Doctor GrubHub

( 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 bo...

It's finally here: Moving tomorrow. Fright versus Fortitude. Life flashes. Past errors and triumphs reel in sequence getting to now. Sit and wait. Get up and go. Wait, but consider the beckoning challenges. They taunt and goad. Go, and don't think. "Don't think...Feel. It's like a finger pointing at the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all of the heavenly glory." Look up at the sky. It is the same sky you will see a few hundred miles away tomorrow evening, momentous and vast, unsettling and quiet. Before bed, you will think about running to help fall asleep. The simplicity of it. Remember you were called "Russian Rocket" in Track. Before the gun goes off, you line up, crouch with head down, and wait for the signal. Can't see the finish line. Crowd hushes. Heart beats against chest wall attempting escape, going nowhere. And then it stills. Time slows to pure silence. No more anticipation or worry. This is where you ...

As a child wandering the globe, I brought along a healthy dose of Soviet skepticism. Upon exiting Russia and arriving in the UK at London's Heathrow Airport, I looked around at the Brits and asked "What are all these foreigners doing here?" My parents laughed, finding it 'cute.' In order to acclimate, I read various books handed to me by my parents, and first among these was a general encyclopedia, written in English, of course. Daily I scanned numerous entries with an insatiable drive to understand, while at school the only words I dared utter to my young British peers were "let's go play" (It was the first grade, with plenty of recess built into the curriculum). Unbeknownst to me or my peers, an intricate set of neural processes allowing accelerated learning and memory formation were underway in my ripening 7 year-old brain, and they were made possible by an ancient, highly-evolved need to survive. During sleep, I was terrorized by the recur...

I left my dream residency a few years ago in ill health, and I did not, for the life of me, want to be a patient. So I procrastinated on seeking treatment. I had become used to being a physician who diligently and compassionately tended to the needs of his patients, but I did not initially have the guts to carry out what was necessary when my role was reversed to that of a patient. Away from Surgery, my life lacked purpose, and an abiding darkness shrouded my days. The cruelty of life is the free choice we are given, as it can be harnessed responsibly for good or frittered wastefully into emptiness. The emptiness of my existence built on itself and eroded who I once was – physician, son, brother, athletics enthusiast, and so on. Nothing mattered anymore as I progressed into a learned helplessness. To pick up this laptop and write would have been a colossal undertaking. Sometimes, I would go for a 5-mile run, perform 60 meter sprints at the local track, or lift weights a...