Another outlet of life and thoughts

Our extraordinary senses

Sandi C — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 07:55:23 +0000

As a student of medicine–regardless the East or West, it is important to know exactly why one wants to go into the field. The intention is so important. These few weeks as I started my first quarter in clinical practice there were quite a few insights that I came to realized. Before I started, I learned that it is important to be on the list of “good interns”. At first, I asked myself: “What does it mean when a patient requests a good intern?” There are so many aspect to that question? Are they looking for someone who can speak the same language? Are they looking for someone with technical precision when needling? What kind of characteristics does the “good intern” have that a bad intern will lack?

If i step back and look at this as a patient, I assume a good intern would have (1) adequate knowledge of what they are doing with (2) decent accuracy and (3) compassion. Out of the three requirements that i have, I suppose only number 3 is commonly used to determined if a intern is “good”. My assumption is that if an intern have enough compassion, it will imply that the intern will go beyond their studies to resolve and understand the problem and find a suitable treatment.

I have been treating quite a few individuals who practices meditation and yoga. It is interesting experience having such patients because they are extremely sensitive to “energy”. I have been getting the comment; “I really like you, you have really good energy I can sense it” ..on their first impression of me as I start taking their medical history. In my mind, I don’t really understand how they came up with such conclusion. Does our body have the ability to really distinguish the “good” versus “Bad” intrinsically?

Anger Food

Sandi C — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 06:41:53 +0000

It’s a funny thing how human have a sixth sense to automatically detect the sight, sound and smell of anger. I walked into a room today and immediately picked up the smell of stress wrapped with pissed-off sauce. It’s an awkward feeling, it’s like recognizing the problem and not doing anything about it. Am I suppose to fuel this anger with inflammables and try to break into the emotions? Or should have I attempt to find some tasty “ice candy” and try to lighten the mood with some sweets? This is when I wish I was a natural impromptu comedian. I could easily share a few lines and sprinkle some humor to dissolve the stress-caused anger. This actually makes me appreciate mediators and those who are in customer service. It’s not easy to deal with agitated individuals and it probably takes a lot of patients to deal with them.

I wish resolving anger is as easy as asking a child to eat vegetables. Perhaps, there are foods that might do the magic–will definitely do more research on this!

Nostalgic Weekend

Sandi C — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 07:39:19 +0000

After a 90s blast to the past housewarming party, the music reminded me of my childhood and teeny days. Overwhelmed with a nostalgic moment, I reflected and web-surfed youtube on all the oldies. I’ll have find some time to trace back more memories but here are a few key memories I still recall…

My only music CDs on a 15 hour flight was BSB’s Millenium and Backstreet’s Back and I’m pretty sure I looped it for every second I was on that plane. I sleep, ate, drank BSB at that time. I was such a fan that I remember my mini-crew and I would imitated dance sequences of BSB music performances. [the ultimate B-crew game: hide-in-the-dark while the adults MJed]
Major Power Ranger fans. I remember my cousins and I were all a “ranger” and whenever we meet up after Chinese School, we would morph into our Power Ranger Phase… good times

I never knew how proud I am to live through the 90s. I wonder what would the 2000s generation remember about their childhood days? Whatever it is, I doubt it’s half as good as the 90s, we got the Disney Classics, the Boy and Girl Bands and Sailor Moon.

Coffee & Tea Shop Hopping

Sandi C — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 08:33:11 +0000

To make studying an adventure, I embarked on a mission to explore different coffee and tea cafes in the neighborhood. Although I might be bound to one or another because of cost, friends and/or food for a while, there are days where I try new places. Recently, I was inspired by a mentor to live life and go on adventures. No doubt that life is an adventure itself but hearing stories about how she explore with National Geographic experts, travelled to the North and South poles with close encounters with animals I’ve only seen in pictures and meet amazing people around the world makes me question how much am I doing to my life to enhance my experiences. I can choose to live on the edge. I can choose to live a simple life. So at this stage of life, what do I want to experience? As I ask myself this question, I remembered my friend and I made a list of the things we want to experience within the next 10 years. I vaguely remember what I listed but to remind myself I will list them again so I can keep a record.

Travel: Visit the natural and man-made wonders of the world (this is a life-time goal)
Create a product
Acquire an expertise
Be involved with a non-profit organization
Learn to love someone? (or be willing to love…)
Be fluent in Chinese (read, speak, write) and speak conversational Japanese, Korean, Spanish

I dont’ remember what else I said but I shall remind myself to “Live all you can; its a mistake not to” (Henry James) . For some reason when I think of LIVING LIFE, this idea rarely involves electronics or watching drama but enjoying my time with friends and family, nature, and food. . Life is what you make of it….(time to venture off!)

