Continuing Forward in the Faint Light

In the blink of an eye, three weeks of this semester have already passed. Since the second week, we have had practical-training and lab classes almost every day. Surgery and Diagnostics have each already had three practical sessions: in Surgery we learned disinfection, sterilization, standardized donning of surgical gowns and gloves, and the various preoperative preparations; in Diagnostics we have learned three diagnostic techniques.

Yesterday, Pharmacology also had its first experiment, titled "The Effects of Different Doses and Routes of Administration on Drug Action." In the afternoon, when we went to the pharmacology lab, we handled white mice for the first time. There were four groups per lab: two groups tested the effect of different doses, and two tested the effect of different routes of administration. The first experiment used two mice per group, and the second used three; the whole lab used 10 mice in total.

During the experiment, half the mice would die under the drug's effect; after the experiment, the surviving mice would also be humanely euthanized. When it came to disposing of the dead mice, most of my classmates found it too cruel.

The roommate I most often pair with for animal experiments learned injections as a child where his parents worked. So injection is no difficulty for him: last year he anesthetized rabbits (I was the operator, he did the anesthesia), and this year he injected drugs into the mice. His skillful injection technique impressed even the teacher. He has a fine personality and a loving heart; before euthanizing a mouse, he would stroke it tenderly, reluctant to bring himself to act.

My first animal pharmacology experiment over the summer vacation, due to inadequate preparation, basically ended in failure. Today, as I handled the mice, I thought of the tumor-bearing mice that died in that experiment and felt great distress. The teacher spoke in class about the 3R principles of animal experimentation, emphasizing that we should treat animal lives well, minimize the number of experimental animals, use alternatives (such as cells instead of animals), optimize the animals' living environment and experimental protocols, and reduce animal suffering. This moved me deeply.

Sick people have a strong will to live, and we use healthy animals to explore paths of survival for them; this is inherently unfair. Every year our country uses about 11 million laboratory animals to meet medical research needs. After this lesson, I have become much more cautious in designing animal experiments.

Had I learned this lesson before my first animal pharmacology experiment over the summer, I would have held myself to a higher standard and avoided wasting experimental animals' lives. From now on, I will likely be far more cautious—carefully considering not only animals' interests but also the value of my fellow participants' time. I will prepare thoroughly before experiments to avoid wasting money and lives.

Today I learned for the first time to administer gavage, subcutaneous injection, and intraperitoneal injection to mice, and personally verified the effects of different doses and routes on drug action. This kind of seeing-is-believing teaching is indeed impressive, but I also genuinely hope to treat animal lives less cruelly in the future.

This semester has many courses and many practical sessions, so studying is not easy. Every day after class I take notes, do exercises, write lab and practical reports, and write an article, which consumes a great deal of energy. Practical and lab classes require hands-on work. Given the school's teaching schedule plus my own writing plan, by the time evening self-study ends I am basically exhausted; after a shower I can fall asleep the moment I lie down.

Last Saturday I returned to Beijing and took my wife and child to the cinema to see The Odyssey—I had promised this over the summer, and I feel ashamed that I did not make good on it then. Not long after the film began, I was snoring in the theater.

After term began, many people at school caught colds, and I was infected too. Sleeping in the theater I also caught a chill; when I returned to campus on Sunday, the cold worsened—headache, sneezing, runny nose, fatigue. On Monday's physical test, my standing long jump was only 1.96 m, a fair regression from last year.

The cold did not fully resolve all week. Perhaps a good rest would speed recovery, but if I skip even one evening self-study I fall behind on a lot of assignments and notes. So this semester, being sick is a luxury for me; I can only manage my schedule well and avoid getting sick.

Since term began, I have been trying to simplify my life, save time, and focus my limited energy on the most important tasks. Work that can be handed to AI I have handed to AI—revising code, proofreading text, batch-editing articles, and so on.

But I do not yet want to hand over writing articles, taking notes, or doing assignments to AI. If I hand these over too, my own abilities will quickly atrophy. Moreover, having AI write a few articles for me, I have been unsatisfied with the quality.

I have AI help proofread after I finish an article, AI organize my notes after I take them, and AI search up a passage when I need a long answer to a question. But I do not want to stop my own thinking, and articles AI writes for me cannot express the ideas I want to express.

Right now I need to study the courses I am taking at school hard, build the framework of my book in my spare time, and also keep working to support my family. Doing all this is already not easy; anyone with slightly less energy could not cope.

So this year I have closed many outward-facing channels. On WeChat Official Account, I set direct messages to only those who have followed for more than seven days; I turned off comments on all articles; and I set a threshold for private messages. I pruned my WeChat friends list, deleting those who simply do not understand the value of my time and make endless, meaningless inquiries. I also blocked those on the Official Account who can only vent emotionally and cannot communicate rationally. Only children and "giant babies" communicate by venting emotion; healthy adults converse rationally. Our precious lives need not be wasted on the mentally immature.

Through these settings I have reduced the workload on this front by more than 90%. I no longer need to over-consume myself to satisfy others; my energy is limited and the workload ahead is large, so saving energy is the only way to accomplish important goals. If one cannot prune the various branches of life, one becomes like a melon vine that only runs and bears no fruit, wasting a lifetime.

Studying at school is, on the whole, pleasant. Every day I encounter much knowledge I have never touched before. Some of it has inherent logical connections with what I learned before; some is entirely new. It is refreshing my cognition, broadening my knowledge, expanding my horizons, and inspiring my thinking.

Often, inspired by something, I fall into deep thought, then stroll around campus thinking, jotting sparks of thought into a notebook. I review the various problems I encountered in past clinical practice and use what I now learn to examine my past successes and failures. Honestly, if I had previously studied Western medicine thoroughly and could skillfully apply both Chinese and Western methods to diagnose and treat disease, many of the patients I treated might have lived longer.

Many TCM practitioners dismiss Western medicine, and many Western doctors dismiss TCM, making dialogue between the two very difficult. I learned TCM first, then Western medicine, and after gaining clinical experience returned to school to be re-forged. Such learning and reflection were bound to make me different from many people. In my first semester on campus, my psychology teacher told me she could not think of many people with whom I could have a deep-level dialogue. In her view, my choices had destined me to be very lonely.

I appreciate both Chinese medicine and modern medicine. I hope that in my lifetime I can integrate the strengths of both to solve some problems that neither can solve today. Above all, I hope my successful treatment experiences can become reproducible experiences that work for others too, rather than remaining at the level of isolated case successes.

Toward this goal, I see a faint light—but it is still too faint, and its efficiency too low. So there is still much room for progress; I will further refine my approach and move forward little by little. No longer pursuing speed, but doing the work as carefully as possible, thinking through problems more rigorously, and making everything more worthwhile.