In Honor of Our Recent Nuptials

In honor of our recent nuptials (first of all, HOORAY!!!, and second of all, maybe I should actually blog about that sometime?), I thought I'd post a little retelling of one of my favorite dates with Michael, back when we were both still living in Provo.

This was about two weeks before my most recent birthday in August. We knew that we were going to be apart for my actual birthday, since I was going to be starting school in Ohio and Michael was going to be finishing in Provo, so Michael wanted to do something special ahead of time. A few days before the big date, I got a handmade card in the mail from him, formally inviting me to this date. Adorable.

The actual activities of the night were a surprise, but when I got to his apartment, I saw that all his roommates had taken off, and the table was set with candles and fancy china he had borrowed just for the night, and there were roses on the table. We had a delicious dinner of a homemade vegetable pasta, stuffed grape leaves (they’re one of my favorite foods but it’s almost impossible to find good ones in Utah!), and sparkling juice. And we toasted to us and clinked glasses and said mushy things.

After that romantic dinner, he whisked me away in the car to a still-secret location for the rest of our date. And as we wound our way up Provo Canyon, past gorgeous summer scenery, I started to figure out where we were going. About a month and a half before this particular night, I had mentioned that the Sound of Music was my probably my second-favorite musical ever. And that weekend, there was an outdoor performance of it in Park City! The scenery was amazing—being nestled in the mountains was the perfect, perfect setting for everything. We laid out a blanket and snuggled up together and watched a great performance.

After the show, when it was dark, we took a long-cut back to the car (they had a shuttle bus since the parking lot was far away, but it was warm and the sky was full of stars…) and it was the most romantic thing ever. I thought the date was over at that point, but then he told me he had one last surprise for me—a Dairy Queen ice cream cake, my favorite food EVER! Then we fell asleep cuddling on the couch (don’t worry, I woke up in time to get home before the Honor Code fairies caught me), and it was just the most perfect date. So well-planned and romantic! Lovey lovey love :)

Removable Bottoms

Did you know that there's such a thing as a tube pan with a removable bottom? I did not, until tonight. I made a delicious, decadent chocolate velvet cake batter, grabbed a tube pan from Michael's cupboard, and stuck it in the oven. A few minutes later, I was met with a curious burning smell. About a half cup of the batter had already leaked out the bottom and was turning into a molten, smoldering mess on the bottom of the oven.














And here's Michael, cleaning up my dumb mess. What a stud!

P.S. We are attempting to rescue the remaining cake batter, now placed in a sturdy, trustworthy bundt pan. Don't know how it'll turn out, given it cooked for five minutes, cooled off, and is now being baked again, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Food

Lately I've been realizing that I don't want to eat things that make me feel full, like peanut butter or oils or whatever. I want to eat whatever lets me eat a lot.

Lunch today was fat-free cottage cheese, a drizzle of raspberry vinaigrette, and a green bell pepper, cut into strips for dipping. All told, it was under 200 calories, but it took me like ten minutes to eat and now I practically have a food baby. It was awesome. My sister told me that every time she makes macaroni and cheese, she adds a frozen bag of broccoli—it's delightful with the cheese and it means that one regular helping gets to be twice as big as it would be if it was just pasta and sauce.

I just don't think cookies and peanut butter are very good bargains. I mean, I love them, with my whole heart, but seeing as how the whole moderation thing doesn't work for me (I always find myself eating like ten cookies, or six tablespoons of peanut butter, or a whole bag of Child's Play), I think I just need to buy lots of calorie-light foods. Maybe diet pop, fat free yogurt and cottage cheese, vegetables, fruit, and fat free Cool Whip should become the staples of my diet.

Soon I will blog about New Orleans and wedding plans.

Personhood Revisited

So the Personhood Amendment failed in Missisippi, thank goodness.

