High hopes

When I started this blog, I had a nagging feeling that I wouldn't be able to write very often. I drastically underestimated my lack of motivation. So, five months later, I have five months worth of stories and not one post. Hopefully, over the next few weeks I'll be able to get a few stories down, mainly for my sake. Sort of a debriefing of the last semester for myself. So here goes the first one.

It was my first day of rotations ever. I woke up extra early that morning. I wanted to make sure I had enough time to look professional, go over the directions to the room orientation was held in, and leave the house with plenty of time in case I got turned around in the maze that is the University hospital.
I found the room without any problem, but was nearly a half hour early, which meant sitting nervously waiting for orientation to begin. Finally two attending doctors showed up. They greeted us all and passed out thick green folders with our names on them. I opened mine and my stomach tightened into a knot. The first 8 pages were schedules broken down into days, each hour blocked off with a new task, meeting, or clinic to be at. There was no way I was going to be able to keep everything straight. I immediately pictured myself forgetting some meeting, being late to clinics, failing the rotation and dropping out of medical school with no way to pay back the debt I had already amassed. A little dramatic, but in the moment it all seemed possible.
Then I noticed my assignment for that week. I was to be in the Emergency Room, and I apparently had drawn the short straw; my first shift was from 4pm to midnight that night. That meant a full day of orientation, then an hour and a half break and then my responsibilities began. I had hoped to be eased in a little more gently, but there was nothing to be done. I showed up in front of the emergency room staff doors that only opened with a code. Not knowing it I awkwardly stood outside until someone came through the doors and I quickly snuck in.
I don't remember much about that first night, or even the second. There were lots of young kids in with colds and slight fevers, anxious mothers hovering over them, sure they were on death's door. We gave them a popsicle or cup of juice, went through the motions of listening to their heart and lungs, taking a quick peek in their ears and throats, then sent them home with a prescription for Tylenol. My third night, however, I had the first experience that made me feel like maybe, one day, I actually would be a doctor.
A young kid, maybe 13 years old, rushed in with his mother and younger brother, a bloody cloth pressed to his arm. I was the first on my team to see them, so I asked him to show me what had happened. He removed the cloth to show me a deep, angry gash across the soft part of his forearm. He had been playing in the park, his mother said, and had slipped and cut himself on a jagged piece of metal on a fence. My attending came in, took a look and said it would need stitches. He and I left the family to go ask the nurse to get the equipment we would need. My stomach started to churn. This could be my chance. I could speak up and ask if I could suture the kid, but I didn't have much confidence in my abilities, so the words kept getting stuck in my throat.
All of a sudden the attending turned to me and said, "you're going to stitch him up." It wasn't a question, it was what was going to happen. "Have you done it before?" he asked.
"On a pig's foot," I smiled back. He pulled me behind a curtain so the boy and his mother wouldn't see us. He showed me how to put on sterile gloves, how to hold the needle driver, then pushed me toward them. "Act like you know what you're doing," was all he said.
I approached them, attempting to smile reassuringly. Both the boy and his mom looked dubious. Maybe I shouldn't have shaved that day, maybe I wouldn't have looked so...fresh. The attending and I started washing the wound, trying to be as gentle as possible. Then he handed me a syringe full of anesthetic. I'd never given anesthetic before, I'd only seen others do it.
"OK, here we go! This will sting a little, but will be the worst part. You won't feel anything after this." Probably, I thought to myself. With a few corrections by the attending, we had him numbed up and the nurse handed me forceps and the suture. I thanked her, trying to sound more confident than I felt, and leaned over the boy's arm. It felt like everyone in the room was watching me, waiting for me to prove myself. I grabbed one side of the cut with the forceps and started to push the needle through.
Human skin was tougher than I thought. I pushed harder until all of a sudden it gave and the needle shot through. I looked up quickly, expecting the boy to pull away and start shrieking, but the anesthetic had done it's job and he hadn't felt a thing. After finishing the first stitch the attending watched me do a few more then patted me on the back and went to see another patient. With his vote of confidence I felt the muscles in my lower back relax a little, and I let out the breath I'd been holding for longer than I realized.
15 minutes later the wound was closed, 7 little stitches that while not perfect would do just fine. I cleaned up the arm and told the family they were good to go. I felt like I should give them all a hug or something, but I think that would have just been weird. They didn't know that what had just happened had me flying high for the whole next week, or that I'll remember them for the rest of my career, or that they gave me the experience that for the first time made me feel like all of the work I had done up until that point was actually worth it.