Foreign Country

I was walking down the hallway in the hospital today on my way to clinic. As I passed by several empty rooms with their beds made and ready for their new occupants, I thought about what it must be like for a new patient coming into the hospital. I don't mean a patient with any sort of medical background or even a patient with a friend or relative with medical background; I'm talking about any patient off the street with little to no medical knowledge other than what his or her family doctor has told him or her. I imagined how overwhelming it would be. Forget the ED right now, the patient is brought to their new cubicle of a room that probably overlooks the wall of the adjacent building. They are swooped in upon by a couple people in scrubs that they assume are nurses. These people strip them bare, attach multiple cords to them that then make all sorts of loud beeping noises, they get stuck with needles that are then attached to more tubing. Another machine is squawking at them now. Then, when all this is done, the nurses leave. Just leave, and the patient is now alone in this tiny room, attached to multiple machines, with only a TV for company. At some point, the patient is descended upon by an army of people in white coats, the doctors, and are told a bunch of things that sound really scary. Are these things explained? Probably not. Does the patient ask for enlightenment? No. Why? Because he or she doesn't want the doctors to think he or she is ignorant or stupid. 

It was disheartening for me to think about how I walk into the hospital each day of my own free will. How I have some semblance of an idea of how everything is connected together. I understand the language to some degree. I just can't imagine the fear the average hospital visitor would have on entering. It's like a foreign country minus the tour guide/interpreter. Except, I would think it's worse because at least in a foreign country, you can ask the mundane questions without feeling completely humiliated. But in the hospital, there's a level of humiliation in the process. The patients know the doctors are speaking the same language thus making it all the more difficult for them to say simply, "I don't understand" or "please explain". The way we tell our patients what is wrong with them is in an air of superiority, again, making it difficult to allow the patient the security to pipe up when he or she is lost in the jargon. The constant sense of urgency, of lack of time, of rush makes the patient feel even more compelled to remain quiet. The "well, I just don't want to make my doctor angry by making them more late with my stupid questions" takes over. Sometimes I wish we could be more patient with the patients. 

Ramblings of the Sleep Deprived Student

I love cooking. Like writing, I don't think I realize how much I enjoy either activity until I take it up again after a period of inactivity. Surgery has been my two months of inactivity, but I'm starting to break free. On the weekends, I force myself to take time just for me. Like this weekend. Yesterday I spent the better part of the afternoon planting, enjoying the sun on my back, the soft, loamy first between my fingers, and the beautiful green of newly planted tomatoes and herbs. I await the day that the secrets of the seeds and corms I planted burst forth in splashes of color, a welcome "hello" from Mother Earth, herself. 

Today, I invented "everything but the kitchen sink" breakfast quiche. I threw whatever veggies I could find into a pan to cook, added eggs, milk cheese, and poured it all over a wonderfully toasty hashbrown crust. See cooking for me is something entirely different from baking (except bread). Certainly, similar tools are used, but cooking is much more like art, while baking is something of a science. Baking requires exact measurements, exact times, exact exactness. My life is the human version of baking. I have to be exact, precise, no more, no less. When I get home, I shed my perfectionistic skin for something more fluid, more dynamic. Like cooking. Cooking is all about a little of this, a little of that. Timing is when it's done. The ingredients change each time I make the dish, so it's never a clone of the time before. I like it that way. I have in my head an idea of what the end result will be, but the road to get there rambles, visiting different areas each time. It never looks the same.

Just like writing. I can write ten different poems about the same thing, and they will say it all in different ways. Each will have its own rhythm, some will rhyme, many won't. Some will be a more somber view, some seductive, others downright risque, but all talking about the same entity. When poems become too rigid, their meaning disintegrates, the reader is left feeling like they just weren't quite to the full meaning, and the author is left frustrated by the lack of communication. But fluidity, allowing for a moment the suspension of rules, constraints, the weights of life, and that's when ideas soar and communication meets understanding. Like love.

Love is indescribable. Everyone knows when they've felt true love, but no one can describe what it is. We all have images, moments that we describe when asked about true love. Mine is knowing that I never have to go through the most difficult parts of being a doctor alone; knowing that I can always talk to my mom and dad, that they will understand what I'm going through because they have been there before. Mine is knowing that my life jar is overflowing with the rocks that keep it full and steady, that make less room for the unimportant sandy small stuff while still providing support for the pebbles that ultimately help to fill out the enriched life I live. Love is knowing that there's one more special rock out there for me, and we're going to bump into each other one day while he's using my yellow umbrella to keep the rain off him (HIMYM reference, fyi). Love is being patient enough to allow that moment to happen when and where it's supposed to. Like life.

Life is one's rambling across the timeline of the world. We each are like ants following the scented trail. We all have an idea of where we are coming from, and a semblance of an idea of where we're going. But watch the ants sometime. Although they are all following the same trail, each one has his or her own unique way of tracking it. Each ducks, weaves, and swerves across the path in a different way. We are all like those ants, we know where we've come from and where we are going, but our paths are all different. I suppose at this point I've rambled on enough about nothing and everything. I have lost found and relost my train of thought, my organization waxes and wanes. Perhaps one day I'll be able to make sense of it all.