To be known

Sometimes I feel like the worst part of third year, worse than the long hours and being "beaten with the idiot stick," as Chunk puts it, is feeling awkward and intrusive and out of place nearly all the time. People not knowing what you are doing there and what they are supposed to do with you. Which was why I particularly loved my OHNS (that's the new way to say ENT) surgical team on Thursday. They were just like, "Hey! Great! Check it out! Here's what we're doing!" Same with a neurosurgeon on Monday. (Yes, I saw cerebellum.) Every day I appreciate how amazingly nice someone is to me.

But then there was a day when I saw two people who really know the real me and care about me on a deeper level, and it felt so good to see them that it made me sad to think about the superficial level I survive on normally when I'm here. I saw Dr. Jeff from the Health & Healing Clinic, and he looked at me like my doctor dad and made me laugh spontaneously and genuinely. Then as I was getting on the elevator with my medicine preceptor, my stream of trying-to-sound-like-I-belong BS was abruptly interrupted upon seeing Holly, my body/mindworker, of all people! It was so surprising, and she is so intense, I was kinda speechless and dumbfounded. Having her see me in this context, having her presence pierce this place, really threw me. And made me want to have some more sessions with her!

Anyway, this is all to say that our coworkers can be the nicest people and most generous teachers in the world -- and we can be grateful for them! -- but they will never substitute for our true support system. I think if I ever saw Scott or Mom or Chunk within these walls, it would have the same effect: a direct comparison, collision, invasion. Confronting the difference between how I feel around them and how I feel around everyone else here.

Then there are med school pals, the bridge. The name of this blog has been modified to placate one of them, that's how important she is.