Working girl

So my computer is sick again and I've used all my internet for the month on my iPhone - I'm practically in withdrawal! How is it possible that people once lived without immediate access to all kind of life essential information!?

Right now I'm at work, my first real shift as a cardiothoracic surgical resident and what do I do? I blog of course! Well really, what else am I supposed to do? I'm stuck at the hospital for 25 hours and (right now) there's nothing to do. I've admitted patients done rounds and taken care of pleural drains.

Oh, and now I'm being called over - better run!

Wide open spaces

Sometimes I think I might have misunderstood the direction my life should have. I think of the apartments I’ve lived in (that have indeed been minuscule!) and that I’ll keep living in for many years to come and I think, there must be something else. There must be some other way of living.

And then I find pictures like those below and I know I’m right. There is something else, there are places where everything seems so serene and calm that you probably can’t help to become serene and calm yourself. There is nothing pretentious or snobbish about the house in the pictures, not like those old last century apartments I sometimes drool over.

If I had two lives that I could live simultaneously I would definitely buy a place like this and learn to horseback ride (not just start, stop and turning – but really learn!), talk about life quality! How can anybody not be happy living like this!?

The pictures are from Skeppsholmens Fastighetsmäkleri and they have so many beautiful places you can buy right now that I’m happy I’m not a multimillionaire cause I’d probably spend all my money buying houses…

The song for this post is (of course!) – Wide open spaces with The (amazing!) Dixie Chicks

I'm starting with the (wo)man in the mirror

“Brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it” President Barack Obama on the passing of Steve Jobs.

I’m not writing on a Mac even though I’d want to. I’ve never been one of the big Apple followers and so I’m not a huge Steve Jobs fan, but I do get that he was an extremely talented man and that when he talked about his products people got the feeling that it truly was an object they really couldn’t live without. I love my iPhone and I really can’t imagine being without it now that I have it, so in a way he changed my everyday-life. He actually changed the world.

I know he didn’t do it on his own, that it’s a whole team of insanely smart people working on the incredible stuff they come up with all the time and that it has taken years to get to the place where they are, but still – he, and they, changed the world. How amazing is that?

Not so long ago I was talking to my sister about the fact that most doctors or med.students I know say that they have chosen to be doctors because they liked science in school and definitely NOT because they wanted to “save the world” (said with sarcasm dripping from every word). It seems arrogant to think that you can save the world – who ever said it needed saving anyway? And why do you think you could be the one to do it? It’s just a job like any other and there is nothing special or big about it, we are definitely not playing God, who would ever want to? Yeah, something like that is the response most give when asked about that part of being a doctor – the saving part.

So am I just a little bit scared of saying, “sure I want to save the world”? Of course I am! (Strangely enough I don’t want people thinking I’m arrogant or playing all mighty God!) But honestly why wouldn’t you want to save the world if you could? Why wouldn’t you want to make a difference if you found a way how? How amazing wouldn’t it be to one day be described as Steve Jobs – creative, bold, talented – and world changer!

I might not be creative, bold or talented enough to change the world, but the least I can do is try to make just a little tiny bit of difference, and hopefully that will be enough.

 

Like an hourglass glued to the table

There is little that scares me as much as time does, imagining it passing, constant and unstoppable. It’s strange; because you’d think that it would make me appreciate it even more, spend every hour of every day as it were my last. It doesn’t. It paralyzes me completely. I just keep fixating on the fact that I can’t do anything about it, that I can’t go back, and that every second passed is a second I can’t get back. Not that I can think of what to do with all of those seconds if I could get them back. Probably just sit there and stare – which is exactly what I did in the first place. I’m not sure that it’s about missing something or wasting it though, I think it might be that the whole concept is too big for my head, I can’t explain why it scares me, but it really does.

So why am I speculating over this in the middle of the night? Well, mostly it’s because it’s at night that it becomes so much more obvious to me. I keep telling myself that I need to go to bed, but at the same time I keep thinking about all the time I’m missing while sleeping, and all the things I should be doing that I haven’t done during the day. But instead of doing them, I just keep thinking about the seconds passing, completely paralyzed.

It’s a little bit like when you were a kid and you thought that if you closed your eyes nobody could see you – I keep thinking that if I stand completely still maybe time will stand still with me.

It just never does.

 

Can’t buy me love

Unfortunately I can’t buy love – but I can buy joy and happiness in the form of books, pretty colors for my nails, washi tape and fruit! I can’t wait for the books to be delivered! I’ve been wanting to read Ape House ever since I read Water for Elephants – an outstanding book, probably one of the best, if not the best I’ve read this year, so now finally (!!) it’s on it’s way!

Other than that my Sunday has been very calm, relaxing and sleeping and watching old episodes of Greys. Only now I have to prepare at least just a little bit for my first day at a Thoracic surgery ward tomorrow. I’m reading the introduction CD right now (68 pages!!) and doing a list over the topics I need to refresh in my schoolbooks. So far I have:

Arrhythmias

Anatomy of the heart

Anatomy of the mediastinum

Valve replacement

And there sure is a lot more to come on that list, but I guess it’s a good thing – I need to get reading more, channeling my inner Christina Yang (hmm, maybe I can even put off “watching Greys” as studying or at least inspirational work… I already feel much better about this lazy Sunday!).