limited time

It's been a long time since I wrote last.  I actually glanced through my last couple of entries, and to tell the truth, I feel a bit embarrassed.  If anyone is still reading this blog, I really appreciate it that you took time to read even my whiny posts.

I passed a test in February and am now training in the hospital as a student doctor.  So far, I have trained at the radiology department, the urology department, and am now in the gastrointestinal department.  There are probably a lot of important things I should be writing about, but in short, I'm learning every day that the human body is a miracle.  And every medical knowledge that humans have accumulated over time to maintain the miracle when anything goes wrong, is a miracle.  I am amazed by the smallest invention, the smallest discovery that supports the medical services we can provide to patients.  And before I forget, it's another miracle that you can sit down.  After hours of standing still in surgeries, every chair you see looks like its shining at you.  Seriously.

The reason I wanted to write today was because I was greatly moved by a story I heard yesterday about a shogi (Japanese chess) player who died at the age of 29: Satoshi Murayama.  He suffered from nephrosis from a very young age, and it was while he was hospitalized that his father introduced him to the world of shogi.  He soon got absorbed in it and started studying it by himself.  By the time he became thirteen years old, he had won all local tournaments and was willing to study under a shogi master in Osaka to become a professional player.  His parents worried about his health and opposed to the idea of their son having to live away from them, but in the end, decided to respect his decision because he insisted he didn't have time.

Murayama's talent bloomed, and he became a professional shogi player in less than three years.  He won tournament after tournament, but at the same time, his illness worsened, and he would call his mother to take care of him after every game when he would suffer from high fever.  He didn't like the thought of having to depend upon his mother, and would occasionally treat her coldly, but his mother never said anything about it because she had always thought it was her fault that her son had become sick, and she thought there was nothing she could do to make amends to him.  She never watched her son's game because she believed shogi was worsening his illness, and she secretly wished he would stop playing.

By age 25, Murayama had become one of the top ten shogi players, but soon found out he had bladder cancer.  He refused to go through surgery because it meant he would lose his sexual function, and he was afraid he would not be able to have his own family.  In the end though, he was persuaded to have a bladderectomy, and devoted the rest of his life to his only dream that was left now, which was becoming a "meijin" (master of shogi).  He returned to the tournaments a month after his surgery, and soon regained his previous rank as one of the top ten players.

However, a couple days before the final match (against Habu -- the most famous shogi player to date) he was told that his cancer had relapsed.  He silently watched his mother burst into tears, and after a while, suggested they go out to eat udon (Japanese noodles).  On the way, he said he wondered if he could win the game.  He told his mother that he really wanted to win, and she was surprised that the match still mattered to him when he was dying.  She realized that his focus was only on the present, and she thought that if he was living for today, she should do the same -- that she should stop running away.  And finally, when she decided to support her son from the bottom of her heart, her sense of guilt melted away.

The final match started out with Murayama taking control, and he was dominant until he was only a couple of moves away from becoming a meijin, when he suddenly made a poor move.  The countdown had started, and he moved a random piece in a rush.  It was the kind of mistake he had never made before.  The piece he moved lay crooked on the board, and it was fatal.  Murayama lost all too soon.  But during the interview after the match, he appeared with a radiant face.  He had done everything he could.  It was five months later that he passed away.

Life doesn't always give us what we want.  We all have regrets, and we all worry about the future.   But maybe that's only because we're not living in the present.  Murayama always knew he didn't have enough time.  It reminded me of what Yuzuru Hanyu had said when he was asked why he didn't take some time off after he was injured during a rehearsal.  After all, he was already a world champion.  He said he wanted to keep on skating because he was aware that his time as an athlete was limited.  Some day, his quadruple jumps won't be perfect anymore, and one day, the crowd won't remember his name.

But of course, nothing lasts forever.  No matter how many miracles occur, and how much medicine advances, we're all going to grow old; our legs will stop working like they used to, our sweetest memories will fade, and one day, we will die.  Our time is limited.  So until then, I hope to live like Murayama -- free from past regrets, free from future fears, only focusing on the present and every moment I'm allowed to have.

big dreams

Last night, we had a welcome party for new students, and their big dreams reminded me of my own dream I'd had when I entered med school.

If you've read my past entries, you probably know I tend to dream big.  As well as wanting to be a writer, saving the lives of people in developing countries has been my dream since high school.  I realize there's no difference between staying in my country and treating people here, and going abroad to treat people there.  If there's some kind of a philosophy behind it, it's just that I think I was lucky to have been born in Japan and as my parents' child, and I feel I should at least help people who weren't as "lucky" as I happened to be.  But in the end, it's probably just another way to feed my huge ego.  And I realized it clearly last night, as I conversed with a new student who had just come back from Uganda where he had worked as a veterinarian.

