official.

It’s official. Our final exam grades are in. I passed 2nd year of med school! Hallelujah. There have been so many days in these past two years that I never thought I’d get to this point. But here we are – studying for boards – waiting eagerly for the next step, when I can finally get out of this terribly boring routine of reading & memorizing and move on to learning from physicians & real patients.

 

my odyssey.

That’s what my best friend from college calls it: my odyssey.

Lately things have been very difficult – and I know I’d be saying that even if it was only med school that was troubling me. Unfortunately it’s so much more than that.

It’s been a tough year for my family: my mom flew to Lebanon in October to take care of her sick mother. The rest of us pulled together to take care of my little sister (the only one not old enough to drive herself around). In January Mom came to visit, then took Rowena back to Lebanon with her so that she could be with her. And then there were four (me, Dad, two brothers).

Last Tuesday 4/7, my dad fell and broke his hip – an impacted femoral neck fracture that he had repaired the next day. And so began a long week of visits in the hospital, discussions with the family, planning for what we would do next. It has been honestly been the longest week of my life. There is so much that has to be done when your whole routine becomes up-ended like this.

I won’t lie – it was really hard initially. I was an emotional wreck for days. I don’t know how to manage a family, a household, everything else, while both my parents are away. And it happened just as things were picking up with school. My finals start in 12 days. Yeah.
I haven’t been sleeping much. I lost a lot of studying time, even though I’ve been trying to read whenever I can. Most of my time until this weekend was spent dealing with family things.

But what else can I do? Bad things happen, and sometimes they happen at the worst, most inopportune times (even though there’s never a “good” time at all). All I can do is shoulder the new responsibility, face these issues head on, and do whatever it takes to get through.

Thankfully people have been so supportive… We have good family friends who bring us home-cooked meals, offer their help, visit my dad in the hospital. And my school has been accommodating enough to give me excused absences from classes (though I’m still trying to attend as many as I can). Still, there is only so much burden that can be removed. There’s still a lot that my brothers and I have to do ourselves, not the least of which is studying.

The other day I met with a dean from school, who gave me something interesting to think about. He said, “This age that you’re at, in your 20s, this is when you expect these things to happen: the parents, the grandparents, all of that. And it’s unfortunate but it always tends to happen at this age. The difference between you guys and your peers, though, is that you’re in medical school. If all of this happened to someone else, they might say, ‘you know what, time out. I’m taking a week off work to sort this out.’ and then they go back the next week. But medical students don’t have that luxury. The work doesn’t stop for you; it just keeps going no matter what’s going on in your life.”

I realized that he’s right: our responsibilities increase and problems come with them, but there’s not much flexibility to deal with that in medical school. But I’m doing the best I can. It really made me take a step back, think of how I have been dealing with things, and cut myself a bit of slack.

My best friend calls it my odyssey because it is a huge personal challenge, something I have to overcome, and that will hopefully make me stronger. But the process – the getting there – seems so overwhelming.

I had much more ambitious goals for my exams before this happened. I thought I could study pathology and behavioral science as much as possible for my shelf exams; that way I wouldn’t have to study them as much for USMLE Step 1. But now my focus has shifted. I still want to do well on finals, but I’d be satisfied to just pass with a safe margin. I’ll deal with Step 1 later. One thing at a time. (That’s part of my new thing now: “compartmentalizing.” So much harder than it sounds. Try studying difficult science material while worrying about your parent in the hospital.)

Today is Pascha – celebration of the resurrection of Christ. I went to church last night after studying for nearly 12 hours (with breaks, of course!). I was happy because it was the first successful studying day I’ve had since Dad’s surgery. (I’ve been productive, but not in regards to school.) Today is not going so well, and it’s tough when I think about how much I have to do. But I’m going to visit Dad soon. It’ll be good to see him and spend time with the rest of my family. That’s my priority right now.

 

on life and choice.

Conversion Diary: How I became pro-life

so the above is an interesting blog post about a multidimensional topic. the author expresses quite thoughtfully & eloquently how her mindset was changed.

this is something i’ve been thinking about a great deal lately, because it keeps popping up in conversation (and makes me slightly uncomfortable, as i think it does to many people). i have strong feelings on both sides of the issue of abortion – both the value of human life and the right of women to decide, and myriad other issues factor into my opinions.

sometimes i wish it were possible to not “choose” one side at all, but to just, you know, set some ground rules. say, if a woman had been raped, or if she’s physically incapable of carrying the child, she should be entitled to have an abortion without judgment or repercussion. of course, the ancient issue remains: where do you draw the line? what’s an “acceptable” reason? obviously, it depends on whom you ask.

another reason i’ve been thinking about it is that being pro-choice in any degree puts me at odds with my church. this has been made very clear to me, but to be honest, that is another issue altogether. i have to form my thoughts both within the framework of orthodox christianity and outside of it.

i’m reminded of a story my mother told me, from when she was a young nurse. she had a patient who was around her age at the time, early 20s. this girl was married and already had five children. five children, at 23 (my age now). she was pregnant again. but now she had terminal cancer.
the patient’s father was deeply religious, a sheikh, and refused to allow her to have an abortion. being pregnant, she couldn’t get the cancer therapy she needed. she died, leaving behind her husband and, now, six children.

i understand that ‘each life is valuable’ and that we cannot ‘dehumanize’ fetuses.
but tell me, when making a decision about a full-grown woman’s life, why does the unborn child’s life take precedence over hers? why is it more important to save a baby that has never been born, than to save a woman, a wife, a daughter, a mother?

in a scenario such as that – how can anyone claim to NOT be making value judgments about human life?

