Medicine, San Francisco, and Seattle

I apologize for letting so much time go by between posts. So much has evolved in my life, though most of these changes have been deeply internal shifts that are hard to write about and may be boring for my readers. Regardless, I will write about them in brief since they are the things that will most strongly shape the course of my life, even if they aren't necessarily accompanied by pretty pictures and flashy descriptions. Thanks for bearing with me.

Most of you know what I'm going to explain in this paragraph already, but one of the biggest changes of the past couple of months has been my radical departure from wanting to be a professor of literature to planning on becoming a physician. The shift might seem so revolutionary as to be psychotic or ill-thought, and I, too, operated for awhile under the assumption that this mental shift was nothing more than an ephemeral fluke, a transient caprice that would evanescence as quickly as it had appeared. Nevertheless, after many conversations, lots of investigation, and pretty consistent questioning, my desire to change professional tracks has stuck, and I will therefore defend and explicate it. Though I wrote 8 single-spaced pages about what brought about this shift, the short of it was the persistent voices of doubt about the usefulness of being a professional reader coupled with my strong desire to feel like I'm using my brain, my education, and my labor to make the world a better place in a tangible way. These thoughts, as well as many others, brought me back to my high-school dream of becoming a doctor. I was hit with all of this in a pretty brief flash of inspiration during what were a couple of at first dark (for personal reasons) and then overwhelmingly exciting days. When my soul hit upon its desire to be a doctor, I was so elated that all I could do was take really long walks during the wee hours of the morning since I was restless and couldn't relax and stay asleep. Some deep urges and unmet needs feel satisfied by the idea of pursuing medicine, and I feel so grateful that I will have the chance to study in a medical school in the upcoming years. I could honestly write about this for pages and pages, but I will contain myself.

As part of my self-questioning and my desire to make sure that I want to make such an enormous professional shift (that will involve enormous investments of time and money and that will ultimately shape the rest of my life in a huge way), I began a process of talking to current doctors, reading doctor-related and doctor-written books, and I also got a new job working in a medical clinic. The conversations with doctors and the readings have been marvelous. I've read essays by Dr. Paul Farmer on getting the world's poorest access to medications that treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. I read a book about being an emergency room psychiatrist who deals with drug addicts, homicidal and suicidal people, and people with psychoses and neuroses of all stripes. I also just finished a brief history of medicine and an amazing book called The End of Illness by David Agus about which I'm going to tell my family members more details in an e-mail . All of my reading has been exhilarating and has confirmed my desires to go to medical school. The new job in the medical clinic has also been great, though I've had so many new experiences and impressions there that I will focus on it in my next post in much greater detail. Suffice it to say for now that I'm loving my new full-time job.

Two letters to Mr. Robert Weatherford, four chocolates,
and a Golden Gate Bridge drawn with syrup all awaited
me in my beautiful hotel room. It was quite posh!

As a fruit of my earlier desire to be a professor of literature, I had applied for a Marshall Scholarship to study for two years in the United Kingdom since I felt like I could never be a fully effective professor of English literature if I hadn't spent a significant amount of time in England. After a lengthy application process, I was granted an interview in San Francisco at the British Consulate as a semi-finalist for the Marshall Scholarship. I was given a flight into the Bay Area and put up by the British Consulate in an extremely swanky (yes, I'm using British terms! :) ) hotel. I was on the 29th floor of a beautiful hotel downtown and had a corner room, meaning two of my four walls were nothing but glass windows. Look at how beautiful my view was.

Like my mother, I absolutely love the Bay Area. I love how vibrant, beautiful, and compact it is. San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the entire world. While I was there, I was privileged to have dinner and a cup of tea with Peggy Weintrub, a professor of pediatric epidemiology at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine. She is Ali Ganem's mom, and Ali was one of my best friends during my year in Spain. Peggy has talked to me on the phone for hours about different options for completing my pre-medical requirements, getting into medical school, and the like. She, too, was a liberal arts undergraduate who made a career change to medicine and is very happy with her choice. Our dinner together was fabulous, fun, and helpful, as time with her always is. (She and I met in Spain and spent a few days together touring around with Ali.) In San Francisco, She and I talked a lot about medicine, and it was kind of dissonant to be preparing for an interview about why I would be a great literature scholar when my heart and mind were dwelling on wanting to become a physician and start my pre-medical requirements.

