Solvitur Ambulando
08/04/2024
There is very little in terms of ‘good’ that I attribute to medical school. My pursuit of medicine led me to the M.D. class of 2022 at Thomas Jefferson University, Sidney Kimmel Medical College. The place where my faith in people was finally lost, and the recognition of teachers being some of the most consistent disappointments in my life became crystallized.
However, I remember two lectures that inspired something that still seems to be making an impact in my life albeit for different reasons. One was a lecture in Cardiology by Dr. Pavri and the other was on neural connections of the eye by someone I fail to remember.
Dr. Behzad Pavri, a revered cardiologist at Jefferson was the first to introduce us to the fundamentals of electrocardiography. Somewhere between describing Einthoven’s triangle and the position of the electrodes for 12-lead ECGs, he mentioned a book with an intriguing cover—Godel Escher Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid. As a habitual backbencher, I always found a place to hide when I started losing track of the lecture. with Dr. Pavri’s mannerisms as he described the book and it being an influential one for him, I lost interest in what he had to say afterward.
Later that day I purchased it online, and when it arrived, tucked it away on the bookshelf like the others with the usual empty promise of reading it someday. A little over 5 years later, amid another turmoil of the soul, in need of a distraction, I picked it up and attempted GEB like I did Lehninger ‘s Biochemistry in 2003 when pursuing a B.Sc in Biochemistry at the University of Delhi. Like my struggle with the Ramachandran Plot, I found myself wondering if going through Douglas Hofstadter’s book would be a never-ending endeavor. Hit with a mixture of music and mathematical semantics, I eventually decided to take notes to make some sense of my attempt. I spent a while on the MIU puzzle by scribbling on a piece of paper. This was one of the first things I did after being diagnosed with ADHD in my fortieth year. 18 mg of methylphenidate wasn’t enough which I discovered a few weeks later in the follow-up appointment with Dr. Borman. However, it gave me enough juice so as not to give up. I powered through to the point where Achilles and the Tortoise started talking...