 

starting to focus.

it’s tough, because all semester long you tell yourself, this time it’ll be different. this time i’ll start working earlier, and harder, and longer, so that i’m not cramming in all this studying at the end, right before exams.

what’s funny is, this time *is* different. i’ve been working my ass off since nearly day one, after my last set of exams in december: reading, writing, reviewing.

and yet, somehow – god only knows how – there is still so much left to be done.

i haven’t been here much, as things have been so crazy: mom came home for two weeks, then went back to lebanon this past wednesday, taking my little sister with her. house feels lonely without them. (also, i’m now the only female – eek.)

school has been going ok, actually – i’m trying really hard to stay on top of my work, and to find some joy in studying medicine. because if i don’t do that, honestly, it’ll just make me miserable. i have to search for the love in it.

and i’m doing better at including “life” things, too: going back to yoga, making doctor appointments, spending time with family, boyfriend, friends. i need to take better care of myself – it’s something i’d let go of.

i’ve recently discovered i’m lactose intolerant (most likely). so i’ve stopped eating all dairy except yogurt (which is ok to eat because the live cultures digest the lactose for you). this might’ve been the culprit of my health problems..

i’ve been thinking a lot about the situation in gaza, the upcoming turnover of our president & administration, where i see our country going, and where i see myself in however many years. i feel a strong connection to my parents’ home country of lebanon, but i’ve grown up and been in the US my whole life. so i try to learn, get updates, as much as i can – but this is also hard, because i have such limited time, between studying & everything else in my life, to be following news & politics.

ok, i’ll now be disappearing for about three weeks… you can still catch me on twitter if you’re curious.

 

shopping on wilsonsleather.com is sweeeet

Wilsonsleather.com EXTRA 30% off the 60% is stacking at checkout.

i realize the English above is not exactly, um, comprehensible. what they’re trying to say is: clearance items at wilson’s are 60% off. everything *except* clearance, supposedly, is 30% off.

but guess what actually happens when you buy a clearance item? you get 60% off the price and then another 30% off that. for some reason the “exception” isn’t working.

so go BUY NOW. i just scored a $210 guess coat for $58. ka-ching.

(via Deal Linker)

 

NME’s Tracks Of The Year 2008

Revealed: NME’s Tracks Of The Year 2008

loving MIA’s “paper planes.”

interesting that MGMT is on there three times. shouldn’t there be a rule against that on top 10 lists or something?

(via uoma universalis)

 

photo in o’hare airport article

my photo was requested for this article on NowPublic:

Two Emergency Landings at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport

check it here:

not even that great a photo (it’s even fuzzy). i just loved their fabulous rainbow lights. it’s a cool place to fly into.

 

family photo minus mom

she is still in lebanon taking care of her mother. sad.

so, here’s the rest of us at home, in front of our tree, with presents underneath it, because we actually managed to pull together and decorate and shop and still make a good holiday out of it. good job, team family.

 

chinese angel babies

merry christmas.

Chinese children dressed as angels attended Christmas Eve mass held at the Southern Cathedral, the oldest Catholic church in Beijing. Credit: NYTimes.com

 

winter break

i’ve been out of school for only five days and i’ve crammed about everything possible into them. yet have managed to spend lots of time in pajamas. excellent.

this weekend i saw the movie slumdog millionaire and pretty much fell in love with it. (i actually dreamt about it, woke up the next day thinking about it, and wanted to download a bootleg version to watch again immediately. true love.)

had dinner at cuba libre in center city philly, where the food was quite good but the rum was so much better.

drove up to queens to see jars of clay performing in a christmas concert at an evangelical church. it was a very mushy experience. the lead singer’s voice was so soothing that i nearly fell asleep. that was kinda nice, actually – someone should always sing me to sleep.

on sunday my brothers & i threw my little sister roweena a 12th birthday party at the local bowling alley. her original idea was an outdoor skating rink, but ice & snow & rain that day were not going to be conducive to a stress-free experience for all involved, considering the involvement of accident-prone 12-year-old girls…

had dinner with aunt & cousins that night – lots of tasty arabic food, because our cuisine just rocks. and then all of us crammed into one tiny photo.

somewhere in there, i checked my grades and found that i definitely passed ‘clinical prevention medicine’ but ‘biochemical basis of nutrition’ is still up in the air. ooh, the suspense.

post-exams, i spent a good deal of time planning for a surgery (bunionectomy) that i ended up canceling today. i saw multiple doctors, had 2 EKGs and an echo, history, physical, bloodwork, urine culture, allll kinds of stuff. turns out i’m OK (uh, medically). but i eventually realized that i’m totally rushing this foot surgery thing, it’s not that severe, and it can wait until a later time in my life when i don’t have to study for exams and i can get a six-week medical leave to sit at home and prop my feet up (well, hypothetically that’ll happen).

now it’s christmas eve. i did most of my shopping online last week, and finally finished buying gifts for everyone this morning – got the last-minute stuff at macy’s, which was a place for crazy people today. thank god they actually had, you know, anything left. and i didn’t slip on the ice – bonus points!

i’m supposed to be studying pathology, because i didn’t do so well on the first exam, and it’s kinda an important subject for the boards / med school / life.

instead i am playing on the internets.

who knew when i first started using it that google reader would be my downfall? if only for the fact that once i get started reading posts (lifehacker, especially!) i click on one link, then another, then i subscribe to another blog because “that guy who wrote that article on wired.com is so funny!” and soon i’m drowning in blogs and news and celebrity gossip.

the only thing i check more often is twitter and, of course, my email. i try to limit my flickr use to posting photos, and my facebook use to, uh, reading stuff that other people post… but that’s enough to waste countless hours, now isn’t it.

i’ve read (mythical?) stories of “internet fasts.” how do people DO that, exactly?

in the epic words of coldplay: wish you a cracking christmas and a tip-top 2009.

cheers.