Champagne and Tears
Exactly one year a go, I hugged Tom at 5:15 in the morning and headed out the door to put on my long white coat for the first time. I thought it would be my armor. Instead, it became dead weight, my responsibilities as inescapable as gravity as I faced my very first night as a doctor, on call no less, with six admissions after midnight. I wish I could say I remembered more of that very first day beyond my pride at signing the team out by 5:30P and the utter terror I felt at 3:30A as my phone rang...yet again...with admission no.4.
Residency, or internship in particular, is like reading an epic novel out of order. You have moments of utter confusion akin to the first time you encountered algebra or trigonometry. And you have moments of utter clarity, where the whole world is thrown into relief. "Oh," you say, "so that's how the alogrithm works," as you run your first mock code devoted to unstable supraventricular tachycardia. And in spite of the fact that your obsessive compulsive personality disorder is what has made you successful in the first place but also leaves with you an inability to relax when faced with a situation that! you! don't! know! or! recognize!, you one day learn that everything in medicine comes in waves and repetitions. You will see status epilepticus again. Oh yes, you will. Indeed, you will see it three times this week alone. As the year progresses, you will go back and re-read your chapters again. And the sequence will begin to take shape and the meaning begins to evolve.
There will be times when you are reduced to an animal, the anxiety primal in its degree as you tread perilously close to violating your oath of "Do no harm" even though you didn't mean to. To be sure, it's the anxiety that
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