On Spirituality

I'm sitting here after having drawn all the muscles of the anterior thigh (writing out their insertions, attachments, actions and innervation), feeling pretty happy with myself but sadly realizing that I've only just scratched the surface of what I need to know for my next anatomy exam. Guess it's time to let off some steam.

NOTE: I will be expressing my views that relate to my own experiences with organized religion. As these views are clearly based on my own experiences and attitude, thus limited, anyone is welcome to disagree.

The concept of spirituality has been on my mind recently, since we've been talking about religion in our Dr./Patient relationship course. We've also been having a lot of conversations about discrimination and that always makes me think about religion - with regards to religious minorities and the discrimination that organized religion can sometimes breed. I'll start by explaining what 'spirituality' means to me, and then see what happens from there.

I believe that spirituality is an inclusive term that applies to all humans in their desperate pursuit to find meaning in a world full of questions. It is a natural response to attempt to answer these deep questions, (what is the purpose of my life? Am I important? What will happen to me when I die?)  and we do it in a number of ways. Commonly spirituality, the desire to answer said questions, is achieved through adherence to a religion. I know that's what kept me going to church until I came to college. I was so terrified to think that my life might have no meaning that I chose to find solace in a community of like-minded individuals who would encourage me to find that meaning, the courage to confront death. It was great, actually. I felt like I was living for truth and justice, that my religion (Christianity, I'm a WASP, I know) was telling me the correct way to live, and if I loved it and followed its teachings with a pure heart I would ultimately be accepted into heaven (the real goal). It worked for a while, but then I stopped going to church and opened my eyes to the world around me.

I'm not claiming I understand how the world works. I really can't understand it. And though I probably sound like a broken record to some, I absolutely must reiterate that I am unbelievably lucky (I might have said 'blessed' at a different point in life) to have all that I have and to be sheltered from the unspeakable things that happen every day in... pretty much everywhere that isn't suburbia. I won't go off about this because I can't do it justice. Nothing compares to seeing it with your own eyes. The only point I'm trying to make here is that once I started traveling to places off the 'vacation-circuit' I started to see that Barrington, IL is not real life.

For one thing, I saw that a person's religious views are almost entirely a result of their upbringing. This may seem like an obvious fact, but it was earth-shattering to the 18 year old white male that I was. Having been taught that Christianity is the ONE TRUE religion, I started to wonder why everyone else would be condemned to Hell, given that they really had no choice in their religion to begin with. I didn't feel comfortable with that fact, and over time I left Christianity. I can't put up with the hate that it generates - not the actual teachings, but various peoples' interpretations of it. This is obviously not the absolute truth for every Christian, but I decided that the root of its dogma (its exclusionary stipulations) generates discrimination and, for me, did more harm than good. It's mind-boggling to think that I used to consider homosexuality a sin, for who am I to decide what is right for other people? I just imagine the opposite, that homosexuality was the majority and there existed a prevailing negative attitude against heterosexuality. It would be a nightmare, to have to deny who I am, so I could never justify telling another person how to live their life.

So, by this point I've left Christianity, but the key point here is that I'm still spiritual. I still harbor the same doubts and fears that I did in high school and I can't think for too long about my inevitable death because it extremely bothers me. My sense of spirituality, this shared human experience, is what connects me to others. It gives me the desire to be honest, friendly and helpful. I have replaced religion with all the things that it used to give me minus all of the rules and close-mindedness. Instead I subscribe to making the world a better place and in doing so I feel like I have reached a better understanding and appreciation for the magnitude of life on earth.

What does this have to do with medicine? It will undoubtedly apply to my future practices, as I confront death, encounter religious discrimination in the hospital, and meet patients of diverse religious backgrounds. I will be called upon to be aware of these differences and be able to act on them to provide the best and most complete care possible. I need to be ready to respect the views of every patient that I see, and though I may not have the same personal preferences as my patients, I had damn well better know how to make them comfortable.

Anyway, there's a lot more to say and I probably didn't articulate my views completely, but I need to go study. Oh yeah, and eat, too.

Peace.

Kidney Transplant!

This post is going to be short because I don't have too many pressing thoughts on my mind at the moment. The last week or so has been pretty tame, with the exception of our second round of exams and an awesome shadowing experience that I had. All I will say about exams is that I'm glad I got through them unscathed and I'm also glad to be done with biochemistry and moving on to immunology and microbiology. Instead, I will regale you with the tale (nice rhyme) of a kidney transplant that I observed two weeks ago.

I decided more than a few weeks ago that I wanted to watch a transplant operation, so I looked up 'Penn Transplant' online and picked the first surgeon that popped up. Dr. Abt, my lucky(?) choice, readily agreed to have me come shadow him in the clinic for a few hours the next Monday. I was delighted - even though I had somewhat hoped to see an operation, I was still very excited to see what a transplant surgeon does when he's not doing surgery. Even though Dr. Abt's clinic schedule was pretty light, I still learned a few things (for example, I learned that there are 2 types of dialysis: hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis - I'll spare the details here, but very cool!) and the best part was that he mentioned that they had a kidney 'flying in' (was not aware that kidneys could fly) around midnight and would I like to come see the surgery? Deciding that this was too cool to pass up for a full night's sleep, I voraciously agreed like the most stereotypical med student in the world. I had too many excited thoughts in my head at that point to even think about staying classy with my response!

Those sugarplums dancing around in my head made it impossible to sleep for a while, but it didn't matter anyway since I was getting up at 3am. I woke up at that godforsaken hour and excitedly got ready and biked to the hospital. Once I had gotten there and into the OR, Dr. Abt offered to let me scrub in (get super clean so that I could interact with the patient/sterile field of instruments) so that I could have a close look at what they were doing. Having worked in an OR before where I saw surgeries from afar as I cleaned up after everyone, it was heaven to scrub in and be able to hold surgical instruments - using tweezers to hold parts of the donor kidney as Dr. Abt cleaned the fat off of it and tied off unnecessary blood vessels. I also got to touch the patient's bladder and stand right next to Dr. Abt as he and his fellow did the surgery. I ended up being in there from 3:30 to 7:30, when it was time for class to start, and I bid an almost tearful farewell (just kidding).

The whole point of telling this experience is to point out how awesome it is to be able to email a surgeon and scrub in on a kidney transplant within a week or two, and to point out how vital these experiences are for reminding me why I'm studying so much science and anatomy all the time. (Fun fact: we had just done the posterior abdominal wall the day before, and then I got to see the same structures in a living being. Amazing!) I will continue to seek out shadowing experiences like this one so that I can continue reminding myself about what is to come in the future. That's all for now, time to VC some lectures that I missed today when I was meeting Ms. X - more to come on her in the future.