Power of Single-Boatedness

The more I reflect upon God’s orchestration, the more I feel confident that his plans are good. I’m not entirely sure I am able to give out what has happened in the past three weeks. Some have already known, and that’s cool. The main deal is that I have seen how God has worked in my life and in a friend’s. Man, it just doesn’t sound very powerful when there are no details. Too bad.

However… however! there is no excuse that I should not state the things that I am grateful for.

I think the coolest thing about being in school is that in school, we have a group of people all in the same boat, and all struggling through the same things. That’s very encouraging to know! Although I knew these things, I did not actually experience the “power of single-boatedness” for myself (ooo, nice title, I think I’ll put it up). You see, this past week has been a busy one. I had a lab calculation exercise due on Friday. I had a test on Thursday, and I must say it tickled my brain until it started biting back in bouts of anger (aka, the test was challenging). Nevertheless, in the midst of all this, I was encouraged (comforted would also make a good adjective) to find that because of single-boatedness, I was able to walk through this week feeling like I’ve accomplished what I needed to accomplish.

I’ll be more specific. Three nights of this week was spent at a friend’s house (Mr. Rascon = total coolness^2), studying chemistry and having fun with it until literally midnight. I come back to my apartment with my room mate out cold on the bed asleep, and I feel achieved because I completely juiced this evening of all its time on things that are important.

That’s kind of what learning should be… fellowship, accountability, Socratic method of discovery and learning. I love that! And I hope that’s the way it will be at University. And if it’s not, I’ll use my super persuasion skills to hypnotize them to the ways of single-boatedness.

Hopefully that doesn’t result in me giving away my notes and betting stabbed in the back. Then again people are evil by nature… Then again, I think I can tell when someone is genuine in their educational pursuits.

Oh, oh OH! I forgot to talk about this next issue!!! In my biology class, you see… there’s a lady who is a “high functioning autistic” (i mistook function for maintenance and Mr. Yang kindly corrected me). It has been a couple of weeks since the beginning of the semester, and my teacher has had a really hard time trying to teach her due to her special needs. She would ask obvious questions, and in class activities, she has trouble performing certain tasks. So I talked to Mr. Yang, and he told me (since he had a loved one who has autism) that people who have autism are people too, created in God’s image. He encouraged me to look past the abnormalities and treat her like just another human being.

The next time we were outside of our lab, she came to sit next to us in a puff… “I feel like dropping!” she told me. The other guys, feeling super awkward, decided to go outside to eat an apple or subway. I initiated a connection, “why?” I said.

She told me that she has read everything she needed to read, but when she asked the teacher if that’s enough, the teacher replied with an annoyed “no.” As I listened to her, I found it to be true… seriously, she is just another person who has the same feelings and the same frustrations as I do.

So, being the awesome consoler I am (tee hee), I told her that she’s on the right track, and that she has worked hard. I also told her that the teacher is saying this because he’s a big ugly troll (I’m just kidding, teacher, you’re cool). Well, what did I say about the teacher to her? hmm. whatever I said, she felt more confident… I think I explained the endosymbiotic hypothesis to her in VERY plain English, and what was so cool was when she understood what I was trying to say, she became very happy.

And I was happy, because if I can explain stuff so that she can understand, I will also understand it at an even deeper level than I ever knew.

You see how God just…. does stuff? All he asks is that our hearts remain sincere, and that our motives work towards good.

Now I just need to detoxify my sin-saturated mind and  revive my heart… with the help of the Lord, of course.

Very well, then. Onward.

Death be not proud.

So I’m here right now, glaring at my computer screen, listening to Pandora, and about to rip my chemistry lab manual apart because I’m so confused about what I’m supposed to do for the lab write-up. It’s Sunday. I’ve been working on stuff all weekend, (sorta). I feel like my brain is going to explode if I find another error in my work.

