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To Everyone Not as Lazy as Me
Thank you!
There’s this little crew of us who get together on Zoom once a week. We used to do this live in 3D, but you remember that annoying little SARS virus? Yeah, that. So for the past couple of years, this is what we do. We Zoom.
And on Zoom recently one of our crew grinned about the unexpected turns her life has taken. Aileen is a surgeon. She’s a surgeon in a trauma unit, one of the busiest in the country. And last week she — in her words — cut off three feet. As in amputated. As in my friend with who I share a wedding date, the friend I’ve hung around with until all hours in various diners, that friend, trained to be a surgeon, did her residency in Chicago where GSWs were common, and now shrugs off having done multiple amputations in an average workweek.
What possesses people like Aileen — who otherwise presents as a pretty normal 40-something with a wife and two kids — to put herself through the incredible stress of medical school (when she was thirty, btw)?
I don’t know but I am very glad people are so inclined.
It’s been too long, but today I got together with another of our weekly crew — my darling friend, Brooke — for the first time in too long (virus, remember?) and we shook our heads. That Aileen takes the cake all right. But the world is filled with Aileens and aren’t…
