Malibu, 2025. Note to self.
It had been already snowing. Awfully early to, but it was Moscow. Normally, after the first snow I’d meet Seda and she would complain about every single aspect of her life and connect it to the snow fall and the coming winter. Now, however, it was just me. I remember I had been looking for emotional sustainability. I, yet, couldn’t find the equivalent of “green, sustainable” for feelings. I was not sure either it was a color.
Oh. Right. It was exactly the things that happened after we graduated that defined us. I died my hair blond, took off to Vienna to meet old affairs and taste the Austrian cuisine (all of it, but I specialized on schnitzels and apfelstrudels). Martin moved with Masha and Domenico to the countryside, after which they became gypsies in the alps. Seda took off with Gennady to the United States in the pursuit of happiness according to the American constitution. I became a vegan after that, but remained blond. Seda ended up working temporarily for a coffee shop that had a blueberry pie she described as from another planet. Those “next steps” were like our last breath. Like it was all we truly wanted. The last meal before death row.
I believe that after six years of living medicine, you can call it medical childhood, we tried so hard to get in touch with who we were afterwards, because we had somehow lost that person. I had always been only an introvert had had learn to be an extrovert, to achieve things and people. But I’d go through cyclic phases of needing to be alone and turning off my phone - because learnt skills will never really outpower talent. Being a people’s person took away an extraordinary amount of energy from me.
But at some point, we went back to medicine. We had to. No more being a gypsy, nor a schnitzel connoisseur, nor a blue berry pie enthusiast.
Our expectations towards the profession were living an all time low - but they were never this realistic.
I’d go to an opera or a concert now and then, Seda would have breakdowns and visit museums, Martin would take his cocktail hobby more and more seriously.
I believe, now, that being a doctor is accepting to give up most parts of your life. And trying to spend time with yourself, and whatever is going on in your head - when you can.
None of us were religious, although at least two of us had been raised to be true Roman Catholics. I couldn’t help but remember a patient we had during an oncology rotation, when we asked to take her history she proudly got up, with her bad prognosis breast cancer, looked at us and said: “in the name of science!”. And I am truly of the opinion that that’s the truth and the basket we chose. We might have to give up all: but we will have science.
This was a randomized study and there were no conflict of interests.
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