Soon after my lovely wife and I moved into our apartment last August, there was an unexpected knock at the door. I had been in Hebrew class for a few weeks at that point so I figured that I could manage to communicate something with whoever it was, maybe. As I opened the door, I saw an elderly man standing with a leather briefcase. We stared at each other for a second and then he said something to me in Hebrew. As I have often done in this country, I picked up one word and thought I understood the whole sentence. I heard the word “rofae” (doctor) and somehow (I don’t quite know how) I put together a whole story in my head that the man was looking for a doctor. He must have found out that I was studying medicine and assumed that I could provide him some medical assistance. Somewhat flattered, I decided that I had to tell him the truth. I quickly went through some Hebrew charts in my head and muttered out, “ani lo rofae” (I am not a doctor). The look on his face told me that he was not surprised, and clearly I had misunderstood him. Through gestures and some more Hebrew (which I mostly pretended to understand) I realized that he was a doctor making a house call and simply had the wrong apartment number. Embarrassed on all accounts I retreated to my wonderful wife and a homemade iced café (the most profitable use of instant coffee in the summer: just add sugar, water, milk, and ice cubes. Bam! Iced café).
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| Not as good as the real thing, but a smart way to spend borrowed shekels |
One of the most difficult things about the first year of medical school is waiting. Of course it’s reasonable and necessary to learn how to do medicine before jumping in there and getting your hands dirty (or bloody). But at least for me, the beginning of this year felt like putting on the brakes big time. I came into medical school ready to start saving people’s lives and quickly realized that I would have to wait a while. I did get the chance to save a few dummies in the Emergency Medicine summer course and got to bloody up my IV partner a little, but otherwise I have been in the business of learning. The days are long, the books are many, and Firecracker doesn’t do itself (see http://www.firecracker.me/for details). There is a lot to learn, sometimes it feels endless, and really it can be quite disheartening to an ambitious first year ready to change the world.
There are a couple ways to deal with these “brakes” as it were. The less ideal way (of which I am a veteran) is to bewail, moan, and blame the system. In my experience, this was often accompanied with long nights complaining to my sympathetic wife. In the end, this way kept me paralyzed from doing anything (like those dummies from the Emergency Medicine course).
The more ideal way (of which I am a rookie, maybe just getting off the bench) is to find opportunities in which you can serve the community around you. Now except for very special circumstances (Jeremy on the plane), you probably won’t be saving people’s lives. But you might very well be helping to improve someone’s life in a small way during your first year of medical school. A few examples from our first year class: shadowing doctors in Soroka, Tel Aviv refugee clinics, and PHR in the West Bank, teaching English or Spanish at local schools, supporting Beersheva families with chronic diseases (Global Health Made Local), helping out families in your church or synagogue, spending time with the elderly in retirement homes, etc. (really there are many more).
The waiting is still hard, and sometimes you might want to think that the guy knocking on your door is looking for a doctor, but take heart, drink some iced café, and wait well during your first year. - blogger of the month, Jonathan Ditty
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