Adaptation-- A Root Canal Experience

After the permanent crown was put on my tooth, my bite became uneven. Frustration settled in and I found myself to feel as if I was a my moody teenager self once again. What if this feeling of uneveness and discomfort linger for the rest of my life? What if the next step is to get the surgery, the one that my orthodontist recommended me to have over a decade ago? I am okay with doing whatever it takes to remove the discomfort but the risk was just something my mind could not accept-- nerve damage was one of them according to my current dentist.
These are the thoughts that have been on my mind since last Thursday and they began to dissipate by Sunday of last week and I am very glad these negative thoughts are disappearing.

My dentist said normally my teeth will position themselves in a way where my body and mind get use to the new bite. I didn't believe him because for one, the thought of the discomfort from the uneven alignment was very unbearable and very disappointing. Let's just say it was not pleasant to go through all the root canal retreatment and then having to get anesthesia injections for the placement of the temporary crown before the permanent crown was put on and then having to hear from your doctor that you might feel some discomfort from these procedure: the only word that perfectly describe this entire experience was pain. We all want good result from an experience and especially from a medical procedure and when this does not happen, it can throw us off a bit. The endodontist prescribed me pain medications for several days and yes, the pain stayed for more than two days to be exact after the root canal retreatment.

Today I am glad all the hard parts are over and done with and I feel more confident that my teeth will settle and position themselves in a place where my comfort level will normalize and I will not feel the discomfort such as when I first had the temporary crown put on.

One of the lessons I learn from this experience is the body adapt to whatever it confronts. There are many parts to the body: we have the mind/brain, we have the limbs, the organs, the cells, etc. However when we mention the word adaptation, it usually referring to the mind. It's how the mind handles the situation and how it wants to put it in perspective. The key fact to remember is the body adapts with time. Time and the act of adaption is correlated and when we believe this, we give ourselves some peace of mind when life gives us lemons.

Our Mind

I used to be mad about how people treated me badly, whether in a professional environment or in my personal life.  Rather than lock myself in this mindset of unhappiness, I decided to change it. I realize that I can do something and sitting and locking myself in a room would not do any good. I remember as I went through this process , I had to continually remind myself that things will pass and that taking actions and keeping my mind busy was the key to unlock myself from this doomed situations.

In this post, I would like to talk about how our mind works and what I learned about it for this past years and I took my brain as a testing objective. Please note that many people who are in different age groups and in different professions, from white collar to blue collar jobs, have the same experiences as I do.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Case study: I've been monitoring my brain and read countless books and news article on it this past years and I realize that it is capable of accomplishing what we want if we trust it.

I notice a few facts about how the brain wire and I would like to share them in this post. And yes, I do not buy in the idea that our IQ is determined by our genes, no matter how much fact someone shows me.  Why? You can argue the premise with a counterargument that our mind is shaped by our environment and there are supportive examples and personal testimonies to support this subject matter.

In any case, here are a few observations I learned about how the mind works this past three years:

1. Are you feeling regrets and sadness? No problem, our mind can handle that. It can forget and let go if we let it. The key objective in these situations is to shift our mind to another objective, something more positive and something other than the object that is making us unhappy. If we remember the word "shift" then our mind will help us to heal.

2. Not sure if our decision is the right one? Then the high chance we are not ready to commit to whatever is.  Maybe the right decision is to wait and explore further before making any sort of commitment.

3. Having happy thoughts and you can think clearly at the same time? Whatever we are doing is the correct course of action for our mind. Keep doing and remember to go back to whatever makes our brain feels good when we are in the low part of our life. Take notes if you want to remember later on.

All in all, I find that people who are "smart" know how the brain works and they use it accordingly and thus they succeed academically and make good decisions through out their life time. Why not imitate these so called "smart" people? They learned it from some where and someone too and so can we.

The Stages

As a kid, people always confused me. I didn't understand how the adult world works. I didn't understand the many aspects of being an adult. I did't understand what it takes to be a great human being and how to succeed. Looking back, it's not that I was dumb, it was that I didn't have much confidence in my own ability to think for myself and on my ability to approach different problems and situations.

Then college began. Though I commuted to school, I find it was easier than I thought when it came to easing my way into this world of people who seemed to possess more confidence and who seemed to exactly know where they will be heading in life.  I found part-time jobs as a tutor and worked my way out of college with decent grades and a lot of experience under my belt.  There were boy complications here and there but I thank God that they did not reck me and prevented me from completing my degree within the four year limit.

After undergrad, work took over my life. I remember working overtime because I had nothing better to do. Work was a part of me and it became my identity. The first year was a tough one. I did not enjoy every bit of it, nevertheless I have to admit I learned something along the way ever single day. I learned how to be a great parent by talking to all the coworkers who were mothers and fathers at work--I worked in a job where majority of the employees were at least 40 years older, thus this gave me the opportunity to grow up quicker just by hearing their advice and life stories. They told me the good events in their lives and the bad situations they got themselves into; and so I found myself to become a better person by learning from other people's mistakes.  In addition, I learned how to be a good coworker who brought snacks and food and shared them with other fellow coworkers; I must add that I gained a few pounds from this fun experience and also learned how to be kind to people whom I do not know well.  I learned how to be a great sibling to another person by hearing my coworkers talk about their immediate family.

Don't mistaken, I completed my assigned work every day and the reason why I had time talking to the older coworkers at work was because I became a quick learner and was able to finish my assigned tasks at a quick pace.

