Moment of Clarity

 I just finished my general surgery stint in Newport, which was simultaneously abjectly terrifying, demoralizing and...kinda not that bad, actually. In retrospect, anyway.


I had one of those quintessentially clear "ah-ha" moments one morning, when I was walking down the hall on my way to the elevator to round on my patient before a long day of O.R. time stretched before me. As I approached the elevators, I passed through a beam of early morning sunshine and it was as if time froze for that second: I was in a place that smelled like a hospital, looked like a hospital, felt like a hospital. I was en route to do a specific job that would ultimately "fix" a person's disorder. After that I would go assist in fixing other people's maladies. Regardless of how much I may be yelled at this day, or how many hundreds of hours I have and will spend reading books, or, despite my studies, how incompetent I may feel in the face of the rest of the team and their years--nay, decades--of cumulative experience, I knew in this sunny moment that I was doing the thing for which I am meant.

Ah-ha.

I also experienced for the first time, moments where my cancer history did not serve me well. When we cut into someone, I was acutely aware of what we were doing. I knew what that would feel like later. I anticipated the first post-op walk. The first incentive spirometry. The inadequacy of opiates for pain control. I had no one to help me understand how to process these emotions, and for the first time in my life, felt as if I may legitimately faint. While watching the surgeon's hand descend through a small incision in the abdomen to feel around for the source of the patient's trouble, my head swirled.   Do NOT faint in front of the Navy special-ops surgeon. Don't do it, I advised myself, biting my tongue, frantically force-deep breathing and flexing my calf muscles to keep blood flowing back to my head. At that moment I was glad I was covered head-to-toe in sterile garb, mask hiding my grimace, and protective eye wear to partially obscure the deer-in-the-headlights/slightly tearful expression.

As the rotation progressed, I became somewhat adapted to the cutting and the not-so-delicate manipulation of internal organs. And I always tolerated the procedures better if I had a job to do, rather than just standing at the table kinda checkin' stuff out (as is often the way when you're a naive 3rd year student). I tell you what: I can hella hold a retractor like a BOSS.

But this is general surgery. A discipline that is by reputation quite the Boys' Club. There's a reason a lot of these people work on people who are asleep: they don't relate all that well to people who are awake. Thus, it was a culture shock for me, having had no surgical experience except for when I was actually on the table. I was constantly reminded of my technical inadequacies and lack of knowledge base. These things added up to a lot of evening commutes spent in tears, and consequently a lowering of my own empathy, just to cope with the emotional burden of this work. And yet, somehow, on that last day, after debriefing, I didn't really want to leave. Stockholm Syndrome, maybe. But I think it's more because I had to depart for another site with another community of strangers where I had to learn a completely new skillset--"the devil you know is always preferable to the devil you don't."