Only In Retrospect...

Only in retrospect can I see that I put aside what I had always loved to help my mother and, by extension, all patients who had been objectified by their doctors.

Math and science had always come easy. As a girl wunderkind in these fields, I enjoyed the attention of male teachers who often were too amazed that even though I lacked the Y-chromosome I could solve word problems, master geometry and memorize endless trigonometry formulas.

My fondest memories were of my childhood library, of balancing eight books as I walked home in the dusk, two avenue blocks and three city blocks. I began reading as soon as I could put them all down and pick up one, turn on the living room light and escape into its words.

Reading was not as noble as being a doctor. Reading would not save my mother. Reading was selfish.

But narratives were in my soul, and even as I tentatively embraced medicine, I saw myself as a female Dr. Tom Dooley, who quoted Edward Everett Hale’s poem “Lend a Hand”: “I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I ought to do, and what I ought to do, by the grace of God, I will do.”

How romantic. How very 18.

I was not fit for this role, though. When I began my third year of medical school, I was no longer the good student. My narratives were now boring recitations to the attending physicians of patients’ medical histories, current symptoms and lab results.

I knew I did not belong when my peers rushed to start IVs and do spinal taps. I stood back horrified.

I had made the wrong choice. It took me years to find my way back and take the other path. Only later I learned that by teaching literature, I was saving myself.