Musings of a Defibrillator

9 days until my company’s trauma event of the year!

Each Memorial Day weekend, hundreds of college students flock to Lake Shasta to participate in the annual Houseboats (boat below) event, where some of the bro-est dudes and the sluttiest girls spend three days partying, drinking, and screwing. Across Lake Shasta there about 40 islands, each with sandy beaches, green grass, and beautiful mini landscapes.

Naturally, the one island everyone goes to is called Slaughterhouse Island. It’s got broken glass, sharp rocks, jagged sticks, and hidden crevices just begging to snap a few ankles.

Enter EMTs.

I would like to thank the Associated Students of UC Davis for providing us our own houseboat to use a mobile medical relief station. All that we ask for this year is barbed wire around the roof of our boat so drunken death-wishing bros don’t hop across the top. That’s OUR turf. We will provide the sentry/tranquilizer rifle.

What I wish we had:

So not only could we be mega-badasses at healing, we could also have our own pool, restaurant, massage parlor, sauna, basketball court, gentleman’s club, gentleman’s club, swing set, waterslide, sailor hats, PA system, and VIP room.

Unfortunately, with ASUCD’s less-than-80-million-dollar budget, we get this:

Not bad for 10 EMTs. Note to self: bring lawn chairs and sleeping bag for the roof.

Here I come, ladies. Enter sexy FTO. Hit on me at your discretion.

When I need to find a real wedding date. Explanation to follow:

I’ve gone to three of my cousins’ weddings, and each time it was either in a foreign country, I was part of the string quartet, or I was still hung up on how weird it would be if I had asked the girl I’d just spent the majority of the previous night’s party making out with.

My old college roommate’s getting married in August, and I need to send an RSVP by June 15th. For once I’d like to NOT be in any of the aforementioned three conditions, and so far I’m drawing up a game plan. Which starts with the fact that UCDMC called back and said I was a TOP CANDIDATE for the position of STAFF RESEARCH ASSOCIATE II in their STEM CELL RESEARCH PROGRAM.

ASDDFKDHLJSHDLHF:ALSJFALSFALSJFHALFJASFALSFHDWOIHFOUEHF

After weighing my options on which program to attend (Boston U or UCDMC, currently leaning towards the latter, since it not only gives me a paid position, it also gives me tons of research and potentially a letter of rec from one of the nation’s leading stem cell researchers. Good reason? Good reason), I’ll begin whoring myself out exploring the foray into relationship territory again. To be quite honest, I’ve been pretty busy with this whole get-into-med-school thing, but I’ve always been a relationship guy, and I always will be. I’m 23, going on 24, and I’m clearly not cut out for the single life - at this point I want to try dating again. It’s been a while, I’m a bit rusty, but practice makes perfect, as with all things.

Partied with my newly-graduated EMT students on Friday night. Blast, to say the least.

Woke up at 8am Saturday morning, sat and chatted with a former student for a while, then decided to go to Big 5 and snag a new pair of Sauconys to replace my retired pair. That annoying pain in my right knee that had been bothering me for a week? Gone in a quarter mile. Vanished. Kaput. Yessssssssssssssssss

I love you, Saucony. I’m going to write you a love letter between cell cultures tomorrow. By hand.

After I went for run in the blistering desert that is Davis, California, I decided to eat. BUT THEN I remembered that the campus EMT class was having a lab that day so I called my GM and said, “Hey, wanna go crash the lab?” We had TA’d for the campus class for 2 years, so when we got there we saw a bunch of familiar faces. I meant to eat eventually, but then I realized it was 6PM and I’d taught over 15 students in medical scenarios, emergency childbirth, and splinting.

Finally ate for the first time that day around 7:30PM - had a delicious linguine with clams and meatballs. It was then I realized that I hadn’t eaten all day, and that I was sucking down glass after venti glass of water at the restaurant. Also, I hadn’t gone to the bathroom all day. Dehydrated? Warm, diaphoretic skin, slight headache, no visits to the urinal… classic mild dehydration.

Went bowling at the Memorial Union later that night and banked out a personal best of 145. 13-pound ball, smaller holes (just for the record so I don’t forget). Finally went to bed around 12:30am, having still not used the bathroom all day. Didn’t have to go until 2:30 this afternoon.

In summary: On my day off, I got up at 8am on a Saturday after having slept 5 hours, tortured myself by running at high noon in 96-degree heat, worked for free all afternoon in aforementioned scorching heat, didn’t eat til 7:30PM, and stayed up until 12:30am. Then I worked all day today.

Workaholic much? See URL above.

Got into the MAMS/MACI dual Master’s at BU!!

