interlude: a little bit of medicine

I'm not sure what it says about the past semester that the prospect of working 9-5 in the OB-GYN clinic seems like a vacation, but it does.  I even get a lunch break most days!  (The problem with computer work is that there's no built-in downtime unless I make it happen, so many days I just go until my brain grinds to a halt, and I don't have a choice about stopping.)  I'm just jumping into clinic for a week before the medical students start up again to learn basic outpatient gynecology and women's health in preparation for free clinic next year.  The first day was a bit scary since I haven't had any patient contact since the summer, but it all came back pretty quickly.  I've only done three days so far but even so, I've definitely gotten a lot more comfortable performing the physical and pelvic exam - not things that would normally be in (anyone's!) comfort zone, but for the preceptors in gynecology, are in fact in just another day's work.

One wonderful and unique thing about medicine is the realization that people come in all shapes and sizes.  Of course we know that, but our perception of what human bodies look like is skewed by the media portrayal of what are actually some pretty un-average physiques.    After getting over the initial awkwardness of, well, examining lots of people, then passing completely beyond the social norms of who and what should be touched, looked at, and/or asked about, it's really quite amazing what variety we all come in.  It's beautiful - people are beautiful, all kinds of people: old and young, big and little, whether they approach commercial standards of beauty or are just themselves - people are beautiful.

Years ago, one of my friends told me, "Everyone's naked underneath their clothes."  I laughed, but it's one of the few things that I thought was "deep" in high school that still seems profound now.  It's true - in medicine, we have the great privilege of speaking to people at a very vulnerable moment in time, and it is a trust that we must guard and cherish.  But what I've found is that as is that regardless of what language we speak (or how long it takes to find a translator on the translator phone), what clothes we wear, what culture we come from - we all have the same basic needs, same basic health concerns, and same basic health problems.  People are very much the same on a basic biological level. 

In retrospect, my friend should have told me, "Everyone's human underneath their clothes."  We are indeed.  We in the medical professions have an amazing privilege to have this window to share and learn about our common humanity, and in the process about ourselves.