The Sequel

This is the sequel to the strange story of how I came in contact with Medicine Royalty. I'm not going to reiterate the story here. If you don't know the story, go to: http://supersida.blogspot.com/2007/03/funny-thing-happened-other-day-youd.html for the prelude.

Following on from last time... I got home today, and I saw the bunch of mail on the dinner table. My mum waited until I'd gone through every single envelope and fallen down on the chair devoid of energy, before she casually mentioned that The Package had arrived and was in my room. OK, I know you're all just twitching with anticipation, so I will skip the bit about how excited I was, the speed at which I ran upstairs, the momentary confusion caused by my not finding it despite instructions from my mum, yelling from down stairs.

The Package held the following: a sheet of commemorative Australia Post stamps signed by both Nobel laureats, a "Les Prix Nobel" by Professor Marshall (signed with "Best Wishes to Sida"), a copy of a cartoon depicting the ingestion, and a note from M.

This week I'm studying Diabetes, and I'm also reading about the psychosocial effects of diabetes and chronic illness in general. (It's more interesting than I thought it would be - I will write about it some other time). So I'm feeling kind of guilty now. What are the psychosocial effects of fame? What are the psychosocial effects of generations of medical students learning about you? Of people writing in their blog that they think you're crazy? I flipped through the "Les Prix Nobel" (I'm yet to find out what that means), and it seems the decision wasn't that crazy after all. I feel really guilty now... One thing we learn - the pen is mighty, the mind may be weak, but a pen in a weak mind is still mighty. (Actually we already know this when we read some of the opinion articles in papers...)

I used to collect stamps, as a pre-teen, so when I looked at the stamps, I thought - wow, this trumps everything I've got. I've got to hand this down to my future generations... I will start my own family heirloom, my own family legend. They'd better appreciate this. I'm going to force the lot of them to study medicine - my sheet of stamps will not pass to a bunch of non-medicine-appreciative people... plus it's the only way I will have a family legend...

Somewhat embarrassingly, there is a rumour going around the 1st years that someone wrote a sycophantic article about Professor Marshall.