Landing

About five hours after becoming an official third year I was standing in the OR  doing a bone marrow aspiration on a toddler. Terrfying, exciting and utterly forgien.

I feel exactly as felt when I stepped off the plane my first summer overseas. Confused, exhausted and somewhat helpless. Heck I have even switched time zones.   Its like I have been dropped on a alien planet.

I won’t say I like it or hate it because its just too soon to know. I know I don’t like the feeling of knowing nothing or feeling stupid.  But I can’t help but enthralled by the people as always.

The other sort of side show of all this is I am now a medical student in a hospital I worked in as a volunteer for 5.5 years.  In a way its neat to be living the dream where the dream was kept alive in another way its odd.

And then there is the odd personal commentary in the back of my head. I keep feeling as if I have been recast in a long running play. Pediatric surgery, a world I have navigated for first the 20 years of my life on a regular basis as a patient. So familiar yet so incredibly, perplexedly strange because I don’t know my lines at all. I am flying blind, improv-ing and making it up as I go along.  I keep looking into kids’ faces at 5AM and wanting to whisper I am not really one of them.  I am not really one of those worthless med students who wake you up at 5AM.

oh wait I am.