legallyblonde

We’d been friends for years and I didn’t agree with some of her life choices This was in 04. We never spoke after a few months of talking about her choices, in between other topics. I just today learned, two months after the event, that she died of leukemia. It’s like we split with her having a thing or two (!) that she’d like to tell me.

How sad. Sometimes you can be someone’s best friend for ages without realizing they only wanted a yes person. Someone to never disagree with them. I see now that’s what she was.

So many of the people I’ve known who have gone to med school wind up bitter and unkind about their job. They are the ones who had an agenda with medical school: to be rich, or famous, or just to help people. Helping people should not be a problem with medicine, but they forget that people have free will. You can’t take that cigarette out of the COPD pts hand unless they want it out; likewise you can’t make a heart patient get exercise, or make people take their medicines. You see what I mean? I’m old enough that I understand all this. I know what it’s like to be human. So many of the people who did medicine at a younger age learned that after they are docs. It can make them bitter.

I think medicine is a job in service to people. Once a friend of mine who did a Family Practise residency joked that it was like being a waitress: you show up in a room for 15 minutes with someone and try to figure it all out and than let them go. We’d worked together as servers at a place when she was in first year medical school at UVA.

With whatever time and energy I have left, I want to do something productive and useful. I think medicine could be it. I just adore Microbiology!

I find it interesting that you and I have some of the same needs, chocolate, debt, and a few other things. One small thing you can do is just plop down to the store and get a new iPod. You can get the cheaper shuffle, or a bigger one.

I love the ability to download music from the iTunes store! It’s so much easier than anything else.

Have a happy day!