Aphrodite's Brew and Real Doctoring!

Since my last post, my whole world and life has gone from clear-cut to the greyest of greys, from sunny and bright, to scintillating rainbows and starry magic, from feeling whole and waiting, to feeling completely complete with total awareness of how shattered and broken we all remain, despite being wholer than we ever were before. Love. That old transformative cliché. But it's real. It exists. I was a fool to ever doubt it. And now I am blessed with its beautiful, wonderous abundance.

But everything changes. Lots of lovely changes -of course these go without saying. Then there are the others. The adjustments that need to be made in both your external and internal realities. All those previous world views, opinions, beliefs -the strong, the steadfast, the rigid... the ones you managed to bend for others, so that for them, you could be less judgmental, more understanding and compassionate, but that you actually never allowed for yourself, you who is just as deserving of such generosity and openness of heart and mind and soul... all of those harsh internalized social norms... they all just become like alphabet soup. Letters with distinct shapes and forms swimming in this lovely red, amorphous, all-encompassing, steaming hot broth that warms the body and comforts the spirit, and makes the sick well. Meanwhile, as the noodle-letters sit in there, they turn a bit mushy, and suddenly you can't tell "A" from "D" from "O" and you wonder if it's even worth trying to make words. Like, so what do we do? The alphabet is a critical component for this soup -it's what satisfies the hunger, gives us that boost of energy to actually get things done, be productive, useful. But it's 'alphabet soup' not just 'alphabet'. So I need to reorganize.

See normally, what happens when we construct our personal belief- and value-systems? We take a bunch of stuff for granted and we end up coupling different ideas together, assuming that 'duh' these go together. So for example, if you're acting like "A", then you must be feeling "Y" about yourself and "Y" is unacceptable, so just don't do "A". But then you learn that the behaviour "A" can also stand alone. It is it's own thing, in itself, and must not necessarily be accompanied by "Y" or "X" or "K" for that matter. And in fact the reality is that "Y" is always unacceptable and anything done while feeling "Y" will be made perverse and gruesome. But that actually has nothing to do with "A", intrinsically.

But anyway, happy 2010 people. We officially began "Introduction to Clinical Medicine" (ICM) in January, basically beginning with 3 weeks of learning how to do a full physical exam, practicing on each other and on patients in the hospitals, taking an intro to Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) course, along with medical ethics and law, opthalmology lectures, first aid training, etc... so cool to finally be looking into each other's ears and eyes and mouths and noses, feeling lymph nodes, listening to hearts and lungs and bowel sounds, knowing how to test for potential torn rotator cuffs, carpal tunnel syndrome, torn ACLs... you know, like real doctors. Also yesterday I learned that I officially passed BOM (basically, I deserve to be here in this next quarter of my medical education). So things are moving along the way they do. Hectic. So hectic. But good. I really feel completely inside my life. And I do love it, even though sometimes at this depth, some pretty strong currents will try to catch you and suck you down. I'm discerning though and a good swimmer though, so there's no reason why this experience should not be, not only survivable, but fully rewarding and enjoyable. Plus, I've got the silky soft, intoxicatingly fragrant rose petals of love to buoy me up.