Thanksgiving thoughts...

Today is Thanksgiving day and I voluntarily worked a 16hr shift in the ER. I remember last year on Thanksgiving Day, I was in New York, off of Broadway Avenue crowding with the several hundreds of thousands of people at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. I remembered floating in the streets with seas of people and buying chestnuts and 'street dogs' from street vendors. I remember the festivities of "Christmas in New York," the picture of the dreamy 'American Christmas' depicted in all the movies about Christmas. Christmas in New York is a dream.

I realized that without a dream, without family and loved ones around, it is really easy for me to not celebrate a holiday. What would a holiday mean anyway, if you cannot recall it later and share it with people who actually know what you are talking about?

I remembered festivities of Thanksgiving Day in years past. The extravagant 'mom prepared' dinners with a smorgasbord of food: juicy ham and turkey, yam, beans, cranberry, handmade mash potatoes and gravy, hotpot, special bread roles, fancy salads, homemade dressings, delicious desserts... and much more filled every corner of the table. Around the table would be a gathering of all sorts of characters from grandpa to aunts and uncles to family and friends and guests. The Thanksgiving tradition usually included my dad reading the story of the original Thanksgiving feast with the pilgrims and their first winter at the dinner table. Then, we may get together afterwards to sing songs and share what we are thankful for during that year. We would usually make part of sharing God's goodness to invited guests who were not believers in Christ. Sometimes family games would be involved. Then, the evening would usually conclude with giving thanks to our Lord in prayer and then all our friends and guest and family get a box of food to take home. (Or, it would be turkey for 2 weeks straight for us)

As we have grown up and moved all over on our own schedules, I don't remember having a usually family Thanksgiving feast in a few years. I must have to admit, I really missed that. I miss being able to share special memorable and unforgettable moments with those that I love and those that pour their love on me.

For this season in my life, I am finding myself, a little bit more grown up, and a little bit alone. Holidays and special occasions are merely just a memory and topics of brisk passing conversations in the hallways at work.

Today was an interesting day. We had had a lot of rain up here in Cottonwood and Sedona area. As a result, there was a huge pile of car accidents that plugged up our ER for the entire day. Many people came in with life threatening illnesses are necessarily admitted to the hospital for observation and treatment... and having to miss out on their Thanksgiving family gatherings. Lots of car accidents, car flips, substance abuse, and lots of other sick people... Some we just have to medically clear them to leave the hospital and go on with to rejoin their family for the Thanksgiving dinner. Many people, however, do not get to enjoy the festivities, which included a whole team of doctors, nurses, ER techs, respiratory therapists, radiology techs…

When you are enjoying your Thanksgiving feast, do give thanks for those who continued to work on holidays to provide the rest of us the peace of mind to enjoy special time spent with family. Be thankful for things you don’t remember to be thankful for! That was my new appreciation…

Babies, babies and babies...

CONGRATULATIONS HOLLY AND LARRY! T'is the season for babies, well, I have a few friends with newborns... they are so squishy cute. My friends, well, we are pretty much family... Holly and Larry Baca just had a new baby girl, Jasmine Noelle Baca: born 11/18/08 at 10:55am. I got my hands on the baby just a few hours out of the 'oven.' She's beautiful! Then, I met my other side of the family... Alicia and Tim Lindberg and their new baby, Ellaina born on 9/7/08. Here are some pictures of us:

Isn't Jasmine the cutest thing?!

Jasmine and I; Ellaina and I :) 2 beautiful princesses! What a lucky guy I am!

My new home... Sedona, AZ

After a month in the ICU in Phoenix, I am moving on. I have just moved into a 6 bedroom house in Cottonwood (a small town right next to the beautiful Sedona), and I have this huge house all for myself for this month... Anyone want to join me? Free house to stay. I am always looking for good company :)

This rotation is E.R. I hear that there are some really good mountain biking trails, world class, kinda like the ones in Moab, UT. So, I can't wait to take my crossbike and my mountain bike out for some good ridin'. *Pictures of my new house*

I have a busy year coming up: Medical Acupuncture class in Phoenix in 2 weeks; 2 residency interviews in Northern CA in 2 weeks; 1 interview at Ventura County MC; Cambodia in 1.5 months; 5 weeks in South America in a few months; 1 week of Osteopathic training in Chicago... Well, what else can I add to my itinerary? Oh, graduation from medical school in June...

