Like Ducks...

Tuesday of this last week, I was told that Labor Day weekend was this coming weekend. To be honest, I was completely clueless of such a three-day weekend. Yesterday, the remnants of a hurricane / tropical storm paid us a visit...again, clueless of such a storm brewing off the eastern seaboard. Since starting, school has become my universe, and for the most part, I'm ok with that. I enjoy what I am learning. I pray that the information sticks in my head so that I can remain in this privileged profession. I'm so focused that when I learned it was a three-day weekend the first thought in my head was (as with most of the class): awesome another day to catch up. For most students, there are those freakish exceptions without any such gauntlet, the gauntlet of medical school does not reside in scientific theory. If one has a sound foundation in the basic sciences (biology, physics, and chemistry), then the theory, found throughout medicine, digests without much difficulty. The gauntlet pretty much comes down to the volume, the amount of information. I have tried to use the fire hose analogy a few times, but then I realized accuracy wasnt up to par. Better to compare medicine like this: take two or three fire hoses of information, turn them full throttle, and stick your mouth on the outlets. Comfort comes when one realizes that others past and present will or have walked the same bumpy road. Last week a fellow classmate and friend told me a good analogy she had once heard:

Liz: Med students are like ducks.
Me: Like ducks, Liz?
Liz: Yeah like ducks. We look completely calm and put together on the surface, but when you look below the water, we are frantically kicking and moving around just trying to stay afloat.

You work very hard. You play hard, and if there is still time left, then you sleep, or, in my case, you write.

In some ways I have already changed greatly. In others, I'm the same. As a student doctor, I met my first living patient this last week on Tuesday. Sounds early, doesnt it? But, this was exactly what I wanted from a medical school. Although Irma (my groups cadaver, we assigned the body a name as a sign of respect) will teach my fellow lab partners and me very much, she cannot communicate back to us. Medicine is as much about science as it is about human relationships, a balance of science and art. This first living patient really left an impression on me. I will not speak of our communications, just of big picture stuff. His condition was congenital, meaning from birth, and very debilitating in the eyes of the healthy, non-deformed population. He however looked at life very differently, in the most pleasant and refreshing of ways. To him, life embraced a blessing. He does not see debilitation; he sees a challenge. During the visit, he smiled the entire time; his undertone spoke of running downhill on a nice fall day in lieu of running uphill and against the wind in the snow. His love of life, his outlook just completely amazed me. I hope when I am infirmed and/or injured, as I will be...we all will be, that I can take life by the balls and hang tight like this patient, this fellow human being.