A Blog About An Asian Medical Student. Yes that's redundant.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

David Poon and the Road to Medical School: Funny Story / Love Story

aka Poon is NOT A SEXIST
aka A Revisionist Love Letter to the Disgustingly Cute


I’m probably never getting married.

And no, hah hah it’s not just because no one would ever bother marrying me.

There are websites for that. And I have my Mommy’s credit card.

No, it’s because I doubt my non-stop repertoire of never ending wit and charm is honestly enough to convince a girl to spend the rest of her life with me.

And no, hah hah that doesn’t mean I’m going to go to men.

I mean, I’m not going to switch to men.

Cause I’m don’t need to switch.

Cause I like girls.

Not men.

No switching needed.

Cause I’m straight.


Italics means emphasis, not sarcasm correct?


Correct!?!?

^-_-^

I remember during the first year of medical school, we were all put in mandatory sessions to learn something like ‘balance in life,’ ‘avoiding burnout,’ ‘childhood obesity’ you know, generally topics that had no relevance to our careers as doctors, but we’re required to know because someone crashed and burned during school and therefore the Faculty had to institute policies to show they cared.

Hm…

I wonder if next year they are going to introduce “How not to end up like David Poon to the curriculum.”

Hah.

Who am I kidding.

They already have childhood obesity.

One thing that sticks out in my memory the most was the Faculty having one of these sessions, with a very particular piece of advice:

“Your relationships will be strained. You will be on call, you won’t see your family, your spouse will argue with you. Be prepared.”

We then hear about high rates of divorce amongst surgeons, and how women in residencies typically put off having kids.

I’m not being sexist here, I mean it’s just very difficult to have a child and not take maternity leave (not that women HAVE to), so many women choose (BECAUSE IT IS THEIR CHOICE BECAUSE THEY ARE AUTONOMOUS IN AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY WORLD) to have children later in life (NOT THAT BEING OLDER MATTERS BECAUSE A WOMAN’S AGE DOES NOT AFFECT HER CAREER, PERSONALITY, OR MARRIAGE PROSPECTS).

Additionally, because of the nature of medicine (long hours, call shifts taking you away from home) marriages can just fall apart.

So forgive me that my relationship jadedness was further exacerbated by that little piece of advice.

Fine, chalk it up to immaturity.

When we first heard this talk, a good handful of us were probably immature too. And not just because of age, some of us just hadn’t been in a real relationship.

About six of us, me included, were 19 when we got into med.

How well do you think we could handle relationships and medicine at the same time.

I mean really, if I can barely handle girls now…

How well do you think I could handle women 4 years ago?

And just to clarify….

I don’t mean handle women physically.

Cause I’ve never been allowed to.

I mean, handle them emotionally.

Not that they NEED to be handled per se…

Cause they’re not objects.

To be objectified.

Cause independent creatures don’t need handling.

Cause they don’t need to be controlled.

Cause they can’t be.

Not that women should be controlled!

Cause they’re not animals!

OR CREATURES FOR THAT MATTER!?!??!

I’M NOT A SEXIST!!!!!

I’m heterosexual!

NOT THAT I FEEL THE NEED TO REASSERT THAT EVERY TIME I MEET NEW GUYS.

AND I DON’T MEAN “GUYS” LIKE MEN.

AND I DON’T MEAN “GUYS LIKE MEN”

CAUSE I LIKE GIRLS.


I met this half Asian, half not Asian girl my first week of med. She was the same age as me (and therefore TOO OLD FOR ME TO DATE), and I thought she would be a great friend to me.

Luckily, this half breed girl had a broken leg, so couldn’t run away from me. Which I guess in retrospect makes her the perfect female in my books.  

In short she met this half Asian, half not Asian boy a few months later. They got married recently, after years of dating.

At any wedding here in Canada, convention states that the ‘dinging’ of a class with a utensil demands a kiss from the newlyweds.

Course in the marriage of two half breeds, there is really only half convention.

So at their wedding, we ding our glasses – but before they would kiss, the requisite was a “funny story’ about the couple had to be told.

There were naturally the tearful stories of friendship from the bridesmaids (not that women only cry) and the plethora of sexual innuendos from the groomsmen. The drunk uncles (made much funnier by the fact that that they were drunk ASIAN uncles) held the spotlight whenever baby stories were needed.

Missing something though.

These two people… they met in medical school

Now, I started with both the half-breeds, and realizing that my entire class is far too polite to embarrass the happy couple, that left me to tell the tales that were unmentioned.

Seated at the table with me was my Vice Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. Knowing that I have my fledging stand up comedy career and a “hilarious” website that confuses the copious use of punctuation marks as humour, she suggested I say something.

And as we all know, as the great medical student I am, I follow medical orders to the tee.

Believe it or not, I’m not nearly as funny as I lie to myself. My spontaneity, hidden amongst a plethora of dramatic silent beats and puns, is actually a result of planned anecdotes running concurrently with a thesaurus.

