weather can make it better

oh my gosh you guys, have you been outside? it's so nice outside today!!! my computer says it's 67º! (i know because i am inside with my computer, and it tells me how nice it is outside while i study and observe that it certainly LOOKS nice out there from in here with my books.) on sunday it was blowing snow so hard at night that the snow drifts were stuck to the side of our house on monday morning! and today it's like summer outside. i unwrapped my bike from its winter cocoon of tarp and ropes and cleaned it up just so i could ride downtown and study this afternoon. that's my bike right there--look how happy it is be have its chain nice and greased up, sitting downtown in the sunlight. i'm surprised it didn't get rickets from not getting any sunlight all winter. i'm really surprised about that. that it didn't get a vitamin d deficiency and then osteomalacia from its 3 months without sunlight. isn't that really surprising? i'm really glad my bike doesn't have rickets. oh, these medical jokes just NEVER stop being funny. right, guys?

even med students skip class for history

actually, that's a misleading headline, because med students skip class all the time. for anything, but especially to study. but here's a picture of some med students who skipped class specifically for history.

important update update

for those of you who come to my blog, frustrated that instead of the information you want, you're being left with meaningless stories about mishaps at target or new and interesting things to hit with a bat or Why I Want To Be A Doctor When I Grow Up, etc, i think this will be a welcome change. because today, instead of continuing the silence, i'm updating you all on the ongoing status of my own special chronic disease.

i know that many of you have drawn inspiration and courage from my story and my insistence that i will continue to live a normal life despite what many consider to be a debilitating disability. i know many of you see me, going about daily life, never blaming my shortcomings on my illness, and you feel within you the desire to be something better, to be...MORE. you say to yourselves, "if a man with such a handicap can live a relatively normal life all by himself, think of what a healthy person like me can do!". perhaps you, too, suffer from this disease and regularly overcome the same struggles, stigmas, and prejudice that i do. you know the pain, and you continue on. i know that many of you point at your jeremy portaits on your mantles, or your jeremy buttons on the lapels of your winter coats, and, solemnly tapping the photo, you say simply "hero".

well, to each of you i say, thank you. because to me, you are all heroes. you all inspire me, and i have your pictures on the button on the lapel of my heart. and with your support for me, and all of our support for one another, we can overcome! we can be proud of who we are! we can say to the world "here i am, and i am here!". and we can hope for a cure. but until that time, i leave you with my motto:

be strong. be bold. be bald.

show and tell

kim and i host a church small group at our house. every once in awhile we have a show and tell night where one person shares something important to them or their development as a person. this week it's my turn, and we're going to watch "the motorcycle diaries". and since the old blog is named after the movie, and even exists because of a trip that was partly inspired by the movie, i thought i'd say a bit about it and its impact on my life here, as well.

after i graduated from college, i wasn't sure what i wanted to do with my life. i thought i might want to do medicine or some kind of scientific research, so i decided to spend a year trying both out. i started out doing research in lincoln, but my ultimate plan was to find a job researching somewhere in europe, and then to come back and work in a hospital the rest of my "extra" year. so a few months after graduating i was getting the research experience i'd need while exploring grants and options to work abroad. and then i saw the motorcycle diaries.

if you don't know, the movie focuses on a year or so in the life of che guevara, before he became a revolutionary, and sort of looks at the development of some of his ideals about equality, justice, and defending the downtrodden. if you just know him as the guy on t-shirts, or even if you know him as the guy who fought various revolutionary wars all over the world (and especially in cuba), you might be surprised to learn that he was just a few exams from completing his medical education and becoming a doctor in argentina when he began a journey that took him from the southern to the northern extremes of south america. and it's that trip that the movie is all about.

there's a lot about the movie that really resonated with me the first time i saw it--"restlessness, impassioned spirits, and a love for the open road," as che narrates in the introduction, for example, that i think helped to make the movie make such a big impression on me. but there were also bigger things about caring for people and about realizing lasting and meaningful change in people's lives, that served to articulate and identify for me the answers to some questions i'd been struggling with in terms of what i wanted to do with my life. i wouldn't say the movie made me feel or think a certain way, but i think seeing the movie and responding to it allowed me a glimpse into my own perspective on things.

but even more specifically, there's a scene that changed "being a doctor" from a potential career to something that i felt some part of me had been born to do. it's the scene pictured above, and in it che has been asked to visit this old sickly woman whose health has recently worsened, and as he examines and talks with her he treats her with such care and dignity and gentleness that i felt like i was watching some incredible, sacred work being done, and it seemed to me like the most amazing thing someone could do with their life. and in that moment i began changing my plans for the next year--as the movie played on, i wiped the research plan from my mind and first started planning ways to do medicine, and then to do medicine in the context of the sense of discovery and poverty i'd seen in the movie, and finally to try out medicine in south america. by the time the movie ended, i'd decided on a plan of action that ultimately led to my trip to ecuador, and has ultimately led to me studying medicine here in chicago.

the movie influenced me in other ways, too, but if i was going to make a map to retrace my life, this movie, and even that scene, would serve as a sort of signpost in the road, and even a direction on the compass. as the movie's tagline says:

"deja que el mundo te cambie, y tú podrás cambiar el mundo."