He said his dream was to work as a member of Doctors without Borders and eventually get a job in the WHO.  I think it's a great dream, and regarding the fact that he has already worked in Uganda, I'm pretty sure he has the guts to make his dreams come true.  The only problem I had with him (apart from the fact that he kept spitting at me and into my plate with every other word he spoke) was that he didn't seem to see what was right in front of him because he was too busy looking at Africa.  He wasn't a bad person at all; I actually even liked him a bit, but I thought I didn't want to be like him.  I don't want to forget the things lying in front of me.  I guess I've realized lately that it's really the small things that matter to me.

A couple of weeks ago, our emergency medicine professor told us about how he had saved a three month year old baby and he was outraged that some stupid doctor had criticized him for saving such a child -- hardly a human being -- who would have to live the rest of his life with serious disabilities.  I was amazed that the professor seemed to have no doubt whatsoever that what he had done was perfectly "right".  I realize that when you practice medicine, you sometimes end up forcing upon patients (and their families) the sense of value that being alive means everything.  Even if you can't walk or talk or go to the toilet on your own, it's great just being alive.  I want to believe it's true.  We need to make a society that makes this true.  But in reality, I'm not quite sure.  Doctors save lives and feel happy.  But what do they know about what happens to those lives they save?  After all, who feeds the kid for the rest of his life?  Who can guarantee that those lives in developing countries saved by foreign doctors who return home to their warm beds and meals, find the same warm shelter and enough food?  What if the country can't support that many people?

I don't want to forget that it's harder to save lives than we usually think it is.  I want to remember that we can be wrong.  I don't know if I still want to work abroad, but regardless of where I work, I want to live with humility.

leaving a mark

I was folding a paper crane today and suddenly wondered who it was that had first created it.  I don't know how many times I've folded a paper crane; maybe a hundred times or nearly two hundred times, and the question never occurred to me until today.

Since I read The Fault in Our Stars two weeks ago, I've been thinking about the meaning of life for the hundredth time.  The book is about two teenagers with cancer who fall in love.  It's one of the most romantic love stories I've ever known, but what struck me most was the boy's strong desire to leave a mark on the world.  Most of my close friends do not seem to have this kind of desire, and I always thought it was just me.  I guess the desire is pretty evident in the obsession towards fame we occasionally see in our societies, but still, most of my friends are like the boy's girlfriend who he admires because of her uniqueness of not having that arrogant desire.  And I've wondered why.

The boy writes a eulogy for her before he dies, and it shows how he lets go of his own desires -- he comes to the conclusion that most of us can't leave any mark, and even when we do, it's not always a good one; we can cause harm too.  So what's important is not what we can do to the universe, but what we can observe from it.  We're here to listen to what the universe has to say, and accept it as it is.

I almost hated the book because I loved it.  It's kind of embarrassing to admit it, but since I've already mentioned it here in this blog -- I always wanted to be a writer and the dream is not yet dead completely.  When I really like a book, it inevitably reminds me of what I will never be.  It's really embarrassing that I even need to be "reminded"; it's an obvious fact.  So why do I still want to be a writer?  Apart from the fact that I like writing, I think it boils down to that desire of leaving a mark on the world.  If I didn't care about marks, why is it not enough to write a story and keep it private?  Why am I even making this writing public?

I actually found it somewhat contradictory and ironic that a million seller book -- a book that leaves a mark -- insists that leaving a mark is not important.   But what does it even mean to "leave a mark"?

I don't think anyone desires to leave a physical mark.  No one would want a statue of themselves made if there was no one who looked at it and remembered them.  Leaving a mark obviously means leaving a mark in people's minds -- securing a place for yourself in the minds of future people.  A good story touches people's hearts over and over, gives the same experience to countless people even after the author's death.

Having said that, it's only an experiece -- one of the many we all go through in our lifetime.  A story may touch my heart, but there are also so many other things that touch my heart.  Among those many experiences, the story is only a dot in my life.  Of course there are big dots and small dots, dots I will remember for a long time, and those that disappear right away.  But everything, in the end, is a dot that makes up my life.  The nameless person who created the paper crane for the first time in human history, and all the great writers and scientists, and all my ancestors who did or didn't make history -- they are all important to my life in the same way.

