Is it alright to have a weird crampy feeling in your muscles after yoga ?? Well you see we had a yoga orientation seminar at college today and we just did a few very basic yoga stretches that didnt seem difficult at all, but all my joints have been feeling weird after that. I probably didn't use the right posture. The organisers are planning a yoga plus aerobic session soon and I cant wait for it !! I hope my muscles are more workable by then !

Left or right ? Up or down ?

You know what I'm stuck with ?? I'm stuck with 11 chapters of systemic pathology, a task that seems endless and then there's community medicine that I just cant get myself to read regularly because the enormity of pathology in my mind just seems to overshadow the importance of community medicine..Uggh

There's an endless list of friends, family, relatives and neighbours that I need to please and that leaves very little time to study, that's the problem with living in closely knit societies like ours, but hey it has its own advantages, like free food :D a shoulder to lean on and an ever abundant source of support, so basically its all about managing my time ( which I need to do more appropriately now, since we're fast approaching our finals date ).

One of the things worth mentioning that has happened lately is a major shift in my plans. I've decided to switch priorities, switch from making neurology my best choice to to IM ( Internal Medicine). And I'm very whimsical and scared of doing it, beacuse I've been in love with neurology for the past , I dont know, 7 years ! and now I realize I might not be as interested in it as I thought I'd be and the feeling sucks. It feels like stepping out of a failed relationship, a relationship that you thought was perfect until you simply lost interest but are still too clingy to let go of the idea of being in a relationship ( Yeah, too complicated) . So just to make things a little less simple I've decided to act like some divorcee to step into a bar and ' explore other options ' ( No I'm a practising muslim and I dont go to bars in real life, in case it got you wondering ). So, I've added more possibilities on my list , they're IM  ( difficult to get in and needs high scores ), Neurology ( I still see hope in it ) and paeds ( not exactly my thing but still a good choice).

Attending a seminar on ' The long road to residency' just made me question my determination and and ability to go through those lengthy application procedures. A point came when I thought I'd rather just go into R & D and do some probably underpaid but less hectic work and forego the hassle. But you see I just cant picture myself not attending to patients or not doing a hospital job. Being a doctor for me meant , interacting with patients and treating diseases ! Its just so difficult to change your own opinion about your own choices that you once so passionately made..

My mom says that I should take things one step at a time and focus on my efforts right now, I think thats what I should be doing

The ophthalmology scare !

So there I was studying about anterior blepharitis, chalazion and hordeolum 5 mins ago when I slammed the book shut and turned on a new tab with blogger to get my eyes off the images of stye on Google images ! Studying ophthalmology gives me the creeps, I'm ultra sensitive about the eye, observing it closely and the look of the fleshy interior lid margins set my heart on gallops and the mere discussion of cases on eye trauma paints such a horrid picture into my imagination that it makes my ears ring ! I bunked all the classes when we were supposed to attend and observe eye surgeries simply because I knew I wouldn't be able to stand it.

Everyone has their own share of phobias and weaknesses I guess, attending anatomy dissestions, surgeries and the sight of blood have never been a problem with me but the EYE drives me insane. I hope studying about it for four months will improve my tolerance !!

Metamorphosis !

image courtesy - google search

 I felt congested to the core and decided running away from everything was the safest option. I deactivated my fb account, stopped blogging, and took a few days off from college. Yeah. I have these strange phases in life, once in a while, when nothing seems right and I feel like packing my bags and moving to a new/strange city where no one knows me.I grow skeptical about myself, self-doubt sinks in and insomnia strikes, every chemical within my body seems out of balance.Absent mindedness and a lack of concentration make me feel as if Im in a different dimension, viewing things from a distance. I feel detached, out of sync, displaced from my ecological niche. A bird trying to thrive under water, or a penguin in the tropics. But thankfully these phases pass and I emerge with something positive.

I believe these phases are like the stages of metamorphosis for me. Just like a larva, changes into a pupa and a pupa into a butterfly. These transitions are changes, and changes, are something I find hard to adapt. I try to make sure the changes around me are gradual or minimal but when they arise within me, there's nothing I can do about it. It takes me time, it takes me getting used to, and until then, I wrap myself in a shield of emotions and thoughts and hence the troublesome phase. But once the change sets in, the shield begins to dissolve and emerges from within, a newer, changed version of me. The changes are minor, a mere difference in thought pattern, a remodeled idea of self, re-adjusted principles, reconstructed dreams, transformed ideas, or a refined personality. Nothing major, nothing macroscopically visible...

Im glad that phase is over, I'm happy to be out of the cocoon,  free and fresh :)

Do you have a heart ?

I closed my eyes and turned my face as the teacher demonstrated the dissection of a frog for some yet another experimental procedure.This was n't the first time I was watching an animal being dissected,infact I have performed dissections on cadavers too, but the sight of the poor, living, frog kicking its legs in despair and writhing in agony as it is malhandled while being transferred from tank to tank before being anesthetized is just too much to watch. It once happened that a frog my friend was dissecting regained conciousness in mid dissection and started kicking its legs,splashing water from the dissection dish all over the place !!!!

Teachers and scientists argue that the dissections are for an educational purpose and that " the use of a few little animals provides us with the knowledge to save the lives of many" but I still feel that the act of using alive organisms for dissections is inhuman and cruel.What possible crime or sin have those poor 'lower class' of living organisms done to deserve being split open or experimented upon ? Does being born with far greater intellect and curiosity than those creatures give man the right to use them for its most inhuman desires ? They are the creations of God as equally as we are.

Flipping through the pages of any Textbook of Physiology,Kinesiology, toxicology etc you will find numerous examples and cases where dogs are given pain stimulants, a tachycardia is induced,viruses are injected or even kidneys are clamped !. Yes, I am a medical student and I know that these experiments have given us valuable treasures of information and knowledge that has helped in the progress of Science and sparked a plethora of ground breaking revelations and researches.But thats not it , over the centuries man has grown to be sadistic.The lust for superiority in knowledge has overshadowed and taken over his more compassionate side.What his 'experimental subjects',as scientists say, go through to satiate their appetite for knowledge is lesser of their concerns and they now dissect, operate,slash, electrocute,imprison and toxicate animals without even the slightest trace of remorse or compunction.

Today man is using animals, next it may start trading the poor, unprivileged cast of people to experiment upon!! for lust has no end, it just grows indefinitely !!

This post was originally posted on my other blog which I'm planning to close down ....

Should I ? or should I not ?

I'm typing this post after opening the layout page for the umpteenth time in three months, and like always I gave up on editing because of my indecisiveness. So instead of wasting more time on thinking whether I should really change the layout or not . I'm just gonna pose this as a question to all of my faithful readers out there. Do you like the present look and design of my blog or would you rather see some changes ? If yes, what kind of changes ? All kinds of suggestions and criticisms shall be appreciated by this indecisive little creature to the other side of your screen..Trust me, just go ahead and say it