It’s at these times when I receive inspiration in the strangest ways. And today, the inspiration came from the death of someone I knew. This morning, I logged onto facebook to find out that a student from my school died of cancer after a long time of fighting it. I’m not sure how to take it: he was ready for it to happen because the doctors gave him warning, yet I still cannot believe he is no longer with us. He was young.

So here I am, among the agenda of academics, just sitting still for a little bit, still listening to Pandora… reflecting.

I talked to Ian during a worship night, when he explained that he wished to be closer to God. My friend, Isaac, and I both gave him advice and shared our experiences. I explained how being close to God could be intense, and gave the example of a time when I was prayed for by five married adult couples that I may be free from the enemy’s strongholds and bondage (that particular time of prayer lasted until midnight). His eyes widened… “you were prayed for for two hours?” I nodded… and at that time I was encouraged that Ian was thinking and reflecting what being with God really meant and how being disciplined is like an aroma pleasing to God.

Now, over three years later, Ian has lived a life of fellowship with God, and is now with God.

I wonder what kind of things a doctor feels when a patient dies. The pain of knowing that there was a way to cure someone, but the timing was wrong and it was too late…  The fear for the patient that is staring at me face to face asking me “am I going to die?” The immense sorrow of me nodding my head and trying not to overemphasize it… The gesture of looking at my watch to record the time this patient breathed his last. I shudder, I choke, I gag… I weep.

I can only observe that because we are human, we fear the end of ourselves. The only thing that sustains us during the last minutes of our lives is the Lord himself. I can just picture myself, as I die, falling into a dream, where I stand before a canyon. Jesus is on the other side, and his palms face me. He lets his blood flow out of him, and it hardens, forming a bridge from my side to his.

Sounds so much better than writing a lab report, huh?

Ian, you are now in Christ’s embrace. I rejoice in your life. The Kingdom awaits.

Fire in my Belly

There’s a fire in my belly. And oh, isn’t it a lovely fire? Passion. Humility. Love. Hope. These are just a few things that fuel this fire.

I went to see my transfer counselor at the community college today. The moment she printed out my unofficial college transcript, she started to get sarcastic on me… “Andrew… can’t you have any better grades than this?” I smiled and said with mischief… “no…”

The appointment was mainly to get me ready for the Medical Internship I will be participating in at the University Campus this summer (that is… if I get in). My counselor was very confident that the experience (service, and academic) will qualify me for the program and will mark me as a favorable applicant. But there was one time during the discussion that I knew that this counselor did not like me simply because I work hard, it was because of the “fire in my belly” as she described.

“From talking to you, I can tell that the things you are doing in class, and the things that you are doing as a volunteer really interest you. You are doing well in everything, and you are enjoying the experience. But look at the people who work to earn grades the same as yours, but are miserable because they feel like they are laboring through their classes for a goal that is not really their’s!”

Hearing her say this was something that really encouraged me. That was the kind of impact I wanted to have on people… that they will know that my authenticity is like a fire that will proudly blaze through everything it touches.

This also sparked a lot of uneasiness in my heart… that is… the fire in my belly engaged with my mind as I thought about my mission.

Thought #1: Recently, my aunt had a mass in her liver that they could not identify. She lived in Canada, and her doctor scheduled an MRI for the end of March. This appointment occurred in early January. This is what appeared to be the logical reasoning: “If the mass is a tumor, there is little we can do about it, so there is no point in scheduling the MRI so quickly. If the mass is not a risk, we will know it is not a risk when we take the MRI in March. Piece of cake” Um… NOT a piece of cake, when you’re a woman that has a family who cares about her and needs to know how to prepare to the future. My father is a great man, and since my aunt has a Taiwanese health care plan, Dad arranged for her to be checked out. An ultrasound and an MRI later, my aunt’s worries were gone. The mass was a cyst, harmless mass of blood that accumulated in the back right side of the liver. Wasn’t it better for my aunt to worry for one week than for her to worry for three months? Here’s a point to the healthcare reformers that want a privatized healthcare system. I really hope that if government-run healthcare is used in this nation, people will be smart in using this service. One faulty way of thinking is “If this stuff’s free, we can use it all we want!” Nah, that’s not the way it works. This “stuff” ain’t free, rich people are paying for it (heck, if I were rich, I’d be willing to pay up to 50% of my income in taxes… only on the condition that people will be smart with what their government offers them).

