Getting "used to"

I've been thinking about "change" - change in the lifestyle and the choice of foods. How my veg classmates started eating non-veg, how people start drinking, smoking etc. The choice is theirs and I'm not commenting about it but just thinking how it all starts. The first and a major influence is the company, friends. Initially, you see people around you eat non veg and drink at gatherings (conferences, parties sponsored by medical representatives, birthday parties etc). First you feel bad, then neglect it thinking it's their choice, then you get 'used to' seeing people eat non veg and drink, then you observe them, then you feel like knowing what it is and how it might be; when the will to taste it exceeds the will of not to do so, you finally taste non veg/ have a drink. That is the start. Then you feel it weird, then in the next party you feel as if you are missing out something and you would have forgotten the taste, so you taste it again, it tastes better this time, not too weird. You feel a bit guilty but then, you get 'used to' it. You promise yourself that you won't get into the habit only to break it yourself.

Next comes the change of attitude. You start thinking why eating non veg and drinking are bad. Animals are of course some entity of life, plants too. Why can't you kill them if you can root out plants just to satisfy your hunger? Plants are also a form of life. (I get this explanation from every non vegetarian)
The attitude about drinks also undergoes a change. There's lot of stress in life, what's wrong in social drinking, many do that anyway, why shouldn't I drink at social gatherings? Initially that was tasting weird, now starts feeling good, then it tastes like coca cola, then it becomes sprite, and gradually, it becomes as easy to drink it as water. You get 'used to' it.

A milder form of getting 'used to': When I was at bhadravathi, the only thing I used to eat outside was pani puri/masal puri, only when I came to high school. There were a row of stalls next to discussion class (where many students used to gather and study, I'll write a post about it later) and we used to go and eat pani puri only when a test/ exam got over, very occasionally. All our energy and concentration was focused on studies and nothing else and there was no temptation and motivation to go out and have pani puri frequently. After we completed 2nd PUC, CET exams and all other exams, the number of visits to pani puri stalls increased. We used to gather at discussion class, chat for sometime, have pani puri and go home; there was no better work to do (there was a long gap of 4 months between our CET exams and the start of MBBS/BE courses). My friends took me to a stall which offered 'gobi,' that was the first time I saw gobi. It appeared like a non veg dish to me and I refused it. The second time we went together, many ordered for it and I tasted one piece, it tasted weird and oily. By that time, classes started and I came to Bangalore. In the hostel, gobi was made once or twice in a month and I started having it. And whenever the food was bad at hostel, Divya (my friend and senior at hostel) and I used to go to VVH canteen. She used to order fried rice and sometimes gobi; I tasted fried rice for the first time there and after that, I've had fried rice and gobi many times at VVH! Got 'used to' it. :-)

PS: I'm a vegetarian, non alcoholic and non smoker. When I had been to ENT fresher's party, I was the only one who ate veg, all others were eating non veg and that was when I felt I'll write a post on my blog about 'getting used to.'

The choice about being a veg/non-veg is not entirely ours. It's about how well we are brain washed during our childhood. My parents are veg, and I'm veg. If my mom had cooked non-veg, I would be a non-vegetarian. I can have non-veg but my brain feels that killing animals is unethical and hence I don't have the temptation to taste non-veg. And I'm not 'used to' it. I used to feel nauseating at the sight and smell of non-veg; now I can see people eat non-veg but still feel nauseating when I see them eat the muscle fibres and the bone marrow.
I can just cut and suture muscle fibres in the operating field or cut a bone with a gigely wire during amputation, but I can't imagine eating them.

Quotable quote #20

I told my brother today that I've joined car driving class. He remarked, "Unlike video games, there's no restart. Be careful."

Quotable quote #19

A post in my brother's blog:

"A wise woman once said about three ways that people end up screwing up their lives:

1. Cannot forget about the past.
2. Can't live the present.
3. And can't stop being worried about the future."

My views on it:

"Live the present as if there's no tomorrow. Life is beautiful."

Irreparable loss :-(

I go to the beauty parlour only 2-3 times a year, just to get a very simple straight cut done. But this time (I don’t know why I got this disastrous idea), I thought of acquiring a different hair style and went to the parlour today. The lady there did something called ‘layers with step.’ The end result was that I was looking miserable and she charged me Rs.150 for that (she told it’s cheap!) which is a day’s hard earned money for me. :-( Moreover, it's an irreparable loss :-( and I just hope my hairs grow back soon.

If I had a barber’s scissors in my hand instead of a surgeon’s knife, I think I would be minting money by now!