An Interest in Ergonomics

Sandi C — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 08:33:36 +0000

One of the reason I am studying Chinese Medicine is because it’s health oriented and not disease oriented. My main interest is prevention and how to optimize a person’s health. There are many contributing factors that lead to illness and one inevitable cause is Stress. After we identify one topic, we can subdivide stress into the different types and the goods and bads (distress and eutress) but I will stop there and focus on environmental stress on the body, especially posture and our surroundings. In Chinese medicine, we understand the human body as an interconnected network between the mind-environment-body; it’s like a mini eco-system or universe of its own! Anyways, back to the topic of Ergonomics, I stumble upon a furniture site and saw these ridiculously expensive office chairs and I thought to myself:

Why the F8&^*& are these chairs so expensive? So only rich people can afford ergonomic furniture while poor people will have to suck-it-up and deal with the “regular” furniture? Is this why our lower class population have more health problem? (i wonder if there are any statistics about this). All these ads makes it seem like ergonomic items are for the rich but we can always makeshift simple things to achieve something close to “ergonomic-al certified”. As long as we have a basic idea of what the optimal posture and position is, I am pretty certain that with a dash of creativity..any work station can be ergonomic friendly. I guess this will be a topic I should research on. Perhaps, I should consider getting certify as a professional ergonomic designer…

Concept of Synergy: in human body.

Sandi C — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:36:52 +0000

Never thought I would be so fascinated with the concept of synergy. How do I define synergy? Why is this so fascination? My idea of synergy is simply the combination of things is greater than the individual. aka synergy= 1+1 does not =2 but something more than just 2 => Synergy = 1+1 = 2+. I’m not sure if the example makes sense in equation but this concept is more relevant in terms of systems interactions rather than 1 or 2 component interactions. A fascinating example is the human body. The human body has probably 12-13 organ systems such as integumentary system, respiratory system, digestive system and etc and all these systems are constantly interacting with each other in what we refer to as a living person. This is when organ + organ does not = 2 organ but = life (which is quite awesome and complex if I think about i). This is why the human body is so sophisticated and beautiful.

If we look at this idea in terms of interacting system, so when one person has a problem with one system, it will gradually affect the others. All of a sudden, this reminds me of the entire cascade of mechanism in biochemistry and neuroscience class. Haha, how one minor thing can change and affect so many pathways. It gets a little too overwhelming when I start looking at the cellular level. Though it’s important to understand the activities in the cellular level, but how do we know what interaction are the milestones that produces a symptom in the body? This is so difficult to decipher. Where is the translational part in understanding the cellular level that would apply to the clinical practice? This is why I’m always a little hesitant about pharmaceutical drugs. I know they help with the specific pathway but how do i know that what I ingested does not affect other pathways in my body, which in turns causes side effects?

Another amazing function of the body that I am intrigued with is our body’s ability to heal itself and adapt While we are poisoning ourselves with unhealthy foods or what not and potent environmental chemicals, our body’s natural ability to heal would kick in and help detox. Our body is like Wolverine from X-men except our body is more fragile, cannot regenerate everything so quickly and claws would not suddenly thrust out of our hands…

Maybe this concept of synergy is making me understand the human body, health and medicine in a new light…

Acu points

Sandi C — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 08:24:48 +0000

I am glad that I have friends who volunteers to be my Model. It’s like learning anatomy from corpse compared to illustrations. It’s quite different but both knowledge is necessary. I am still trying to figure out an effective way to learn my acu points along with the functions and combinations. I’m quite excited about my intern level test. It’s time to continue to review what I have learned in the past year!

Lesson 1: Lingering cough

Sandi C — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 08:07:18 +0000

As a student learning anatomy, pathology, chinese medicine and western medicine, you get a different learning experience from simply being ill. Who knows that my lingering cough has become one of my valuable learning experience, right? I read about respiratory symptoms and treatments but never really know what it really feels like. Usually I can only live through the Symptoms my patients experience but now I get to experience it first hand! BUT, in the last two days.. I experienced what real wheezing felt like, cough attacks, phlegm with tinged blood, etc. ..

What I learned when I’m sick:

- Running makes me wheeze. If I continue running, it will only make it worse

- The more I try not to cough, the more it backfires then it would turn into a horrifying cough attack.

-Now I have a few food remedies for coughs

An attempt to resume bloggin’

Sandi C — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 07:32:33 +0000

My problem with blog is loosing the motivation and interest to post. As I read through some of the blogs that I follow, I am very impressed on how they manage to have consistent updates. What is their secret to this commitment to update?? I hope it’s not because these avid bloggers are simply “older”. I don’t want to give in to the stereotype that young people are not ready to commit. I re-titled this blog, hoping to inspire me to reflect more on my life and thoughts but it’s so difficult to highlight what happens in life. My goldfish memory doesn’t work too well with blogs but I will try to dedicate a few minutes to reflect and add to this. Hopefully I can break my last record.

Apple, Apple,…Kindle?!

Sandi C — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:47:52 +0000

I have been researching and contemplating which eReader to buy for about 3 months. Should it be the Motorola Zoom, Apple’s Ipad 2 or the Kindle 9"? Each has its strengths but which one will I actually use to read my text books? I already have an ipod touch so maybe I should get something else…kindle?

Oh, Why is it such a struggle to buy electronics or toys for myself?