Monday, August 28, 2006 at 11:07 am (Two Roads Diverged, Yabaadabadoo!)
I’ve decided! 
I’m going to go the pediatric oncology route… it’s a really cool set of projects – a fair blend of clinical trials as well as lab-based research – and I’m going to submit my final decision tomorrow and start the day after that. But wait – let me tell you more coz I’m super-duper excited! (The following explanation should cater well to my medical and non-medical audience, but let me know if it doesn’t.)
There’s this new drug that’s come out in the chemotherapeutic world – it’s pretty magical since in the first set of clinical trials itself it’s brought about amazing cures in people with certain advanced stage leukemias. It targets a specific site that’s very common on certain leukemic cancer cells (CD-22) and it’s attached to the toxin that belongs to a bad bacteria called pseudomonas – so that’s kinda how it specifically targets and kills off the villainous cancer cells and spares the other cells.
So… the lab I’ll be working in is the lab of the guy who invented this drug – he’s simply amazing. I typed his name in pubmed the other day – his name’s on 1048 papers, the first of which was in 1957! So I didn’t even know that was possible. Now he’s invented another even better version of that drug and I’m going to be working with that one too. Lots of cell cultures, specifically looking at patients’ cells and figuring out what combination of chemotherapeutic drugs will kill off the cells best.
On the clinical front, I’ll be making clinical protocols for trying out these two new drugs in the pediatric population. If all goes according to plan, we’ll start enrolling patients in a few months and sooner or later there’ll be data to analyze and see if the results are just as amazing in the kiddies. The guy I’ll be working with on the clinical front is sooo excited about the whole project and I guess it’s kinda contagious coz now I am too! The nice thing is that he’ll be the pediatric oncology attending this week, and he wants me to spend the first two weeks shadowing him on rounds, just so I get to see how everything works here and get to meet the patients – kinda get a good feel for what I’m going to spend the year working on. (Note: this would give nerdy me time to study during the rest of the day - yay!)
So there you go – final decision. Thanks for listening to me whine while I was still in the decision-making process. I guess the answer really was staring me in the face. I think whether or not I choose pediatrics as a career in the end, a year spent working on cures for diseases that affect kids is definitely a year well-spent!!
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Wednesday, August 23, 2006 at 2:58 pm (Wishywashyness)
Why am I so noncommittal? I wonder sometimes… for someone who’s been in med school for three whole years, and been interested in the medical area for about a decade now - I am amazingly wishywashy about what I really want to be!
Maybe it’s because I never grew up with a clearly defined concept of what a doctor is. I didn’t realize when I first wanted to be one that there were so many types of doctors you could be. I guess I must’ve assumed years ago that you learn to be a master of everything - you become some kinda amazing person who can treat people both medically and surgically, who can be there at the scene of disaster but also manage terminally-ill patients at other times, who can treat babies, old people, teenagers, women – everything, everyone, everywhere. I really did grow up thinking that’s what a doctor was – I didn’t know any better. I could probably count on my fingers how many med students or doctors I knew prior to starting med school. And no, I didn’t even get round to watching the medical shows on TV for some reason – maybe that might’ve helped. The first time it really hit me that I had to decide on something more specific was actually in the past year. Which meant suddenly having to redefine everything I’d been assuming for the nine years prior to that.
But even after a whole year in the hospital, I don’t feel too much closer to knowing. Oddly though, I feel like the answer is staring at me straight in the face. I wish I’d figure it out already, it would make my job of choosing a research project for this year a hell of a lot easier!! I wouldn’t be meeting a surgeon one minute and a pediatric oncologist the next, only to move on to infectious disease and cardiology.
There is no end to the amazing stuff going on over here – do I want to help with the latest immunological miracle drug for advanced stage cancers, or do I want to help with choosing the best tests to diagnose certain oppotunistic infections in people with AIDS, or perhaps help with a clinical trial for cancer vaccines so that kids who got cancers in the past will have a chance to live cancer-free once they’re cured, or maybe figure out pancreatic cancer cell targets for a more effective chemotherapeutic cure? Everything is way too cool! Can’t I just do it all?!
