Surgeons are an interesting people. There are those, like my mentor Solomon, who seem to live in calmness. He has the strongest looking hands but every movement they make looks deliberate, graceful, clean. Then you hear about surgeons who are type-A personalities, loud, unconstrained, who shout and scream at residents--partly because within the operating room they are rightfully the authority above all authorities but unfortunately, this can lead to a god-complex and unwillingness to negotiate outside of the OR.
(Maybe Scott Walker was a--never mind. That would be like saying maybe a garden slug built the great wall. In a former life)
Today Solomon was accepted into the neuroscience training program at UW Hospital, which means he'll be a resident for seven years here(!), then be fully licensed and able to practice surgery in the United States as well as Uganda. It's such great news, and he definitely deserves to get it--he'll make a kickass neurosurgeon. All throughout today he kept getting congratulatory phone calls and other residents/researchers on our floor would wander in to say congratulations. This made me very happy. Seeing the generosity, the warmth, the simple acts of goodwill made me think: most people are nice. Imagine that! This'll probably last until pessimism kicks in again in five minutes.
I just thought about this. When I'm suturing a rat, harvesting, or doing some operation, I don't think about the amazing thing that is any relatively advanced organism's body. When I'm reading a textbook, or kind of going off an a tangent thought to a lecture, or even just thinking, it becomes inescapable that life and all the myriad parts that make up life are reason for awe. Complete and utter confounded awe. From membrane protein to diastereomer selectiveness to blood circulation to negative feedback to set points to hypothalamus to visual cortex to action potential to yawning to movement to thought to wonder. Like what the fuck? Every moment we live is a mystery.
However, when it's you and a scalpel and a sedated rat the mindset changes. Suddenly your brain shuts down the metaphysical thinking portion. What's left is more mechanical than anything else. "Have a gotten all of that bit of muscle pulled down so I can anchor the hook in ?" or "cut along that muscle, wow it's like a perfect landmark." It sounds gruesome and sometimes, it is (harvesting the spinal cord, hoooooly crap the surreal disgust when Thomas got to the skull...maybe I shouldn't explain that) but most of the time I find myself completely engrossed. It's fantastic. The body disintegrates into something to be contextually understood and then in a way, conquered, as you are always trying to achieve something without damaging something else.
It's the relating of the two mindsets that is critical. Just like the merging of "do this surgery/immuno/whatever" with the grander picture of "here is a problem, affecting the quality of people's lives, and we must solve it."
...this has been the weirdest spring break ever. It feels like a slinky.
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