Hello, clerkship

One day you're a student, and the next, BOOM, you're a doctor.

No, not really. The thing is, I think I've been living in a happy bubble for the last three years, where the reality and gravity of my profession still hadn't sunk it. Things did a 180 for me yesterday when, after an extremely benign orientation at Psychiatry care of the chairman, a resident came into the room (where we were all lounging about waiting for the next thing to do) and said, "Alam niyo bang mayroong dalawang ICC na dapat naka-24 hour duty ngayon?" I felt like a headless chicken for the next few minutes. Apparently, because there are no clerks (who, if they're rotating in Neuropsychiatry, are assigned for duty in Neuro rather than Psych), WE--third year know-nothings--have been assigned to monitor patients and do 24-hour shifts, from 7 am to 7 am, AND we're still expected to show up for all of the classes from 8 am to 5pm.

I know my seniors will probably roll their eyes at this because they've gone on duty a gajillion times, and because monitoring a patient or making admitting notes is nothing to them, but wow, suddenly it was like I was a limbless person thrown into an ocean and expected to swim. In fact I'm still feeling a little bit at sea here. Up to this point we had only ever met patients who had already been evaluated before we got to them, so nothing we said or did could possibly have an impact on the management or outcome of the patients. We diagnosed things pretty much like people sitting at home watching HOUSE. We were just having fun. And it was really okay to make mistakes.

I'm also a little bit afraid. I saw the notes that an intern had made before me and I just couldn't believe my eyes. It was like he did this thoroughly horrible and careless examination of the patient, taking everything she said as gospel. You don't do that. You just don't. So instead of a schizophreniform or schizophrenic patient, his notes read more like the patient was just depressed, because he believed everything she said without realizing her lacking reliability or without consulting the two available relatives.

What if I missed something vital during MY evaluation of patients? My decisions will have such an impact on their lives. Eventually there will come a point when I won't have anyone to rely on but myself, and my (extremely bad) clinical judgment.

I know I used to complain that medicine takes so long. Now I think that maybe it shouldn't be five years but twenty, PLUS specialization.

What some call censorship; CCP, the art exhibit and "blasphemy"

I don't agree with death threats. I don't agree to anything that threatens to cause material harm to any party.

But.

Imagine an art exhibit with photos of famous people from the LGBT community. The photos are defaced and strong words like "whore" and "fag" and, you know, words I can never bring myself to type, dot these images. These images, imagine them, show these people as the lowest of the low, as though they're hardly even human.

If the LGBT community took a stand to have these photos removed, calling them offensive, insulting, and an outright manifestation of discrimination, they would be completely justified. I'd probably be campaigning right along with them. The whole world would probably be campaigning right along with them.

So why is it so different with images of Jesus Christ? I'm really trying to understand other people here; I am in no way trying to be smart-alecky. If those imaginary photos of LGBT-directed insults were removed due to pressure from the relevant groups, wouldn't the LGBT community heave a sigh of relief and satisfaction? (I mention the LGBT community not to make it a polar opposite of the Christians and Catholics and the Bishops; only to use it as an example of a minority group that has its rights like every other group does.) What makes it so different that this time the people who raised an outcry were Christians? Why is it OK to discriminate against Christians? Why is it not okay to campaign to have art exhibits like those in the CCP removed, when they do offend a lot of people? Why would it be okay, in my hypothetical but all too possible situation, to apply the correct pressure to remove those slanderous photos from CCP, but they call it censorship when the force behind it is "conservative" and "conventional"?

Why is it censorship as long as the CBCP is the first one to speak up? They're just one group, like the rest. Whether you believe they have power or not, they are just one group, and they have rights like we all do, and they have freedom of expression as well. Whether the powers that be will bow to the pressure they exert is another thing altogether.

Just help me understand. Why is it not okay to discriminate against the atheists and the freethinkers and the LGBT, and always, always okay to discriminate against Catholics? I am getting a little tired of this double standard, and all I really, really want is to understand why it exists so that I can stop being so hurt.

