I realize, with a shock, that it's been more than a year since the last posting on this thing. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that it's so hard to write in medical school, especially when I'm as OCD about my writing as I am. So perhaps it's time to let go.
I went to visit my grandma last week, and for some odd reason she started flipping through my First Aid book. "Wow," she said, "you have to remember all this?" Yup, yup, and then she started flipping through the pictures in the back. Then all the questions began.
And somehow, I suddenly found myself telling stories. Tales of how the body works like a machine, and where that analogy ends. We ended up talking about cholera, about germs that don't normally make us sick, unless they themselves become infected with even smaller germs. She pores over some of the histology slides. "It's so beautiful," she said, running her finger along the edge of the cells. "What is it?"
"That's, uhm, prostate." Awkward.
I think one of the things that medical school does so well is to kill the sense of wonder that we have if we sit back and think about the things that we talk about in medicine. I can't help but to blame some of our professors for this, especially the ones who come in and just try to cram our heads full of tiny, infinitesmal facts. But I know that I'm to blame for this too-- that I've become so distracted with learning the technicalities of medicine that I've rarely stopped to sit back and go whoa.
This frustration is where I'm at now. I'm stuck with the immense chore of stuffing a ton of information into my brain; useful information, for the most part, and then a lot of tedious unnecessary technicalities as well. And I'm so busy trying to jump through this hoop that I don't stop to look up, pause in the air to gasp at the view.
