When practicing medicine, hold on to what makes you whole

Blackness covers the paper in its entirety. Hunched over, charcoal stained fingertips splayed out in front of me, I exhale and my saturated breath evokes miniature tornadoes. The fragrance of warm charcoal engulfs my olfactory bulb and my temporal lobe explodes with images of the past. I am transported back to scraped shins guarded by starched, white ruffled socks. My fingertips awaken with the memory of smeared purple chalk on warm summer cement and the velvety caress of red and yellow tulips. I am home again, where the earthy scent of newly piled mulch mingles with the syrupy sweetness of golden honey suckles. Once more I am utterly consumed with the wonder of this world. Reality snaps me back to the present where I collide with the onslaught of images I wish I could forget. The gray, lifeless, meconium stained baby, his limp body lifted from his mother’s gaping abdomen; the fragile toddler with osteogenesis imperfecta, gasping for breath through delicate, broken ribs. The tearstained eyes of weary parents begging for hope I know I cannot give. I wince. “Follow the light,” I chastise my anxious mind, placing the rubbery eraser over the obscured canvas. To create what I see, I must forget what I know. So I consciously clear my thoughts and begin reducing images to their most basic components. An intricate earlobe becomes a series of distinct but connected shapes: a small triangle here, a delicate arc there, each shape bleeding seamlessly into the next. My eyes flow une...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Education Residency Source Type: blogs