one month in

             I haven't been in med school for a long time, but let me say something (possibly) premature and (probably) naive: I think I'm in the right place. Because I have learned so, so much in the past month or so, and I absolutely love the things that I'm learning.

             Back in high school, I used to see med school as something I just had to endure before I became a doctor. Sort of like having to sit through the lame MCTRB infomercials before the actual movie, I used to think med school was five years I would simply have to sacrifice before I could get to the really really good parts of my life.

            And maybe the more time I spend here, the more that feeling will resurface. But maybe, beneath all those feelings (which, like Fr. Dacanay says, are impermanent), I'll discover that I really am right where I'm supposed to be.
   
            It's been a highly stressful month for me (and for Batch 2019). Already there's a lot that I've had to sacrifice, like family gatherings and precious, precious time watching the Biography Channel (Rap thinks it's full of trashy daytime shows but it's really not!!!). Thanks to the weekly exams we've been having, all my weekends are spent in front of transes and books instead of with family and friends. My sense of time has been distorted; there is no such thing as "idle time" anymore. There is only school time, study time, and "you should feel guilty you're not studying" time. Pat says it nicely: "I never know what day it is anymore. I only know if it's a weekday or not." Sometimes I feel frustrated over the senseless things I'm driven to do, like unquestioningly memorizing series after series of letters and numbers that supposedly correspond to things that will "make sense in the future." It's all incredibly tiring.

          But it's also kind of fun. Actually, it's been really fun. For instance, my dad was in Manila some days ago, and he asked me a lot of questions about stuff like cancer. What happens to a cell that has cancer? How does cancer spread from one part of the body to another? What causes cancer? I was surprised to find that I could actually answer all these questions, and in great detail. In answering them, I had to practice the valuable skill of making large chunks of information easily understandable by people who aren't in med school - people who, for instance, don't know what cell signaling is or what apoptosis means. And I loved synthesizing, summarizing, and sharing all this information that I had in my brain. Because this was information that somebody else found very useful too.

        I love learning, whether inside the classroom or not. During classes, I love those moments when the lecturer says something really really interesting. SO interesting that my eyes widen, the air catches in my lungs, my heart races, my vision spins, I black out, I wake up in the ER days later. Kidding. But really, many times I am left in awe at how amazing the human body is. For instance:

• Dead cells really shouldn't come back to life. But there are some cells, called HeLa cells, that possess the power to reverse death. Appropriately called "zombie cells," they can come back to life although are heavily damaged.
• Very recent research is showing that cancer happens when mature, adult cells want to regress into their "baby" form. For instance, cancerous epithelial cells, which can be found on the surface of skin, may revert back into their earlier "evolution," called mesenchymal cells. These then further regress into unspecialized cells known as stem cells, the only kind of cells we were made of when we were but embryos in our moms' uterus.
• Events that shaped the world in which your lola or lolo lived (like war, famine, harvest) can have an impact on your health today, even though you never experienced such events! If your grandparents lived during a time of abundance of food, you're at higher risk of diabetes.

       I could go on listing a lot more interesting factoids, but I probably shouldn't. It's 6 PM on my watch, which means I really should get to studying for the Cell Finals on Friday. Such is the med life: Even though you want to do something you really love, the love of medicine simply takes precedence over anything else. And, to delve into Theology a little: this love I'm talking about is not a feeling. Feelings are impermanent - I am giddy over something I learned in class now, but later I'll be cursing the name of Berne and Levy for troubling me with so much unnecessary information. It is not the feelings of love that should sustain you through your study, because feelings inevitably fade. It is whatever commitment you made at the beginning of your journey that you should keep in mind. You don't control how you feel about things or people, but you can control how much you commit.

      So please excuse me. It is 6:30 on my watch, and I've made commitments.