Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The Furnace

14 Long at the Med Center is 1/3 chemo, 1/3 medicine, and 1/3 palliative care. The chemo side is quiet - doors closed except for the few passers through. Patients in their beds and maybe a family member plinking away at a laptop to pass the time. The medicine hall is kind of a mystery to me so far - some doors are open with daytime TV drifting out into the hallway. Others are closed, but judging from the bold lettered signs next to the precautionary gowns, gloves, and masks you have to put on to before going inside, it's a good thing they are! By far the most activity is on the palliative wing, where family groups are gathered at doorways - allowing one or two at a time in to say their goodbyes. There's a beautiful solarium at the corner of the palliative hall that feels like a crows nest overlooking the skyline and the Golden Gate and the sea. A reminder that life is still happening to all the lookers-out.

So on every Thursday and Friday this summer from 7-4pm, that's where I will be. Struggling to stay out of the nurses way but still learn from what they're doing. Attempting to be useful with the so-far-not-very-extensive skills I learn in lab. Willing my hands to avoid the nervous shakes when I take a patient's vitals. Praying to all things holy that I don't mess up... at least not too badly.

14 Long will force me to put my head down, dig deep, and keep my sense of humor. I don't really know what I was expecting, but I can tell you this: Last week when I was leaning against the wall with a classmate- our eyes wide, our discomfort palpable- I started to giggle. "Welp. I guess this is the furnace," I said, "And we just got thrown right in." 

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Little Miss Brand New Start

To say that this week marks the beginning of a journey would be neglecting everything that led to this point: working like it depended on me and praying like it depended on God to get me into an Anatomy class for Summer 2009... realizing that I, too, wanted my life to be about service at Denny Hastert's retirement dinner... trekking to Georgetown Minimed school with Liz in Spring 2007(?)... visiting a rural health clinic in las afueras in San Jose, Costa Rica in 2005. So really, like so many things in life, this is another chapter of a bigger story. A long, involved, detailed, important chapter. 

What I'm thinking about a lot is how God is redeeming so many disappointments through this opportunity. I hated my undergrad social experience at GW - it was a dark, lonely time that I have always carried a chip on my shoulder about. Here I am surrounded by 75 motivated, friendly, helpful, open-hearted, high-capacity people. I mourned the loss of my house in DC - not only the awesomeness of that townhouse and the vicinity to the metro and my walk-in closet and personal bathroom, but also the HOME it was to my friends, roommates, and me. Now my DC peach room has metamorphosed into an SF orange room with roommates who pontificate about the matrices in health care, prove that artist and starving don't have to go arm in arm, and manipulate a bacteria colony into the most delicious fizzy kombucha you can imagine. 

I wore scrubs today for the first time. The khaki bottoms and hunter green tops make us stick out like sore thumbs as people who have zero idea as to what they're doing. I don't mind. I'm proud. I'm inspired. I'm... ready.