Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a doctor. There were pipe dreams when I got involved in theatre at a young age and momentary lapses when I had a knack for filming and photography. There was also the running theme starting with my parents' divorce when I was a baby, where custody battles had me appear in court a few times throughout my childhood; it gave me a lot of hands-on experience with the law that in turn made me believe I would make a good lawyer. Before I got medically disqualified, I had plans to be an officer for the military, and honestly saw myself staying in the service as a career. Then I started working in kitchens in college, and being surrounded by other creative cooks, I had the physical beginnings for someone who might eventually open their own restaurant. But, at the end of the day, being a doctor just always made the most sense.
I’m not someone who believes destiny is laid out for us or that whatever semblance of a god that you believe in wholly ordains what does or doesn’t happen to you, free will aside. And yet there’s been several moments throughout my young existence when I could swear someone somewhere has been trying to tell me something.
The first time it happened isn’t even a time I remember. It’s a story that several people have recounted to me about how when I was four years old and enjoying recess on the playground, my friend was going down the slide – the open kind that loops its way down – when the class bully rammed into her from behind, causing her to go up and over the first curve, landing on the mulch. Apparently I had been on the swings and rushed over as soon as it happened, saw she had cut open her knee pretty badly, and told the teacher we needed the “brown bottle alcohol,” clean towels, and I quote, “the cloth band-aid that you can wrap around, do you know what I’m talking about?” Pretty sure I meant hydrogen peroxide and rolling gauze and Melissa ended up having to get stitches anyways… but you guys, I was four.
The second time it happened, I was in the last few weeks of 7th grade and the moment came when we were to dissect frogs. It was the thing I looked forward to basically all of middle school (more excited over this than I had been when I auditioned and eventually got cast as Rizzo that same year over an 8th grader), and it was finally here. Except the teacher paired me up with the worst person in class because they needed the grade boost and she felt I would have a pretty handle on the assignment anyways. Long story short: this kid nicked the bowel, the whole cavity started filling with stool, she started to say, “Oh no. Oh no,” under her breath, and I told her to move. Not that I was trying to be an asshole (although many people I’m sure felt that way about me in middle school), in the panic over getting a bad grade, I told her to start ripping strips of paper towels while I grabbed the twist-tie from the bag the frog had come in, made a small loop to isolate the cut part of the intestine, tied it off, took the strips, started piling them around to blot up the stool, and making a small pile of them on the tray as they saturated. What I hadn’t realized yet was my teacher standing right behind me, so when I said, “I’m gonna flip the loop so she can’t see it, and I want you to throw out the dirty towels so she can’t find them,” to my partner, there was a small cough and I turned around to see Mrs. Palmer ask me to speak in the hallway with her. I felt the blood drain from my face as I followed her and expected a terrible conversation about the poor dissection and my intent to lie about it. Instead she put a hand on my shoulder and asked me if I had given thought to what I wanted to be. I told her I had already been toying with the idea of being a doctor if being a government spy didn’t work out (I was 12 and really into James Bond). She laughed and said I’d make a great surgeon.
The most recent time it happened, I had been out getting post-work drinks with a friend and was a few drinks in when she frantically grabbed my attention and signaled right behind me. I turned to see a much older gentleman having dinner with his daughter, choking. I run over as best as I can in the heels I’m wearing, ask him if he’s choking (there is protocol after all), and when he can’t even turn to me to respond, isn’t coughing, and starts gripping harder at the table top, I position myself behind him to perform the Heimlich and alert him to what I’m about to do. The daughter requests that I be gentle with him, and the only thing that goes through my mind is, “I can break a couple of the bottom ribs or I can save this guy’s life,” and I proceed to do the abdominal thrusts. It takes four before a piece of bread the size of my thumb to my index finger comes up, and another five seconds before he takes a huge gulp of air. The maître d’ comes over, thanks us profusely, and goes off to calm the other guests that had gotten shaken up in the process of this man almost dying. The bartender gave us a free round. I sobered up immediately, and Colleen asked me if I was okay. With a then-upcoming EMT-b certification, I had gotten my first real taste of having someone’s life directly in my hands, so I nodded and we went about our night.
The time at the bar was just a reminder that I had made the right choice years before, when life put me in the third situation, the one that solidified what I needed to do. I studied neuropsychology with the intention of eventually going to med school and become a surgeon, but between financing woes and personal issues with friends and family needing solutions first, it hasn’t been easy to stick with the plan. Nevertheless, while this occasion was fleeting in its duration, it’s the one that’s left the most lasting impression.
While my opinion on abortion is neither here nor there – if only for the reason that I have to keep my opinions as a health professional, a woman, and a raised Catholic compartmentalized for my sanity – I think it takes looking at an embryo with a beating heart to truly understand why some people are pro-life. That’s not the reason a 3-day-old chick made such an impact on me back in 2012 during my freshman spring semester in college.
It was the way the blood completely left and then completely filled the chamber again with each pulse. It was the way you could see the little bunches of cells move the way through the vessels. It was the way the entire chick vibrated at each beat, because the heart is simply that strong. I remember feeling totally overwhelmed and looking around to see if anyone else was feeling what I was and realizing no one else was as moved that, at 72 hours old, this chick was the embryonic equivalent of a 5 week old human fetus – and there was nothing I could do to stop it from becoming biological waste.
With a second semester under my belt, my feet were already wet with pre-med reqs but that was all the confirmation I needed. That was my very vocation calling out towards me. I was meant to save people. The motions have always been innate, further reinforced by formal training and education. No matter what obstacles life has thrown in my way, it keeps sending me these small reminders that helping people has always been a natural thing for me. And the only strength I need to keep going and achieve it lives and vibrates within me.