A couple of days ago, my French uncle went back to France to visit his ill mother (I met her fifteen years ago when we used to live in France).  I wrote her a letter in French (she only speaks French), and it took four hours.  Maybe I could've done something more productive, something that would've led to leaving a mark on this world or whatever, but today, I received an email from my aunt telling me that her mother (in law) had read the letter aloud and had dropped tears.  She had read it again and again.  Considering the fact that she ususally has no family around her, I knew how much the letter meant to her.  And I thought -- well, even if I can't write a great story like I once dreamed, I can still create a dot in someone else's life.  I may not be able to create millions of dots in millions of lives, but still, there are dots for me to create by living my own life with a bit of compassion.

A movie I just finished watching, Quelques Heurs de Printemps, reminded me of my uncle and his mother.  I was greatly moved by the scenery the protagonist's mother saw as she traveled to the place where her euthanasia was to be conducted.  It was just trees and the blue sky you see every spring, and yet, when I saw it through her eyes, when I thought this was the last sky I was going to see, I felt like I really had to see it properly.  To remember it clearly.  But when you know your memory is only going to last for another few hours, that it's going to disappear with you altogether, what value does it have?  It's always only that moment that counts -- memento mori, carpe diem.

So rather than worrying about how many dots I can create to "leave a mark", I might as well go to bed now so I can enjoy tomorrow -- a new day that will never come back.

three minutes

All I've been writing about lately has been my shadowing experiences but here's another one.  If anyone has felt angry or even hurt by a doctor's insensitive attitude, I want to apologize on behalf and promise I will try my best not to be the same (when I finally become a doctor).

The other day, I shadowed a physician specializing in liver (and the surrounding organs).  One of the outpatients came to get the results of her test and it turned out she had some hepatitic virus in her blood and that her liver had some kind of inflamation.  The doctor wanted to do a biopsy and he needed the patient's consent.  But the patient's daughter asked most of the questions and the doctor's answers were blunt.  The patient just sat there with a worried face, not knowing what to do.  Amidst an awkward silence, the doctor started glancing through a chart of another patient while the patient in front of him thought about the options provided.  I totally understood how busy the doctor was -- he had so many patients waiting; the list went on forever.  His behavior may have been unavoidable for the greatest happiness of the greatest number.  But I could tell he was also in a bad mood (partly because his computer kept bringing up the wrong kanji).  And this is where things started going worse.

He leaned back in his chair, glanced at the patient, and told her that he himself had never caused hemorrhage that required transfusion but that he had seen a horrible case in the past when he had been a resident.  He laughed a bit, and the patient just nodded.  It's of course important to inform the patient of the risks but it's useless to stir up her anxiety with an accident that occurred thirty years ago.  Some doctors bring up so much statistics and even talk about cases of other patients under different conditions.  If the patient wants all that information, she will ask for it, or she could even look it up herself.  What's good about getting informed by a doctor, in my opinion, is that the doctor is not a computer; he becomes a human filter that picks up necessary information for the patient and provides it with consideration towards her feelings.  All she needs is a clear explanation of what the biopsy is for and how it will be done, and what the risks are in her case.  Not the next patient.  When I become a doctor, my duty will be to treat as many patients, but I still don't want to forget to focus on the patient I am seeing at that moment.

The same day, I happened to listen to an interview with Ed Sheeran, and he described how a brief exchange with another singer had changed his life.  It had only been three minutes for that other singer and it might've meant nothing, but it meant his life to Ed Sheeran.  That's why he thinks it's important that he always leaves his personal emotions backstage or in the car.  His fans are going to meet him only once for less than three minutes, and if he acts like a jerk, he might pluck a bud that otherwise would've bloomed as a great musician like himself.  Doctors don't change lives like that.  A liver biopsy being postponed for a week may not change a patient's prognosis.  But I think it's the same three minutes.  "Another three minutes" for a doctor means more than that to a patient.

0~1 year olds

A quick note of nursery shadowing round 2:

1. Kids can tell if you're a stranger from when they're around a couple months old.

2. Kids aren't interested in one another until they're around two years old.

3. They're fine with tasteless foods until they taste all the yummy stuff out in the world.

4. They're more interested in picking at pieces of Velcros on toys rather than toys themselves.

5. Some kids bite their peers when they fight for toys.  (Reminded me of a certain soccer player.)

6. The yellow lines on their diapers change blue when they've peed.

7. You can feel the gelatin in their diapers when they've peed.

8. When they're crying, it's because they need a warm hug or a bottle of milk or they've peed.

9. The reason the nursery staffs don't throw away used diapers and give them back to parents is NOT because the parents check the contents when they get home.  They have to take the diaper to the doctor when the kid is sick but usually, no one checks.  They just stink.  So the nursery has decided to stop giving back wet diapers from next month.

