Progress
(Note: Specific details of individuals depicted below have been altered for full anonymity. See upcoming article about "Levels of Anonymity in Medicine.")
Lately, it seems all I do is scuttle to and fro around the hospital: Emergency room, operating room, clinical wards, emergency room, and so on. A mental checklist reels and menaces in my head, always brimming and never complete. Then, as I scurry from Emergency to the OR, anxiously praying to do things well and on time, I glimpse outside through the vast hallway windows: Mountains stretch the horizon, leaning to kiss low-hanging clouds that blend with the sun into a golden vanilla foam. An elderly man sits by the piano next to an elevator, playing Segovia on his guitar for patients and visitors. A boy in a hospital gown walks by with his therapy dog German Shepherd. His mother beams proudly, smiling with cautious relief ("I'm so glad he is doing better now.")
With the mountains, the music, and the boy with his dog, a warmth flushes over me and I pause for a moment to note where I am: I am in the hospital, where I serve as a resident doctor. I pinch my oversized white coat to check if this isn't a dream - never in the wildest of dreams did I think I'd end up back here, healthy, serene. Looking back at the boy and his mother, I imagine my mother and father walking besides me, beaming with pride, smiling with cautious relief ("This is my son, the doctor. He is healthy now.")
I feel content (torrential downpour). Try to hide it, bitching about the way things are going, but this is the best year of my life (thundering storm). My mind is clear (blistering winds); body strong (running and gasping and pleading for breath).
As I pass the large windows into the tunneled operating room complex, I see a middle-aged physician walking towards the light of the sun and the mountains. He has a thick, mostly dark, head of hair, and an athletic, angular face. But his skin has yellowed and his abdomen grown into a tense repose, as if the viscera persist on the verge of spilling out onto the floor ("Get me out of here," says the liver). His guts seem to hang by the thinnest of membranes, the abdominal layers stretched over time due to pressure. I don't know him, but perhaps he was jovial before, though now his face is fixed in perpetual concern, aware of a constant emergency. Every moment is precious and dire. "He must be an excellent physician," I think to myself. "He knows the value of life."
I think of every person I pass - the yellowed physician, the sick child, his worn-out mother holding fast to hope, the elderly guitar player providing peace to others - and think back of myself, where I've been. Our existence hangs on a tenuous string, like that Frenchman, Philippe Petit, walking on a wire between the Twin Towers in 1974. He's still alive. The Twin Towers are gone.
I walk swiftly to the floor, where I've been called to evaluate the infected hand of a heroin addict. It will probably require amputation at some point. He cites having incredible pain with each motion, and he is given high doses of narcotics to allow us to change his dressings. He manipulates the nurses, and maybe he's trying to manipulate us as well, but in one form or another, his pain is real. At one point in his life, he must have been an innocent child. It is easy to dislike him now, the way he manipulates hospital staff, smokes in the bathroom, and complains all the time. Many doctors and nurses treat such patients with unspoken contempt. Few care to consider what prompted him to become that way. It is much easier to dismiss his humanity entirely.
I'm no angel of empathy, preaching to others how they should act. All I know is that I've been given many a chance to thrive in my life, starting with birth. Of each person who suffers, even by one's own unruly hands, I utter the same, tired refrain: "There, but for the grace of..." and so on, back and forth.
Lately, it seems all I do is scuttle to and fro around the hospital: Emergency room, operating room, clinical wards, emergency room, and so on. A mental checklist reels and menaces in my head, always brimming and never complete. Then, as I scurry from Emergency to the OR, anxiously praying to do things well and on time, I glimpse outside through the vast hallway windows: Mountains stretch the horizon, leaning to kiss low-hanging clouds that blend with the sun into a golden vanilla foam. An elderly man sits by the piano next to an elevator, playing Segovia on his guitar for patients and visitors. A boy in a hospital gown walks by with his therapy dog German Shepherd. His mother beams proudly, smiling with cautious relief ("I'm so glad he is doing better now.")
With the mountains, the music, and the boy with his dog, a warmth flushes over me and I pause for a moment to note where I am: I am in the hospital, where I serve as a resident doctor. I pinch my oversized white coat to check if this isn't a dream - never in the wildest of dreams did I think I'd end up back here, healthy, serene. Looking back at the boy and his mother, I imagine my mother and father walking besides me, beaming with pride, smiling with cautious relief ("This is my son, the doctor. He is healthy now.")
I feel content (torrential downpour). Try to hide it, bitching about the way things are going, but this is the best year of my life (thundering storm). My mind is clear (blistering winds); body strong (running and gasping and pleading for breath).
As I pass the large windows into the tunneled operating room complex, I see a middle-aged physician walking towards the light of the sun and the mountains. He has a thick, mostly dark, head of hair, and an athletic, angular face. But his skin has yellowed and his abdomen grown into a tense repose, as if the viscera persist on the verge of spilling out onto the floor ("Get me out of here," says the liver). His guts seem to hang by the thinnest of membranes, the abdominal layers stretched over time due to pressure. I don't know him, but perhaps he was jovial before, though now his face is fixed in perpetual concern, aware of a constant emergency. Every moment is precious and dire. "He must be an excellent physician," I think to myself. "He knows the value of life."
I think of every person I pass - the yellowed physician, the sick child, his worn-out mother holding fast to hope, the elderly guitar player providing peace to others - and think back of myself, where I've been. Our existence hangs on a tenuous string, like that Frenchman, Philippe Petit, walking on a wire between the Twin Towers in 1974. He's still alive. The Twin Towers are gone.
I'm no angel of empathy, preaching to others how they should act. All I know is that I've been given many a chance to thrive in my life, starting with birth. Of each person who suffers, even by one's own unruly hands, I utter the same, tired refrain: "There, but for the grace of..." and so on, back and forth.
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