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the beginning of return?
7 Mar 2009 06:00 pmBecause of various things that happened (or rather...various pieces of news that we heard this week), I think me and Irene have totally gone back to our 本命 after a long disinterest in the fandom. We didn't know how good we had it until it was gone, and now even the smallest hint of it coming back is making us so....incredibly...high.
But for those of you interested in my life beyond being a fan of random J-pop groups you've never heard of, I think neurology is becoming for me what immunology was. There's so much there in terms of concepts and anatomy and theory it's daunting, but because of the complexity it's actually quite fun...but come exam time I'm going to be really, really, really hating this subject. LOL. So far I'm liking it more than I expected, not that I'm understanding most of what's going on. It's also getting towards the time when we can/should integrate everything we've learned so far, but it's hard to recall anything that was taught more than 3 months ago ;__; I don't know how I'm going to deal with a barrier exam that tests everything from the first week last year to the last week of this year.
I also started my Options, which, in spite of its name, is actually not Optional. Elected to do something in medical humanities, which is apparently about the association of medicine with various humanities subjects like music, art, literature; and the way that medical practice can be dissected as a narrative, etc.
It feels like walking into an after-hours poetry club, to be honest =___=;;;;; You can take whatever interpretation you like out of that.
I'm now stuck with doing weekly readings, and I don't know if I've been toilet-trained by 5 years of scientific/evidence-based writing, or if this thing's just as much bullshit as I think it is. I'm halfway through one article and I can't read more than two paragraphs without experiencing a surge of craving for violence.
The particular reading tries very hard to put TB and cancer as diseases of contrast. If a doctor wrote this I'm going to start smashing things. It makes ridiculous sweeping generalisations about the disease process of cancer - one of the most variable categories of disease out there.
TB is very specific, but even as itself it's a disease of enormous variability. But it's like comparing apples and meat. In other words - which meat????
The article suggests that cancer is always begins as a slow, insidious process characterised by physical/psychological wasting, "things turning hard", etc. It's like saying infectious diseases are always characterised by being a fast process that makes patients vomit.
It also suggests that there is a difference between "being consumed" and "being invaded by cells [that cause the body to] shrivel". Umm what?
Apparently consumption (TB) "gallops", while cancer has stages, with the final one being "terminal" - which is all fine until you realise in the past only the terminal stage of TB was diagnosed, as consumption. By the time you bloody diagnose terminal stage cancer, it's also cantering down like a whirlwind down that road towards the afterlife, thank you. The staging of cancer is a diagnostic formality, not beautifully divided boxes you can slot every patient into.
I WANT REFERENCES WHEN YOU MAKE SWEEPING CLAIMS.
But for those of you interested in my life beyond being a fan of random J-pop groups you've never heard of, I think neurology is becoming for me what immunology was. There's so much there in terms of concepts and anatomy and theory it's daunting, but because of the complexity it's actually quite fun...but come exam time I'm going to be really, really, really hating this subject. LOL. So far I'm liking it more than I expected, not that I'm understanding most of what's going on. It's also getting towards the time when we can/should integrate everything we've learned so far, but it's hard to recall anything that was taught more than 3 months ago ;__; I don't know how I'm going to deal with a barrier exam that tests everything from the first week last year to the last week of this year.
I also started my Options, which, in spite of its name, is actually not Optional. Elected to do something in medical humanities, which is apparently about the association of medicine with various humanities subjects like music, art, literature; and the way that medical practice can be dissected as a narrative, etc.
It feels like walking into an after-hours poetry club, to be honest =___=;;;;; You can take whatever interpretation you like out of that.
I'm now stuck with doing weekly readings, and I don't know if I've been toilet-trained by 5 years of scientific/evidence-based writing, or if this thing's just as much bullshit as I think it is. I'm halfway through one article and I can't read more than two paragraphs without experiencing a surge of craving for violence.
The particular reading tries very hard to put TB and cancer as diseases of contrast. If a doctor wrote this I'm going to start smashing things. It makes ridiculous sweeping generalisations about the disease process of cancer - one of the most variable categories of disease out there.
TB is very specific, but even as itself it's a disease of enormous variability. But it's like comparing apples and meat. In other words - which meat????
The article suggests that cancer is always begins as a slow, insidious process characterised by physical/psychological wasting, "things turning hard", etc. It's like saying infectious diseases are always characterised by being a fast process that makes patients vomit.
It also suggests that there is a difference between "being consumed" and "being invaded by cells [that cause the body to] shrivel". Umm what?
Apparently consumption (TB) "gallops", while cancer has stages, with the final one being "terminal" - which is all fine until you realise in the past only the terminal stage of TB was diagnosed, as consumption. By the time you bloody diagnose terminal stage cancer, it's also cantering down like a whirlwind down that road towards the afterlife, thank you. The staging of cancer is a diagnostic formality, not beautifully divided boxes you can slot every patient into.
I WANT REFERENCES WHEN YOU MAKE SWEEPING CLAIMS.