My interview in San Francisco was really nerve-wracking for me, but once the questions began, I felt calm and enjoyed feeling the anxiety subside. I felt like I answered all but two of the questions well. In general, the format of the interview was much less aggressive and interrogatory than I thought it would be, and when it was done, I was so relieved that I almost cried tears of joy. I exited the building to a beautiful day in the Bay Area, I put in the ear-buds of my iPod, and I started jamming out to tunes as I walked down Market Street back to my hotel, all dressed up in a suit and tie, so happy to have spent a brief day in San Francisco interviewing for the Marshall Scholarship and talking with Peggy. I heard back from the Marshall Committee two weeks later and found out that I was not granted one of the prized scholarships. Even though it would have been an awesome opportunity to have won, I hardly felt any disappointment. My heart wants to become a doctor now, and the Marshall Scholarship was the dream of the old ambition to become a professor. I'm glad that someone else won that scholarship, and I'm glad that I am now free to apply to post-baccalaureate pre-medical programs and pursue my dream of becoming a doctor.

As some of you may know, my bike got stolen on Halloween. Though it was locked up, it was locked with a chain and not with a steel U-lock, so it's likely that the lock got clipped and the bike taken, especially given that it was decked out with front and rear lights, a rain fender, and my helmet (which I stupidly left dangling on the handlebars). Losing my bike was tough, since that is how I get around, but I ended up asking around, doing a bit of research, and finding my dream steed, which I now proudly own! This bike is a road bike, and it is so speedy! I get to my job downtown (and everywhere) much faster than I used to, and I pass other bikers on the road all of the time (respectfully, of course). I'm totally in love with my new bike, and I bought an enormous lock and even a funky chain that winds around the tires so that no one dares lay a hand on my new baby. It cost me a pretty penny to buy a new bike (with all its necessary accouterments), a helmet, and the two locks that I have, but I haven't regretted my decision yet. I love flying around Portland on a gas-free, good-for-your-heart bike! (Pardon my preaching. :) )


Speaking of Pacific Northwest pretension and preaching, people from Portland can be really funny, and many of them are open enough to be able to make fun of themselves. Many people up here are "alternative" and eat only organic, local, vegan food, or insist on only biking places, or wear mismatched, hipster clothing to "go against the grain." I go on Sunday morning runs with a lesbian who doesn't shave, for example, and she's totally normal up here. It's a city full of the "alternative" crowd, and some of these people can get pretty haughty about their lifestyles and their choices, bragging about how big their organic garden is and how they invited their interracial gay neighbors over for yoga and a fundraiser to stop global warming. There is a whole show making fun of Portland called Portlandia, and I thought that some people who read this blog might appreciate it. Check out this 2.5 minute episode in which a couple insists on knowing how happy the chicken was that they're about to eat on their date. Portland is wonderful, but it can be taken too far, and I love that many people up here can make fun of themselves and realize that there's no reason to be judgmental or arrogant.

Lastly, I wanted to tell you all about the beautiful Thanksgiving that I spent up in Seattle. I was invited by Susannah and her sister Margaret to spend Thanksgiving with their extended family up in Seattle, which is one of my favorite cities on this planet (up there with Paris, France, and Salamanca, Spain). Susannah's Aunt Susannah (it's a family name!) put us up in her house, and I shared Thanksgiving dinner with 21 other people. It was a scrumptious feast, and the conversations that were had were wonderful. I really love a couple of Susannah's uncles and a couple of her aunts, and it was such a pleasure to get to spend time with a family quite similar to my own in many ways--large, warm, full of fascinating characters, and most importantly full of love. I was also privileged to get to speak with my sister Amy on Thanksgiving Day, who gave me the update on the Shumway family reunion and her exciting life, as well as my old friend from BYU Brad Ackerson, a Portland native who is finishing up a neuroscience degree at BYU before starting medical school. It was a great day full of love, conversation, walks, and food. I missed seeing all of my loved ones back home, though, and I hope you all know that more than anything, I'm grateful for you!

I will write more soon about my new job at Outside In Clinic and anything else that happens between then and now. Happy December!

North to Mt. St. Helens and South to Ashland

In the past three weeks, I've had the opportunity to travel beyond Portland to see other parts of the beautiful Pacific Northwest. My impression continues to be the same--this is a magnificent region of the country, with some of the most lush and stunning landscapes I've ever seen.

