"Where Olmsted County News Comes First"

28

Should the Vikings be able to use the University of Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium?

 Yes

 No

 I don't care


View Results

Comments

Camilla and I take turns threatening to quit medical school. It all started the first week when the sheen of pride at having made it here despite my stupidity turned to sweat as I realized that as a doctor I could, and probably would, kill someone with ignorance. Camilla had the same fear and promptly decided she would be a medical examiner, because in an autopsy the person is already dead, harm already done. Then I wanted to quit when I grew existentially skeptical about whether healing was real in this broken world, and besides, it seemed harder and harder to balance being a doctor with my dream of starring in musicals while writing great American novels. Then Camilla relapsed in doubt, worrying that she wasted too much time learning fancy with medical jargon, that she had neglected her friends and family members, and this whole doctor thing was becoming a quest for a selfish trophy rather than a vocation of service. Then it was angst over the evils of “health insurance.” Then “medicine as a business” and reconciling that we would one day profit from illness. Then the disparities in health care. Then god-awful telemedicine. And then the whole matter, the futility, of actually learning everything.

But we do. Breathing heavily the same narcotic idealism that floated us toward the vocation, we still believe we’ll be the good doctors who will work for free, and being the healthy young brave academic warriors that we are, we keep chickening out of chickening out. Each morning Camilla and I are pleasantly surprised to see the other still taking notes and tests as though our grades will save someone—ourselves for the time being.

Camilla caught up with me the other day on our way to an afternoon liturgy of basic science. As usual, she made me laugh long and hard. My mother says she is “the doctor with a big heart and kind eyes.” In company of all the other pompous, resume-twitterpated, sadly typical doctor proteges, Camilla is a warm pocket of air. “I really love these interludes of ours, Camilla,” I said as we carried on. It occurred to me that I live for the interludes. But to call them “inter” is disingenuous, because they are not breaks between more important things. How could managing e-mails, the zombification of studying, or working, God, the interminable working, be the important things? When we are getting ready to die, as we might exasperate with Cartoon Cathy eyes, stress frizzles, and Frank Oz’s feminine growl, who is going to wish they had spent more time with their computers!?! Ack! The main events in life are actually these, the ludes, a sun burst when we are so thick in the clouds we just may cry, the flush of contentment after just enough wine and good company, having said exactly what you mean and being heard. These are the undeserved, unexpected rediscoveries of beauty in the world, hints of healing, perhaps, medicine aside.

One day at lunch, Camilla said she needed to talk. In her eye was that look like she was worried I had mistakenly taken the cyanide pill instead of my multivitamin. Red alert. A week later her eyes were red from crying, so were mine, after together we looked disbelieving at a sinister constellation of white starry tangles in the dark night of her mammogram. The shock and bang from that lump rippled through the background static of the season, even after it had been savagely plucked and smeared through a pathologists lens, there was the hole left where the assault on youth’s confidence had transpired. The scar on her soft left breast has the benign quiet of a battlefield several days after the fight, or Lake Ponchartrain years after Katrina. Never will the land escape its story, neither will Camilla’s breast. In this way, the body is much more of a narrative than a textbook.

A week after the “elephant in the boob,” as we called it, had gone, we were partners in physical exam class. While practicing my signature doctor move on Camilla, listening to the heart sounds, I moved the stethoscope to where the mitral valve rings clear, right under, or sometimes on, the left breast. But as I was about to settle the diaphragm on skin, my hand caught itself and stalled. Face hot, I remembered. And Camilla remembered. She hadn’t told anyone else, not family, not a single friend but me and I was sworn to silence. She hadn’t wanted them to worry.

“Is this okay?” I searched her eyes for a green light, but the hazel was dull. Tight-lipped, she looked away.

“Okay, honey, I’ll just skip this part.”

But the tears had already come. Dr. Anne Patrick, the proctoring physician, came up to the exam table where Camilla hid her face, forearms flush in boxing defense over her bandaged heart. And I told.

Dr. Patrick paused, touched the tip of her tongue to her teeth, and picking her words as though placing dominos in a precarious line, said, “Camilla, it is hard. But you are still beautiful, you know that? You are sweet, and sensitive, and beautiful.”

Camilla sobbed harder. Dr. Patrick placed her straight arms on Camilla’s knees, ducked her head down in a stretch, a thought, and then she kneeled beside the table and looked up at Camilla from where her tears splashed, a supplication.

I stood there helpless and thought for the millionth time that I should quit this whole doctor thing since I seem prone to sicken the healthy.

“Okay,” said Dr. Patrick, changing strategy, pushing off her knees, “This is one of those doctor becomes patient moments.”

She asked me to lock the exam room door. When I turned back, Dr. Patrick had unzipped the back of her minidress with electric orange and pink circles, and was peeling the straps from her shoulders.

“You need to see my smiley face, you need to know that you are beautiful with your scars.”

Her entire chest was exposed bare down to her hip bones, her swollen breasts were taut with gentle creases where the knife had been, another line curved under her belly button, a smile where her womb had slipped through.

“Please look,” she instructed.

Sweet, shy Camilla looked. She admired. The strain in the room relaxed, and we all breathed gratitude for a rich minute. She was beautiful. Maybe that day, maybe the next day, I think, Camilla rediscovered her own smile, and her kind eyes shone the way they used to.

In hers and Dr. Patrick’s storied bodies, I have seen stubborn beauty, the sultriness of survival, and the powers scars have to heal. These women are evidence that not only the body, but more importantly, the soul knits.

A confidence wove through my spirit that day. Though I may jest discontent, I know now I’ll never give this up. Though we’ll never be tested on it, the delicate space between a doctor and their patient is sacred ground, and it is an honor to share these ludes together. The soul needs sturdier fibers than the flesh, so maybe doctors don’t need to know everything, but they must know themselves, they must love themselves, and tenderly, they must convince their patients to do the same.

There’s a rip in Camilla’s favorite T-shirt. It’s more lovely for it. Among paint-stains and Americorps insignia is a horizontal slice through the cotton, about two inches across the chest from the left armpit. She remembers how it got there, and she rather likes the story. Some years ago a live wire hung low in a New Orleans home under reconstruction. Dodging a sledge hammer carelessly thrown, she survived with just a brush of cautery, burning a curious line through the grey knotwork, grazing the soft flesh over her big, beautiful heart.