I hit a trail last week with my roommate that was a fantastic exercise experience, as many trails can be. We took off down the rocky path and soon found ourselves winding up and up through a forest thick with fall; leaves of many colors had been strewn by the wind on the path, sometimes hiding jagged rocks. Ever so often I would take my focus off the ground, let go of my fear of busting-it, and look around me. There was a small pond off to one side, covered with autumn's debris, with a turtle and frog here and there. As we continued, the path winded up an ascent with unpredictable turns and twists and just as my chest was heaving to its maximum, the ascent let up and we jumped over a small stream and I felt every bit a Huck Finn as any twenty-something could.
Today was the beginning of a trail that will be every bit as unpredictable and curvy. The expectations are high and I suspect I will be breathing with difficulty through many days. But every once in a while I will take a step back and breathe in that what I am doing is fascinating and wonderfully creative, just as the little pond. And if today was any indication, it will be just as rocky.
I've been warned about surgeons for three years now. Students and professors alike joke about surgeons' crass behavior and abrasive personalities, not to mention their colorful language. I'm not sure what it is, really. The long hours? Tradition? So my introduction today was no disappointment. My team for the next two weeks consists of three male students and myself, or, as our new resident referred to us in the third person today, "studs". I paged her to introduce ourselves and to find the team and was met with a swarm of language that really ought to at least wait until after the morning coffee.
I'm on vascular surgery and so the next two weeks I will attend procedures in which veins are redirected to flow another route because they've gotten themselves all clogged up with years of smoking, overeating, and various other equally destructive vices. Other procedures will include grafting through abdominal aortic aneurysms, and carotid endardarectomies. As I observe I hope to relay here.
For starters, here's an overview of the anatomy I will come to know hopefully very well: http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Falls/5057/heart4.jpg