(*) Good analogy...

I was talking to my friend Ben today and he shared with me a very good analogy from the book Abba's Child by Brandon Manning... I would like to share it with you. Well... very much simplified and paraphrased. Life is like a box of chocolate... um... oh, wrong book, wrong movie.

Life is like a pond. When we feel like our life is in a mess, it's like the pond has been stirred... the water is now muddy and we can no longer see clearly through the water. Our reflection has become distorted. If we don't have 'stillness' in our lives, and we cannot be stillness and wait in solitude for the water to calm down, and we keep on stirring the water (trying with our efforts to fix things or not addressing the issues from the root and continuing asking God 'why, why, why'), all we are going to see is more muddyness and more distorted images of ourselves through this pond. We will not see who God has created us to be until we spend time waiting on Him, and waiting for the water to be still. It is then, after the 'ripples and mud have settled,' can we start to see clearly our reflections and the clarity in our environment. It is then we can see things clearly and get to know ourselves without distractions or lies.

Amazement!

I was so ecstatic today! I paid a visit to one of my patients today. Remember the girl I told you about in a previous blog, who survived a plane crash and suffered burns all over her body. Several burn surgeons and I spent countless hours debriding and skin grafting her 2 months ago. She continued to have more grafts… Today, I had an opportunity to visit her in her room in the Burn ICU. As I entered the room, I had to take double looks! She was beautiful! She was setting up, chatting with some nurses… her deep green/blue eyes were open, looking around. Her face was flawless, little to no scars (her whole entire face was burnt). I remember doing surgery on her 2 months back, with her completely frail, hanging on by a thread, and her eyelids sewn shut. I prayed for her each day that she would survive and be there for her children and husband. God answers prayers! As I stood there, I was too much in shock and amazement to approach her. I was too shy to introduce myself to her to say how much I was a part of her recovery and how much I had prayed for her even shed tears for her. I thank the Lord and simply slip out of the room, in complete amazement!

Another day...

Another day in the ICU… Between rounding for 5 hours at a time, learning about fascinating physiology, learning to managing the ventilator, placing in central catheters and arterial lines, lumbar puncture, engaging in discussion about patients with the neurosurgeon/ gastroenterologists/ cardiologist/ nephrologist/ infectious disease specialist, I had another chance to witnessing patients dying today. Timothy, my friend, I really appreciated your comment in my last blog about ‘Death…’ I feel that to do the ministry as our Father called Christ and also us to do is to actually do something that is out of the ordinary. In essence, ‘going against the grain.’ To fight the urge to be the ‘status quo.’ (Btw, I like how you infer ‘status’ as ‘dead’ or ‘no influence’ as if the ‘status quo’ means ‘idle’ and ‘doing nothing’) How do I know that the patient needed to be left ‘alone’ to deal with grief? We assume that. May be we don’t need to expect ourselves to extend comfort and compassion to family at times when no comfort seemed to be enough. However, we need to show people we genuinely care. We also need to show people there is hope.

Death...

As we run down the stairwell from the Medicine Intensive Care Unit (ICU) to one floor below, the attending physicians and our team of 12 ICU residents, interns, and me (the fourth year medical student) arrived at a chaotic scene. There was a surgeon doing chest compressions so vigorously, it seemed as though he could have touched the floor, through the patient and the bed, with each pump. There were respiratory techs managing her ventilator, there were nurses standing by to push medicines to revive her heart, and other nurses with the electric shocker near by. Patient’s husband was at her side, grasping tightly to her hand, and fighting the flood gate of tears that was ready to explode as if the dams are crumbling.

She was young... actually, not much older than I am. I am sure her life was clean, and she hadn't tried everything to destroy her body like many of our patients before they end up in our unit. She was dealt a pitiful lot. Her vice was one that she didn't ask for, or earned. It was a very rare kind of cancer that had spread all over her body. She was so young.

