My New Camera!

Finally! It has arrived. My new Canon Rebel Xti, digital SLR camera. I can't take a picture of it :) so I am providing this link

Soon this blog will be rife with pictures. For now, you will just have to read and use your imaginations.

Performed many volunteer duties in the ER today, including watching over a one-year-old baby post drainage surgery while his 11-year-old sister kept him smiling and somewhat relaxed. It must be very strange to be one, groggy and unable to truly move around or be picked up while six wires and tubes stretch out from your body. But, he did great, and even responded to me when I gave him "high-fives!" Unfortunately, he didn't completely trust me because his sister thinks I looked like a doctor. A high compliment in some regard, as well as the tough reality that one day, kids won't like me very much. I don't like to think about it.

Also trained in the oncology unit this week. I've always had an affinity for children with cancer. I like taking their mind of the bad stuff and getting them to smile. It's occurring to me more and more that being a physician will mean not being able to make kids smile, being scary, being hated and being a bad memory.

Someday, though, I will take great pride in any drawings or popsicle arts and crafts collages the children I treat make for me. My goal isn't to have great wealth (because as we all know, I will be a government employee by the time I graduate), but to have a couple of those macaroni, construction paper likenesses of me hanging in my practice.

Dear Grandad

I think of you a lot these days. I probably thought about you a lot before I started down the path of medicine, but I think about you now in more brilliant colors and great memories. I remember how we used to write each other when I was younger, up until you passed away. You had some great advice in those letters that I've kept and look at some times. I think I'll look at them again tonight and try to find some pearls of wisdom.

I try to call Grandma now and then and it's always so uplifting to hear her positive voice on the other end. At 95, she sounds the same as when I was only four years old. She is a remarkable, inspiring woman, as you know :) She likes to tell me how you are watching over me and guiding me into health care. I think she's right.

It's funny how I've never forgotten your stories about starting out so young as a doctor and feeling uncertain or unprepared. You were my doctor sometimes. Of course, by then, medicine was pretty much old hat. But, I remember in particular your story about sitting vigil for a young child with polio. You did that even though you had four children at home at the time.

I wish you could be here still and give me the dirty truth and the incredible greatness about being a doctor. I wish I could ask you questions and get answers to all of this work ahead of me. But, I will have to settle for the letters you've written in the past and the feeling I do have that you are never far away.

You were my doctor, you were my grandad and you are now my silent mentor.

It's Really a Dog's Life

Do you ever just look at dogs and wish you were one? I do, anyway. I have a dog and my neighbor/landlords have three. Sometimes from my bedroom window, I'll look down at their golden lab Toby and watch him just running around the yard, playing, smiling, barking and lounging around and think, "Damn! That's the life!" No bills to pay, no job to go to, food in my bowl everyday, people to pet me and love me.

Where did we humans go wrong in our efforts to be different than the animals...we really cheated ourselves of the care-free life. But, care-free animals we are only some of the time, which is why I suppose I've decided to pick something especially challenging to work on for the next several years. My mentality has always been one of - don't do anything half-assed. Just go all the way. You only live once.

If only we could live once playing outside all day.

The Nurse/Doctor Tete a Tete

Every Sunday in the ER, I bring my MCAT prep book to study. This book measures about 5 inches thick and weighs about 4 lbs. Even though I don't need to take the MCAT for another 16 months or so, I am not a test taker. Me stupid, me suck at standardized tests. So, I am determined to do well this time. Determined to prove myself wrong about those damn multiple choice tests.

Bringing the MCAT book to my volunteer job, however, elicits some very interesting reactions from the nursing staff. They pretty much give me the side angle glance. You know the one. The one where the person looks at you with a raised eyebrow and a feline smirk.

"So, why do you want to be a doctor?" asks the quick-look nurse.

"Ah, it's just something I've thought about for quite a while now, and I think I am just crazy enough to take the plunge...finally."

"Oh, you're young, you can do it," she says. However, the tone of her statement is one of - good luck, honey chile...cause it's a long ass road of stress ahead, and at the end you get to become an asshole.

Only one of the nurses said to me, "I wish I had done it. It would have only been a couple more years of school. But, I'm glad I have time with my kids and a pretty flexible schedule."

Ugh - the family thing rears it's ugly head again.

Yes, I want a family. In fact, I've wanted five children since I was about 12 years old. Yes, I want to spend time with them and see their soccer games and their football practice and attend their musicals. Yes, I want a husband I can fool around with and enjoy laughs and good times.

How is this possible if I go to med school, you ask? I really don't know how to answer that then, it just is. Why wouldn't it be possible? Only doubters live lives of impossibility. My perspective is that there is no other way to be but exuberant and optimistic. It may not happen soon, or for a while. It certainly hasn't happened yet - and I've been down the road of love and relationships enough now to know that there is not silver bullet or magic answer as to how and when it will happen. Not everyone gets to have a family at the same time in life. I'm just the one who gets to do it later.

Thankfully, I tend to look slightly younger than my age. Now, if I could just keep my grey hairs covered up.

So, to conclude. Nurses at the hospital don't befriend me. They tolerate me, so far. They are very curious as to why I want to be a MD. I can't tell if they are jealous or jaded or both. I've seen the MDs they work with and can understand why some nurses become bitter. The MDs are serious, they are cranky and sometimes rude. They don't usually stop to smile or say hi or ask you how your day is going. It's hard to imagine this might be me some day. But, one of the reasons I'd like to shoot for MD is for career flexibility. The truth is - I would like to end up practicing in a smaller community, maybe even do house calls.

In my dream of dreams, I'd be Dr. Macdonald in the country with lots of land, a smoking, funny, intelligent husband and five awesome kids to laugh and play with. Possible as a MD? I think so.