Been feeling like you have would like to open your heart at school or work for a while? And you know you can connect a little bit deeper? You're at the tip of the iceberg, but no one can push or pull you in the water. It's time to jump.
You know the feeling you get staring down into an ice cold pool on a midsummer Saturday? You've probably already put a few toes in. It's shocking, it's tantalizing, it feels downright wrong. Yet, you know how refreshing it will feel when you break the surface. You shiver, your back feels the sun's comforting warmth for what you know will be the final time that day. You think about sunbathing yourself instead.
And then something very deep inside tells you to fly. A split second of no sensation at all, and then the chill, the brisk water touches your toes, then races up your body. As you feel naked, you feel refreshed. Your body's gravity is being carried, and just as you loose control, you feel like a rock touching a concrete basin it once called home for millions of years.
Like many of you, I live for those moments.
As a medical student, I know all too much how hard those moments are to find. I can only imagine how professionals in all fields must feel. In my field, we often wear our white coats close to our skin. We approach patients with, "Hello, sir or ma'am? What is bothering you today?" Often, we really care about them. For a second. And then we move on to the physical exam, and formulate a plan and diagnosis. When someone is dying, I naively hope all physicians take off their white coats. But on your average Thursday, often people are there for an annual, or to have their knee looked at.
I sat down earlier and asked myself, how many intimate relationships have I had with my patients today? I have trouble answering that question with a single digit. I came into medicine to heal the world, to be the next Paul Farmer. And today I remember shaking some hands, asking some questions, examining some limbs, and writing some charts. I guess I do remember a few names. Maybe the opportunities just hadn't presented today. Was I missing something? What had I forgotten?
I sat down and thought about the people in medicine I love. The people I saw jumping head first into ice cold swimming pools, before I started my journey onto the wards. I thought about Dr. Isaac Yang, my neurosurgeon mentor from UCLA. What was it about him that initially made me want to become a physician?
Without being biased, he's the world's best mentor, he tells undergraduate freshman to call him by his first name. He really connects with his patients as people, reminds them they're like his Mom and Dad. And he's saved literally hundreds of lives in the operating rooms. And it's funny, I don't really recall the times we have been in the operating room together. I recalled a morning I just happened to be riding in the elevator with him. We stood next to a family talking about a loved one in the intensive care unit. Isaac stared them in the eyes. He looked down for a while. He looked at them again. In the center of their eyes. He looked for a long time. "I am so sorry for your loss." You could see a few tears coming down his cheeks as we got off the elevator. "This is probably their worst day ever", was all he told me. He didn't even know those people. And yet they came into his life for seconds. He probably won't ever know their names, let alone see them again. And I will always remember that moment, I remember it better than yesterday and that was four years ago.
I thought about my Dean, Dr. Delbert Wigfall. He hugs all of his students, he spends meetings speaking a few phrases - and listening for the rest, he's published many articles, and is a true leader in Pediatric Nephrology. The list goes on and on. And yet, thinking about the person I seek to emulate, I remember a moment, a day I was doing poorly in anatomy class. And I walked into his office, and he just stared me in the eyes. And we stared at each other for a while. And told me we could get through it together. That I thought, that's the kind of doctor I want to be.
I thought about my preceptor, Dr. Barbara Sheline. She has completely revamped medical education, created a novel clerkship system that sends students into the community for half of their clinical year, is Durham's most beloved doctor, and a family member of hundreds. I remembered a moment in clinic last spring, when we said goodbye for the weekend. I was headed home to California - it was a longer weekend. She was headed to: "A pharmacy. One of my patients who also happens to be a close friend needs this. It's a script for morphine (for a dying cancer patient on hospice care). I try to do what I can." "Oh ok." I thought. Wow.
Oh how we remember the little things. The little things. Seeing another breaking the surface of an ice cold swimming pool. As I reflect, I realize that as hard as those moments are to find, often the bigger epitope is, oh how hard I make those moments to find.
How I hide them in the milieu, the patient charting notes I'm somehow always behind on typing. How I hide them in my worry about not fitting in, in my worry about not being good enough, about my clerkship evaluation, about my exam score. How I hide them in my subconscious thoughts of not wanting to stand out from my medical team being only a medical student.
Day in and day out there were little things. The elevator rides, the people I saw for tenths of a second, or the pharmacy trip I could have offered to make after my shift ended. The little things. It's time to jump.