Drinking in America

My next post was going to be something about the beginning of the school year. I had a nice introspective post all planned out. And yet the first few weeks have passed and I couldn't quite get around to it. On the other hand, today I finally turn 21, so I feel a post about the drinking age in America is in order.

I have long been an opponent of the drinking age in America being 21. My father always said that it was just because I was under 21, and that when I became of age then I wouldn't care so much. I find that isn't true. I still feel as strongly now about the issue as I ever have. The drinking age in this country is simply too high. If you can get married as young as 14 in many states with parental consent, and 18 without, you should be able to drink. If you can choose whether to fight for your country and die for your country at 17, you should be able to drink. If you can be tried as an adult for your crimes, which is often as low as the age of 12 or 14 these days, you should be able to drink. You can vote, kill, and reproduce all before you're legally able to drink, and society expects you to be responsible enough to make those decisions. I call bullshit.

The drinking age does not stop anyone in this country from drinking underage. Rather it encourages teenagers to binge drink in party situations. After all, the penalty is the same whether you have one or twenty. I have seen with my own eyes the results of this party culture we've developed. Minors drink too fast, too much, and will often times drive home afterward. This, in my opinion, is a direct result of the secrecy which we force by unfair and arbitrary rules. Teenagers in other countries learn to drink with some supervision by their elders, and know how to at least be responsible if they intend to be drunk. Teenagers in America learn to drink from drunks who are impressed by the amount of liquor you can hold, no matter if it makes you sick.

And don't say that it prevents people from drinking and driving, because it doesn't. Studies have shown that it just moves the mortality bracket from the 16-21 year olds to the 21-25 year olds. Increase the penalties for drinking and driving, and let teenagers learn to drink from responsible adults.

I think that the issue will come to the national forum again within the next several years. Obviously there are things like gay marriage to be addressed first, but it's coming. The drinking age should be no higher than 18, the legal age of independence in this country for everything but alcohol. I mean seriously, I graduated college last May but couldn't celebrate my achievement with a glass of wine? What the hell? I'm 21 now, maybe I'm just so much smarter now that I can't even imagine how feeble and irrational my mind was yesterday. Ya, I'm sure that's it.

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You Can't Touch This

In continuing my recent trend of not being moody or deep:


Best. Shit. Ever.

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Why I Want to Become a Doctor

Well, lots of people ask me why exactly I want to become a doctor. I try to explain, but it's hard for me to put into words so that people understand. Most people assume that I want to be a doctor just because my mother is, but that's not it really. My parent's have never suggested that I should pursue medicine just because my mother did. So, since I had to write a personal comments essay anyway for my application I thought I would post it to try to explain to others my desire to be a doctor as well.

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Although I know now that I wish to pursue medicine as my career, that has not always been the case. Some people know from a very young age what they want to do with the rest of their lives, or rather they decide at that age what they will be. However, I always wondered if those weren't the same tired middle-aged souls you see who hate their job and everything associated with it. It has long been one of my worst fears that I would become one of those people, so it took me a long time to choose with absolute certainty my career.

I remember being asked as a young child by a seemingly endless number of adults if I wanted to be a doctor like my mother. Yet my answer was always a resounding no. To me at that age, being a doctor meant late nights, long weekends, and too much time away from home. As I grew older I began to understand that my mother often spent long hours at the office and on call because she was unwilling to leave patients before she could be sure of the outcome. That she did it not just because she had to but because she was a good doctor. Even though I had a more mature perspective by then, when I graduated high school I was still sure that I should spend my time exploring other options.

It was not until late in my college years that I came to my final decision to pursue a career in medicine. I had majored in Molecular Biology and worked in Dr. Stephen Paul Ford’s lab doing research. I loved doing research, but was forced to realize that every piece of information I learned I filtered in my mind in accordance with its relevancy to medicine and that any research I was interested in was medical. Perhaps someday I will return to research, but it was the idea of helping people every day in a real manner that held my attention.