Another experience that changed me the most was my volunteer experiences at a hospital called St. Mary Medical Center back in 2013. Here, I met some of the brightest people in the United States. I met resident physicians, attending physicians, nurses, medical students, high school students.  Let's just say they were not your typical average Americans.  These professionals know how to use their brain at a capacity that I rarely saw in a person.  This is a trauma hospital and it's a teaching hospital, therefore the people who receive any form of training here have to be on top of their work or else there would be bad consequences, or worst they lose their jobs.  For instance, the resident physicians have to stay in the hospital and made sure the patients in the Intensive Care Unit are well cared for and little mistakes can endanger a life.

Then I also had the opportunity to meet some of the brightest students in the United States. I met some high school students from magnet schools in Southern California and as I watched them helped the patients and talked to the hospital staffs, I realize that my brain was picking up some skills they had. These kids had great interpersonal skills and they knew how to study well while still putting in some fun time in there.  Another occurrence was my time talking to a medical student from UCLA; she completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard University and was doing her third year rotation for medical school at St. Mary Medical Center.  I accidentally ran into her while we were watching the resident physicians perform a procedure on a patient in the Intensive Care Unit and we started this one conversation and for some reason, my brain enjoyed the convo deeply; it liked the fact that this girl was right in front of me and showing me what it was like for person like her (coming from top universities in the nation) handle such a stressful environment. If you ask any physicians who have worked in the Intensive Care Unit, they will admit these patients are really sick and they need more care than your average medical surgical patients.  Furthermore she was just like any other classmates I talked to in undergrad, however her confidence made a difference. Her sentence structures and her voice tone showed the confidence that many college students do not have. 

I have moved on from my many experiences as a college students and young adults, professionally or personally, for the past two years and the lessons I learned from those experiences are invaluable for my success in the next step I take in life.  They say it takes a village to raise a child and it felt sometimes that my many jobs and my many volunteer opportunities were the villages that raised me and made me who I am today and who I need to be later on.

A Note to My Mom

The best decision my mom ever did was to move my whole family to America. Don't get me wrong, I fight and argue with her from a young age to this very day, nevertheless I learn to embrace this woman for who she is and how strong she was when she made the decision to move her four little girls to the US.  And she didn't know much about this country except that it will give her girls a brighter future than the land where she lived and worked for over forty years. She left everything behind to move us to America-- a great business that was striving, a beautiful house she built from the ground up, her family, my grandmother and all the comforts that were there.  This woman worked so hard to put her children in this land and I don't know what I would do without her. I love you mom <3 p="">

It's Not Hard, It's A Lot of Work

Whenever I ask a person a question about a skill, I notice some people have a tendency to use the word "hard"  to describe his or her feelings toward an experience.  And yes, I do believe they're feelings and they're not an objective fact. As a college graduate, I understand what that word means. It means it takes a lot of energy and effort from the doers to perform certain tasks in life and we not only talking about school work; I'm referring to tasks at a particular job such as at a Starbucks, a restaurant, at an office, computer science, etc.

 As a kid, I dread that word when I heard it from classmates ( especially this bunch), neighbor friends, church friends, strangers, etc. Sadly almost about everyone I know on this planet used that word now and then in my presence.

Instead of using the word hard, we should describe a particular activity as "it takes a lot of work." When I hear this phrase, my mind thinks there are ways and techniques to do certain tasks easily and we can do them well too.

My conclusion is when we learn anything in life  we should have the right mindset first and then we can do much more from that.

A Sunday Afternoon

Today I had a chance to talk with a new friend whom I met the other day during a church service on  a Wednesday night. She was telling me about her great career (go Nurse Practitioner!) and though it was exciting, what made me remember the most was her personal stories she shared with me.

Now, I have heard countless stories while working for a social service agency and I did this for five years, that is I heard hundreds and thousands of life stories, some were sad, some made me laugh and some were just head-scratching. At first, it was hard to understand and sympathize with the families I once called my "clients" but then as I became more proficient and good at the technical tasks at work, and not having to worry of my boss' nagging,  I learned to truly listen to their stories and be as neutral and non-judgmental as possible in all situations.

Today's story was different. I felt I could relate to her story and heartbreaks while I have never been in situations that she was in. She has a child and the kid was beautiful and observant just like any toddlers out there in the world. She has big brown eyes and light skin and as I watched her eating, I couldn't help but to continue watching her as she allowed her mother to feed her small pieces of the blueberry muffin that was served after the church service.  This child was a someone this new friend of mine was most proud of having and I couldn't help but enjoying how much love my friend was showing to the child.

This new friend of mine has gone through so much and I could see courage all over her face. And despite the fact that she is a bright person academically (NP schools makes their students work hard, from what I heard), I learned that just because we have our job and careers together, it doesn't mean life is perfect. There are other unexpected events that would hit us in the head and wake us up to to the reality that is right in front of us.  Steve Jobs once said, "Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith." Life hits, or will hit, us in the head sometimes here and there and we shouldn't lose faith and any motivation to continue this road we call "life". But rather we should get back up after every fall and roll with the punches, as the saying goes.

Becoming the Next Harper Lee

I was forced to read "To Kill the Mockingbird" back in junior year of high school and despite how much I dislike reading, I discovered that the characters were very fascinating and very much relatable to most of the people living in this world. 

After learning more about the author Harper Lee I actually want to become a writer some day.  Her book "To Kill the Mockingbird" changed the world and definitely the future generation to come. It sheds news lights to hard conversational topics such as race, relationships between people with different race, and casts a new light on how we should see the authorities in our lives. 

Written in February 2016