I’m a gopher. Glimpse my shrimp paws. Glimpse them furiously digging and digging and digging. Little puffs of grime and soil are thrown haphazardly over my dinky shoulders. My shrimp brain modified into as soon as entirely absorbed within the digging of that very inconsequential, dinky or no, very explicit gap. Tail within the air, head down, no breaks. Dig, dig, dig.
As a tiny intern in a big hospital, that’s me. Day after day, digging, with ever-increasing effectivity, my hang series of shrimp holes. Working so anxious, so diligently, so blindly, on patient after patient, assignment after assignment. Every dinky checked-off box one other clump of grime I throw over my shoulder as I furiously dig every dinky gap. Every gap produced from my most efficient efforts at taking supreme care of this patient nowadays.
It would no longer take very long to alter into a gopher. Gophers make no longer know that intention. Gophers enact no longer dig for a increased cause. Gophers forget that patients are of us. Draw gophers dream?
Gophers are residing in days that are darkish and rapid; they traverse hospital hallways and protocols that are dusty and bewildering. They are tired.
I’m serene a gopher, nonetheless now, with the cease of the 365 days glimmering ahead, the digging has a different tone. The times hang lengthened, and the solar shines. Flowers bloom and chiefs talk of graduation and careers. My fingers are callused by scut and death and pus. My fellow gophers are basically my visitors. I are attempting and copy. It’s far anxious. My gopher brain can finest stretch thus far. I write fairly of. I specialise in fairly of. Dreams spin along with the circulate appropriate out of search for. Classes learned linger nearby.
Then, with grime in my hair and stains on my scrubs, I head dwelling. My patients will need me day after nowadays.
Ariella Rubel, MD, is a surgical treatment intern.
This put up appeared on KevinMD.