Thought #2: Did you know that a drug is simply an enzyme inhibitor? Our bodies are controlled and kept stable by tiny little guys that have different shapes. These little guys are called enzymes, they are cool, because they are made up of proteins. What makes them cooler is that they help us make things we need to survive by speeding up the process. Anything from pee to mucus, inflammation agents to regulatory chemicals for every function of the body. Take the example of a headache… The reason why we have pain is because enzymes are speeding up the process of the production of inflammation agents that end up causing our veins pressing against our nerves (uh, not sure if that’s accurate, but something like that happens)… Basically, a drug like aspirin will have a chemical that has the key to shut off that particular inflammation agent producing enzyme. Some people complain that when they eat aspirin they have stomach problems… No, it’s not because aspirin burns a hole in the tummy… it’s because that inflammation agent producing enzyme does two things, it makes inflammation agents, AND it makes chemicals that regulate stomach (or intestinal?) function… Oh my gosh!!! No wonder drugs have side effects. Some chemicals have shapes that end up attaching to the wrong enzyme… people sometimes die because of this and that makes me sad…

But it makes me so happy to know now, what drugs are, and why it is so good at helping people. Now, if we have the technology to investigate enzyme structures such that side effects would not happen, then this world would be a better place.

Thought #3: Lastly, when I learned the above thought from my biology professor, he talked about how the enzyme protease (no, it’s not pro-tease… it’s pro tee ase… hahaha) can be inhibited to help stop the progression of HIV and prevent AIDS. I remember talking to my counselor and reflecting upon the emphasis of community service… She told me about the strong community service emphasis at UCSF’s medical school, where, in San Francisco, there is a high HIV+ population. Hearing my teacher talk about how we have the power, through drugs (I mean, enzyme inhibitors), to take people off the track to death and give them live, I wanted to cry. This is the redemption so many people need to jump start their faith and reinvigorate their spirits… basically, light a fire in their bellies. And I want to take part in the redemptive nature of medicine… that it continues to give second chances because we know more about what we are.

Saint Peter said that love covers a multitude of sins… We are called by Christ to love one another. Let’s make this world a different place before it dies.

Then again, does it have to be medicine?

My dad and I were driving to someplace during my time back in Taiwan. Usually, my dad opens up and wants to talk about stuff when he’s driving (maybe that’s what being in a car has sometimes been unpleasant, since my dad lectures me about my indecencies in such settings, but that’s another story). This is what he said during that car ride.

“Not that I want to discourage you from something, but do you know why I regret doing medicine?”

I hate it when my dad brings up rhetorical sounding questions. Unfortunately that’s what he does often. I answered his question with in a joking way.

“Because… you’d rather deal with machines than people?” I gave a snicker and my dad gave a “no.” Silence.

“It’s because in medicine, there’s always something new, and I’m not a fan of new things. I dislike learning something every progressing year, and medicine is constantly changing. It’s because of this that many of my classmates who used to be behind me are now way ahead of me.” I nodded and gave a vocal gesture to signify that I understood.

“So if you choose to do medicine, be prepared, don’t relax too easily because there will be more information for you to digest in subsequent times.”

Now I’m just wondering, “Do I really want this?”

Haha, if I really want to help people, there needs to be sacrifice, but THIS? After my father described such circumstances, I was not sure that being trained as a physician will be very good for me. Given the intensity of the training, my personality could easily warp and I would turn into this nasty guy that gives people shots for money… gross!

In all honesty… I don’t know what it means when someone says “I want to be a doctor because I want to help people.” I feel like when medical school admission panels read all the personal statements that applicants spit out, all it is is simply a variation of all the little stories and analogies, blood and sweat… to say what? “I think I’m the perfect candidate for your school because I’m exactly what you’re looking for, I want to help people… oh yeah, and I’m smart, and I’m pretty, and I have a ton of volunteer hours to prove it.”

