that I hated how she wrapped the twisted electric cord around the dryer.  "Make it straight before you wrap it around."

She thought I had become neurotic because of all the anatomy practice.  She's glad that I've become a bit relaxed now, but she still remembers the incident when she uses the hair-dryer.  The other day, she asked me if I was seeing anyone.  When I said I didn't know what to look for in a man, she only said one thing: "I hope you find someone who cares about getting the electric cord straight before he wraps it around the dryer."

3. What it is to die

My mom was doing the laundry when she found a red disgusting bee-like bug.  It hadn't gotten into the room yet, but she decided to kill it with a spray because it was "so disgusting".  It didn't look like it was going to die so she sprayed a couple of times and watched as the bug eventually suffered to death.  "So I realized even bugs suffer when they die.  It's obvious, but I felt kind of sorry.  The poor thing is still lying on the balcony."

It reminded me of an essay by Naoya Shiga.  It was written during his recuperation after surviving a fatal accident.  He had realized that death and life were not opposites but that death was part of life.  He describes some deaths he witnesses, and one of them is that of a rat with a skewer stuck through its neck.  Some children are making fun of it, but the rat tries to live until the end.  It doesn't give up; it keeps getting up and trying to get out of the ditch.  And Shiga observes that animals are not even allowed to commit suicide.

4. What it is to have a pharmacology test in three days

I have to go back to studying.

inheritance

When Angelina Jolie told the world that she had cut off her breasts to prevent cancer, I didn't really have any opinion about what she did.  I didn't think it was *that* tragic to cut off her breasts -- there's more to femininity than breasts could ever speak, and even considering Jolie's profession -- she's not her breasts as much as I'm not my breasts.  Obviously.

Neither did I think she was brave and wonderful to have told the public that she had cut off her breasts.  The news gave a headsup to women all over the world, but as far as I know, it's not like she has offered to pay for every single surgery needed because of mutant BRCA1/2.  She had the money and the support she needed and did what she could to protect herself, just like anyone would do.  I didn't really understand what the big deal was.

But today, I was reminded of the difficulties patients and might-be-patients of hereditary diseases face.  They want to know the truth, but if they get tested, it might violate the right of their family members -- the right to stay uninformed.  It's great if it turns out they're safe, but if not, parents end up blaming themselves and it can also cause some hurtful arguments.

It especially shocked me when an anonymous patient said her mother had told her to give up having a family of her own.  She said it was cruel and pointless to produce another human who would have to go through the same pain.  It does make sense in a way, but the patient also has the right to live her life the way she wants.  Babies are not born to fulfill the parents' desires, but in reality, people have babies because they want babies.  If the patient wants a baby, shouldn't she be allowed to have one just like anyone else?

If people start thinking like the mother above, people with hereditary diseases are doomed to suffer discrimination.  Our lives will heavily depend upon what kind of genes we have.  But we all have genetic deficiencies regardless of whether it shows or not.  No one is perfect.  And it's hard to define what is "normal".

It seems like science has come a long way.  It needs a mature society that can accept what it gives.  Maybe this is when ignorance becomes a crime.  And I guess Jolie, after all, has given us a good chance to think about something very important.



Note: will be absent till my pharmacology test is over.  Take care!

creativity

Today we did our last experiment using two groups of mice.  We put some inflammation-inducing substance with and without betamethason (an anti-inflammatory drug) on a couple of ears and measured the thickness of each ear every thirty minutes to see the effectiveness of the drug.  This time, we couldn't get the results we wanted, but every time I do an experiment, I'm amazed by the creativity of all the past scientists who came up with all the unique methods and instruments.

Like Pasteur and the flask he made to trap the micro-organisms in the air.  If it hadn't been for his flask, humans still might've believed that living organisms could appear spontaneaously out of no where.  Pasteur boiled some broth in his special flask and proved that it didn't rot (=no organisms appeared from that boiled broth) unless some micro-organisms entered the flask.

And even statistics -- we have all these tests that help us prove if there are significant differences between groups.  Apparently, we're supposed to hypothesize that there are no difference and do these tests to see if that hypothesis is wrong or not according to the data we have.

Coming from the humanities field, it really impresses me that humans could come up with all these ideas.  It sort of reminds me that when I studied the constitution, I was impressed by the idea as much as I'm impressed with the T test now.

mouse

I'm extremely tired.  I haven't been able to get enough sleep lately, not only because I'm busy with all the experiments and papers but also because I keep waking up at 6:30 for some reason.

Yesterday, we injected morphine to a couple of mice and put them on hot plates and pinched their tails with a clip to see how morphine affected them.

Today, we injected a couple other drugs to some virtual mice on the computer and observed their VBP/HF/HR while another group did the morphine experiment.  They worked with the mice right next to us where we were doing our task, and once in a while, when I moved my mouse and tried to move the cursor to a certain place on the screen, it would move on its own -- towards where the mice were.

