Starting to walk

My daughter is starting to walk by her own. Other then being a great achievement it is really her first steps toward independence. The freedom she experiences when starting to walk is a lesson I wish I could take with me on my day-2-day life. She is one year old now and she is just waddling all over the house.

Something in me wishes to go back to the feeling of accomplishment like that fist step, first word, first anything. It's like magic seeing her face when she "gets it". I wish her great travels and even greater adventures in the future.

I want to try and imagine that every day should be the start of something big, a real achievement. When I wake in the morning I want to feel like today will be the day that I start to walk. Starting to walk can symbolize any new beginning, even things that I do everyday can be looked upon as if they were done for the first time, with all the awe and gratitude that comes with the first step.

I wish I could remember these wishes during the day, they seem so clear to me when I write them down but after I leave the PC to go on with my life I forget, I get caught up in life and I can't bring myself to focus on the important moments. Well that is not exactly true...I find the moments...and they are magical.

Last day of university

It has happened, today was my last day in the university as a student. The beginning of the end has started, I still have one exam left at the end of this month, but until then I have no obligation to come in to study - I have this time to study at home and prepare for the exam - so I consider this to be my last day in university. I can count down the days I will be visiting the walls of my faculty on one hand. Mostly to finish up some academic bureaucracy - return all the books to the library and hand in my locker key to the janitors.

I haven't really seen any interesting cases that are worth my opinion lately, that is way I haven't shared any ideas for the past week or two.

I am just getting used to the idea that I have finished something big. Until now it was mostly a vague idea in the mist, but today it suddenly became real. I am going to be a doctor. Its kinda freaky to realize it, the responsibility that comes with the job can debilitate me and cause me to freeze, but I choose to stand strong and hold my head up high towards what the future will bring. The responsibility. The hard work. The challenges. The long shifts with low pay. The fulfilling feeling of maybe saving life. It all starts with the last day of university.

The journey has begun...I'm sure it will be a great film...I can't wait to see the end but I'm really interested to find out how everything will unfold.

Practical Medicine???

I wonder how practical the use of medicine really is? If this question is a little unclear let me try to clear it up before I add my opinions on the topic.

I studied chinese medicine and acupuncture for 2.5 years before I started my journey into modern medicine. Back then I thought I was not getting enough information from my classes and I searched to understand the human body better, so I went to learn medicine. One thing I can say for sure is that I do understand much more of the biology and chemistry and physics and molecular processes in the body, but do I really understand the body more? That question is still not answered to me.

While I was learning acupuncture I felt I had the power to "heal", I could always poke a friend with a needle and treat his headache, stomach ache or just get him to clam down. Of course this was not always successful due to my human errors in finding the right acupuncture point or just due to the fact that acupuncture is not an exact science and not always the results are clear and immediate but at least I could treat, I wasn't afraid to try, whats the worst that could happen???? That is what I call a practical medicine. Medicine that can be used on a day-to-day basis and give results.

Today after 6 long years and even longer nights of studying and remembering all kinds of crazy syndromes and pharmaceutical names I can't even treat my wife when she wakes up in the middle of the night to vomit and has a diarrhea from hell. I forgot the acupuncture points for vomiting and nausea, I don't have any needles left for treating...all I could do was tell her to hold on tight its probably a virus and tomorrow she would feel better.

I was right, it was a virus, a 24 hour flu, but what about the practical part of my studies what about the practical medicine??? I felt useless. Yes I could have gave her a prescription for some anti emetics or open an IV fluid line, but I could do nothing to help her symptoms make her feel better right there and then. "We'll go to the doctor in the morning" "I'll find an open pharmacy maybe they can help". Modern medicine heals and prolongs life but in order to fully treat we need the equipment and the computers and the microscopes and the chemicals...we forgot how to heal using nature, we forgot how to look at a human body and not only at the numbers of a blood test.

I believe the combination between the two worlds is the future, and I hope one day to find a way to implicate both worlds into my practice and to be able to truly heal. Am I naive? Am I innocent? Time will tell....time will tell.