Wednesday, September 29, 2004
P-Cards and Puzzlement
There are some things you're prepared for when you start medic school. You expect to be tired all the time, and you expect to stick needles into people, and you expect to be reciting cardiac-care algorithms out loud in your sleep. You expect to spend a heretofore-unprecedented amount of time hanging around fire stations and trying not to die from secondhand smoke. (Health-care professionals are the unhealthiest group of people I have ever met.) You expect to try to fix people who are sick or hurt, and you expect that sometimes, you're not going to be able to. You expect that sometimes, while you're trying, they will throw up on you, or bleed on you, or splash any variety of other bodily fluids onto you, or insult your mother, or crack jokes, or just sit there with the silent kind of pain that sends a little bit of hurt resonating inside you. You expect to stand in a thousand birthing rooms-- quiet rooms where people's mistakes haunt them in the click and hiss of ventilators, lovely rooms where a single sick person transforms sterile hospital tile into a dance floor or a place for the kids to play (small-scale) tag, rooms echoing with cries of grief, agony, renewal, life, joy. There's not an EMT in the world who doesn't anticipate all that, and welcome it. What we're unprepared for is the greater story.
I never expected people to come up to me on the street and thank me. "You're welcome," I invariably reply, but I wish I could ask "For what?" For feeding your parking meter last week? For moving aside when you wanted to get through on the sidewalk? For smiling at you? For Taking a Stand against the Mad Chef's inclination to spice all food so heavily it scorches not just the eater's palate, but also the eater's plate? Oh, wait, it's something to do with my outfit: duty jacket, uniform, boots. Heh. "Well, I don't really do anything, see . . . I'm a student, you know . . ." but the question's still there regardless of whether or not the p-card's in the pocket. You're thanking me for my choice to do my job, a job I love with all the ferocity and humor of a Chihuahua taking on Yao Ming? Jeez. Well, fine with me.
There are some things you're prepared for when you start medic school. You expect to be tired all the time, and you expect to stick needles into people, and you expect to be reciting cardiac-care algorithms out loud in your sleep. You expect to spend a heretofore-unprecedented amount of time hanging around fire stations and trying not to die from secondhand smoke. (Health-care professionals are the unhealthiest group of people I have ever met.) You expect to try to fix people who are sick or hurt, and you expect that sometimes, you're not going to be able to. You expect that sometimes, while you're trying, they will throw up on you, or bleed on you, or splash any variety of other bodily fluids onto you, or insult your mother, or crack jokes, or just sit there with the silent kind of pain that sends a little bit of hurt resonating inside you. You expect to stand in a thousand birthing rooms-- quiet rooms where people's mistakes haunt them in the click and hiss of ventilators, lovely rooms where a single sick person transforms sterile hospital tile into a dance floor or a place for the kids to play (small-scale) tag, rooms echoing with cries of grief, agony, renewal, life, joy. There's not an EMT in the world who doesn't anticipate all that, and welcome it. What we're unprepared for is the greater story.
I never expected people to come up to me on the street and thank me. "You're welcome," I invariably reply, but I wish I could ask "For what?" For feeding your parking meter last week? For moving aside when you wanted to get through on the sidewalk? For smiling at you? For Taking a Stand against the Mad Chef's inclination to spice all food so heavily it scorches not just the eater's palate, but also the eater's plate? Oh, wait, it's something to do with my outfit: duty jacket, uniform, boots. Heh. "Well, I don't really do anything, see . . . I'm a student, you know . . ." but the question's still there regardless of whether or not the p-card's in the pocket. You're thanking me for my choice to do my job, a job I love with all the ferocity and humor of a Chihuahua taking on Yao Ming? Jeez. Well, fine with me.
Monday, September 27, 2004
Aaaaand the winner is . . .
-- you, who, after a blissful hiatus from this infrequently-updated whatever-it-is, are gifted with an equally-wonderful return to normal operations. Heh. Or something.
--me, because I get to keep sticking needles in people this quarter, and am starting to learn how to be a drug dealer, kind of. Also, I get to live with the Realist, the Mad Chef, and the Cutthroat Entrepreneur, so it's this big, happy, cheese-sauce-loving family over at our apartment. Come visit.
-- KCher, because she may come visit in time to sample some delicious pumpkin bread in addition to the banana bread I owe her.
-- Julia Child, who may technically be dead, but whose spirit lives on in our kitchen, laughing and picking food up off the floor for use in cookery (dude, I wiped it off first!).
-- and Boomer, who wrote an entirely freaking-awesome personal statement that I will post later if I can figure out how this whole "copy-paste" thing works.
In the meantime, I humbly present the requisite Snippet of Fun Dialogue:
Mad Chef: So what did you say to them? ["them" being some friendly College Republicans wanting to know if I planned to vote for G.W. Bush this year]
Schu: Well, not much. I'll tell you what I should have said, though: "I'm Catholic, I'm gay, my son's Chicano, and I plan to live and work in the inner city for a significant portion of my adult life."
MC & Realist: (giggle)
MC: Can I borrow that?
S: Sure.
R: Me too! Well, my roommate's Catholic, gay. . .
(more giggling)
R: . . . and we share a bathroom, so . . .
MC & S: (giggle)
R: It is so far past my bedtime.
Good luck with classes, everyone who has them, and with life, those who don't. Seriously, come visit us. We've already established our tasty-food night: Taco Thursdays. Awww yeah.
-- you, who, after a blissful hiatus from this infrequently-updated whatever-it-is, are gifted with an equally-wonderful return to normal operations. Heh. Or something.
--me, because I get to keep sticking needles in people this quarter, and am starting to learn how to be a drug dealer, kind of. Also, I get to live with the Realist, the Mad Chef, and the Cutthroat Entrepreneur, so it's this big, happy, cheese-sauce-loving family over at our apartment. Come visit.
-- KCher, because she may come visit in time to sample some delicious pumpkin bread in addition to the banana bread I owe her.
-- Julia Child, who may technically be dead, but whose spirit lives on in our kitchen, laughing and picking food up off the floor for use in cookery (dude, I wiped it off first!).
-- and Boomer, who wrote an entirely freaking-awesome personal statement that I will post later if I can figure out how this whole "copy-paste" thing works.
In the meantime, I humbly present the requisite Snippet of Fun Dialogue:
Mad Chef: So what did you say to them? ["them" being some friendly College Republicans wanting to know if I planned to vote for G.W. Bush this year]
Schu: Well, not much. I'll tell you what I should have said, though: "I'm Catholic, I'm gay, my son's Chicano, and I plan to live and work in the inner city for a significant portion of my adult life."
MC & Realist: (giggle)
MC: Can I borrow that?
S: Sure.
R: Me too! Well, my roommate's Catholic, gay. . .
(more giggling)
R: . . . and we share a bathroom, so . . .
MC & S: (giggle)
R: It is so far past my bedtime.
Good luck with classes, everyone who has them, and with life, those who don't. Seriously, come visit us. We've already established our tasty-food night: Taco Thursdays. Awww yeah.