10. Some parents prefer cloth diapers because kids can feel the uncomfortable wetness when they've peed and they learn to use the bathroom earlier than kids with expensive paper diapers.

11. Most kids are messy and have runny nose.  They drool over your shirt and then look back at you with innocent eyes.

12. And they're so adorable it's heartbreaking when you leave them and they start crying.

two year olds

I still remember about the day I stopped crying at nursery school.  Until then, I think I stayed by the glass door and cried as I watched my mother disappear into the distance, but that morning, I went into the playroom and decided that I wasn't going to cry.  The sliding door closed, and I held back my tears as I picked up a wooden block to force myself to focus on playing with it.  I was three years old.

When we moved to New Zealand and I started going to kindergarten, the whole process started all over again.  I cried like mad every time my mother tried to leave me.  I don't really remember when it was that I finally stopped crying.  Maybe it was when Kate came up to play with me.

Today, I went to visit a nursery school as it was part of our shadowing program.  I was put into the rabbit class with 17 cute two year olds.  The hardest part was making them finish their lunch.  They do all kinds of stuff to avoid eating what they don't like: they drop spoons on purpose, drop the food on purpose, walk around the room, stick their hands under your apron to touch your breasts, make faces, and cry.  It's amazing how they change their attitude according to who's helping them eat.  A girl who would keep shaking her head to me would open her mouth when a strict teacher comes to force the food into her mouth.  They can't control their pee, and yet they know how to manipulate college students with huge drops of tears and vague complaints.

One episode that might be worth noting -- a girl I was feeding (Erika) said she was finished and left her seat to pick up her toothbrush, and then the girl sitting next to her started crying, apparently because she thought it was unfair that Erika got to leave her veggies while she still had to eat hers.  It reminded me of a monkey experiment that proved that even monkeys didn't accept unfairness (you can watch it here).

Later when Erika had to get changed for her nap, she came up to me with her bag packed with diapers but instead of giving me a diaper, she handed me a pair of pink undies and insisted she was going to be totally fine with that while she made me take off her wet diaper.  Well, at least she didn't spit lettuce on me!

On a side note, after nap time was over, they were served a cup of milk with their snacks, and I winced as the teacher gave me my cup.  I don't like milk (my mom could hardly breast-feed me).  When I took a sip, it was tepid and it just tasted really bad.  Having to drink it with messy kids made it harder, but what could I say after telling them they shouldn't be so picky?  In New Zealand, I didn't have school lunch, so when I came back to Japan, I told the teacher I couldn't drink milk because I didn't like it.  She told me I couldn't say that.  I didn't quite understand her, but eventually, I learned to accept the only choice.  School lunch does make kids grow up -- physically and mentally.

just the way we are

In today's result-oriented system, almost everything is conditional.  To be worthy, we have to be good at something.  With nothing to be proud of, we're called losers.  With no contribution to the society, we're worthless.  In Japan, we have to be married and have children to be a woman.

About a week ago, a 35 year old female member of the Tokyo assembly was subjected to sexist abuse while she tried to debate support for childrearing (the details are here).  It took more than five days for one of the male culprits to come out and admit the inappropriateness of his remark ("You're the one who should get married").  He did not admit his underlying disrespect to single women with no children.  We still don't know who did the rest of the heckling ("Are you even able to have children?" etc.)

Many Japanese showed anger towards this incident.  But I think the male councillors precisely represent the general Japanese who do think that women should get married and rear children rather than stay single.  These kind of people think of marriage and childrearing as what makes women a full human being, and also what gives them "true happiness".

The declining birthrate is a serious problem.  Personally, I don't understand the feelings of people who avoid marriage because they don't want to "grow up", or because they might "get tired of their partner".  But lack of responsibility is not the only reason why someone is single.  It might not even be their choice.  If it is their choice, it must be a very important choice to them -- a conclusion they came to after overcoming many difficulties in their lives.  Happiness is different to everyone, and we have to respect every shape of happiness as well as every lifestyle.

Apparently, many young people are doing the Shikoku Pilgrimage lately.  During the pilgrimage, they are given free meals along the way from local people.  It's a tradition from hundreds of years ago when pilgrims were called 稀人(rare person).  The local people have welcomed them unconditionally to this day: every pilgrim is welcomed the same way, and as a result, by the time they finish their pilgrimage, they realize that they are worthy just the way they are.

We all want to be accepted unconditionally -- married or unmarried, with or without children.