Saturday, October 27, 2007

They Come in Threes

I've been thinking a lot about life and death recently. Sitting in my spider hole in D'heller, my networkless laptop powered on just to keep me warm, put these thoughts about existence into my mind. Was there more to life than perfecting my Zero Wing skills? What was the point of being a Puzzle Bobble god?

My good friends in LA had a baby two weeks ago now; I've been through a lot of births in the past few months, but I still get choked up by them. And, when it's the baby of such good friends, it's especially meaningful. My happiness about the event are, well, inexpressible.

While they were experiencing new life, though, I was forming a new and close relationship with death. A week ago, I answered a code; the poor person passed away, his head in my hands, my face perhaps the last he saw. Will I end up the same, I wondered, alone, a stranger saying goodbye to me as I leave this world?

I continued on my rounds, and ended up at another code, less than twenty minutes later. This time, I had just begun to bag when she revived. The code team arrived, and I left. Is she still around a week later, I don't know.

They come in threes, I was told. And so, the wait for number three began. It happened on Thursday, at the end of a long day. This one turned out well, and everyone there was happy and relieved. Grandma was okay, and the family intact.

So, now that I am in nephro/internal, I find myself with a job opposite to that I had in my obs/gyne rotation. Death is all around, and it's our job to make sure that it doesn't come too early. This is why I'm here...

As Leonard said:

We've been around, we fall, we fly
We mostly fall, we mostly run
And every now and then we try
To mend the damage that we've done

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Back to Life

Last Thursday, I emerged from my spider hole, and returned to so-called civilization, looking much like Saddam. I haven't quite recovered, though. A classmate asked me yesterday why I was walking around stooped over; the contractures will take some time to stretch away.

We had Thanksgiving on Monday up here, which resulted in a nice dinner at a classmate's place. I started nephrology the next day. It's fun so far; maybe I should go into nephro...