While I'm not a very secretive person, I've found that I've recently made most of my entries "friends only" entries as I've found myself confiding more secretive stuff. I will still make general topic posts and some of my diary-ish entries public (especially them light-hearted ones that demonstrate my crazy), but I will now limit my more "confiding entries" to my LJ friends.

Just comment here or send me a personal message to be added and, as long as we've had some extended encounter in one of our communities or heck, as long as you're my friend outside the Internet (i.e., IRL), I will add you back.:)

Cheers,
Nicole

No. I live in the tropics. If it did, I'd get down on my knees 'cause it's likely a signal that the end of the world as we know it is at hand.

...since I've posted anything here. I've been writing in my MS OneNote Journal more often (as I don't always have an internet connection available) so that's become a more ready habit than posting here. Still, one misses one's LJ account, as well as reading up on the many adventures and misadventures of one's LJ friends.

So where am I? Med school still, and glad to say that I am not just surviving now; I'm actually learning. I've achieved my academic goal there: to top the class in Psychiatry. I can actually die happy. :-P Well, that or I can set another academic goal. Meh, I'll think about it. Grades are no longer as important to me as they were say, when I was in college. Even then, I remember the late Dr. Roberto Mendoza (Sir Bob to many of us) telling me in an interview I did after I'd graduated that he'd loved having me as a student because I genuinely wanted to learn. I was touched that he'd seen that in me and since then I've always tried to keep to that course.

Now, I could really use getting my sea legs in the clinics. I know I can do it. I've dealt with patients before. I just never poked and prodded my patients before but I'm no spring chicken to the hospital setting. This is in fact the third hospital I've found myself in--and I've seen both sides of the spectrum. I've worked in a high end institution and in the country's main government hospital so I am in the know, at least about the setting.

I guess it's my eyes, my ears, and my fingers that need a confidence boost. I mean, how do I know that what I'm palpating is indicative of something? Am I deaf or is that a murmur I hear? And can that thing I see through my otoscope--the white, pearly thing--ever be torn so badly? I sure as heck have never seen it. When I can answer those questions as confidently as I can tell you the difference between an Axis I and an Axis II DSM disorder, then I know I've reach my clinical goal for now.

Well, gotta go. I've cooking to do.

-fin-

Old and New


Long have the poets vaunted, in their lays,
Old times, old loves, old friendship, and old wine.
Why should the old monopolize all praise?
Then let the new claim mine.


Give me strong new friends when the old prove weak
Or fail me in my darkest hour of need;
Why perish with the ship that springs a leak
Or lean upon a reed?

Give me new love, warm, palpitating, sweet,
When all the grace and beauty leave the old;
When like a rose it withers at my feet,
Or like a hearth grows cold.

Give me new times, bright with a prosperous cheer,
In place of old, tear-blotted, burdened days;
I hold a sunlit present far more dear,
And worthy of my praise.

When the old deeds are threadbare and worn through,
And all too narrow for the broadening soul,
Give me the fine, firm texture of the new,
Fair, beautiful, and whole!

(Ella Wheeler Wilcox)

-------

My sentiments exactly.

...is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."--Gustave Flaubert, from Madame Bovary

I am glad to have been blessed with a natural easy eloquence. It's a certain gift of gab, if you like, as though I had not only kissed the Blarney Stone, but like I had passionately made love to it. OK, that's a exaggeration, but you get the point. And yet today, for all my articulateness, I felt exactly what M. Flaubert described.

There was so much I felt and wanted to say, so much to describe and convey. I wanted my words to soothe, to aid, and to basically say, "Hey, we are but fellow passengers of the same boat." And yet, and yet. Not only did Flaubert's lament ring true; add the fact that I also know that sometimes, more is said when no words are heard.

Despite knowing that, my heart's been stirred. I wish I could do more and say more. But for now, I know all I can do is hope for the best.

And be ready with a safety net.

-fin-

2000 BC - Here, eat this root.

1000 AD - That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer.

1850 AD - That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion.

1920 AD - That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill.

1945 AD - That pill is ineffective. Here, take this penicillin.

1955 AD - Oops...bugs mutated. Here, take this tetracycline.

1960-1999 AD - Thirty-nine more "oops"...Here, take this more powerful antibiotic.

