So, I've made it through my first day of "real" medical school. Started off with Anatomy lab at 8 am. Saw some prosections of the thoracic cavity and held some pig hearts (Lord, You are amazing...how truly fearfully and wonderfully each one of our bodies in made). Then PBL with a case on congestive heart failure. Then back home by 12:15! A truly welcome change from the summer months.
Even so...the novelty of it all is fading, after only a few hours. Sometimes my classmates' enthusiasm for all this stuff bugs me, but that's just because I can't summon up the same enthusiasm. I don't really want to be learning about cardiac physiology. I hate to be negative, but it takes monumental effort to feign interest in what I'd rather not be doing.
I feel drawn to be with people in the hard times of life...the elderly patient dying of cancer. The parents of a child who will live only a few days. The young mother struggling with an unplanned pregnancy. Medicine seems like this hazy way that I will be able to help them...but maybe what I really want is not to manage their medical problems, but just to be present to them. Just to sit with them and help them make some kind of meaning out of their suffering. Just to help them glimpse the face of God through the thinning veil between this world and the next.
I can come up with a thousand reasons why I don't have a vocation to religious life. I suppose there's only one good one why I would - only if He calls me.
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