Before I Forget

 The other day I was looking for my UCLA transcript because I wanted to apply to grad school for a masters in public health (I got a little bored with my wonderful, stable life). I didn't find it but I did find an old math paper where I used Berkeley Madonna software. I told a friend I did not even remember learning Berkely Madonna and he said something about trauma and memory. I've never explicitly thought of my time at UCLA with three kids as traumatic but I got the gist. Anyway, that made me wonder how many memories I might have lost and how many more I will continue to lose if I don't write them down. So I'm going through old pictures and recalling memories before I forget.

Days after Abel's 8th birthday

Some of the reasons I stuck with medicine even when it looked bleak for me are that I love science, I love learning - I never want to stop learning, and I love divulging knowledge. Part of my flavor of math major was taking a whole year of neuroscience. I would come home after lecture and tell Rudy and the kids fascinating stuff I learned. Rudy and Dina did not care very much but Abel was like a sponge. He loved neuroscience too. He was four-ish at the time so did not even begin to comprehend but was interested nonetheless. By the time I started medical school, he had decided he wanted to be a neurologist. Yes, he asked for the correct term. He wanted to be a neurologist, not just a brain doctor. 

Abel was 5 years old when I graduated from UCLA

Come my final clerkship of third year of medical school and the neuroscience knowledge divulging continues. I start sharing that, in addition to sleep walkers, there are sleep cookers. People get up out of bed and cook while still fully asleep! Abel asks "Are their recipes accurate? Like if they are cooking soup, do they get the ingredients correct?" This is May 2019 so Abel is 10 years old and in 4th grade. So I'm already breaking my own rules but I think he'll allow it. Anyway, I don't actually know the answer to that question and I had not thought of that question either. I love the question. The next day, we are meeting with our clerkship director and he loves the question too! He happens to also be a sleep medicine doctor and is actively involved in sleep research. The answer is no. The recipes are not accurate and patients oftentimes get sick from eating undercooked / uncooked meat and other stuff that should be cooked. 

9 yo Abel at the MN Children's Museum

Another quick thing about little Abel: the first time we went to Guatemala in 2016, he was appalled to learn that there are so many "free dogs" (stray dogs) that did not have someone to feed them. He almost cried and obliged Rudy and I to buy a bag of dog food so that he could feed any dog he saw. The neighborhood dogs got so fat during the six weeks we were there.

We quickly learned that little bags were

not going to cut it.