For a little wrap-up analysis, I enjoyed this article. Here's an excerpt of something I found particularly disturbing:

If Personhood USA doesn't have popular support even among conservatives, at least they have high profile politicians willing to pay them lip service. The degree of disconnect between what politicians say they believe and what voters actually want has reached nearly comical levels. In the Mississippi gubernatorial race, both the defeated Democrat Johnny Dupree and the victorious Republican Phil Bryant publicly supported the Personhood amendment. As Salon's Irin Carmon points out, it was difficult to find more than a handful of public officials willing to publicly declare that they were opposed to personhood in the state. Out of step support for the measure doesn't stop there, though; GOP Presidential field (with the exception of poor forgotten Jon Huntsman) has reached a general consensus that personhood is a dandy idea. Even Mitt Romney, who this side of the airing of the last episode of The Wonder Years was speaking out in favor of abortion rights, has said he would sign personhood legislation into law as the country's executive.

Not to sound like a campaign ad, but if candidates of a major party feel compelled to align themselves with an ideology that is too extreme for even America's most conservative state, something is amiss.

For now, at least, let's hope politicians have gotten the hint that people simply aren't interested in inviting the government any further into our reproductive organs. Let's enjoy the rueful sense of victory that comes from being declared more important than a fetus by ballot initiative. And let's ponder the irony of an organization that believes that life begins at the moment of conception, yet doesn't believe that the game ends after they've clearly lost.

Sighs all around.

School

We started out school with an intensive anatomy block. We did several hours of dissection on most days, in addition to getting lectures on anatomy, embryology, and histology. We also have an ongoing clinical skills curriculum. It's been fun and challenging and engaging. I loved learning about new things and I especially loved learning about things that were so clinically relevant. Things like the pattern of innervation in the arm and hand are super important to know!

Last week we had the final exam for anatomy (along with the Post-Gross Toast, an annual party the first year med students put on after the last test in the anatomy block; this was also the first time Michael and I have gone to a bar together, and a lot of diet Coke and cranberry juice were had by us). So this week has been the first week of the Cell block. A sampling of our first few lectures: Protein Biochemistry, Plasma Membrane, Myoglobin and Hemoglobin, and Enzyme Biochemistry. YAWWWWWWWWWN. So far, it's all just been a rehash of stuff I learned in O-chem, biochem, and nutritional biochem. That's bad enough. But I really have to say that going back to basic science after getting a little taste of clinical relevance is just torture. In undergrad, I loved basic science classes! They were interesting and I was good at them! But now, I just can't make myself give two hoots about it. I think after this Cell block, and the Host Defense block, we'll start doing a lot more interesting things again (neuro, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, etc). But I can make it through five months of boring classes! I guess. Thank goodness we have an ongoing clinical skills class; otherwise, this would be ten times worse!

Donuts

Today, as I walked in to school from the parking lot, the entire hospital campus smelled overwhelmingly of hot, fresh donuts. It made for a fun walk in, but it was a little odd, considering that there aren't really any bakeries around the area, and I've never smelled anything so awesome on my morning walk in. Unusual but definitely no complaints.

When I got in to the med school building, I saw that one of the med school clubs had set up a free breakfast table inside the lobby. With about 200 donuts. Now, I don't think these donuts could have been the parking lot aroma culprits, but if I were doing a literary analysis of my life, I'd definitely call that foreshadowing. Donut foreshadowing. Probably the best kind.

"Personhood"

So today on the drive home, I was listening to NPR and I heard a lot of discussion of Mississippi's new "Personhood amendment."

Basically, this amendment would define "personhood" as beginning at conception. The biggest implication of that is that anything that interferes with the zygote/embryo/fetus' growth and development could be legally considered assault, involuntary manslaughter, or homicide. That includes many types of normal, everyday birth control, such as Plan B and IUDs. If someone is raped, they would be unable to use the morning-after pill. They would also be unable to receive an abortion. If a woman miscarried for any reason that could possibly be construed as "her fault," including things like exercising, she would be guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Not only that, but this amendment would also interfere with many fertility treatments, denying children to infertile couples who desperately want to raise a child. It would interfere with stem cell research, which is being used, to, oh, you know, cure disease and stuff. Oh yeah, and it would also make any kind of abortion—whether elective or medical—illegal.

Here's the thing: people have different ideas of where life begins. Is it at the first breath? First heartbeat? Conception? "When the mother feels life come to her infant"? When it starts to look like a person?

