She suddenly opened her eyes and wearily looked me over.
“Hi,” I said nervously, “Are you Ms. So-and-so?” She nodded. Yep, right patient. Pressing my stethoscope against her stomach, I heard all the normal bowel sounds. Wait, was that the baby kicking?
As it turned out… no, no it wasn’t. Behind me, a nurse wheeled in a small bed with a tiny newborn happily perched in its centre. The mother broke out into a tired smile. “That’s my son,” she said proudly.
Surprise! A woman’s uterus remains enlarged for days after she delivers the baby, before it eventually shrinks back to its normal size. The uterine muscle inside becomes so thick over the course of the pregnancy that it could probably mug an old lady on the street.
Day in and day out, medicine has never failed to surprise me since I started here at McMaster. Now that I’ve wrapped up my first semester or “foundation”, I can only look back at the last three months and marvel at all the weird yet wonderful things I’ve seen and done. It’s been the most intense period of my life, a rollercoaster ride through success, failure, exhaustion and jubilation with a healthy dose of surprise.
First of all, I’m really surprised about how much I’ve enjoyed working with patients. Before entering med school, I kind of assumed that I would branch off into a more research or teaching-based specialty with minimal patient contact. The thought of having to drain pus-filled abscesses, suture wounds and do prostate exams on a daily basis didn’t seem particularly appealing.
And yet I’ve come to love being in the clinic. Yes, it’s messy, stressful and endlessly frustrating, but it’s also invigorating to be in such close contact with the human experience; to share in people’s lives and stories while feeling like you’re in a position where you can actually help. The cases do tend to get repetitive, but for every one hundred episodes of diarrhea and headache, there always seems to be that one case that touches you.
Recently, a four-year-old boy came into the clinic with a cough and fever. With a short thatch of red hair and big, expressive brown eyes, he instantly reminded me of Puss in Boots from Shrek. But unlike the feisty cat, he was polite and clearly very smart, describing his symptoms in great detail. At the end of our interview, I asked him what he wanted for Christmas.
“Ummm, I asked Santa for Cars 2 [a movie].”
“Nice… Anything else?”
“And some Hotwheels cars, and…”
“And?”
“And a Jeep,” he said earnestly. His dad laughed.
“So I take it you like cars a lot?” I asked.
He seemed to think for a moment. “Um yeah,” he replied with a giggle, as if only suddenly realizing his obsession.
Sitting the kid up on the examination table, I listened to his breath sounds with my stethoscope and found fluid in the lungs, an early indication of pneumonia. After I presented the case to the doctor and medicines were prescribed, the boy stuck out his hand.
“Thank you, doctor,” he said. I shook his tiny hand before his dad whisked him off.
Despite being slightly concerned that I had just contracted an infectious disease through hand-to-hand contact (don’t worry, I hit up the Purell right afterward), I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. It was deeply satisfying to think that I played a small role in making this little person get better. And one day I’ll get paid to do this? I thought.
 |
Small group learning
|
But perhaps my biggest surprise has been my fellow med students. Far from being stereotypical “Type A” personalities, the people I’ve met so far are generally relaxed, friendly and have great senses of humor. I spent most of my time this semester with my tutorial group, a team of eight students who study and train together every week. No matter how stressed or tired I felt on a particular day, I always felt cheered up at tutorial. We bonded through laughter, cracking jokes in between obscenely long discussions about death and disease.
Going into the Christmas vacation, I’m looking forward to a break from all the surprises and toward more predictable activites: sleeping in every day, eating lots of fat and going shopping for presents. Then I’ll be jetting off to the Bahamas with my mom and sister for a “self-discovery” program in yoga and meditation. To be honest, I only signed up because of the beaches and warm weather … I’m not sure how much more of myself there’s left to discover. But who knows? Maybe the greatest surprises are yet to come.