My first trip was up north into the state of Washington to be a chaperone for the 7th grade trip that Oregon Episcopal School, my employer, had planned. I felt really sick at work on Tuesday, as I was battling what was already a 10-day cold that seemed to have settled deeply in my throat. Nevertheless, when I was called Tuesday after work and asked if I could go on the trip to Mt. St. Helens to be an advisor to 10 seventh-graders, I decided to take the great offer. How could I say no to getting paid to hike around Washington while getting to know my co-workers and my students better? I said yes, packed everything I would need for camping, hiking, and caving, and was given a Prius to drive up to a base camp near Mt. St. Helens early the next morning where my boys were waiting for me.

Our trip was so much fun. The highlights for me were the following: the discussion we had as an entire group while lying under the heavenly expanse of stars about finding personal meaning in the universe even though we are such a small part of it; cooking bean, cheese, and guacamole quesadillas with my boys over a small propane-fueled stove; and helping all of the kids in my caving group climb over a tall rock wall. We spent one afternoon on our trip seeing a movie and exploring a museum dedicated to explicating the Mt. St. Helens blast of 1980, and it was neat to learn more about this volcanic eruption that I had always heard of as a child but never fully understood until my trip up there a few weeks ago.

Mt. St. Helens, which used to be a traditionally
beautiful mountain that got destroyed by a large lateral
blast in 1980 that emitted tons of lava, ash, and gases



Literally the light at the end of the tunnel...well, sort of.
Sunlight shines through a place where the cave opens to
the outside world near the exit.

As I mentioned briefly above, we spent another afternoon caving in what is known as Ape Cave, a cave in Washington created by the igneous rock left in the wake of other eruptions of Mt. St. Helens. The cave was enormous and required us all to have good hiking gear, helmets, and headlights. There was lots of skilled footwork and hiking involved, and at one point, there was a large wall that we needed to get a group of about 30 students over. The expedition leader taught the kids how they could all spot each other as they mounted the wall, but one kid said, "I think Mr. Weatherford should spot all of us." The other kids chimed in with affirmative "yeahs," and I probably blushed right there in the cave. :) I was the tallest male leader on the trip, and apparently they felt safest knowing I was spotting them and lifting them up. So I proceeded to help all of the kids and other adult leaders get up this large rock wall, and it was probably the most  gratifying part of the entire trip simply since I felt needed by my community and proud to be perceived as strong and capable.

The Mt. St. Helens trip was amazing, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. When I got back on Friday night, however, my throat was killing me, my right ear was aching, and I was finding it difficult to swallow. I made a quick appointment with an urgent care doctor, and after being swabbed and looked at, I learned that I had strep throat and a peritonsillar abscess. Yikes! I was given a small supply of steroids, two weeks worth of antibiotics, and a recommendation to see an otorhinolaryngologist to consider having a tonsillectomy. Though physically I felt really crummy, it was nice to know that my chills, fever, and ear and throat pain weren't all in my head but were actual bacterial realities. All I can say is thank goodness for modern medicine.

The next morning, Susannah and I left early to drive south to Ashland, Oregon, where the Oregon Shakespeare Festival takes place every year. We had pre-purchased tickets to two of Shakespeare's plays that are lesser known, Troilus and Cressida and Henry V. Since my antibiotics and steroids were kicking in, I started to feel so much better and to have tons of positive energy. Susannah and I first saw Troilus and Cressida, which is a somewhat tragic love story between a Greek girl and a Trojan boy that takes place during the Trojan War (that greatest of all Western epics depicted in movies like Helen and Troy and poetry like The Iliad.) We enjoyed how the director interpreted Shakespeare's words and made a modern adaptation of setting and costumes to change the Greeks and Trojans into American Marines and Iraqis. When that play was over, we explored Ashland a little and prepared for our second play, Henry V. Henry V was the last history play that Shakespeare wrote, and in it he tries to show how a character in his previous history plays, Prince Hal, goes from being an immature rich prince who steals for fun and drinks with his fat buddies in the tavern to being a noble king that eventually conquers France and thereby extends the English empire. This play was also really well done, and Susannah and I were, on the whole, very impressed, especially since our production of Henry V integrated a deaf actor really well, something neither of us had ever seen before. We spent a little more time in Ashland the following morning, and then we headed back north to Portland.

These deer were eating the grass of a park in Ashland. Look
how close they let me get!

The rest of life has been good, too. Portland is beginning to embrace autumn, and the leaves are spectacular. I'll take some photos and include them in my next post. Susannah and I have a new custom of eating this delicious, cheap food at a restaurant called Laughing Planet on Friday nights to celebrate our weekend. We then hop over to a small ice cream shop that serves flavors like Mexican Chocolate or Caramel with Salted Dark Chocolate (my favorite), and I've developed a little crush on the cute guy who serves us our ice cream. He he. It's a good life I've been able to lead up here, and I'm so grateful that all of this is possible for me!

