Seeing the world with the eyes of....

I don't know about you, but when I study a particular subject in depth, my view of the world changes... literally!!! It has happened to me before, but now that I am studying medicine, it is happening again.

During my first degree in chemistry, I spent four years looking at chemical formulas learning about the molecular make-up of the world. Since then, without intending to, my brain has tried to identify chemistry everywhere, most commonly on car license plates:

During my PhD in Biochemistry, I spent day and night analysing NMR data, i.e. looking at spectra with different constellations of dots, in order to identify amino acids and their close neighbours in a protein sequence (for more detail on how this works, see here). After doing this for a while, my brain automatically tried finding protein sequences everywhere. I could no longer look at the night-sky without seeing amino acid side-chains:

 

This year I have been studying anatomy. My colleagues and I have spent more than 50 hours in the dissection room, cutting into cadavers to explore the human body. I have seen a lot of organs, nerves, muscles and tendons. The other day I was in a place where they did some building works, and my brain identified the cables hanging out of the wall as the flexor compartment of the forearm:

 

With this little presentation, I acknowledge the presence of this development, but hope it won't extend too far. Some things are better appreciated as they are... ;-)

Where are you Benjamin?

In the very last episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Benjamin Sisko threw himself into the Fire Cages on Bajor along with Gul Dukat. This put an end to his corporeal existence and since then, he's been living with the prophets in the Celestial Temple (the wormhole). He said, however, that he will return one day.

Well, Benjamin, it's been 12 years - where are you?

I am waiting!

Einzug mit Narrhalla-Marsch!!!! (Carnival in the Rhine valley... and every week in Oxford?)

Today is "Rosenmontag", the most important day of the carnival season in the Rhine valley. Inspite of that, I had to go to work today, and even worse, I had to wear my normal clothes!! Not a single "Helau" was to be heard in the streets of Cambridge ("Helau" is the carnival-outcry of my region, it usually comes in threes) and not a single shot of Schnaps was offered to me in the streets. I pity myself!!!!! ;-)


I have been living abroad for almost ten years now, but it's the carnival week-end that brings with it the highest waves of home-sickness (so does the wine-week, which I describe here, but that's not until August). You would expect Christmas to be worse, but it's not. I should have booked a flight home!

Maybe it's because I was born on the 11th of November, which marks the beginning of the carnival season every year. It starts exactly at 11.11am (I was born at 11.51am) and lasts until Ash Wednesday (as you may have gathered, eleven is the official number of the carnival). Of course we used to celebrate the carnival every year for longer than I can remember. In my teens, I even danced in the show-ballet of a carnival club for a few years. No wonder I am so attached to it!

Every year it's strange for me to spend this week-end calm and quietly, rather than out in the streets dressed in a costume at one of the many carnival parades in my region. The only carnivalesque thing I managed to do this week-end was to have a doughnut, which represents the closest substitute available in the UK to a carnival cake (in my region, we call them "Kreppel", see blow). The crappy doughnut I managed to find did not taste good, but it felt good!

There is one more essential element of the carnival to mention here, and it's just as ridiculous as the rest of the carneval: the Narrhalla-Marsch. It's a piece of music you hear all the time in the Mainzer carnival (Mainz is one of the most important carnival towns, just on the other side of the Rhine from my hometown Wiesbaden). During the carnival shows (evenings where people dress up and watch a show with funny speeches and dances and stuff), the Narrhalla-Marsch accompanies the entrance and exit of every show act:

During my time in Oxford, when I had high-table dining rights at Somerville College, I was reminded of the Narrhalla-Marsch during every formal dinner. When the members of the Senior Common Room entered to walk up to the high table, all the students stood up until we had taken our seats in silence. With all the fellows marching in like this, I always felt it was a Narrhalla-Marsch moment. It made me laugh, and once I had thought of it, the Narrhalla-Marsch would play in my head whenever I'd enter hall during formals. Now you know why I was smiling then.

My current college does not have a high table, and even if it did I would not be allowed to sit on it... So bad doughnuts are all I have to remind me of the carnival, until I buy a ticket home next year to join in the celebrations once more!

Exit with Narrhalla-Marsch.

Helau!

The Social Context of Health and Illness (SCHI)

I am going to write about our SCHI course today, a course about the "social context of health and disease"... and about interacting with patients. I've been planning to write about this for a while, but today I am also creating this entry for opportunistic reasons: I need to motivate myself to study SCHI later tonight... the exam is in two weeks!

SCHI is part of the 1st year medical course in Cambridge. It's where students learn about sociology, anthropology and some ethics of medicine. It's where we are reminded that we will deal with patients, which is easily forgotten during the seemingly endless science lectures and practicals. The SCHI course is really well organised and consists of tutorials (ok, supervisions!) and lectures in which we are given factual introductions to the topics, but also meet patients and learn about their experiences in coping with an illness.

Amongst our many science lectures, SCHI offered a welcome break in our schedule where we could remind ourselves of the altruistic reasons for studying medicine in the first place, and realise that science cannot (ok, in some cases, not yet, but certainly not always) explain everything or represent the sole basis for dealing with patients. Obviously, doctors don't deal with the patients' bodies in isolation, but with the entire human being who is real, whose life is embedded into social surroundings, a particular culture, and a society.

I was therefore quite surprised to find out that many medical scholars do not think highly of the course and question its necessity, that the course was apparently imposed onto Cambridge by the GMC (the General Medical Council), and therefore introduced rather reluctantly. (Be aware, this is gossip!)

How interesting. But how can this be?

