Things I've Learned In Med School So Far

xrayunicorn is back.

It's been almost a year, if you can believe it. What's happened? people have asked me. What has been so pressing that you can't even keep your blog about nothing up-to-date with recent nothings?

Chastened, I asked some friends whether it was time to end the hiatus.

"I liked you better when there were turkeys," said one friend.

"Who are you?" said another friend.

And so, with that encouragement, I am back. Please accept the following as a short retrospective on the lost year.

Things I've Learned In Med School So Far

1. X-rays are much more similar to unicorns than I had previously suspected: as with unicorns, you need to believe in them before you can see anything. When looking at x-rays in class, I am usually skeptical that I'll pick up on anything unless there is an arrow pointing to the answer. These days, to save time, I only look for arrows. I have gotten very good at detecting arrows of all sizes.

In my defense, x-rays -- especially chest x-rays -- are unsettling to look at. Seeing through people is unsettling. And the heart is a constant interruption, a lopsided mess busting into the middle of everything and distracting you from the stuff you should be noticing, like the fluffy white crap in the corner of the lung shaped sort of like a face that's mocking you. What now?

2. Debt is the future tense of the verb 'to dead,' defined as killing yourself to pay your way through four-plus years of killing yourself to learn how to save future people's lives.

3. Malaria is not an STD.

4. Math problem: If Wednesday is the new Friday, and Thursday is still the new Friday, and Friday is a glorified janitor to Thursday, and I'm holding my breath in an elevator headed to the center of the earth at roughly the speed of life, how many days are left until Christmas?

5. Especially when school gets busy, it is important to stay physically fit. Instead of simply shopping online, push yourself to open different sales websites in different browsers and toggle back and forth. Instead of buying your fifth burrito of the week from across the street, convince someone to bring you pizza from the food court two blocks away -- negotiation can do wonders for the figure.

6. In high school, a differential was the opposite of an integral. In med school, nothing is more integral than your differential. A differential is simply a "this or that." You can create one for almost anything: chest pain, groceries, Friday night plans. This or that? I don't know. It's tempting to just take the slope of things and call it a day.

7. The body is like a beautiful and unreasonable girlfriend whom you cannot live without and will never fully understand. This, the world says to her with some urgency; this! That, she replies.

When things are good, things are great. Without your even asking, she will dilate all the right vessels and you will think, You know me better than I know myself.

But then you come home one day to find she has arranged a small collection of crystals in your big toe. Why did you do that? you want to ask her. Why would you put crystals in my toe? You never take me out anymore, she says.

In time, she will get a little fat in places that are neither here nor there: the liver, the bone, the eyelid. You will say nothing. And even after she begins to falter, in small and then bigger ways, you will continue to call her beautiful, and she, not caring one way or the other, will never apologize for being anything else.

Next post: things I haven't learned in med school so far.

Things I Love #6: Pseudo-Intellexuality

On the first day of medical school, my new classmates and I were herded into an amphitheatre and shown a welcome video produced by and featuring former students. In one part of the video, a young man being interviewed says helpfully to the camera, "I think intelligence is an aphrodisiac." At this, many members of our audience laughed nervously -- could it be true? was there hope yet? -- and adjusted the lanyards around their necks.

In the several months that have passed since then, I have had ample opportunity to reflect upon this statement. I am most commonly moved to reflection while in the basement of the school library, standing before a vending machine with insufficient change clutched in my fist. Are 'Famous' and 'Amos' supposed to rhyme, I find myself longing to know? Is intelligence more or less of an aphrodisiac than green M&Ms? My mind reels, but seventy cents won't get me any answers.

Fortunately, the time I've spent in the library has not been entirely a waste. Every room and corridor -- excepting the basement, which evidently vends nothing but disappointment -- offers promise of a new breed of intellexuals. If you see them, you will recognize them: they are the hot little numbers with nice boots and too many ideas. From across the table they turn you on with their literacy, leave you breathless with their rapid typing. Like sirens, they draw you close to show you the answers they've written neatly on their problem sets. Their shiny hair gives off the fragrance of victory.

Sometimes it can be too much. I once witnessed an intellexual pull out a Nature paper and whisper to the guy next to her, "Do you want to go over Figure Six?" Her companion immediately passed out.

On a separate occasion, I watched another intellexual in a tight sweater neatly line up five highlighters of four different colors next to her notebook. Whoever has the mixed fortune of crossing her path some day: I hope you have great stamina, because this one is going to devastate you.

So what does it all mean? Perhaps it means that the boy in the video was right, or at least ahead of his time. Maybe it means it's finally possible to be celebrated as both smart and sexy, and not just one in spite of the other. Maybe someday in the not-too-distant future, everyone will find it perfectly natural to say what Max says with genuine admiration in Avatar: "That's a gorgeous brain...nice activity."

Until that day comes, I think I need to find an extra nickel.