Pretty much, I had to think of something.

And I thought…

Definitely talk about their public displays of affection (PDA).

One of the bridesmaids mentioned how over the first few weeks, the girl slowly started sitting in the front row to be next to the boy.

I sat in front row too.

I think it’s safe to say I started moving towards the back.

I doubt I’ll ever be able to wash the image of him functionally GROPING her scalp in front of all 140+ of us in class one day.

It’s like how in a movie theatre, you expect people having sex to be doing it in the back.

So you sit in the front, so you can see the movie in peace.

Except in this case, replace movie with fundamentally important mandatory learning, put the innocent bystanders in the back, and place disgustingly cute somewhere in the unavoidable in between.

Oh oh, and I got to mention one time they invited me to go to the park with them.

She, in her short shorts, and he in his tank top…

… touch Frisbee has forever been scarred in my mind.

Emphasis on the word touch, incaseyoumissedit.

But I scrapped that idea for a speech, cause honestly, I embarrassed the couple enough for potentially accidentally buying them some sort of softcore porn called ‘Young Doctors in Love’ as a wedding gift instead of a toaster.

I figured it would be hot enough in the old breadmaker.

Get it?

A pun.

Like toast.


But then it occurred to me that the funniest story may be the oddest one…

The fact that the story existed at all.

I wanted to tell the story of a girl from a small rural town in Alberta. She dreamed of bringing back to the isolated communities, yet ironically grew up alienated from her own family as she grew older.

How through sheer determination, she became the top of her class over and over again despite circumstances dictating that she would have to do it alone.

How at 19, her work ethic and focus led her to medical school. And led her to meet her future husband.

I wanted to tell the story of how she inspired me. A girl no older than I, with far fewer supports and privileges, who overcame nigh unbearable odds.

Who ultimately had the courage to rely on her future husband, even if she didn’t know it at the time.

While I struggled and fought, kicked and screamed, cried and hurt alone,

she opened her soul that had been so long neglected, gave her heart to a man who at times seemed solely to exist to hold it.

She was young like me

but brave.

As my own life collapsed, I could not find my peace. My devotion to medicine overpowered my responsibilities to myself.

As her life fell apart, she gained new strength in medicine – her partner, in her class, could share her every pain

from losing her first patient

to delivering her first baby.

Whether she was next to him in first row, or away from him for a year in Rural Family medicine, her strength, her inspiration, her capacity for and from the person she loved made all the difference.


I wanted to tell the story of a girl who knew the value of something I will forever regret not knowing the value of sooner.

She knew the value of love.

The power of an unconditional bond in the darkest of moments.

The pleasure of going to class with someone you know you want to spend every moment of your life with.

The end of call shifts, collapsing beside a person who, despite staying up for the past 26 hours plus, is never too tired to hear you whine, complain, or most importantly, cry.

I dinged my glass.

Got up to the microphone.

The groom said, “Now I’m scared. Is this about a toaster?”

My classmates smiled, “Maybe he’ll say something funny… for once.”

I started;

“Funny story.

Med school was wrong.

You can find love.”

In between the public fondling, grossly absurd public displays of affection, and sometimes just sickeningly cute couple talk;

I realized how they made each other stronger.

In every painful experience on the wards, there was another experience that the couple could share.

Within the madness of choosing a specialty for their individual futures, they understood how simple their decision really was, simply because what mattered was already there; they were together.

The stress of medicine didn’t tear them apart.

It bonded them together.

In a profession where the darkest moments of despair consume you…

In palliative care, where an old man watches his wife become decimated by cancer.

In neonatal, where a young couple prays for their first born.

In the wards, where some kid plays with his DS while her bedridden grandpa sleeps another day away.

In the ICU, where the solitary beep of the heart monitor is your patient’s only companion.

You learn the value of love.

You learn to appreciate it.

You learn exactly what it means to find it.

And you learn exactly how beautiful it is to have it.

On the Road to Medical School, we were all prepared to compromise on our emotions. We were all ready to sacrifice our happiness for our careers, our relationships for our goals.

But I saw something different.

I saw the impossible.

I saw four halves make a whole.

And I am truly blessed to have witnessed such a spectacle.

Funny story.

I figure I’d like to get married someday.

Just, after I get my MD.

I’m fully Asian, after all.

- David

3 comments:

  1. Poetic, eloquent, and emotionally nourishing. A pleasure to read. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. David you made me tear up again - not fair!!!!
    Thank you (again) for all your words - I never thought I could give somebody else inspiration and hope through my everyday actions (minus the public fondling and other PDA?) and I think that's what I see in your blog.
    Remember that it's never too late to start your own love story as well as your success story!

    P.S. Love the "broken leg" line - I'm surprised that didn't come up at the wedding, haha!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Deep David, very deep!

    And, yes, I remembered the website :-)

    The Cheatin' Vegan

    ReplyDelete

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