It started last week because we had several moribund patients, patients who we knew were imminently going to leave the hospital through the back door. Every morning, when I walked into the hospital and check my team’s patient list, this awfully morbid game played through my head.
If we’re talking in programming terms, the “_Medicine Red” list is an unsorted set of entries of patient names representing the patients we are currently managing. Names are added to the list when they are admitted through the emergency department or transferred from other teams. Names are dropped from the list when we discharge them, when we transfer them to other teams, or when they die. In simpler terms, our list of patients tells us who to treat, and changes in our list are a big deal.Continue reading A moribund game→
As I’m working through my medicine sub-internship (the closest to on-the-job doctor training as we ever get in med school), I have met a handful of memorable patients that have forced me to ponder our place in medicine as doctors. Like, in a non-ironic non-philosophical way.Continue reading Doctor versatility versus obligation→
Imagine the city as a living body. In that body, the roads would be its blood vessels. Traversing those roads are us humans, wandering through the tangle of highways and roads like like blood cells pumping through a maze of arteries and capillaries. Among them — about 1 in 300 — are us white coat-clad doctors, like those 1 in 800 white blood cells wandering among the red blood cells. Like those WBCs patrolling and protecting the body, doctors are the city’s healers.
This post was written in retrospectively in July 2017 about a wedding that happened in August 2013. One of my closest friends from high school was getting married, so I made a big drive from Santa Barbara where I was working up to the Bay Area where we’re from.
This was within a couple of months of me getting my camera and within a week of me getting my macro lens. Whoa. This probably explains my excess of shots of table ornaments and food. Continue reading Wedding guest with a camera→
Thanks to studying for my Step 2 board exam in the middle of wedding season, I only scheduled myself 10 hours to explore London! 6 hours after landing the first day, and 4 hours the morning before the wedding ceremony.
I do seem to enjoy darting around excessively and unnecessarily before my friends’ weddings (I ran a quick half marathon before last September’s wedding), but the strangeness of this habit is not lost on me. How much can I really get to know a city if I’m mostly just moving around with my camera? And why did I choose to spend my valuable time abroad in such inauthentic fashion, working hard to misrepresent my trip through a few photos? Continue reading Dashing through London→
My best friend got married! I’ve known him since, what, kindergarten? Maybe little girls fantasize about their friends’ weddings, but certainly not us. While we were sitting in math class or doing school projects or playing Super Smash Bros or rehearsing music duets together or just growing up side by side, I truly never about what this day would look like.
But here we are, 26 years later. He’s standing in City Hall with his wife, and I’m there alongside their families bearing witness with my camera to their ceremony. Continue reading Weddings and Lions→
During the weekend of July 4th, my friends Rachel and Winston were married in London! This is a little ironic given that both the bride and groom are American as were almost all of their guests, but all the same.
In what I assume is the most classy British way possible, they were married in the church where the groom was baptized and had the reception in an old temple.
For three weeks, Sing For Hope has scattered 60 pianos painted by local artists all around the five boroughs of New York City. After today, they will be transported to their final homes: NYC public schools.
I don’t know why I decided to challenge myself to visit as many of them as possible — especially during a pretty busy stretch in med school — but that’s what I did! Continue reading Finding the SFH Pianos→
