I do not have New Year resolution to make. It's not that such resolution doesn't work – it does. However, why should we make resolutions simply to make ourselves feel better? Why should anyone? Does anyone? I don't, and I never did.
I turn forty next year. Come to think about it. It didn't take long for me to realize that I haven't had my baby until somewhere near the "half time" of my life. What I do at this point, as the panic mounts and I think about my age by the time my daughter graduates, is to stop. I stop just short of actually dropping dead from worrying. Then I think about something I really treasure. A beautiful Christmas gift, say, arriving long way after the festival is still much better than a run-of-the-mill box that arrived on time.
Thurgood Marshall, an eminent jurist who helped bring about the desegregation of America's schools, said it best when someone asked him what he wanted written on his tombstone: "He did the best he could with what he had."
It reminds me of a clinical trial I'd recently completed. The study design is almost impressive – except that it's not. I first launched the study around three years ago. Since then, the recommended treatment has really changed, leaving my treatment design obsolete. I sighed. Yet I know I did my best I could with what I had three years ago. I then tiptoed into writing up the study.
Let's move on. That's all any of us can do – try our best with what we have. Forget about the New Year resolution.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Pi
Recent reading the novel Life of Pi brings back my overseas training memories that are engraved in a way I know will never fade.
Yann Martel's Life of Pi chronicles the tale of a 16-year-old Indian boy moving to Canada. One time, during my training in Montreal eight years ago, I started reading this novel, and never got the chance to finish it before coming back. I know I won't remember the story and will have to go back to page one again.
Wait. I talked earlier the memory that has stayed with me for years. There is another story I like to tell.
Those books I read in Montreal, over twenty of them, made clear ripples and then less and less so. Obviously, I can never remember every detail. One thing I know for sure is that lovely memory of the Chapters bookstores in Montreal, where I buried my nose at all kinds of books every evening and weekend.
Over the course of one-year laboratory training in Montreal, I didn't have to look after patients. When the day's work was done, it would be hard for me not to hang out at the Chapters. I found plenty of chairs and couches inside the store. They were not the most comfy couches on earth, but they were mostly very kind with hospitality. I loved them and stretched out on the couches to read. By the time I closed a book with a sense of triumph and satisfaction, I would have almost sunk to the bottom of the couch. There was just one problem: most of the blood would have settled in my legs after sitting in a locked position during my avid reading. Next I tried to stand up, and every so often would pass out. But the point is that, like shooting heroin, the experience of near-fainting feels so good.
Yann Martel's Life of Pi chronicles the tale of a 16-year-old Indian boy moving to Canada. One time, during my training in Montreal eight years ago, I started reading this novel, and never got the chance to finish it before coming back. I know I won't remember the story and will have to go back to page one again.
Wait. I talked earlier the memory that has stayed with me for years. There is another story I like to tell.
Those books I read in Montreal, over twenty of them, made clear ripples and then less and less so. Obviously, I can never remember every detail. One thing I know for sure is that lovely memory of the Chapters bookstores in Montreal, where I buried my nose at all kinds of books every evening and weekend.
Over the course of one-year laboratory training in Montreal, I didn't have to look after patients. When the day's work was done, it would be hard for me not to hang out at the Chapters. I found plenty of chairs and couches inside the store. They were not the most comfy couches on earth, but they were mostly very kind with hospitality. I loved them and stretched out on the couches to read. By the time I closed a book with a sense of triumph and satisfaction, I would have almost sunk to the bottom of the couch. There was just one problem: most of the blood would have settled in my legs after sitting in a locked position during my avid reading. Next I tried to stand up, and every so often would pass out. But the point is that, like shooting heroin, the experience of near-fainting feels so good.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Colic
Preparedness is no laughing matter. It's real. Just when I think I've read up and prepped myself on a subject, the real thing will happen exactly.
To give you a little bit of the idea, I would say it's just like looking into a crystal ball. I believed that I should take a good look at Dr. Spook's Baby and Child Care yesterday; I then read the advice how to nurse and breast-feed a baby when the mother is ill. This made me feel like I was already in control of it. I was less scared after being told, to be sure, there is a chance of the baby's catching the ailment, but this would be true even if the infant weren't being nursed. I can rest assured that babies on average have milder colds than other members of the family because they received many antibodies from their mothers before birth.
I told my wife all about this. Then the real story unveiled itself last night; my wife caught some bad virus and began to throw herself up. She moaned. No, she grimaced as she continued to feed our baby. Ugh! Colic is much less a problem for our baby. It's her mother who got into nasty colic. Her stomach was in knots. Oh, my. That's exactly what I had been told. I know.
To give you a little bit of the idea, I would say it's just like looking into a crystal ball. I believed that I should take a good look at Dr. Spook's Baby and Child Care yesterday; I then read the advice how to nurse and breast-feed a baby when the mother is ill. This made me feel like I was already in control of it. I was less scared after being told, to be sure, there is a chance of the baby's catching the ailment, but this would be true even if the infant weren't being nursed. I can rest assured that babies on average have milder colds than other members of the family because they received many antibodies from their mothers before birth.
I told my wife all about this. Then the real story unveiled itself last night; my wife caught some bad virus and began to throw herself up. She moaned. No, she grimaced as she continued to feed our baby. Ugh! Colic is much less a problem for our baby. It's her mother who got into nasty colic. Her stomach was in knots. Oh, my. That's exactly what I had been told. I know.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Little Prince
I remember reading the queer experience of the little prince seeing a lamplighter putting out the street lamp, followed by lighting it again. And then another morning, with the lamp extinguished again. Over a hundred thousand times. I remember it as a back-and-forth between the lamplighter and the little prince's fondness for his own rose. Antoine de Saint Exupéry's story helps me understand what the little prince describes as "the rose that belongs to me."