I've heard people defend using conception as the start of life, but it has always seemed really arbitrary to me. People say, "Well, fertilization is the point when you get something with the potential to become a human, with feelings and the ability to contribute to the world." Of course zygotes have the potential to become humans. Sure, but before it can become a real human, a little conceptus still needs to get to the uterus, it needs to have a perfectly hospitable environment there, it needs to have no major genetic flaws (which can cause spontaneous miscarriage), it needs to be kept free from teratogens, it needs adequate nourishment, it needs to develop in all the right ways, and it needs to survive labor and delivery. So sure, the potential is there, but there are a whole lot of intervening steps.

You know what else has the potential to become a human? Unfertilized eggs! And the sperm that never saw them! Compared to the fertilized egg, these only require one more step (the fertilization itself) in the path to becoming a full-fledged human. So as long as we're being arbitrary, why not draw the line there? What's so magical about the cortical reaction that makes two cells suddenly become a "person"? Why not mourn over the loss of potential life that every period or wet dream represents?

And furthermore, why do people care about this? Why would anyone welcome the government into our medical exams, into our bedrooms, into our families? And why is it that the same people who demand protection for little cell accumulations are often the same ones who want to deny privileges like affordable housing, healthcare, and education to actual human adults, who, unlike zygotes, have brains and feelings? Why is it that so many conservatives rail against the government regulating our lives, and yet so many of them demand that the government involve itself in our most private, personal decisions, like when and how to bear children? I seriously cannot understand it.

I think this whole debacle is just a result of people trying to legislate their religious opinions. You guys. That is a sucky thing to do. If we start doing this, then the minute the majority has a religious opinion that doesn't coincide with yours, you're screwed. I think we have to accept the fact that no matter how strongly you know that your religion is true, someone else feels just as strongly about their own different religion. Do you want them feeling entitled to turn their moral opinions into laws that affect you, just because they feel strongly about it? Come on, guys. This is the opposite of what our country is about.

Ok, this is starting to get off-topic. But I think that one of the reasons why the Personhood amendment is so repellent to me is that people are basically drawing a random, arbitrary line in the sand, but instead of quietly living by their arbitrary sand-line and trying to do what they think is right in their own lives, for some reason, they're trying to make their arbitrary line affect me and limit what I'm legally allowed to do. It doesn't matter whether I even wanted to get an abortion or use those particular types of birth control or ever get fertility treatments; I still say no thank you to being subject to someone else's morals! As long my moral decisions don't hurt organisms with brains and pain receptors (cough, cough, this doesn't include zygotes), I want to be able to choose what I want, and I think other people deserve that same privilege.

This post is really just about my feelings on the Personhood amendment. I have mixed feelings about abortion in general—personally, I find the idea of abortion repellent, but I also feel that making birth control and abortions safe and accessible will go a very long way toward reducing the suffering of men and women who don't want to be pregnant, and also toward reducing the suffering of babies and children who would otherwise have to be born to parents who didn't want them and/or couldn't care for them. And isn't reducing suffering one of the best ways to make the world a better place?

I don't know. Again, I have mixed feelings about elective abortions, but strong feelings against the arbitrary invasion of privacy and independence that Mississippi's Personhood amendment represents.

First Post

I've been thinking a lot about blogging more. I have a 20-minute drive to get to school every morning, and when I actually get to school, I'm so full of thoughts that I really just want to write something when I arrive. Problems: my old blog is basically inactive, I had too many things to say for a facebook status update, and I don't tweet. Solution: start a new blog! And put Michael's name in it! I figure since every newlywed couple starts a blog together, we may as well get a head start on this (our wedding isn't until December, but whatever).

Anyway, on my drive to school, there's a point where the highway curves around and suddenly there's an awesome view of the Columbus skyline. It approaches from the west, so depending on how early/late I left that morning, I sometimes get to see the skyscrapers outlined against a brilliant sunrise. Today everything was foggy, so I got to see these fog-shrouded giants rising out of the ground, silhouetted against these vast stretches of low-lying magenta clouds. It was really something to see. I was sad when my exit came.