These opinions of SCHI reminded me of an impression I've had during the first term of medschool, actually starting in the very first week. During that week, the graduates spent time in the hospital and I personally spent an afternoon in the emergency department, where I saw my first open wound and lots of blood. A colleague and I were shadowing a nurse, who seemed to be very good at her job, very experienced, but also somehow roughened up after many years of hard work. We watched her stitch up a young woman with a laceration on her hand. I was surprised by her lack of empathy and harshness towards the poor lady who would not be able to work in her job for a while and would be left with an ugly scar on her hand. Obviously, this was no case of malpractice, but it left a certain impression that kept being reinforced from this point onwards: that the idealism with which one starts medical school must wear off quite quickly.

Back in Cambridge, I then noticed that the loss of idealism is not only discouraged, but sometimes even encouraged (you've just got to imagine that the first patient a standard course medical student meets is a dead one in the dissection room...). Perhaps it is also a result of the huge amount of science taught in the first two years of med school, which somehow makes you lose sight of the more human aspects of medicine.

I guess the subject of sociology does not fit in with this initial desensitisation of the students. Maybe the course brings up topics that doctors don't like to be reminded of, after all it must be very hard to make it through a lifetime of medical practice without gaining some degree of cynicism. Perhaps it also has to do with the fact that a huge part of the first years of medical school is taught and organised by scientists, who can easily relate to the science behind medicine, but maybe not as easily to other "softer" aspects involving care, leaving them dismissive of the subject.

I have decided not to become roughened up yet (hopefully not ever), to keep enjoying the topic and not give up my altruistic intentions too soon.
But it's sad to see that so many undergraduates are drawn in by this atmosphere so dismissive of anything not strictly biomedical. You can truly watch them being molded into shape, so that they will carry on the hubris of the medical profession into the next generation.
Wow, that's getting dramatic now... Now I really have to start studying!!!!

LOST season 6 is out ;-)

the big day is finally here: the start of LOST SEASON SIX!!!!
while itunes is downloading the first episode, i'd like to say a few words:
it's been a long long wait since the last episode of season five, which was shown on the 13th of may 2009. i cannot believe that it's been this long!!! it was a hard having to worry about sawyer, saiid, juliet, kate, jack, lock and desmond for this long (and claire - where the hell is she???).... today i can look forward to an entire new season to watch, without yet being too sad about the fact that there will be no more lost after may this year.

so today is great day. for the next 86 minutes, i will forget that i have a life and live on an island with icebears, smoke-monsters, scientists and strange indigenous people. yay!

10 reasons why somerville is a great college

1. we have pogo ;-)

2. we have pogo ;-)

3. it is a very friendly place with friendly people

4. it is more progressive than other colleges

5. it has a good library

6. it is less authoritarian than other colleges

7. the food tastes good on most days (and it almost never tastes bad)

8. it has a good choir

9. the porters are nice

10. you can step onto the lawn

oxford in the snow

since christmas, it has snowed pretty much anywhere in the uk, except here. two days ago, the snow finally arrived in oxford!!! above you can see what that looks like from the rooftop flat.


and here are a few snowmen i photographed on my way into work yesterday!

enjoy the snow-fun, and the free time at home if your buses aren't running. unfortunately i can walk into work!!! :-)

seven of nine costume

this party i just mentioned also had a theme... star trek!

being almost the only trekkie amongst my friends, i was worried that this theme would not work out so well, but i was wrong. lots of people showed up in great costumes, and i can only recommend it. the party was attended by counselor deanna troi, commander chekoteh, commander william t riker, many many vulcans (including an admiral), ensign kim, scotty, a trill, keiko o'brien, voyager's medical hologram, captain picard, a horta and lots of other aliens. it was great.

being the hostess i had to come up with a good costume too and i decided to be seven of nine.
looking around on the web for ideas, i found a great link with instructions on how to make this costume (here). however, i found the making of this costume using liquid latex rather involved, so i came up with my own version tricks. the final product might not look 100% movie-authentic, but it definitely looks pretty good.

(by the way, for the real seven of nine, take a look here)

what you need and what you need to do:

1. seven's hairdo:
that's easy, here's is a link on how you do the hair.

2. seven's clothes:
for seven's rather tight onesie, i just bought a dance leotard. they are not very expensive and available in all colours.

3. seven's hand (her borg exoskeleton and assimilation machinery):
to make seven's hand implants, i took a rubber glove from the lab. i put it onto my right hand (i'm a lefthander) and drew the outlines of seven of nine's implants onto the glove using a black markerpen. then i used silver acrylic paint to make it silver, and dried it with a hair drier so i could take the glove off. with the glove off, i cut out the bits that i did not need. (doing this, you just need to be careful that you leave enough connective elements in-between the lines that the whole thing still resembles a glove that you can take on and off)

4. seven's occular implant:
to make the occular implant, i drew a lifesize copy of seven's implant onto a rubber glove. then i cut out smaller bits of glove material and aluminum foil to add detail to the implant. whatever wasn't silver, i painted with the acrylic paint i mentioned above. for the corner bit (see picture), i used silver thread that i glued on. finally i glued on two halves of pushbuttons for the final detail and re-drew the contours using a black markerpen.
in order to stick this to my face, i glued plaster onto the back of the implant using the non-sticky side, so that i could then simply stick the plaster onto my eyebrow to attach the implant. it lasted all night.

5. seven's other facial implant (does anyone know what that's for?):
i cut that one out from aluminum foil and stuck a pushbutton onto it. then i glued plaster onto it like it did with the occular implant.

6. the star trek voyage communicator:
using silver and gold colour, i painted pieces of cardboard and cut out the shapes of the communicator, and stuck that onto my costume.