"Because she is my rose," said the little prince. "In herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses."
This passage moves me every time I read it. This is even more so after having a new baby. Now she has my full attention; it is she that I have changed nappies; it is she that I have bought truckloads of outfits and nightclothes. Just as the little prince cherishes his own rose, I'm simply enthusiastic with mine although an ordinary passerby would think that my baby looks like the hundreds of other babies.
It's an idea that cries out for individual experience. It appeals not to the gardeners' teaching of how to water roses, but to your own way of watering. We learned the bell curve and growth chart, but I have to look after my baby in her own manner. Never mind that mine hasn't gained much weight after birth. Nobody is to classify my baby as "failure to thrive." And let's face it, we don't want to classify ourselves as a failure. Who does? Countless times my wife and I have to decide if our baby gets enough breast milk. Sh-h-h, we fix our eyes on the clock and keep track of how many minutes (if not seconds) our baby suckles. From the moment we brought our baby home from the hospital, everything changed. Taking care of our own baby is, after all, a learn-by-doing, seat-of-the-pants, unique and individual project. To make life simple, we need our own way of doing it. Right now, for example, we've thrown away the notepad for scoring the start and end times of each feeding. Every time our baby girl starts her meal, I play a new CD. Instead of counting as the clock ticks, we learn to count the number of songs. It works – and definitely for our little princess.
"Because she is my rose," said the little prince. "In herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses."
This passage moves me every time I read it. This is even more so after having a new baby. Now she has my full attention; it is she that I have changed nappies; it is she that I have bought truckloads of outfits and nightclothes. Just as the little prince cherishes his own rose, I'm simply enthusiastic with mine although an ordinary passerby would think that my baby looks like the hundreds of other babies.
It's an idea that cries out for individual experience. It appeals not to the gardeners' teaching of how to water roses, but to your own way of watering. We learned the bell curve and growth chart, but I have to look after my baby in her own manner. Never mind that mine hasn't gained much weight after birth. Nobody is to classify my baby as "failure to thrive." And let's face it, we don't want to classify ourselves as a failure. Who does? Countless times my wife and I have to decide if our baby gets enough breast milk. Sh-h-h, we fix our eyes on the clock and keep track of how many minutes (if not seconds) our baby suckles. From the moment we brought our baby home from the hospital, everything changed. Taking care of our own baby is, after all, a learn-by-doing, seat-of-the-pants, unique and individual project. To make life simple, we need our own way of doing it. Right now, for example, we've thrown away the notepad for scoring the start and end times of each feeding. Every time our baby girl starts her meal, I play a new CD. Instead of counting as the clock ticks, we learn to count the number of songs. It works – and definitely for our little princess.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Buying
Many a time while going shopping, I would ask my wife what's the purpose of buying a new thing. Without a doubt, finding the reason to spend money on anything new is the most challenging test a man will ever face.
After nine months of witnessing my wife's ever-growing belly to be a full-fledged baby, it began to dawn on me that I might not be as good as my wife in buying the right stuff.
Oh, sure, I hadn't thought of any good reasons when my wife previously bought all kinds of pillows and cushions – not until the pregnancy Olympics kick-started. I then saw her juggling the pillows and cushions to sleep through the night during her last trimester, to accommodate the gymnastics routine of our new baby during breastfeeding. I must confess the shame I feel when I had the eye-opening demonstration of versatile cushions.
In much the same vein, I could never understand why my wife bought me that many T-shirts. T-shirts are downright durable. Why should I have so many of them when one T-shirt seems to last forever? It isn't easy to find out why until I looked at her bigger and bigger tummy. Each and every day I would see her wearing my comfy T-shirts – lots to pick from my wardrobe.
After nine months of witnessing my wife's ever-growing belly to be a full-fledged baby, it began to dawn on me that I might not be as good as my wife in buying the right stuff.
Oh, sure, I hadn't thought of any good reasons when my wife previously bought all kinds of pillows and cushions – not until the pregnancy Olympics kick-started. I then saw her juggling the pillows and cushions to sleep through the night during her last trimester, to accommodate the gymnastics routine of our new baby during breastfeeding. I must confess the shame I feel when I had the eye-opening demonstration of versatile cushions.
In much the same vein, I could never understand why my wife bought me that many T-shirts. T-shirts are downright durable. Why should I have so many of them when one T-shirt seems to last forever? It isn't easy to find out why until I looked at her bigger and bigger tummy. Each and every day I would see her wearing my comfy T-shirts – lots to pick from my wardrobe.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Red Letter Day
Red letter days never cease to fill our hearts with joy and real fun. So much so that, hooray, the arrival of my baby brings with her miraculous words of admiration.
But there's a catch. The right thing to say – as it is when it comes to so many aspects of red letter days – is what's appropriate for everyone.
If there's anything more embarrassing than a question "So, when are you going to tie the knot?" in a wedding party, it's the question "When are you two going to have kids?"
The reality is that such questions often pop up while we're supposed to be celebrating. This happened when the friends came to celebrate the birth of my angel. Beads of perspiration glistered over my forehead when my mum, brimming with surprising enthusiasm, asked the second "funny" question. Hmmm. Is this really anyone else's business? That never is.
But there's a catch. The right thing to say – as it is when it comes to so many aspects of red letter days – is what's appropriate for everyone.
If there's anything more embarrassing than a question "So, when are you going to tie the knot?" in a wedding party, it's the question "When are you two going to have kids?"
The reality is that such questions often pop up while we're supposed to be celebrating. This happened when the friends came to celebrate the birth of my angel. Beads of perspiration glistered over my forehead when my mum, brimming with surprising enthusiasm, asked the second "funny" question. Hmmm. Is this really anyone else's business? That never is.
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