update of utmost import

when my blog was on hiatus these last several months, people would always ask me "hey jeremy, why haven't you written on your blog lately?" or "dude, what's the deal? did you break your hands?" or "have you joined some kind of anti-internet cult?". what they didn't ask me, but what i always knew they were curious about, was "so jeremy, how's your male pattern baldness coming along?" well, now that i have time to blog again, i can give you, readership, the kind of information you've been really longing for and missing these last long months. i give you the current status of the top of my head, as of thursday, may 15:



as you can see, this last year has seen a mass emigration of hair and hair follicles. as someone who's been told since he was about 5 years old that he'd one day be as bald as his dad, i've had plenty of time to notice various balding styles (and also to amass a list of bald heroes, including george bluth, winston churchill, michael jordan, (zidane, until that incident in 2006), and of course larry david, who even beat churchill for the position of honorary president of the club). i have to say, it's not time to abandon ship (shave head completely) yet, but i do see cause for alarm. note, for example, that worrying tuft of hair in the middle of the loss zone (that's what i call it). in all my days of observation of baldness, i've never seen anyone make the donut look good. i have to say, though, that i'm very glad to be losing my hair from the middle out, as opposed to from the front. i always worried how having my forehead slowly taking over my hairline like a territorial dispute would effect the overall look of my face. fortunately, i'll never have to know.

taking this picture (which, by the way, i did about 7 times trying to get the perfect angle for hair-loss assessment) made me wish i'd done this more consistently over the last 5 or so years so that i could have more closely monitored the development up there. i wonder if you can pinpoint the exact day you start to look like you're going bald if you're watching closely. probably not--you know what they say about watched pots boiling and all. wow, i think i may have just stumbled across the perfect hair loss prevention technique*--just keep watching it...really closely. it's cheaper than rogaine, folks. GENIUS!

*in all seriousness, though, you know how in the x-men movies they try to find a "cure" for the mutants, to make them normal again? and how all the mutants are like "we don't want a cure--we're AWESOME and we like it"? that's exactly how i feel about these products. not only that it's incredibly insulting to assume that we (the bald community) would WANT to look like the rest of you, but also because of the superpowers we bald men possess (and which of course we never talk about to the haired of the world).

A Small Poll

I am conducting a poll.

But first you have to read Jeremy's blog post, that comes before this one. Then come back.

::: (I am waiting. I will be here when you return.) :::

Welcome back. What a nice blog that was. I especially liked the part about me.

Here is the poll:

Do you understand the sentence quoted below? If so, please translate. Please answer YES or NO, with modifying comments if necessary. (We are betting money on this, so don't leave without commenting!) And drumroll....

"i won't say i want to do this, but i will say i'd rather do this than be utterly lost when the second half of the year i can't wait to pair in sentences with past tense verbs starts."

Thank you for your participation.

Plugs for Blogs

Faithful readers, while we wait for the final results of Jeremy's reader poll, a commercial break...

At the request of my dear, dear friend, the elusive and perhaps fictional Mr. Derrick Fudge, who is trying to take over the world, I am informing you of the existence of his collection of blogs, all of which fill my days with meaning and make life worth living. He is currently in a push to more effectively spread his propaganda across the cyber universe, and he needs more of the masses to read. So, masses, unite!

• For general insanity: thedevilishlyfantasticderrickfudge.blogspot.com (Warning: this blog contains a high ludicrous quotient.)
  
• For thorough reviews on everything from pretzels to presbyterian churches: ratingsrantingsandresponce.blogspot.com
• For more sane meditations on theology and grad school by Derrick's 100% more actual alter ego, Mr. Jeremy Pietsch of Seattle: ischangepossible.blogspot.com

Please note, the Howe Jr. family cannot be held responsible for any brain damage resulting from exposure to these blogs. Enter at your own risk.

P.S. Mr. Jeremy Pietsch/Derrick Fudge. I now consider my debt to you paid in full, you treacherous fiend.

the first week

i have now completed one week of medical school. that is to say, i am now a medical student, for real. i guess this means i have a career track--i am ON a career track. i will one day, barring lots of persistent failing of exams, be a doctor. i'm not sure if that's scarier for me or for my future patients, but it's not all gloom and despair--it turns out med students know how to party, too.

so on saturday night kim and i went to a party thrown by a fellow m1 here in our neighborhood. there was tasty food and drinks, lots of mixing and getting to know new friends, and discussion of how fast the lectures move, and the homework, and so on. but then, as we all stood on our second floor apartment deck chatting in the evening air, a group of neighborhood kids walked up the back alley armed with water balloons and unloaded on us. one of my classmates tried to catch them to throw them back, but a much more resourceful student began throwing chicken wings and sandwich squares until they ran out of balloons and fled the scene. these events repeated themselves about a half hour later, this time with more words exchanged. a particularly mouthy 11 year old boy responded to some taunting from the students by shouting "don't make me go stone cold steve austin on you!", which left pretty much all of us on the deck speechless--how do you respond to that kind of threat?

a bit later, a kid from the group came alone with a plastic bag and walked away. the bag was full of several filled balloons, a bag of empty ones, and those faucet adaptors that seem great in theory but never really work out--they were inviting us to join in the arms race toward some wonderful kind of mutually assured saturation, and we were more than willing.

it was a pretty good first week, and a pretty great party.