So we have just finished our second set of exams for the term. We’ve spent numerous hours poking, prodding, and pontificating over various facets of our cadavers’ bodies.
We’re pretty much surrounded by death and decay most days, right?
You’d think the concept wouldn’t seem quite so foreign. In some ways, med school is a death of sorts. A death of a real social life for sure. A death of all the other career options or hobbies you might have otherwise pursued. Or wished you could, if only you had the time. And it’s a constant reminder that death is all around us.
I’ve learned at least five new ways to die since being here only a few weeks. Yet, still have not learned one skill to save anyone!
And then the announcement came…or rumor rather. It enters in and takes over the psyche!
It was reported today...
that one of the guys in the second year PA class was diagnosed with cancer.
Even though I am not fully familiar with all the people in our own class quite yet, I have enough of a grasp of them and the sort of weird intimacy that comes from being in this kind of program….well, to not want something similar in our class.
It must be devastating. Like one of your own people, your own family, falling ill. Simply terrifying. To have it be in the other class seems sort of like that cousin you don’t see often getting cancer. You feel bad, sad even, but it’s a little bit removed. You’re glad it’s not you!
Now, paranoia sets in!
From other stories that have circulated already, I learned at least 3 D.O. students have been diagnosed with the big “C” in the past year. So should I be drinking the water at school? Is there something in the lab that’s more carcinogenic than reported? Where’s the MSDS’s? Are we being exposed to high level radio waves from the television stations next door? Again, I don’t know.
It seems like death or the possibility of it, becomes so much more a part of your mindset here. No worries though. I have no plans on going anywhere. It’s not my time yet.
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