Career #3?

Well now that I’m in medical school, a whole new set of acronyms are starting. It’s funny how only a month ago that RBC meant Royal Bank of Canada and it now means red blood cells. It’s all about the context! On Friday, we explored the rib cage in anatomy and saw some real lungs. Lungs are VERY cool. They’re very squishy and sponge-like when you feel them (ones that have been preserved anyway, so normally they’re probably not so fluid-filled rather they’d be air-filled). It was very striking to see the chunks of black on people’s lungs. Some had little bits of black here and there – which our prof said likely meant that they were a smoker in the country OR lived in the city. Yuck. But then there was one guy close to us that had extremely black lungs. I tell ya, the pictures of black lungs don’t do them justice. If teenagers (or adults) could see a REAL lung that’s black from smoking, I bet you it would really put them off smoking. It is quite amazing how in the short 4 weeks we’ve been in school, they’ve already pretty much told us that smoking will increase your risk for every disease. When in doubt, a risk factor is smoking. How strange that people still smoke. My friends and I have wondered aloud numerous times whether we think there’s anyone in the program that smokes. If they do now, they won’t for long I don’t think. Not when it keeps coming up again and again in all of the horrible diseases we’re studying. On a totally different note, I had my first session of shadowing at the integrated medicine centre today. It was quite interesting and I do look forward to my next session there so I can sit in on some one-on-one appointments. Today I sat in on a session on Passion, which is one of a 4 session set for people that join the centre. The others are on mind, body and spirit. Basically the idea is that knowing and living your passion is key to truly living your life – whether it’s singing, dancing, painting, writing, etc. Something that makes your heart sing. It was nice to have the chance to think about that today. I know that this centre operates very differently to all the other experiences I will have in medical school, so it’s nice to get that exposure to something very sane and grounding early on. I’m really eager to see what different things you can do as a family physician and how you can structure your work, your day and your life. There are many options and I’ve also just recently found out about community medicine through which you can have a family practice and do some public health stuff on the side, which sounds quite interesting. In reality, it all sounds interesting at this point, except surgery, anything eye-related and dermatology. In fact, most specialities seem like they’d get boring after a while which doesn’t make me too keen to specialize. I’m all about keeping doors open vs shutting them. Finally, this weekend I somehow got thinking about mailmen (mail people for you ultra-politically correct types). I was wondering if there are a large number of them that are big daydreamers. Seeing what mail people get must be interesting sometimes. Of course I was thinking about myself and how over the last year my mail has gone from the usual boring bills to include the odd few letters from medical schools (mostly rejections) to now a plethora of medical journals and other bulk (aka junk) mail from the BC and Canadian medical associations. I got to thinking about what my mailman may have been thinking as he/she watched this progression. Or at least what I would have been thinking if I were my mailman. I think they have a pretty good job really. Lots of fresh air & exercise, good pay, being able to imagine elaborate tales about the people whose mail you’re delivering. Maybe that will be career #3 for me.