Settling In and Visiting Seattle

My first month in Portland has treated me very well. The weather, for example, has been sunny every day since I've arrived, which nearly everyone has made a point of telling me is "false advertisement," as I am in for hundreds of days straight with lots of rain. Coming from the parched lands of Wyoming, though, I say "bring it on!" Portland also gave me a job that I'm loving, and I suppose that my part-time occupation is a good point of departure for this post since I ended on a cliff-hanger about it in my previous one.

I got a job as an after-school teacher working for Oregon Episcopal School, a private K-12 school in the southwestern part of Portland. My job responsibilities are simple, but I derive much satisfaction from them since they all concern human interactions: I design, shop for, and cook two snacks a day for my students, I tutor students during one hour of required study time, and then I simply hang out with students and interact with them in appropriate but enjoyable ways as an adult mentor. The job, it turns out, is incredibly fun. I work specifically in the middle school, and I love my kids. Since Oregon Episcopal School is a private school, these kids come from very affluent backgrounds and have been raised to be confident and bright. On my first day on the job, two kids wrote me a survey that I had to fill out so they could learn about me. Yesterday, one extremely perspicacious kid (he's thirteen and will take calculus next year and hopes to study physics at MIT) was interrogating me regarding my political beliefs about government intervention in economics and my feelings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These kids come from fascinating backgrounds--two of my boys are the sons of Nike's President, I found out yesterday. One of my kids lived in Israel for awhile (the interrogator) and invests an allowance of $1,000 that his dad has given him to teach him about stocks and the market. Though philosophically I prefer the idea of public education so that all children, regardless of the socioeconomic background of their parents, have access to knowledge and social advancement through school, since this private teaching job is the one that presented itself, I'm embracing it and giving these kids the best I've got. It's not necessarily fair that they were born to wealthy parents who can afford to pay for private tutors, buy them private cello lessons, give them thousands to invest in stocks and take them around the world to live in multicultural environments, but they deserve love, too, so I'm giving them all my love. I love that these kids are being raised with opportunities and wide worldviews, and I merely wish that all children could have access to the same resources and possibilities. Regardless, my job is incredible.

I also adore my co-workers. They are sharp, educated, open-minded folks who instantly took me in. My work is 11 miles away from where I live, and I've been biking over the river (and really through the woods, too, though not to grandmother's house), and one day the PE teacher took me home in her car to save me the workout. On the way home, we stopped with her adorable daughter to get some donuts, and then we resumed singing along to Kidz Bop as I got a ride home from this wonderful stranger. My fellow after-school teacher and I get along really well, and she and I are going to carpool to save me some time and thigh energy. My boss is awesome and continually gives me freedom to do my thing and praise for the energy my co-worker and I are investing in the job. Anyway, it's all been incredible so far, and next week I'm substitute-teaching since I told the head of the school that I want to be put to as much use as possible! I'm thrilled to continue to learn in this job that I really enjoy.

Multnomah Falls, totally impressive
but very close to the highway, meaning
gobs of tourists were mobbing the scene
and depriving it of its tranquility

Because we are now both working, Susannah and I have had fewer outdoor adventures. Nevertheless, we took another beautiful all-day hike around Multnomah Falls and didn't stop until we reached a peak from which we could see Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, and other prominent mountains in the region. It was a stunning view, and up top was a couple on vacation from Spain with whom I spent a good amount of time chatting in Spanish, which felt wonderful. It was a great moment of natural beauty and human intercultural intimacy combined.

A random photo I snapped of a stream
we encountered on our hike, but aren't
the moss-covered tree, the stony brook,
and the effulgent skies gorgeous?

On another day, Susannah and I went for a trail run in an enormous wooded area in Portland called Forest Park. After the trail run, which was invigorating, we hiked to the top of a hill where Pittock Mansion lies, an old Victorian house now used as a historical museum of the Pacific Northwest. The grounds were nicely laid out with many species of flowers, and the inside was full of the trappings of Victorian life in America, including an impressive shower and restrictive whale-bone corsets. The position of the house on the hill also afforded a marvelous view of all of Portland, and I had a moment of deep gratitude that I get to live for a year in such a pretty city in a deep green, fertile environment. I learned that many forests in Oregon are actually temperate rain forests, a biome about which few people know, since we are so accustomed to speaking of tropical rain forests. I feel so privileged to get to live in such a sylvan setting.