Smart patients!

Most of the cases in the Orthopaedics OPD are HPD syndrome (haata, paava dard syndrome!), osteoarthritis, fractures and lot others. The standard treatment for HPD syndrome followed by us is diclo+rantac and paracetamol for osteoarthritis (only analgesic action of paracetamol is enough as there’s no inflammation in osteoarthritis).

A case of osteoarthritis came and the PG examined the lady and prescribed her paracetamol. After 10 minutes, she came back with the paracetamol tablets provided by the hospital and asked the PG, “Ye bukhar ki goliyan hai, is se dard kaise kam hoga?!” (You’ve prescribed me tables for fever, how will pain come down by it?) The PG frowned, tried to explain her that paracetamol was enough for her illness and I don’t think she was convinced by it.

What would have happened to we doctors if all the patients of Victoria and especially Vani Vilas Hospital were well educated?! Most of our energy would be spent on trying to communicate with the patient than actually treating them. Thankfully, majority of the patients still listen to what we tell and we try our best to help them.

Updates

Now in orthopaedics postings. I’m allotted only female ward, emergency and special ward and the number of patients there are quite less; and even after one and a half week of postings, I’ve not done a single wound dressing! Ortho is much better than ophthal/ENT postings (where I didn’t have any work but had to just stay there doing nothing) and it’s going on smoothly. I' m mostly doing pre-op work up of patients and casualty duties.

I read a couple of novels by Robin Cook and found it just ok ok. The biggest flaw in “Coma” is Susan Wheeler (the intelligent doctor in the novel) telling all her discoveries to the director of the institute which is obviously unintelligent and stupid.
Read Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, another wonderful fiction; very much different from the movie.

After the news of ‘Swine Flu’ spread like flu through the media, my male counterparts (interns) seem to be happy seeing some pretty ladies roam around in the Victoria Hospital campus, asking directions every 100 meters to whoever they find in white coat, to the swine flu ward!

The swine flu screening centre is just next to our duty room now! Hope we get resistance to all the infectious diseases prevalent in our hospital and hope the flu ends soon.

PS: Victoria hospital was visited only by poor people who were ill. Now that swine flu screening is done only at certain institutes, even the rich people and all healthy ones are visiting Victoria hospital.

The anthropomorphic phenomena

When the movie Koi Mil Gaya was released, it was stated in a newspaper review that the producer has spent some crores on the creation of the character 'Jadoo' (an extra terrestrial life in the movie) and lots of big minds have spent a couple of years creating it. There was also a picture of it and my mom saw that and told, "It's again just a modification of a human, what's so special in it?" Recently, I read the novel 'Sphere' and started thinking why an ET is always human-like.

“You see,” Norman said, “at first I thought the Anthropomorphic Problem—the fact that we can only conceive of extraterrestrial life as basically human—I thought it was a failure of imagination. Man is man, all he knows is man, and all he can think of is what he knows. Yet, as you can see, that’s not true. We can think of plenty of other things. But we don’t. So there must be another reason why we only conceive of extraterrestrials as humans. And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don’t like to be reminded of how frail we are—how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended. So we imagine other life forms as being like us, so we don’t have to think of the real threat—the terrifying threat—they may represent, without ever intending to.”

-From the "Sphere" by Michael Crichton.

The below three creations in the movies related to extraterrestrial life substantiates the above reasoning. Master yoda in Star Wars, The ET, Jaadu in koi Mil Gaya; all that they could imagine were a head, a body, a ribcage, two legs, two ears and two eyes.

What else can we imagine? If they had created an extra terrestrial life resembling an umbrella, it would look like a jelly fish;

if they had imagined a muscular structure with tentacles, it would look like an octopus.

An organism like a ball of thorns would look like a sea urchin;

an organism with wide wings would look like a bat.








Can't we imagine anything else? Our imagination is only limited to what we know. We can't imagine what we don't know/ what we can't perceive. There's a good reasoning in 'Sphere' - We can only imagine a life in 3 dimensions or maximum 4. And whatever we can imagine is a permutation combination of what we already know. What if there's a 5th dimension? Or a 6th and 7th dimension? We will never know as we can't perceive it.

Also, only human-like forms will appeal to humans. Hence, to make the ET appealing, it has to have the basic mind of a human. An ET like the jelly fish/sea urchin won't be interesting as we know that a jelly fish/sea urchin can't speak or interact with a human (Again, that is all that we know of). Hence, the component of 'emotion' is invariably associated with whatever we imagine; which means our imagination can't expand beyond what we already know.