The Best Gift of Christmas

We draw names from a hat (or bowl) every year to see which family member we will give a gift to on Christmas Eve. This year was special because our grandma spent the holiday with us. We included Grandma in the name drawing and wouldn't ya know it, she drew my name.

I sent a wish list out to the family to help them in their gift giving pursuits. This chance comes only once a year so you would think the list would be pretty long; unfortunately, after typing it out, my list looked pretty weak.

My Plan:

I added some pretend items to the wish list in an attempt to give a false appearance of variety for family members: they would see a healthy list of gifts and would think to themselves, "so many options, I can definitely find something on that list that I would like to give." As they scanned the list, they would weed out the fake wishes and pick a real one as their targeted gift.

Christmas Eve came, we ate our traditional dinner, we read Luke 2, sang carols around the piano, and then the gift giving began. This was the first test for my wish-list-plan. My turn to open my gift came and this is what I found.
I didn't know what to think when I unwrapped the jack-o-lantern and pulled out these devilish boxers. I was in a slight state of shock. Then I remembered that I asked for breakdancing underwear. Grandma had looked over my list and she shared with my mom her concern that she just couldn't figure out what breakdancing underwear was. The joke was on me when Grandma called me on this and actually gave me her interpretation (a brilliant one, at that) of breakdancing underwear.

Me, breakdancing. My apologies that the photo doesn't tell the whole story

HSF Highlights

The Top Ten Moments of HSF[i]

1. Dr. Dirksen’s WWF Dance[ii]

2. TA Debbie Dao hemostating Dr. O on the last day of anatomy[iii]

3. Hemostating[iv]

4. Belinda Carlisle[v]

5. Dr. Pickett, “So much for…”[vi]

6. Impromptu yoga session in anatomy lab[vii]

7. “That’s what she said”[viii]

8. Dr. Davis’s Histo review[ix]

9. The arrhythmia video[x]

10. Cher[xi]

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[i] Our school curriculum 'subjects' us to one course at a time. Human Structure and Function is the four month course we completed on the 19^th of December, 2008. The following was taken from the course intro: The HSF course encompasses the subject matter traditionally taught in separate courses in

physiology, anatomy, histology and embryology. However, the course extends beyond these

traditional boundaries by providing the opportunity to integrate the facts and concepts across

disciplines, and to apply this knowledge to clinical problem-solving in your PBL cases. Finally,

the HSF course is integrated with the Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM) course.

The subject matter taught in the HSF course is coordinated with and complements your

introduction to the basic skills required to perform a physical examination on a patient, and your

HSF/ICM Integration Conferences are designed to emphasize the clinical application of the basic

science concepts taught in HSF.

[ii] This gets the number one spot because Dr. Dirksen blew us all away when the music came on in the middle of his lecture and he did a very convincing Wrestlemania victory dance for a solid minute. This teaching moment taught us that 1) our professors could be crazy and funny, and 2) that med school was going to be more fun than we had anticipated.

[iii] See below for “hemostating.” On our very last day of anatomy lab, Debbie Dao did the unthinkable. With all of the room sneaking a peak from their own dissection table, she clipped a hemostat right onto Dr. O’s scrubs as he taught table #24 about lower limb joints . The hemostat clanked twice against the dissection table and then no one could hold it back. The room erupted with laughter. Thanks to Debbie for sacrificing a letter of reccomendation for that moment.

[iv] This is a game we started to play to keep the mood light in the anatomy lab—as if our room needed anything more. We already had windows spanning one side of our newly refurbished 5^th floor anatomy loft. The sun was shining (or the snow was falling) and we were never short on laughter. So the purpose of hemostating is to clip a hemostat onto the clothing of a neighboring student without them noticing. I believe Drew won the medal of honor for getting five hemostats clipped to his back before he realized what was going on. I also should get an award for almost reaching the elevators before Zach let me know about the hemostat on my pants pocket.

[v]Our anatomy table broke out in Belinda Carlisle’s, “Heaven on Earth” one day. What can you do when something like that happens beside dance like you’re in the music video? Never mind that table 22 was the only all-male table.

[vi]One of the HSF all-stars, Dr. Pickett subconsciously (we believe) closed out each portion of the lecture with her signature line, “so much for, insert the organ or tissue of focus e.g. brain, heart. It never failed to get a shout out in intra-class conversation later that day.

[vii] We just started doing yoga one afternoon in anatomy lab. What more can I say. It was awesome, and yes, I may have had something to do with initiating/leading the session.

[viii]This never grew old for Bryan, and hence, only occasionally grew old for anatomy table #22—we’re a team no matter what.

[ix] Not only did these reviews help 90% of the class to pass the histology, this also made the list because of moments like Judge Jerry, the Dr. P impersonation, and every other attention grabber attributed to the HSF all-star, Dr. Davis.

[x] There is really no way to describe this. You’ve just gotta watch it!

[xi] No one can explain how, perhaps there was a subliminal link between a Dr. Davis lecture, but one day table #22 (mostly myself) spontaneously started singing Cher, “If I Could Turn Back Time.” Maybe we were just lucky that day!

Haunting or Hilarious

I almost laughed out loud walking home from the hospital this afternoon.

The application process for medical school is not like any other graduate school application process. First, it takes more than a tanking economy for someone to decide to apply. Second, it involves more than a purchase of a Kaplan review book, some letters of recommendation, and a $200 exam. It is more like an application for the FBI or CIA; I confess that I have never applied for a job with the CIA or with the FBI and therefore have no idea what the application process looks like; but if I could imagine, dream, postulate on the details, I would say there is a lot of screening, a lot of interviewing, a lot of intimidating going on. If this is true, than my experience of applying to become a doctor was indeed very much like applying to work as an FBI agent.

I was interviewed fifteen times, including the two at BYU used to judge if I was suitable to even apply to medical school, at seven different schools throughout the application process. As far as the screening goes, I wrote essays on every ethical issue under the sun, wrote a 3,000 word personal biography, and did an interpretive tap dance of photosynthesis for one particularly demanding dean of admissions. That is just the direct screening. There was plenty of non-direct screening and intimidating to pass around. Every time I told anyone I was interested in medicine, and by anyone, I mean anyone not enrolled in an undergraduate institution, their face would contort into this marquee flashing messages like "You are crazy!","You are evil","You have no idea..." and so forth. Truthfully though, none of that amounted to much in my head.

One of the things that actually did concern me about the decision to be a doctor was whether I could handle the anatomy lab. I heard that students dissected their way entirely through a human cadaver. I confirmed this at one of my interviews when the student giving me a tour unexpectedly pulled back the sheet over his cadaver, mid-sentence! It was every bit repulsive as I imagined.

So I almost laughed out loud as I walked home from the hospital this afternoon smiling at everyone and everything I passed, thinking about how awesome the dissection of the pelvis (yes, that required us to split the pelvis with a handsaw and dissect the leg with a scalpel) was that I just did, and how much I LOVE the anatomy lab, and comparing that with my pre-med concern. The contrast nearly put me in stitches.