???

I don’t know, at least, when I try to write personal statements for summer internships, the above quotation seems to be the common motif that oozes out of me, even though I try to retain it (knowing that saying stuff like that will NOT help). What do I do? Authenticity and the presence of faith looks so cheesy on a written statement, and no one wants a sob story. And telling about my third culture background just seems like such a boring story.

As I continue to brainstorm for a personal statement, I grow weary. I am reminded of my dad saying “I regret doing medicine sometimes,” and I just think… hmm…

I guess the main goal for me is simply not to lose my vision. And what is my vision? It is a combination of my experience and my passion. There is no doubt that I am here in this world for a reason… if only God could speak to me and sharpen my vision so I may pursue it better. Alas, I know that part of the sharpening involves me sculpting my life and preparing it for the work I am to do.

When I held that child with cerebral palsy, I was moved. When I handed that teary eyed lady in the patient room a Bible, I felt like my life had a purpose… If I am a physician, will I live my passions out the same way?

Good question, Andrew, I should think about that for a bit.

So.. about medicine.

Now that I’ve sort of refreshed my mind, I can focus on one thing.

I like the idea of making people well again, and I now that I have experience in volunteering at the hospital and shadowing doctors, I can say more confidently that medicine could easily become my passion.

I’d like to share my first example. It is set in the hospital’s aquatic rehab pool that I work at on Friday afternoons. My responsibilities are chiefly to make sure no one drowns. But since the recreational therapist is in the pool rehabilitating patients, there isn’t much to worry about. I interact with patients. Because this is a rehab pool they usually have difficulty walking on ground but some are surprisingly amble in the water and are able to walk and do exercises where they would not be able to on land. I am able to hold patients’ hands and help them walk laps between the sides of the pool. I talk to the patients and they are a lot of fun to get to know. All this was okay, I thought. It wasn’t all that exciting sometimes because I’m the youngest (supposedly strongest) person there and the patients need a lot of assistance sometimes. Thank goodness there are only seven or eight patients that come on Friday afternoon.

I think my mind changed about the rehab pool when a boy with cerebral palsy was strolled in by his mother. When the therapist gave me the okay to take the boy into the pool, I eagerly took the boy into my arms and he laughed as I lowered him into the warm 96 degree water. He bit me a couple times (for now it’s just gnawing) and his arms were sometimes unable to move the right way. His knees can’t bend, and he likes to arch forward, which is dangerous since he does not know how to hold his breath underwater and could easily gag if some water went down the wrong pipe.

As I held him, he would giggle. His eyes aimed at two different locations but I knew he was looking at me when I shot him up and down like a rocket (his favorite activity it seems). He laughed when I rowed him around in the water. He eagerly hugged me whenever I got tired from holding him and rested him on my shoulder.  He was absolutely wonderful, and he seemed to fulfill a need inside of me when he was being himself. After all, I like hugs, and I wish people were more open to them here. After a little bit, the therapist came over to do her fun exercises with the boy. She sang and helped him dance around in the water, and assessed his progress, etc. The encounter with the boy is one example why I would give everything I have to be able to help people.

In that boy, I saw courage, though he doesn’t really see it yet. When I volunteer in the hospital, I see so many patients, and some may be buried in stress and despair. However, there are others with hearts that are stronger than Kevlar. There was an old lady I met in the transitional care unit, and her faith in Christ literally kept her in good spirits. There were workers in the hospital whose passion and caring hearts could be seen wherever they went. In a place where people die, somehow people learn to live.

It’s so strange, though I would hate to see people die, at the same time I know that I would be so encouraged to witness the character and strength of individuals that face harsh circumstances. It’s moving to see sick people acting as though they weren’t sick. I love it when even though chemotherapy does not work on a patient, the patient is still smiling when she sees her grandchildren. So much strength… It’s like light in the darkness, like a flower among weeds… That smiling face tells me everything’s going to be all right when scientific data and biological analysis give grim statistics about the chance of life.

