Sometimes its hard to say goodbye.
Ten years. Ten years in a mostly cold, windowless, airflow scrubbed bunker. I feel like a mole sometimes, finally coming above ground after living deep in the bowels of a hospital for so long. Granted, I will be in a windowless room once again, but one that has a back door, good smells and is not kept thirty five degrees below body temperature.
I was thinking on all of the cases I have done in my career and how I could never explain what I do to most folks on the outside. How do you explain what goes on beyond those double doors, after the Kiss And Cry departure, after a flimsy hospital gown goes on, after that bracelet is applied, after the patient walks into the hospital? How do you explain living and dying in a few moments time? How can I ever tell people the things that my black Dansko shoes have seen, my first and only pair since day one- the ones I am having sterilized before I leave this job for my next job that requires standing?
I knew the change had to happen when I one day realized that my motiones and movements at my back table in the OR were so blurred with the motions of my time at the stove- they became one and the same. I have learned efficiency of movement and grown comfortable with my tools in both the kitchen and the OR that I sometimes cannot separate them. The passion for medicine is gone, and the stirrings of lust for food preparation have taken its place. My body will move the same way.
Medicine was good to me. I did a hard physcial job that almost never injured me, which not every tech can claim. Never been cut. Burned only once. Poked with a dirty needle only twice. Took antivirals only once, and the patient tested clean 72 hours later. I was lucky and remain healthy. I never fell on a wet floor, only smacked my head twice, hard enough to make tears fall from my eyes with little control over them, and I never passed out, but came close three times…mostly blood sugar related. I still can feel my fingers, have no arthritis, only one or two little ugly superficial varicose veins and I have the wonderful gift of a fourteen-hour bladder. Can’t make it past the front door every time I walk through it without a mad dash to the can, working or not, but I am a helluva great driver on road trips now.
I’ve done nothing heroic, save for taking an asshole surgeon for the night as a favor to a colleague from time to time. I’ve held only four patients hands as they died in front of me (not blood relatives), and I’ve always done my duty as respectfully as possible when I procured organs from a failing body. I’ve worked on the families of colleagues by request- a daunting task and an honor at the same time. I’ve helped everyone equally, Nazi sympathizing skinhead, meth addict, junkie, wife beater, drunk driver, murderer. I’ve brought one colleague’s baby into the world, too, so I guess its not been a bad contribution on my end.
I wonder how it will feel when I finally walk away for good…