I know, of course, that it is not an easy job on a personal level. Being a doctor requires a level of commitment beyond the average professional career. I needed to know if the job itself was one that I would love. After my graduation with a Baccalaureate of Science I spent a period of several weeks shadowing Dr. Mary MacGuire, a general surgeon in Casper.

It is without exaggeration that I can say this was a life altering time for me, regardless of my final career. Before this I had often been with my mother during office visits, but I had never quite seen the face of medicine like this. Anytime that Dr. MacGuire was at the office or hospital I made every effort to be there, and so I saw the full range of human interactions over the course of long days. There were of course the calm office visits and the nervous trepidations of scheduled surgeries. Trauma call, though, required Dr. MacGuire to see a wide range of patients.

I saw a man on suicide watch, who required a feeding stint because he had damaged is throat and could no longer swallow. There was a ninety-year-old man, still sharp and happy, who would have died due to an impacted water chestnut of all things. Another case involved a young man, not much older than myself and certainly no older than most of my friends, who crashed his car while driving drunk and whose life hung in limbo. I saw his mother, who was beside herself with hysterics because she had known her son’s habits.

I think it is the range of emotion that will stick with me, when the details of these cases fade. Yet I felt completely comfortable in the hospital, even during the most intense moments. Hospitals are the place where action can be taken, and a sense of purpose displaces the despair that might be felt by witnessing the pains of others.

Dr. MacGuire told me that it is at the hospital that you see people at their worst. That may be true, but I think that sometimes you get to see them at their best as well. I saw a mother who had a twisted bowel obstruction. Her husband, neither a small nor timid man, was scared to death for her. She, however, was as steady as a rock. Post-op she did everything she was told to the letter, because she just wanted to go home to be with her husband and children.

I was also amazed at the tireless efforts of the hospital staff, and the stories I heard from other doctors and nurses. Resoundingly, the message was to treat as many people as possible, to the best of their abilities, and to worry about payment and costs later. It was comforting that my view of medicine that I had gotten from my mother, that it is truly about helping people, was echoed by so many of those around me. Often, these people were not even aware of the message they were speaking, but it was evident in their mannerisms as they communicated and worked together.

It has taken me quite a bit of time to decide that I truly want to pursue medicine as my career. However, I feel that it was important for me to take this time. Becoming a doctor takes too much time and money, and carries too much responsibility, to decide on a whim. A person has to know both the good and the bad of what being a doctor really means in order to make that choice. This is the career that I can see myself doing in twenty and forty years and still want to go to work everyday.

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Intergalactic Chipmunks

I saw these through the craft website I visit today and had to post. These were taken by the 37 year old photographer Chris McVeigh in his parents backyard where he has apparently befriended the local chipmunks. Not only has he befriended them he has convinced them to pose for him with Starwars figures he just "happened to have around."

Now, I think these are frickin' adorable, but let's face it guys. Even though this man has created awesomeness, he obviously has no life. He's 37 years old and has enough time to befriend the chipmunks in his parent's backyard, where he presumably lives. And photograph them. Thousands of times. With his toy storm troopers.

Well, maybe his adorable chipmunk pictures will help him get laid at the next con. But probably not.

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No really, the sun is shining

So lately I am quite... content. A change of paste from my recent posts, I know. But for the first time in a long while I have been able to relax, take a breather, and just enjoy life. My hobbies have been ever expanding, at a great cost to my wallet, and the simple ability to create things on a daily basis has been highly therapeutic. It's actually the reason I haven't posted since my last very moody and depressive post, though I've been feeling happier for a while.

It's a little strange for me because summer is actually usually my moody depressive time. For the last four years I've spent every summer away from my long term boyfriend, which is about four months at a time. I don't recommend it. It makes me anxious, moody, and paranoid. Though I've never blown a gasket from these mood swings and done something to permanently damage my relationship yet, let's just say I'm glad that for once my boyfriend is here this summer.

