Just Fine

It's Summer 1995, the summer before I start medical school.

I score a job hiking the trails of Canada's Ocean Playground - Nova Scotia. Sport Nova Scotia is creating a database of all the hiking trails in the province. They tell us they will put all the information we collect on the "World Wide Web" (whatever that is). So, no matter where you are in the world, you can go onto your computer, click on a map of the province, and all the information about the trail you want to hike will come up.

I am skeptical about it all and still questioning how it will happen, but if they want to PAY me to go hiking and camping, I'm game!

I feel lucky because my workmate and I get to hike the beautiful South Shore. The South Shore is a gem – rocky bear-boned coastline sprinkled with white sand beaches, pine trees you can smell, and bald eagles you can spot flying overhead. We will start just outside Halifax and make our way to the southwestern tip of the province to Yarmouth, a port city home base for many Rum-Runners back in the days of Prohibition. I am looking forward to going as I want to meet up with a town doc to tell him I got into Med School.

Dr. Dave and I met two years prior, working on a development project in Guyana, South America. He was our team doctor. Dave was pushing 40 and balding, but after three months in the jungle, all of us 20-somethings fell in love with him. His wisdom and his calm nature wooed us. He made us feel safe, and we knew we could tell him anything - the hallmark of a great family doctor.

When I arrive in Yarmouth, I find a phone booth, pull up the big heavy black binder, and flip through the yellow pages until I find his number. I trace it with my fingers, then lift the receiver, drop in a quarter, and with the dial tone buzzing in my ear, I punch in the numbers and wait as the phone rings. My heart is racing as I cold-call his office because I don't want to be a bother. Finally, his receptionist picks up, I tell her who I am and my connection to Dr. Dave, and she immediately gets him on the line.

"Shailla!!!" I hear his surprise and joy through the receiver. I exhale, my shoulders drop, and I tell him I am in town for work. He is excited to hear from me, and we plan to meet at the end of the day.

I arrive at his beautiful Victorian-style home and see him waiting in the driveway. Happy to see him, I give him a big bear hug. Immediately, I tell him that I got into medical school, and he congratulates me, noting that he assumed this would be my path. He invites me to sit in his 1920s-style parlour, then goes into the kitchen to put the kettle on. When the tea is ready, he brings out two cups and slowly places them down on the old oak coffee table next to an issue of Time Magazine. On the cover is a story about a revolutionary new stroke treatment.

"You will have to read that – and everything else that comes up in the news. People are going to be asking you about it."

I glance at the cover. I have no interest in the story. This should have been a sign.

He sits back in his chair and looks at me. Then, he says, "Shailla, going to medical school is like being thrown in a washing machine. They throw you in with all the stains of your life, add the soap and bleach, put you through the spin cycle, and you all come out looking the same."

Words of wisdom I have since repeated to others.

Yet at that moment, I dismiss his comment out of my naivety or perhaps as a defence against my subconscious fear - a fear that has witnessed reality. My older brother is finishing up his residency in Orthopedics, and he is a shadow of what he once was. Or, more accurately, he has become his Zombie, hyper-focused on one task. Bone broke. Fix Bone.

I shake off that thought and boldly say, "That won't happen to me."

At 23, I know who I am and what I want. I have travelled. I have seen different parts of the world, and my experiences have shaped me. I am ready to bring my unique perspectives to my newly chosen career. I am determined that medicine won't change me, but I hope to change it. I am confident that I am going to be perfectly fine.

Oh, I will be fine, alright.

FINE - Fucking Incapable of Normal Emotions.

Being fine is a rite of passage in medicine. Being fine is an essential skill I hone under many a medical preceptor's tutelage. Being fine is demonstrated to us and encouraged if not enforced. So move on, suck it up, and keep going.

I am a good student, so I do just that. I suck it up – all of it. Car accidents, cancer, suicide. It’s a heavy load I carry around in my bones, muscles, and connective tissues. It is all right here, held under my now thickened skin.

 And I am just FINE.