It’s hard to provide a sound bite to the question “how are you?” or “how is school?”
How do I explain the pure joy and exhilaration of catching a baby? Of being the first flesh to touch another human? Of owning the two hands that shepherded another human, or four, into this world?
How do I explain what it feels like to be sitting in front of a man sobbing uncontrollably into his own hands because he just attempted to commit suicide? To look into this man’s eyes, someone my father’s age, and be the first person this man must now face? How do I explain his pleading gaze and the pungency of sorrow that encapsulated my whole being and then sent shivers through my bones lasting for days after?
How do I explain the pride I felt after delicately suturing a 6 inch incision across someone’s neck? Yet it was a half-ashamed pride because the only reason the team decided to suture was because the patient was dying of anaplastic thyroid carcinoma. To leave staples would’ve been an insult to this woman who had days, maybe weeks left. (She had 28 days left.)
How do I explain the exhilaration I felt when the HIV screen that I had ordered (and intern signed) came back positive? That I had successfully diagnosed somebody with HIV? But then terrified when I had to deliver the news to this previously healthy young 22 yo male?
How do I…? How do I…? There were so many more How do I’s from these past 40 weeks that I don’t know how to answer. So instead I wrap each of these experiences and memories up as the little bits of sand that they are in the hourglass of my life, and hope that one day, maybe in a year or 10 or 100, I may look back and find pearls in their stead.
Vital Signs 