After 1st Year
My first year as a Resident Physician comes to my memory in a blur, maybe because it was mostly on fast forward. I remember though that I missed sunshine. I leave the house at dawn and get back home close to midnight. When I do get a chance to watch a little TV at the nurse station or at a patient’s room, I am often fascinated by the commercials. To me, they were all new. When I get the chance to enter the mall, I marvel at how good it smelled. My sense of smell had grown accustomed to the sanitized smell of the hospital, that smelling something nice, like the inside of the mall seemed like a whole new experience. Imagine an OB-Gyn resident. How fascinating it would be to smell something nice for a change. :)
After my first year, I’d often wondered if I had to reintroduce myself to my friends, my then boyfriend and my family, the way I had to reintroduce myself to our dogs. “Hey buddy, remember me? Here, smell my shoes. See, it’s me Joei. Remember now?”. “Hi Ken, this is Joei, My name is spelled J-O-E-I, and it is read as “Joey”, like the goat. Remember? We slept together a year ago…”.
Sometimes, while in residency, we forget that there is a whole bigger world outside the hospital. There are birthdays, and Christmas days, and New Years. We often forget that there are tons of people missing us. We forget the world, and sometimes, the world forgets us.
