Flying to Katmandu
 

My daughter, Eryn, took her 2nd medical school board exam on Friday, and is now on her way to Nepal, Kathmandu to be exact.
When she gets back next month, she'll be a 4th year med student, applying for residences, etc. She decided that her specialty will be psychiatry.
She flew out of Dulles in Washington last night at 11pm, landed in Itanbul at 9am this morning, and took off for Katmandu at 2pm today and will land at 9mp tonight.. A 22 hour trek.
Ahhh, to be young again!
I'll post pics as I get them.

psychiatry? is she nuts?

break in Nepal, or school related?

Ya, we're all nuts. :eek: in our own way :D

She got a scholarship to study there and be part of a published research paper.
It is psychiatry related.
She is really stoked on the meditation thing that Tibet and Nepal offer, and wonders if there is a deeper way to delve into the mind.
What a better place to figure that out... :yesnod:

we hear a lot about 'mental illness', however undefined that term may be, and we hear a lot about people committing suicide, which could be lumped in with 'mental illness'.

both have the same root: loss of hope.

why does someone run out and kill others without cause? we say "mental illness", but the root is he lost hope in his future.

there, just saved you a trip.

Good luck to your daughter. I hope she makes a difference in this world.

So Mt. Everest doesn't intrigue you.
Free money to go somewhere really cool?
She likes her free shit.
Hell, she's got $250k in student loans, so she might as well scam the system somehow. :Jeff '79:

it's a big mountain.
no such thing as free money. it's worked into her tuition somewhere.

if she wanted to study Buddhist teachings, there are plenty of places here that teach the same things they teach over there. and yet, every now and then we see some Buddhist monk ignite himself and kill himself for some odd reason. not terribly healthy behavior. they ask for alms and sit around all day.

:withstupid:

Wow...
All righty then.
Smoke another drink :spdchk:

I hope she has a wonderful time. See if she can stop in Singapore on here way home a study how their HC system works so much better than ours for less than half the price.

I hope that she does too.
Studying internationally takes you out of the box.
Hopefully she can lobby for mental institutions to reopen.
That would at least give the mentally ill somewhere to go for treatment instead of on every street corner in Washington DC and Los Angeles .

I will mention that to her. :seasix:

They will not reopen until we change the involuntary commitment laws. That's what drove us to close them down. No patients.

Eryn did her rotations in Washington DC GW Medical Center, the hospital where Ronald Reagan was taken when he was shot.
She also did one at a hospital in DC, where many "walk ins" were treated.
The amount of those walk ins at both hospitals alone, could warrant the reopening of mental institutions.
Multiply that by every city in the US....
Not only that, where does a parent take a kid for mental treatment?

And when these poor sick people wake up feeling better they sign themselves out. That's the kaw.

Change the laws then they will reopen the hospital's.

Now if you are over the age of 18 you can sign yourself out unless the courts say you can't. And the current laws make that nearly impossible.

I worked as a volunteer in two institutions in NY when I was in college. They are both closed up now due to the laws.

Ya, I know, but Eryn has seen many cases where the doctors have got court orders to keep mental patients. The judges are very wary of doing this though, unless they deem the patient a threat to the public.
I'm not saying that she'll be superwoman with regards to this.
Time will tell where she takes her education.

They can only hold them for 72 hours unless they are accused of or convicted of a crime.

The sad part is most of these people can be helped but will not be because they refuse treatment.

:yesnod:

Eryn's CV is most impressive.
She speaks three languages, was in the Peace Corp in Mozambique, has a paper published from when she was doing a cancer research thing at Harvard, bla, bla, bla.
When applying for residency, it all helps.
You can end up at Rutgers in NJ or Stanford in California.
Jersey is not a top pick for any med student.
Just an example as to how important it is to do the things that she is doing right now.

not picking on your wonderful daughter,

but she's 250k in the hole. 4 years of training under her belt. she is like many other doctors to be.

deeply in debt, several years invested in this career path, and her hope is that she'll like what she does long term, be good at it, and at some point break even and later show a profit on her account.

the above comment about who will pay sums it up.

someone always pays. if the service is priced out of the range of the common man, then the doctors and hospitals turn to the .gov to pay their large sums. but .gov payment comes with all manner of strings.

and every year, we repeat this process of getting young people deeply in debt, investing years of their life, in the hope that later it'll all work out somehow.

but since i'm just some dumb guy without an impressive resume, no one listens to me.

we've been treating 'mental illness' for how long, and we still have it? why? Dr. Salk fixed Polio long ago. done. it's over.

:DAB:

The little bubble that you live in must be very comfortable.
I'm so happy for you.:clap:
Stick to things you know about, like your wood.