Saturday, July 19, 2008

• Worlds on Fire

  A strange week, indeed.

  For the first time in many years, I woke up each morning looking forward to my day in the hospital.  Any person who has known me over the past four years will recognize the preceding sentence as just short of unbelievable.  With that in mind, dear reader, you may imagine I had finally found my niche in the world of medicine. 

  Perhaps you would, without feeling confused, until I told you my week was spent in the department of anesthesia.  This field represents the antithesis to all things that drove me into medicine: a desire to know my patients, their lives, and their illnesses.  A desire to celebrate victory over sickness and to use words to diagnose, comfort, and teach. 
  
  Anesthesiologists obtain the minimum information required to keep the patient alive through surgery, a duration of not more than several hours.  Anesthesiologists love to be in control, and will override the requests of patients who lack capacity to make decisions concerning their care.  Anesthesiologists use words their patients will not remember to provide temporary reassurance.  Anesthesiologists are not concerned with lifelong improvement, but rather maintenance of life as a bridge to continuity of care.  My impatient desire for control was finally, finally, an asset. 

  And it is here, in this detached confidence and intermittent urgency, that I found myself most at home.  The questions posed by attendings required me to dig out my computational intellect, a part of me that has been silenced by the noisy processing of short term memory required for most rotations.  Reminded me of math in middle and high school, when I always knew the answer before everyone else in the room, and the teachers would ask me to double check their board work.  

  I could call this place home. 
  But I won't.

  Because there is something more important to me than feeling smart.  More important than feeling in control, and more important than getting people to do what I know is best. 

  There is balance, and a challenge that will force me to become a person I can hardly imagine will ever exist: gentle, gracious, hopeful and free.  There is a place I can serve, daily, and feel more alive each day.  A method of influence by which a servant can lead and a doctor can be healed. 
  
  This is where I will call home.  

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