Just Life Itself

Monday, December 11, 2006 at 8:51 pm (Defining Life, Just An Update, Sniff sniff, Sunshine & Rain)

Life has been happening.

The past couple days have been such a whirlwind. My younger brother, the nicest guy I ever got to know (whose actually a couple years older than me but I made him into my ‘little brother’ four years ago and I can’t help but feel like his protective older sister) got back in touch with me after about two years of losing touch because he needed to see if I could help him. Over the last two days I’ve been getting to learn more about the woman he married one and a half years ago and the story has gradually become clearer about how this dear 26-year-old girl has metastatic cancer that seems to have taken over her liver and now their doctor has told them there’s nothing more they can do.

Day 1 of knowing this: Found out all the essential details I could think of and considered who I could contact. Felt a lot more indifferent then what I thought I would feel like considering the fact that my brother was basically telling me that his wife was dying.

Day 2 of knowing it. Woke up in the morning and felt like throwing up. I cried, louder and harder than I’d ever cried before, as if the world was ending, as if there was nothing left to be happy about, as if my dear little brother’s world was shattering around him. And really it was.

But the crying had to end, the tears had to run out, the thoughts had to give way to something more than the despair of knowing that nothing could change what had already happened.

Day 3. I finally learnt what it feels like to be at the other side of the fence. All of a sudden I wasn’t the medical student walking with a team of doctors at the research hospital and meeting another patient who was part of yet another cancer clinical trial. Now I was the desperate friend calling doctors who seemed like experts on this rare tumor, now I was describing to the umpteenth research nurse what had happened in the past 4 months of this poor girl’s life and trying to see if there was a way we could get second opinions soon. Now I was the one watching the clock tick, twiddle my thumbs in front my phone, and check the dial tone to figure out why no one was returning my calls yet.

Now I was the one silently preparing myself for the whole range of options – maybe things could work out, maybe they won’t. Maybe there was still hope left in terms of cures, or maybe there wasn’t much at all. Maybe it was time to accept the dismal prognosis, or maybe it wasn’t and this was still the time to keep fighting it.

I don’t know what’ll happen. We’re still trying, we’re still calling people, we’re still hoping for the best, we’re still searching for second opinions. This story continues to unfold with each day so much so that there just isn’t time to waste feeling all sad about it – there’s work to be done.

And it suddenly struck me that I think I do want to be an oncologist or an infectious disease doc. I feel like it just might give my life the meaning that I’ve searched for for a long time.

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I Believe

Sunday, September 10, 2006 at 8:53 pm (Sunshine & Rain, Whatever...)

I believe that true love does happen.  I believe that even if we haven’t found him/her yet, we still have to continue to believe that somewhere on this planet there is someone right for each one of us.

For a while now I’ve had a crush on this guy in my program.  He’s pretty much everything I’ve ever wanted in a guy – we share the same beliefs (like down the whole vegetarian deal and all), cultures, origins, career paths, and ambitions.  The nice part is that despite having so much in common, we still have a lot of new viewpoints and experiences to share.  We get along really well and somehow destiny made it such that we both decided to take a year off med school this year and ended up not only in the same program, but also living in the same building, same floor, next-door neighbours.

When you bump into someone who you think is so perfectly right for you, sometimes it throws you back – like “Huh? You do exist after all – it wasn’t just something I was falsely reassuring myself of all these years.  All the times I was trying to make other people seem right, there you were, miles away, leading your own life… and then one day you walked into mine.”

But in the real world there’s no such thing as perfect - and he was yet another reminder of that fact.  He already has someone in his life.  He met her four months ago and he’s crazy about her.  I guess in spite of everything then, he wasn’t right for me after all.  And so gradually I get over this silly crush and I let go of how right I thought he was.

Which takes me back to my initial point.  That even if we haven’t found him/her yet, we still have to continue to believe that somewhere on this planet there is someone right for each one of us. 

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A Series Of Unfortunate Events

Saturday, August 12, 2006 at 10:02 pm (Just An Update, Sunshine & Rain)

Interesting day today.

I got to know my next door neighbour – he’s a nice Indian guy (don’t worry, I’m not interested in him – he’s in a relationship anyway).  But just so you have a picture in your head to refer to, he is all of the following: vegetarian, a med student, in the same research program as me, studying for the usmle, really nice and humorous, gets along well with me, and… oh yeah, he happens to be a little goofy too.  I suppose though, once I describe him as a vegetarian, you can kinda figure what made me most happy about meeting him.  This kinda of package deal is not the common deal you’ll find on the Dell website, you see. This is rare and customized and it really needs to be recognized as such.