Summer is also my pensive time, this summer being no different. It's about this time of year I start to question the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. And after a small crisis of faith, for a lack of better terms, in the last week, I've decided that 42 is as good an answer of anything. I don't know the meaning of life, but maybe I don't have to. Maybe just living is the point of it all, and what comes after it will come. Really, it's not like you can choose to play a different game.

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The Sun is Shining, and I'm Ready for Something

Summer is finally really here. Now, I know to the rest of the country, this doesn't seem like a big surprise, but when you're living in the mountains and the first month of summer is mostly rain, you start to wonder. But finally, the sun is shining. Yet rather than feeling relaxed and ready to stretch out like a cat basking under a window, a feeling of unrest has come over me.

I'm not sure what it is, really. I just know I'm ready to go do something. I feel somehow trapped, though I've been moving house for the past several weeks and have certainly not been bored. Yet a feeling of unease has come over me, and I feel ready to take on the world or go down fighting.

Maybe its not just me, and I'm just picking up on the political climate that seems to have gripped the nation. With the murder of an innocent family last week by a fringe Minutemen group, that brings us up to three conservative extremist hate crimes for this summer alone. Three crimes: the murder of an abortion doctor, the attack on the holocaust museum, and the Minutemen murders - all spread across the country and for apparently different reasons. The world seems to be on edge as well, between North Korea and Iran. I think it speaks of something deeper going on, and it scares me just a little bit. It also awakens the fighter in me, the primal urges which are suppressed by modern society. I hope that I won't need her, but I'm comforted to know that she exists within me.

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Doctors are Terrified of National Healthcare.

And not for the reasons you think. I'm not going to lie, they do consider the issue of money. But it's takes 9 years and three to five hundred thousand dollars to become a full doctor, post-baccalaureate, so you should all know that I feel they are justified wanting at least as much as the lawyers. But really, they are concerned that the clipboards and the bureaucracy are going to keep them from saving lives, and doing what's right. That the bureaucratic machine created by people who have no idea about the workings of medicine will prevent them from doing their job.

What people don't realize is that doctors are not legally allowed to give away their services, whether they want to or not. And that many doctors write bills they know will never get paid, and that they never intend to collect on. Doctors look at Medicare and Medicaid, which are failing systems that don't pay for jack-diddly, and wonder how the hell is the government going to pay for good and equal treatment for everyone? They can't, and won't, if we model our systems off of Canada and Great Britain. Both of these countries have been known to disallow certain treatments because they are too expensive, even if they are the most effective means of combating a disease. Further, they don't allow people to purchase the treatment outside of the system because that wouldn't be fair.

Personally, the idea of the government making decisions about whether my life is worth saving is terrifying. And don't think that that would not happen. The insurance companies already make such decisions to the maximum extent that the law will allow them. What happens when the insurance company is the law? The eighty-year old man who has already had heart surgery is probably not going to be considered a worthwhile candidate for further treatment. My grandfather has had two types of cancer, and a triple bypass at the spritely age of 75. His health is now beginning to fail due to unrelated conditions. The extra decade of life was worth it to him, and those who love him.

Don't get me wrong. I think that certain aspects of nationalizing health care would be wonderful. Ensuring that every adult and child gets the checkups, vaccinations, and preventative care they need would not only save lives but billions of dollars. How many times have you told someone they should go to the doctor, but they insisted that it was too expensive? Insurance companies should not be allowed to trap you in a job you hate, because changing jobs would mean going to a new company with a "preexisting condition." Doctors having protection from frivolous suits would alone drastically reduce the cost of healthcare. Half of what you pay when you visit the doctor is their malpractice insurance. But they don't intend to give that sort of protection with this plan they are laying out.

And noble or not, what the doctors want makes a difference. Over 50% of the doctors currently practicing are over 50 years of age. That means that if they decide they don't like the new system, they'll just retire. Those that are left are likely to simply pick up and move to a place where they are free to practice medicine as they see fit, without the constant threat of enormous fines. What sort of medical system will we have if there is nobody to practice medicine?

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