So yes, I will push papers, I will analyze data, I will read about how DNA connect and duplicate and give information in order to make proteins. I will study like a madman, continue on journey after journey to discover that the body is one big cluster of chemical reactions. I will learn everything about the body. But when that day comes where I walk into a patient’s room in a white coat and a clipboard, all this information will mean nothing. That is the moment I will learn to really love. Just like the boy in my arms chewing on my shoulder in the rehab pool, every patient has a heart.

All those years I will spend learning about medicine… for a chance to experience the depth of each person’s heart. What a glorious sacrifice! And for some reason, I think I’m going to love every step of it.

Picking Andrew Chang’s Brain Once Again

So I’m sitting here, in an apartment, all alone, listening to my iPod, and thinking… “I’m not good at songwriting, I can’t give a darn about anything on the internet except looking for e-mails and occasionally seeing a funny video on youtube. It’s a Saturday and I’m bored.”

And thus the random online blurbs about my super exciting life continues in a journey to perplex, a ride to confuse, and essentially an endeavor to entertain while my boredom exceeds the suggested dosage and leaves me melting on the floor.

Oh right. School has begun, and it has been one week… just a little bit of info that I forgot to mention.

It’s kind of a strange period of time when I’m super excited (haha) and then again feel a mixture of remorse (why did I decide to go back to school when I could be earning money?), and meh-ness, whatever that means. Basically, I’m saying “hello world” then laughing at myself for being here all by my lonesome. At least God has a sense of humor when I wanted so badly to move out of my brother’s house. “That’s what you get, peabrain…” thanks God, I get the message.

I don’t want to talk about school right now… actually I don’t even know what to talk about. I just feel like typing and proving my existence. So far I’m satisfied.

I might have to explain my absence from this blog; I haven’t been on here for over a year, and now I finally feel like I might be able to have something to say. What was I going to say? Oh yeah, “I’ve got nothing important to do.” Considering it’s 9:30 at night, that’s a good thing.

But stupidity and randomness aside, I want to have a point in writing. Let’s see… I’m in college, I’m interested in medicine, and the study of molecular biology is beginning to get me really excited about the world I live in. This is no random thing. What’s random is my reluctance to take myself seriously.

So, all right, here’s the scoop. It’s been a while, and if anyone was ever really following my crazy train of thought, it’s good to see you again.

This past week has been kind of weird for me. I’m at a community college, and it’s my last semester before I transfer to UCSD. That’s probably where all this strangeness is coming from. That said, I am so looking forward to getting into the University environment and start interacting with different people. Furthermore, I am looking forward to expanding my knowledge, and positively influence people around me with my awesomeness. Of course I’m kidding about that last comment.

Being my over-achieving self, I have been memorizing amino acids. I’ve memorized eight. I don’t want to list what I’ve memorized because I would look like a nerd, and I promise you that I do not want to be a nerd. I highly doubt, however, that memorizing amino acids’ molecular structures will get me into medical school.

Speaking of medical school, I have been looking for something to occupy my time during the long three month summer between my last semester at my community college and my first quarter at UCSD. I hope to get into a program called the University Link Medical Science Program. It’s a one month live in program where we get a boot camp introduction into the discipline of health professions. I applied last year, but I was rejected due to poor preparation. I guess one semester of classes and nothing else didn’t cut it. So, 120 hours of physician shadowing and 200 hours of volunteering and 40 college credits later, I’m ready to tell them that I am worthy of a place in the program.

The only thing to crank out now is an essay that tells them that I can think and I am a cool person. Should be easy, but it’s so hard. Many of my friends will testify that I think too much. Seriously, I think so much about what I’m going to say that I end up convincing myself that what I am about to type out is so ridiculously stupid that I never write it out.

You know what? Now that I have something to write about, I’m going to get out of this stupid stream of consciousness and start a new post.