Wartime Efforts
I’m a rising fourth-year medical student and currently in limbo. Clinical rotations have suspended until further notice. But I want to help, even if only in small ways.
Step by Step
Halfway through my third-year rotations, I was sitting in a hidden enclave in the children’s hospital, trying to eat my lunch and get a bit of rest. By that point in the year, the gray circles under my eyes were darker, my feet hurt more easily, my time was consumed by work and study. Is this all worth it? I often asked myself.
Final Breaths
I remember my first code.
I was a senior in college, shadowing in the ER on a cold, Sunday night. Decembers in Providence can be brutal.
It was 11:30 p.m., and a voice came on the PA, urgency in her voice: “Code Blue, Code Blue.” The physician asked me if I had ever seen one before, and when I shook my head, he directed me to Critical Care Room C.
Behind a glass wall, I stood in silence, waiting. All the nurses and interns seemed on edge, ready to spring into action. I breathed in and out, in and out.
Comfort Amidst the Unfamiliar
In the waiting room, I hear melodious Spanish words and think of my own family.
I think of my abuela (my grandmother) and of my parents–immigrants to a foreign land. They left behind the familiar to come to America. Childhood memories swirl in my mind, of my brothers and me eating empanadas in the evening, of my mother speaking her native tongue. Whenever I crossed the threshold to my school, or back to my house, I remember switching from one language to another.
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Seeing Patients for the First Time
I wish I could see his eyes, hidden beneath a pair of shades. A tweed cap, or as I like to think of it, the “grandpa cap,” covers his head. With his hands resting on a cane, he leans his back against the chair.
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Presence
I take a deep breath in and let it out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. I wipe the sweat off my palms, adjust the newly-minted stethoscope draped around my neck and knock on the door.
A voice croaks, “Come in,” and I enter the room to find the patient on the chair. His eyes look tired.