Pittock Mansion, like Laramie's Ivinson Mansion,
represents the residences of the societal elite of the
late 1800s. Today it houses a museum dedicated
to the same period.

My camera captured the many petals of this rose with
great precision, much to my delight. There were dozens
of species of roses of all different hues and redolences.

Portland is also home to a beautiful park that has such an impressive rose garden that Portland's sobriquet is "The City of Roses." I had visited this park before when Troy and I went on our Pacific Northwest trip after I graduated from college, but none of the flowers were in bloom at that time, and it was a completely different experience to see these plants at the height of their beauty. Susannah and I spent a couple of hours wandering through the rows of roses, taking photos, appreciating their scents, and marveling at nature's floral creation.

Here I stand under an archway of flowers right next to
the Shakespeare Garden. How cool is that?

For Labor Day, one of Susannah's good friends named Helen invited us to have a barbecue at her mom's place a little south of Portland in Tualatin. We prepared a salad with all sorts of garden vegetables and headed down. Everyone at the barbecue was wonderful--Helen and I met when she stopped through Laramie, and we instantly had a connection. She's a super successful lawyer who is nevertheless down to earth, emotionally sensitive, and hilarious. Her best friend is a gay man named CJ who is a vegan and has run 17 marathons in his life. CJ is one of the sweetest people I've ever met (not judgmental or pretentious at all, even though any vegan marathon-runner has the right to be in my eyes!), and his partner, Brandon, is also wonderful--a environmental engineer/architect who spent the barbecue with someone else's fussy baby and didn't complain when it spat up all over his nice shirt. They both have been so great to me but unfortunately are moving to Los Angeles where CJ will get his PhD in urban planning. Regardless, it was wonderful to meet them and to get to spend time with them both at the Labor Day barbecue and over a plate of nachos another night.

From left to right: Brandon, CJ, me (ecstatic to be in
between such rock star people!), Susannah, and Helen

My last big adventure occurred last week when Susannah and I went up to Seattle for a few sundry purposes. The principal reason for our visit was so I could meet some of Susannah's extended family who are as close to her as parents and siblings. We also wanted to explore the University of Washington campus, since I'm considering applying for a masters there, as well as to see Seattle University, Susannah's alma mater, since I find great delight in learning more about the past of people that I love deeply. First of all, Susannah's family is wonderful, and they treated me so well. Her Uncle Topher let us sleep at his beautiful place on Capitol Hill, the hip, gay-friendly neighborhood of Seattle. Her Aunt Julie and Uncle Daniel, who have a gorgeous house overlooking a lake, hosted us all for a delicious dinner of prawns, salmon, pesto pasta and then coffee and ice cream for dessert. The entire meal was full of hearty laughs, connections, and getting-to-know-each-other tales of our lives. It was so fun and heartwarming. When dinner ended, Uncle Topher took Susannah and me out to some dance clubs around his house where we had a blast dancing and just feeling young and alive. We had an amazing time.

UW's Suzzallo Library. How could you not want to study in
there, especially when the reading room looks like something
from Harry Potter?

Our visit to the University of Washington was stunning, and even though I've seen many campuses in my lifetime, I think the University of Washington is the prettiest or second prettiest I've ever seen (with the Universidad de Salamanca, in Spain, being the other contender in the ring). Though I am no expert in architecture, the buildings looked primarily neo-Gothic to me, and the landscaping, using lots of cherry trees and a long drag of tree-lined grass framing a view of Mt. St. Helens, was immaculately designed and executed. I felt sparks with the university the whole time we strolled around its grounds. Later, Susannah and I went to Gas Works Park, a park of grassy knolls and old industrial factory remains that frames Seattle's downtown perfectly between residential hills laterally and part of the Puget Sound in the foreground. I was literally so giddy with love for Seattle that I was laughing out loud. I have never had chemistry with a place like I did with Seattle, and I am absolutely going to apply for its masters in comparative literature since I think I could live a great life in Seattle for two (or more) years. We had a total connection.

One of four symmetrical buildings framing the quad, a large
grassy area lined with cherry trees. Can you imagine how
this looks in the spring when the trees are in bloom?

Seattle, folks. Ain't she purdy? Like my older sister
Laura, I too have fallen in love with this astounding
city.

I hope you all are well. You're constantly in my thoughts and always safe in my heart.