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prev.cont.I don’t want to go to the operating room tomorrow. I don’t want to go anywhere anymore. The thought of going anywhere makes me want to vomit and die.
I’m sick of this shit. I want to pluck out each medical fact I’ve ever learned from my brain. I squeeze the skin of my temple and imagine the words “sacubitril-valsartan” being drawn out as I pull my fingers away. I throw it into the corner of my room.
As miserable as it is, each day of the weird year, each person I’ve spoken to, has revealed to me something about the world that had been hidden from view. There’s no other job I can think of that allows such intimacy with perfect strangers.
The stakes are high (a man who had a stroke and has to leave behind his 50 rescue dogs in the mountains), but they’re not (a man in excruciating pain laughing about how his toenails look disgusting). There are no other jobs like this.
Today I hurt my arm diving into the lake. I saw the 8th-grade-going-into-9th-grade kids doing it with an elegance that I didn’t expect from boys that age, and I was envious. Every time I brought myself to the edge of the dock, I became paralyzed. I couldn’t do it.
When it was time to go home, I decided to give it one more try. I assumed the position and jumped without giving myself any time to second-guess. I figured the worst thing that could happen was ending up in the water, which was going to happen anyway, so there was no risk.
In the split second after I jumped, I screamed in terror, splayed out my arms, and slapped my arm against the water in a way that I didn’t know was possible. It still hurts. Fuck them kids.
I used to spend a lot of time thinking about what I’d do if I ever saw a glitch in the matrix. Something that proved without a doubt that everything around me is part of some grander scheme, or is otherwise not what it seems. A sign from God, or some indication that my life is being generated by a machine. Glitches and signs and indications like that have happened nearly every day this year. No need to wonder what I’d do anymore. The answer is nothing.
I saw a patient in clinic today who was the largest person I’ve ever seen. Her doctor sent her to the vascular surgeon because her legs are swollen. She’s unable to stand, walk her dog, or do anything. But these things are beyond the scope of vascular surgery. The doctor prodded her legs a couple times before saying she needed to get ultrasounds to check for blood clots. And then he left.
I followed him back to his tiny office to put the order in for the ultrasounds. My head started spinning when he used a keyboard shortcut to write “It was nice to see you in clinic today” in her after-visit summary.
Then I worked the night shift in the emergency room. I sat in my usual spot. The doctor and nurses were talking about a patient who’d just been brought in and was “pretty much dead.” They threw out numbers like 17 (his lactic acid) and 9 (his potassium) as evidence of his near-deadness.
The doctor came back every now and then with updates on the numbers, which were improving. It started to look like the patient was going to make it. Everyone was surprised but ultimately unphased.
The body has its own agenda that doesn’t require anyone’s permission to advance. Medicine has no right to take itself as seriously as it does, but it does.
exit