Guts

It began in junior high when a group of neighborhood girls decided they were better than the rest of us. They wrote a song about their looks and personalities; they sang this every morning on the bus to school and every afternoon on the return trip home. These girls made me feel worthless and invisible.

I wish I had had the guts to stand up on the bus and silence them by telling them the harm they were causing. But I didn’t have that moral courage.

Dear readers,

When I think about which parts of my medical training required guts, what pops into my head is my very first clinical rotation: surgery.

You might think that I’d have been most fearful of what I’d encounter in the operating room–spurting blood and writhing intestines.

In truth, the thing that roiled my own guts was the hour that I’d have to report. The thought of getting up at 4:30 AM–to shower, dress, have breakfast, catch a bus to the hospital and trudge to the surgical ICU–filled me with despair.