Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Work
I’m listening to Bob Marley singing “Buffalo Soldier” on Pandora . . . and I’m wondering whether this song came first, or the theme song to the Banana Splits. Because they have more than a little in common, you know. Okay, here goes:
“Buffalo Soldier” — 1980-1983 depending how you date it.
The Banana Splits — 1968-1970
So Bob Marley borrowed from the Banana Splits. That’s cool.
My pager goes off while I’m making dinner (taco soup). I know what this is. No I don’t. I can’t be sure that it’s the ICU patient bleeding again. I don’t know this. And even when the Service tells me it’s the ICU, I’m still thinking: You don’t know for sure. Maybe the nurse has a question. Anything is possible.
But no, he’s bleeding, and I need to go in. It’s still early, not quite 7, so if it’s gotta happen it may as well happen now. So I tell Karen how to finish things off and then I try not to break too many laws speeding into the hospital.
When I’m there, I realize how much I like being there. (This is a difficult admission. Doctors are natural complainers. It feels wrong, somehow, to admit that I enjoy my job.) I like the fact that I know what to do and that no one else here can do it. I like my nurses, who seem remarkably young and good-looking (men and women both) and helpful tonight. I like the banter. Where else can you converse lightly about how you want to die? And what would be the best drugs to have with you on your way off the stage?
More than anything else, I like feeling useful.
I feel fortunate that I flopped as a scientist, that I had an adviser who told me to hedge my bet and get the MD, that I had the wisdom to follow her advice. (She was cute. Of course I listened to her.) Otherwise, I might still be cloning and sequencing and hybridizing and generally hating my every working moment. True, I never tired of seeing that little gray smear of DNA at the bottom of my Eppendorf tube, but it was the same glee that five-year-old me brought to a steaming beaker of water and dry ice. (I like mixing shit.) The good result brought me pleasure only inasmuch as it meant I was that much closer to completing my PhD.
I should have known as a medical student that I had come home. I really should have known. It should have been obvious when I would round on ICU patients in the middle of the night, checking urine outputs and blood pressures, just one last round before bedtime, chatting up nurses. Feeling useful. But how to shake a youth of thinking myself a scientist despite all evidence to the contrary?
And now I’m wondering what adjective I should use to describe this trait: of needing to belong to a profession where one’s usefulness is never in question.
Pandora is being very weird tonight. Bob Marley one moment, Bauhaus the next. I think I may have to switch from “Pink Floyd Radio” to “Mellow Radio.”
D.
I’m with you on the useful. Some might point out that saving lifes and healing patients is rather more useful than responding to questions from Mexico and the G-77 on how much translation is done contractually. True. But those documents go to facilitate the work of the Subcommitte for the Prevention of Torture of the Optional Protocol of the Committee Against Torture, so there’s supposed to be some good coming out of it – admittedly I’m three or four times removed and whether the SPT actually has an impact is another question.
I’m very envious that you get Pandora. For some reason, Pandora is only for the U.S. and, so far, I’ve been too lazy to do a workaround and get a U.S. IP address.
Enjoyed reading this because I can heavily relate to the word “useful”. Though a teacher’s usefulness is in question these days, I’ve seen the results of kids who have been taking courses on line for a year or more, and the result is not pretty.
There is much to be said about having a specific purpose where what you do matters and in turn you get banter you enjoy.
Showing my age, I had to google the Banana Splits.