Just as we stopped compression and almost stopped all the meds, her heart got stabilized. A few minutes passed by before her heart rate started to show signs of the peculiar rhythm that we are too often familiar with before patients breathe their last. At that moment, as I tried to fight back the tears in my eyes, the following image was burned into my mind: there was silence in the room... There was nothing to be said... well, nothing can be said. The husband had his head buried in her neck, his cheek to her cheek, in their ‘essence’ saying the last goodbye... One dying heart and another left forever broken and crushed. I can't help myself; I don't know what to do...

Then, as cold and manner-of-fact as we came, we left the scene. The patient’s heart was still beating, but, not for long. I knew the Lord was taking her home.

I have seen at least a patient die every day or every other day since I been here. Other than doing the best we could to help patients maintain all of their vital functions, what else could we do to help them and their families transition into the next chapter of their lives? What do I do when I see the husband’s heart break and bled out right in front of me? Why were my feet so glued to the ground that they won’t move an inch even when my heart wanted to be next to his? How do we become compassionate for the patient and their loved ones? How do we not become a machine, an ‘artificial intelligence’ filled with medical knowledge and algorithms? How do we apply ourselves in ministering to God’s Beloved in their last moments? How do we deal with all the sadness and brokenness we see? How do we deal with the feeling of being inadequately prepared to respond to the broken heart?

(*) Why does your loving God allow suffering?

As the atheist and agnostics say, why would a loving God allow or even designate suffering? Well, to those people who ask… here is what I need you to know: I think in the bottom of our hearts, we want the same. We want essentially a world without sadness, diseases, sufferings, and impurities. Have you ever thought about what you are saying? You are telling me that you want this world to be Heaven! A place that almost seemed too good to be true; a place that cannot be explained by a scientific mind; a place that require your faith and trust to believe.

God had built into our beings a desire for perfection; A perfection that is very much a reality. You may ask, “Why then is the God that you’ve described ok with imperfection and suffering?” Well, God is not ok with imperfection. If He’s ok with it, then there is no necessity for His existence. He has granted us Grace out of His omnipotence, so we have the promises that in His timing, we will not have to accept imperfection as our lot.

So, why are you fighting so hard to be ok with this world of imperfections? I am not ok with this world of imperfection and suffering, and I fight the urge to accept it and to say that there is no hope and no salvation. I resist all temptation to say that there are no more than what we can perceive with our senses. I say that the hope for salvation, Heaven, and eternity with God is the only answer to why we had to suffer, and why there is never going to be cessation of tears on this side of Heaven. In fact there is never going to be true-peace in this world. Continual rejection of the reality of God is the acceptance of imperfection.

Furthermore, the God that is worthy to be worshipped and revered is a God that is completely powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent, loving, compassionate, holy, and able to redeem us from our imperfect condition WITHOUT our merits. If we can earn ‘holiness’ through our actions, then we can achieve god-hood. If we can achieve god-hood, then we ourselves become gods, or god-equalities. That theology ends up with a god that is really not God, and not deserving worship… because, ‘if you work hard enough, you can be god too!’

So, a Holy God is a God that is so pure and perfect that we can never achieve, and never earn a seat at His dinner table… Moreover, it is because of His omnipotence, He is able to grant our ‘redemption’ without us working for it. It’s a gift. It’s Grace!

People of this world work too hard for the wrong goals. The Great Deception started in the Garden when Satan deceived Eve and Adam to disobey God and to earn their ‘supernatural’ knowledge and position to be god-equal, was why we had to suffer. Creation suffers because of that disobedience and our undeserved craving to be god. All creation cannot wait to see perfection revealed… soon.

So, why do atheists and agnostics say there is no God or there is no knowledge of God or why suffering is everywhere or why does people in virtually every religion out there say that they can earn their way into perfection? I think fundamentally our world is still under the original deception. The truth is that, it is easier to lay blame to God why He hasn’t designed the world as they’ve wanted, and why the ‘delusion of God’ had to exist, since religious fervor is ‘unacceptable’ to the scientific mind. It is not an argument for the existence of God. I believe, people are simply refusing to accept a God that they cannot become!