jjablkowski's blog

The UBC Medicine Spring Gala is a yearly celebration of the visual and performing arts where UBC medical students from all four years can come together to showcase their talents and passions from outside the medical realm. It is a beloved event that brings together the entire medical community and promotes connection, healing, and shared appreciation of creative expression. 

I recently became the honorary great-grandfather to a baby boy, and his mom let me hold this beautiful new infant in my arms. The beauty of new life—the well-formed tiny hands and feet and the prospects for this new human’s future got to me. Tears started to roll down my cheeks. Then my doctor mind clicked on and I marveled at the biology behind the process of sexual reproduction.

Tango is more than a dance. It is the language of romance. To tango is to learn how to love, how to communicate in a relationship. 

I had frequent ear infections as a child of 6 and 7 years of age in the early 1930s. As was the practice of the day in my native Hungary, the otolaryngologist specialist arrived on his bicycle to our apartment, carrying his medical bag. I was made to sit up in my bed. He sat next to me with his instruments. Looking in my ear he said, “hang on!” and in a second he punctured my eardrum to let a drop or two of pussy fluid escape. I felt immediate relief from my earache. That was over 86 years ago. 

While visiting the Canadian Museum of Flight in Langley, I saw extensive displays of aircraft, some from the First World War, some from the Second World War, and even more from recent times, including modern fighter jets and their engines.