Sigh! Decide already! Commit already!!!
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Saturday, August 19, 2006 at 10:46 am (A Bolt of Insight, Just Do It!)
Generosity never ceases to amaze me. There’s a special person here, and I told him he was like a big brother to me – my Veerji (which means big brother, in Punjabi). His med school subscribes to Kaplan so they can order review books every year for usmle exams. When he heard that I was studying for this exam, he ordered a fresh new set of books for me, and this morning he passed them to me.
It brings tears to my eyes – the 7 brand new books sit near my little puja corner, ready to be used in their full capacity. My heart hurts when I think that someone I’ve only known for two weeks has it in his heart to give me such a precious gift of knowledge. It’s not something I could ever return, but perhaps one day I will get the chance to pass it on to another person and give them the same hope that he gave me today.
Certainly, the biggest tragedy in life is the person who knows exactly where he wants to go and has a map of the entire journey, along with the means of getting to his destination, but doesn’t end up making it just because he didn’t give his ambitions enough priority.
There are so many people who just want me get through this exam and to be satisfied with whatever effort I put in it in the end. That’s really all that matters now – it’s really not about results, it’s really not about where it’ll get me. It’s all about me realizing that this really is my only priority for the next three weeks – I can’t spend the present worrying about the past or the future – there’s just too much to do in the present, too many more things to get done in order to make the present as fulfilling as possible!
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Thursday, August 17, 2006 at 8:46 pm (The Blues?)
Blegh. I’m getting so homesick. I think it might be the lack of interaction with people. Two weeks and it just feels sad not to know anyone too well here and to be trying to study instead of getting to know anyone. Two weeks of living alone in a two-bedroom apartment. Two weeks of watching the sky go from blue to black and still sit alone in my apartment and try to focus. Two weeks can make you very hug-deprived…. I’m sitting here with my huge teddy bear in my lap, holding him as I read answers on my question bank. The only other person I’ve spent much time with is the only other person who’s studying for this exam (ie my next door neighbour) but I’m trying to limit that coz we’re just getting to know each other and that means that once we start a conversation about anything, we end up talking too much…. and nice as it may be, I don’t have time for that I guess. So here I am, evening numero twelve, with my teddy bear and pet fish to keep me company.
The teddy bear is more hugable than the fish, I’ve come to realize. The fish, on the other hand, keeps nodding at me with full understanding of how I feel, after all, it must get pretty lonely to live in a huge fish bowl on your own. 
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Thursday, August 17, 2006 at 3:04 pm (Just Do It!, Yabaadabadoo!)
Just got done watching Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (Never Say Goodbye) starring Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta, Abhishek Bachchan, and Rani Mukherji. At the library at my workplace (off the internet!). Prior to this I had been going through severe Bollywood Withrawal Syndrome (BWS), which includes most of the following symptoms: sadness, emptyness, blueness, feelings of waiting for someone in your immediate surroundings to burst into Hindi dialogue, feelings of wanting 20 similarly dressed people to jump in front of you in the hallway at your workplace and start dancing to instant loud catchy Bollywood music playing over the overhead speakers “Where’s the party tonight? Sapnon ke din hain, sapnon ki raatein!”, also compounded with withdrawal symptoms from the lack of new hindi music to get your day goin’, lack of new wallpaper for your laptop, etc etc.
Suffice it to say…. this felt like a chocolate bar I’d been holding onto for ages and finally got round to savouring.
I’ll have some of the music up on my blog soon. In the meantime……
Tumhi dekho na, yeh kya ho gaya, tumhara hun main aur tum meri! La la la la la la la la la laa! *me in a flowing golden gown with long flat-ironed hair, twirling and singing through the hallways of this building full of formally dressed research people*
And then I guess I *trip* back into reality. Darn. Time to study. 
La la la la la la la la la laa!
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