Crushed, but hopeful

This week was incredibly brutal. I'm counting on a little overnight camping trip to help renew my spirits. I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully with refreshed insight into the narrow, narrow world of plastic surgery residency...

A compliment of sorts, I suppose

Patients often say funny things to you. It is a privileged situation, with the patient often literally exposed and naked before you. Things are said that would never be uttered in ordinary conversation.

Today, as I was changing a patient's dressing, he looked up at me and said, "No offense, doc, but you look like you're in high school." I laughed. He was certainly not the first patient to say this to me. I told him, "No offense taken, sir. I had thought things were looking up last week when someone guessed that I was a college student."

Most women, in most situations, would probably be flattered to be told day after day that they look young. In the hospital, it often works against you. Many patients seem to be reassured by the wrinkles at the corners of eyes, the grey hairs streaking the temple, those tells of age that signify experience, and in turn, excellence.

These comments about my apparently disturbingly youthful appearance used to bother me a lot. Now, I brush it off with a glib remark about the benefits of having great plastic surgeons as my colleagues, or I simply have curious patients calculate my age from the prerequisite years of education (college + medical school + residency equals... at least thirty-two?).

In the end, no one seems to object. Patients just want to know that as their doctor, you will do your very best for them.

270 days, 2 hours, 57 minutes

First days, always tough. A little nervous, a little afraid, perhaps to make a mistake or ruin the pristine appearance of a blank page with any less than perfect words.

But you have to start somewhere, sometime.

More to come, perhaps tomorrow - an explanation for My Plastics Life.