Why is it okay for movies like Easy A to have words like "Jesus-freaks"? Why is it okay to make fun of Christians and not of everyone else? Does the fact that Christianity has been "in power" (an absurd and oversimplified concept) for two thousand years justify the violation of human rights against discrimination in the present? Why? Why? Why?

Why is it that everyone's catchphrase is "respect", but that no one ever seems to remember it when it comes to Christians and Catholics? Why?

I don't think I'll ever understand.

--------------------------

ETA.
...And, you see, because I understand that freedom of speech is not absolute--meaning it is NOT the same thing as freedom from criticism--I'm just going to let you come at me. I will let you say what you want. Because that is what freedom means.

I just wish that you, whoever you might be--whoever might be reading this and might be thinking of commenting--would approach the topic with the same sensitivity, and respect, and fairness of outlook that I try, try, try to use. Because I have tried. I really, really have. When we're angry we tend to use strong words. Sure. I get that. But maybe, just maybe, you can understand that topics like these require something more than strong words. That they might, for example, require kindness.

Art, imitating life

I used to have this HUGE thing for Jason Robert Brown's music, and today I was searching my iPod for songs to listen to while traveling to community, and I thought of him. I googled him again and found this strangely appropriate paragraph, which is apparently how he rephrased something that Stephen Sondheim said to him:

Nobody cares what you think. Once a creation has been put into the world, you have only one responsibility to its creator: Be supportive. Support is not about showing how clever you are, how observant of some flaw, how incisive in your criticism. There are other people whose job it is to guide the creation, to make it work, to make it live; either they did their job or they didn't. But that is not your problem. If you come to my show and you see me afterwords, say only this: "I loved it". It doesn't matter if that's what you really felt. What I need at that moment is to know that you care enough about me and the work I do to tell me that you loved it, not "in spite of its flaws", not "even though everyone else seems to have a problem with it", but simply, plainly, "I loved it." If you can't say that, don't come backstage, don't find me in the lobby, don't lean over the pit to see me. Just go home, and either write me a nice email or don't. Say all the catty, bitchy things you want to your friend, your neighbor, the Internet. Maybe next week, maybe next year, maybe someday down the line, I'll be ready to hear what you have to say, but at that moment, that face-to-face moment after I have unveiled some part of my soul, however small, to you:that is the most vulnerable moment in any artist's life. I beg you, plead with you to tell me what you really thought, what you actually, honestly, totally believed, then you must tell me "I loved it." That moment must be respected."

And the thing is, that really surprised me. I've always thought of Sondheim as a really tough guy, who just puts his art out there regardless of what people think of it. (And through the years, despite his genius, there have been some pretty mixed responses.) But I think that was wrong of me, and that I missed something that is so integral to his work: that it is all so intensely personal. (And I think I missed a huge chunk of what "Sunday in the Park with George" was all about! Now, despite myself, I think I understand it better.) Whether it's good art or bad art, or good musical theatre or bad musical theatre, whenever I pop a CD of his into a player (or a CD of Jason Robert Brown's, for that matter), I am actually listening to pieces of a man's soul, put to music. Interspersed, too, with the art and soul (haha.) of the people who sang his songs, the musicians who played the notes.

I know that my little story--my 13,999 word story that took so long to write but still ended up underdeveloped and a little awful--is nothing to Sondheim's immortal work, and that ten years from now the fifty people or so who have read it will probably have forgotten all about it, but it is still a part of my soul, and I hope that when it's revealed people will be... nice to me. Nice enough. Nice enough to tell me, "I loved it."

Les examens

The smell of possibility means everything
On this wet morning
When the third exam is placed before you.
It's an old exam and you've seen
The questions before; you know
All the answers and how
You got them wrong before.
Again and again crashing through fences
And then backing up sheepishly once you've realized
You're wrong, not you, never you
Never right.
You think you know the answers now
But there's something, something in the light
And the possibility
And the feathered hope, light-winged
That travels over your exam paper
Confusing you
And the warmth in thinking
Maybe just maybe
But you've failed this exam before
And should know exactly
The right places to shade
Because there is no other option, and if you fail again
You've failed
Forever.