Either way, vagal reflex is a huge trend lately -- at least around me.  Caffeine is supposed to strengthen the heart which means heart rate should rise, but it goes down.  Why?  It's a result of vagal reflex (caffeine⇒heart↑⇒BP↑⇒vagal reflex⇒heart↓⇒BP↓=back to normal).  Norepinephrine is also supposed to strengthen the heart, but heart rate goes down.  Why?  Again, vagal reflex (α receptors contracts the vessels and BP rises ⇒ vagal reflex ⇒ heart↓)  Vagal reflex seems to explain everything.  Well, not everything, obviously.  It doesn't provide any explanation on why my mouse kept moving towards the mice.  Or why I can't sleep.

I feel overall depressed when I don't get enough sleep.  Going to bed now.

miracle

Since I'm not Midori, I can't "ignore" sine or cosine or statistics -- I've been analyzing/proving the effect of caffeine on calculation performance all day, and thought I wouldn't feel like writing today, but a short note:

It was raining last night and I remember it had been the same (or worse) exactly a year ago.  Because that was when I came here to take the entrance exam for my med school.  It was raining like crazy -- umbrellas were useless and it was almost impossible to see where you were walking.

A year ago, I thought I would be happy and relaxed once I got into school.  But.  I realize again that it's a never ending cycle.  You pass a test, a year passes, and you're still facing another test, writing another paper.  Cleaning another room, washing another dish, waking up early in the morning feeling tired.  We keep doing the same thing.  Over and over.

But in a way, that's the "miracle".  Being able to do the same thing.  Not being in a worse state.  Being able to wake up in the morning.  It's a miracle -- if I just take the time to stop and think about it that way.

perfect headmistress

I was reminded today of a story about an American woman who I think died just a couple of years ago (I think her name was Jane something).  She was the headmistress of a very famous girls' school and was known for her discipline.  Years after a divorce, she met a man at a party and his passionate love letter pushed her to enter a relationship with him.  They had a happy time together, but the man (he was a doctor) refused to marry her, and eventually started having an affair with a young nurse, while Jane worked on his book that became a national best-seller.  Soon, Jane was arrested for murdering her lover.

She insisted in court that it had been an accident, and everyone who knew her believed her words.  They said it was impossible for someone like Jane to commit murder.  Jane's reputation and her sophisticated character that showed in her testimony led the whole nation to sympathize with her.  The victim's selfish behavior convinced the jurors that Jane was just a poor woman who was caught in an accident.

However, the prosecutors had one last evidence -- a love letter Jane had written to her lover just before the "accident" occurred.  The letter showed the darkest side of the headmistress no one had ever seen.  She was jealousy itself, torn between hatred and love; she was ugly and nasty, and in the end, she was just an ordinary woman in love.

As I saw her cry in jail when asked about her now dead lover, I was reminded yet again that every human was not just good or bad.  A part of us are good and right but we all have a dark side that we try to hide consciously or unconsciously.  Maybe Jane didn't have to kill anyone if she could convince herself that she didn't have to be perfect in front of everyone.

Either way, we should probably be careful when we recieve passionate love letters but even more careful when sending one!

fire for dessert

Relating to Murakami, the only books I've read thoroughly are Norwegian Wood and the one I mentioned yesterday.  I personally think of the former as the Japanese version of The Catcher in The Rye; NW is obviously a hard core love story and its characters are much more morbid and even more sentimental, but both stories depict the inevitable loss we all experience in the process of growing up.  I can't say exactly *what* we lose (probably because I've already lost them) but I'll probably remember when I read these books again.  They remind me of the struggles I went through and the questions I used to have - how I used to see the world.  Of course you can't always live in the world of sentimentalism (and I'd rather not), but it's sometimes nice to be reminded of things you forget without realizing.  And there are a couple of scenes and conversations that I really like, and I wanted to share one of them:

University student Watanabe is spending one Sunday afternoon at Midori's.  It's a sunny day and they're on the laundry deck after lunch, where they can see a neighborhood house caught in fire.  Watanabe suggests they evacuate, but Midori wants to sing a song and that is what she does.  She sings her terrible self-composed song called "I have nothing", and they drink beer while she talks about when her mother died -- she hadn't felt sad at all.

They feel somewhat "warm and close" after watching the glittering rooftops and the smoke and the red dragonflies together and they want to "preserve that mood in some form" -- they end up having a "soft and gentle kiss", "one not meant to lead beyond itself".  Midori pulls away and tells Watanabe that she's seeing someone.  He admits the same, and "the brief spell of the early autumn afternoon" vanishes.  Watanabe leaves a couple hours later and asks Midori to come for a snack, but she says she has to stay in case the phone rings.

Midori:  I hate waiting at home all day for a call.  When I spend the day alone, I feel as if my flesh is rotting little by little -- rotting and melting until there's nothing left but a green puddle that gets sucked down into the earth.  And all that stays behind are my clothes.  That's how it feels to me, waiting indoors all day.

Watanabe:  I'll keep you company next time you have to wait for a call, as long as lunch is included.

Midori:  Great.  I'll arrange another fire for dessert.

One of the best kissing scenes that I know of.  Then again, I actually didn't like it at all when I read NW the first time.  I was probably around 19-20 and I read the original in Japanese.  I happened to read the English translation two years later, and I didn't think it was too bad (except that too many people die too easily).  I don't know if it was me or the language, but if anyone's wondering which version they should read, I would still recommend the English copy.