I have a future!! Or at least I’m making progress in working towards one!!

Alright, so in the past three weeks I’ve been accepted to three osteopathic medical schools, turned them all down, applied to grad school, GOT IN, finished all my work at the lab, shadowed an eye surgeon in the OR, did a phone interview with a postbac, got an interview with UC Davis Medical Center’s Stem Cell Research Program…

On Chinese New Year 2012, my barber asked me what year I was born in. I told her I was born in 1988, and I’d be turning 24 in July. Here is the ensuing conversation:

“Ohhh, you DRAGON. Very good year. Very good year for you. You have girlfriend?”
“Haha, no. No girlfriend.”
“You get girlfriend this year. Very good year for you.”

After I get definite answers from the postbac and UCDMC, I’m gonna have to do some more thinking and make some choices. Davis? Boston? Southern California? Gonna be a doozie.

So here’s the update on med school:

Got accepted to Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine (RVUCOM) and Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM). For one reason or another, I didn’t find myself feeling at home with either school, so I’m choosing to defer my medical school career in favor of a couple master’s programs. I plan to beef up my credentials and nab an extra degree, so as to upgrade my dual-wield medical pistols to dual-wield Abrams tank-ambulances.

Instead of this…

I will have this…

And to prove it to myself, I’ve submitted an app to Boston University’s MA Medical Sciences/MA Clinical Investigation (MAMS/MACI) dual degree program and USC’s Keck Graduate Institute for the Premedical Postbaccalaureate Certification program! Currently working on Loyola-Chicago’s MAMS app; almost done!

Medical school admissions committees, we shall meet again soon. Very soon.

Quiet and simple - despite my affinity for metropolitan areas, there’s something about the UC Davis campus that I fell in love with six years ago. Heavy bike traffic bustling its way through roundabouts by day starkly contrasted by a nighttime of calmly empty streets and softly croaking frogs provides this dichotomy that makes me feel strangely at home.

I should probably also check my blood pressure tomorrow morning.

I’ve always preached the importance of mental health in my practice as an EMT and as an instructor, albeit not explicitly. If patients and students aren’t happy or in the right mindset for whatever task is at hand, efficiency goes down on both sides, and neither party gets the deserved satisfaction, whether it’s getting a femur put in traction or learning the anatomy of the spine. My goal is always to make healing and learning enjoyable, or at the very least, helpfully instructive. I can’t imagine having a compound forearm fracture as ever being enjoyable.

I decided not to write this one down in my private journal because it not only concerns me too much to keep to myself, but in my journal I can’t get feedback. As some of you may know, I dated a girl in college, and for one year afterwards, bringing us to a total time of about 4 years. This girl was my first girlfriend, and naturally I fell in love with her. For a multitude of reasons, after 5 years of on and off dating, we decided to go our separate ways.

This past February she accidentally sent me an email that was meant for her graduate advisor. I replied with a brief hello, and we’ve been emailing back and forth ever since. Just today we agreed to meet on the 6th of May to catch up, and I was set on keeping my past feelings at bay. However, after over two months of consistent contact, I developed the idea that she may be looking for something more, but I tried to keep it firmly under wraps and in the back of my mind. All was going well until I stumbled upon a picture of her on my Facebook news feed kissing another guy, whom I recognized from an earlier photo. That characteristic rush of blood to the head was more overwhelming than I had imagined it would be; I had no idea it would affect me this much, since I had been firmly set on keeping our conversation platonic. So much for the effort.

The punching bag took a good beating, as did my pecs from an unnecessary number of pushups. The nice thing about hitting something is that I didn’t even have to imagine anyone’s face in particular - the more I hit, the more the image faded away. However, I felt like I needed to talk to someone about it, and so I texted my best friend. Since I’ve always felt at home on Tumblr, I felt like this was a good place to voice my feelings as well. Thanks for listening guys; I hope someone out there interested in personal therapy is reading this and is willing to give me some feedback.

Right.

Well, it happened again - another one of my buddies popped the question. While I am certainly happy for him and his fiancee (who is also a good friend of mine), it left me thinking about my own love life. And how empty it is.

My mother didn’t help the situation at all when she urged me to find a “compatible partner” (translation: grandchild factory) when we were talking after dinner last night. My Cantonese barber DID say, however, that this year being the Year of the Dragon (my birth year), I would be very lucky and I would “get girlfriend this year.” Let’s hope she’s right.

Blah blah blah, endless rant about how I hate being single and alone… done. Well, I’ve got an interview in Colorado next week, so if I get in there I’ll have a chance to start a new chapter of life.