2000 AD - The bugs have won! Here, eat this root.

-Anonymous - Quoted in "Overcoming Antimicrobial Resistance" - World Health Report on Infectious Disease 2000 (as quoted in "Pandemic: The Terrifying New Threat of the New Killer Plagues" by Pete Moore)

Well, well. Today was...eventful. So eventful this song made a reprise. I listened to it this morning after one of the fiascoes that made today so eventful.

Here're a couple of mp3s of it. Both the original...




...and the Chipmunks version.




Thanks to the kind support of a dear, dear friend of mine, I'm back on my feet and am now feeling far better than I've felt the whole day. As I always like to say, when you've hit the very bottom of the well, there's only one direction you could go: up and out toward the sun.

-fin-

The moment I saw this on deviantArt, I thought you might like it. Hope you do. :-)



( Click here for the full-sized picture. ;-)Collapse )

One thing a lot of people wonder about autistic people is whether or not they can appreciate deeper matters that require a certain understanding of the world. The popular cliché about them is they seem to have a "world of their own" and that world is usually thought of as childish and/or autistic--which is where the syndrome gets its name, by the way. Autism is a symptom that was thought to characterize another psychiatric disorder: dementia praecox, better known today as schizophrenia. It is a drawing into oneself, a near-absolute self-absorption so strong it excludes the world around the person.

But ha, I digress. The point is, autistic people often have some sign of social dysfunction. They do not relate very well with people not because they are inherently avoidant but because they are so self-absorbed, they would not. Of course, a caveat to this description: autistic syndrome or autism spectrum disorder as it is better known today is not all about the autism symptom. There's more to it, but that is a discussion for another day.

Now, someone who doesn't meld with society would have an understandable difficulty understanding social contexts and cues. My youngest brother Fidel does have this difficulty. And yet, there are moments when I think he might be more socially insightful than even we, his family, give him credit for.

We were watching a documentary about Francisco de Goya's El Tres de Mayo. That's this painting:


Now, toward the end of the film, a close-up of the central figure in white was shown:


He is the Spaniard about to be shot by Napoleon's soldiers. He is facing death straight in the eye, almost literally. Out of plain curiosity, I wondered what my brother thought of this figure's obvious suffering. So I asked him:

"Fidel, how does the man feel?"

Fidel looked at the TV screen, then looked at me. Then he gave a chillingly haunting answer.

"Alone."

Yes, at the moment of death, each of us, regardless of the nature of our imminent demise, is alone. It's a truth so simple and yest so profound...and definitely one of the least likely things to be stated so offhandedly by someone who's supposedly so detached from "the rest of us".

Methinks we underestimate Fidel and people of his ilk far too much.

-fin-

I still hear your voice, when you sleep next to me.
I still feel your touch in my dreams.
Forgive me my weakness, but I don't know why
Without you it's hard to survive.

'Cause everytime we touch, I get this feeling.
And everytime we kiss I swear I could fly.
Can't you feel my heart beat fast, I want this to last.
Need you by my side.
'Cause everytime we touch, I feel the static.
And everytime we kiss, I reach for the sky.
Can't you hear my heart beat so...
I can't let you go.
Want you in my life.

Your arms are my castle, your heart is my sky.
They wipe away tears that I cry.
The good and the bad times, we've been through them all.
You make me rise when I fall.

'Cause everytime we touch, I get this feeling.
And everytime we kiss I swear I could fly.
Can't you feel my heart beat fast, I want this to last.
Need you by my side.
'Cause everytime we touch, I feel the static.
And everytime we kiss, I reach for the sky.
Can't you hear my heart beat so...
I can't let you go.
Want you in my life.

'Cause everytime we touch, I get this feeling.
And everytime we kiss I swear I could fly.
Can't you feel my heart beat fast, I want this to last.
Need you by my side.

******

This song's pure magic for me, from the very first piano note to the very last syllable. It just lights me up inside and makes me feel warm, fuzzy, and antsy all at the same time. Interesting, huh?