After spending the whole day with this aforementioned hard-to-come-by package deal of a guy though, I’m looking back at all the goofy events that went on today.  First we headed toward the public library – walked 15 mins in the sun just because I was convinced we needed the exercise – only to find out that we are allowed to use the library computers only one hour every 24 hours. Yes, really! How in the world was that supposed to work – our practice Qs are online! Plus, I didn’t have a library card and I’d forgotten to bring my apartment lease paper to get one made. So forget about even that measly one hour in that 24 hour period!!!

Anyways, we sat there reading our review books (my goodness, it helps sooo much to have a study buddy – I’d tried studying for this exam for weeks on my own and the difference a fellow-sufferer can make is priceless – thank you God!) until I got hugely distracted by a guy who was brushing his teeth right outside the library window. (Why would I lie?!). Next a huge guy sat down closeby to my seat and started to snore!  Honestly, what do you do!

So we packed and I bought myself a tub of Edy’s Limited Edition Half Fat Sundae Crunch Ice Cream from the grocery store nearby. (My freezer was looking pathetically healthy prior to this.) We then went by car to the library at our workplace, only to take one wrong turn – ended up waiting 10 whole minutes in the sun for the traffic light to turn green! Geez.

At that library I was trying to add their VPN to my laptop, at which point it restarted the computer and started asking me for a password I didn’t even know existed. (… Hours later after trying every password I could come up with - from past phone numbers to names of crushes, to various pet names in the family, to different versions of my own name! – I find out that I could’ve just clicked ‘OK’ without a password and it would unlock the computer!!!!!! Blegh.)

Two hours into our time at that library, my study buddy spills coffee all over his t-shirt/jeans.  (Told you he was a little goofy.)  But to top things off, about an hour later, we notice huge dark puffs of smoke coming at the library window. Yes really! Some idiot tossed a cigarette into a trash can, and something that shouldn’t have been burning was indeed then burning and releasing very ominous dark clouds of smoke. 

Hmm… similar to the kinds of ominous dark clouds between me and this upcoming brilliant joke-of-a-usmle exam.

This brought our repeated studying endeavours to a final end for the day, and we went back home and decided to do laundry instead, interspersed with servings of Edy’s Ice Cream and exchanging poignant stories about the beginning of third year. 

Gee. At least I studied more today than I have in the past week.  I mean heck, at least you can’t say I didn’t try, right?!! ;)  

Tomorrow is another day!

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Water Water Everywhere

Friday, August 4, 2006 at 6:18 pm (Sunshine & Rain)

As my first day at my new place slowly sets to a close, I look back at the day and ponder.  Life is such a fine blend of sunshine and rain that sometimes it becomes hard to discern what’s sunshine and what’s rain.

It’s strange to be at a new place again. New neighbours, new neighbourhood, new roommates, new everything. This is the ninth time I’ve moved to a new place since I came to this country, oh, just less than six years ago.  Moving time and time again helps remind one of what life is all about.  It’s a journey.  Who knows where it started and where it’ll end?  Who knows when it started and when it’ll end?  Life is a journey and on I flow with it all, just as a river meanders through various terrains during its course towards the sea.

Speaking of which, barely a day has gone by here and in a sheer moment of epiphany, an old hot water pipe at my new place decides to burst open, thereby creating rivers of water that flowed through half of the apartment.  (Am I exaggerating? Oh don’t I wish I was!)  Coincidentally, I wasn’t at the apartment during this water pipe’s moment of epiphany. Fortunately though, my sis and my dad were there at the time and in those few precious moments of damage control they managed to get maintenence over to drain out the apartment and to save my belongings from irrepairable destruction.  And here I am now hours later, in a room with fans/dehumidifier/air conditioning on, all making a team effort to somehow dry up this place.  This whole incident helped me count all my blessings related to having my family here to help me settle in.  Needless to say though, this has still quite literally dampened my spirits in a very soggy way.

…Almost like some sort of secret signal the Universe is tossing over in my direction – Go home, you’re not welcome here, said the Universe through a bursting hot water pipe.  Sail away sail away sail away!  So there! 

Ah, but I am too stubborn to listen to such waterishly subtle hints.  I think I am.  Perhaps it might help to run by words of Paulo Coelho from his bestseller, The Alchemist…

“We who fight for our own dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: ‘Oh well, I didn’t really want it anyway.’  We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey.  Then, the warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.”

So here’s to my first day here – Cheers!  And now it’s time to go out for dinner so that we can: 1. dry up our wet spirits in the bliss of pleasureful food and company, and 2. allow this apartment to recuperate from its current soggily smelly state.

Welcome to my blog, by the way – it really makes my day that you made your way here. :D

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