***Four Years Later***
Instinctively I woke, popped out of bed just like any other day. Washed my face jumped in the shower and shook away the restlessness of the stale night. I continued to groom myself, while the pot of coffee warmed to a satisfactory temperature. I also churned my thoughts to steadily warm my mind in preparation for the day. The day before, I had neatly laid out my light brown slacks and a nicely ironed blue collared shirt. As I gathered myself for the morning, I noticed it was not a normal morning. All the actions, getting up showering, preparing the coffee, all normal actions, but something was different. Today was a special day, but what special day was it? I thought through anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, and no conclusion projected.
The illusive feeling was relative to the feeling that I had post-college; I had a good job working at company that paid substantially well, more than I deserved at the time. Later I came to find the owner of the company had been waist deep in IRS back-taxes which forced the company to go belly up and file chapter 11. During my time of temporary success with the company, I justified a reward, a 1996 Lotus Esprit V-8 luxury sedan. You can imagine my enthusiasm, having driven a small college truck that mainly got me from “A to B.” The transition from a heavily used Datsun, mini cab truck, to a luxury sports car was quite a step forward. I enjoyed the freedom and durability of the Datsun, it lasted longer than all of my college girlfriends and then some. Even though the Datsun got me through the best of years, it was time to maneuver to the subsequent phase of life. As I sat in the newly leathered Lotus seat, I felt a power, a passion that had been dormant my entire life until that very moment; a sensation of satisfaction that would lead me to my next accomplishment, my next endeavor, my next success. Only one missing piece of the puzzle subtly rebuked my attention, which was the pure and simple fact that I was the operator, I was not the power. I was merely the puppet of power and control. Generously, the Lotus posed as subordinate and allowed me to play the all powerful “king of the hill.” Regardless of the borrowed power, I was happy, I felt special. Ironically, I felt I was more in control of my life than I had ever been in my life.
Now preparing for the present day, I felt satisfied with my life, I had gained a better perception of self development and personal strength in the past 4 years. I have also dedicated myself to applying and pursuing medical school. Almost flawlessly, I dominated the MCAT and was accepted into a nearby medical school. With honors I graduated, landed and secured a residency in neuroscience. I developed personal devotion to every aspect of life that I desired to change.
Looking back, prior to 4 years ago, I realize it was not the life I craved. The life I have now is measurable to a dream. I have surpassed my expectation of mental, spiritual, physical and social strength. In the past, I hardly knew what I had and now sustainable functionality grew to full capacity.
Filled with satisfaction, I pursued my morning exercise and breakfast and head out the door. The commute quickly passed, skipping a short chapter arriving almost instantaneously to the hospital doors. Nothing noted as anything different, except for the existing anxiety of anticipating the special day that had no special meaning up until this point. These visiting feelings presented with no rhyme or reason, however one thought I can decipher is I have been waiting for this event or time for years.
Luckily, I was fortunate enough to acquire a sound residency at the same hospital I preformed my first and second year of clinical work. Hesitating slightly, I walked through those, oh so famous, doors entering the hospital. These doors represented a life of change and taking the leap of faith. Change is a powerful influence that can only be subject to self evaluation and nothing outside of that influence; comparable to the Serenity Prayer, accepting “the things that cannot be, courage to change the things which should be changed.” Courage is provoked by desire and nothing else, which desire is proprietary to each individual and floats to the surface under different circumstances and different times in every living person. For some, trigger events push desire, when the law breaking motorcyclist crashes and undergoes years of rehabilitation with the desire of walking again. For some, survival calls forth desire and courage, when the young Algerian boy ventures into the desert to hunt for food. In which case instinct hampers desire, but desire is rarely translated into actions unless it is empowered by cause. The cause of a poor or less than ideal situation leads to desire, which leads to action. Even though our bodies are perfectly created to send signals all throughout the body such as temperature control, limb actions and reactions, speech, sight, etc, but somewhere along the line, desire can get lost in the communication. While fostering desire, we weigh our options, argue with ourselves, and in most cases end up with a lack of action. The pituitary gland, located just below the brain, has a function of controlling our body temperature. When damaged, signals send incorrect elevations of temperature; if we had a “desire” gland in our bodies, most often signals would hardly translate to successful results. The reality is that desire is a passive instinct and not until cause out-weighs effect, will desire finally start to generate results through actions. There are few that can break the cycle and provide results without pressure from a cause or event; this would require one to be able to be proactive in effectively changing.
Now happy with the changes, knowing how non-instinctive change really is. I have been able to accomplish what some only hope for from their broken “desire” gland.
Suddenly as I walked through the automatic sliding doors everything inside the hospital was different? Almost magnetized my body mechanically continued to the fourth floor for no apparent reason. My usual routine was to head to my charts to start rounds on the third floor. When the elevator bell rang, arriving to the fourth floor to the intensive, long term, care unit, I realized I had no business on this floor, at this time in the morning. My feet stayed planted in the elevator as I slowly lowered my arm to push the third level button. “Hello Dr. Dunbar!” a friendly nurse whom I had met just two years ago. “Hello Cindy”. She jumped on the elevator distracting my train of thought. “Heading to rounds?” she questioned. “Sure am” I answer quickly. I smiled and kept a professional stance. She was cupping her coffee cup with two hands as to keep her hands warm. “Should be an exciting day today!” she said. Again I raced through my head trying to figure out why? She must have seen the confused expression on my face as she quickly exclaimed. “We are extubating one of my patient’s today! His stats and blood oxygen results have been improving” she said. “Wow, that is exciting! Who will be pulling the tube?” I asked. “Doctor Cooper.” Shortly after her response the elevator bell rang and the doors slowly opened. I stepped off and turned slightly and said, “I hope all goes well!”
I headed towards the large dark room where all charts were kept, located down a long stretch of hallway passing the surgical and recovery rooms in the west wing of the hospital. Arriving at the dark room I thought back to some of my clinical days. I often used this room as a refuge from the world. Sometimes during my first year of medical school after my shift I would stay in the same room for hours, memorizing, reviewing medical terminology, studying for finals, or just to escape. Now, years later the room was full of old medical equipment, mostly used by the respiratory therapist. It was a sea of tubing, connections, and nozzles. All mounted on grey peg boards and on multiple walls, each piece occupying its own hanging space. I kept a small chair in the corner next to some old white filing boxes for occasions such as this.
Whenever I used the room, I closed the door and pulled it just enough to hear the click of the inner mechanics seal off the room. I often imagined myself and the room where the only things that existed. No hospital, no earth, no stars, no space. I imagined removing myself from the room sitting in a space of nothing to explore. Floating in darkness, looking back at the room, I could see myself sitting in a poorly yellow lit, see-through room. As I explored, I made sure I was indeed the only thing that existed outside of the box. As I peered back at myself, di
stanced from the room, I had nothing to inhibit my space, no doors, walls, air nor gravity to impede my space. Sitting back in the room, my breathing was slowed and a trance overcame my mind. For hours I was taken from, what most call, reality. Although I lost my connection to the world, during these times my mind became a source of power. Thinking of nothing else but myself and the room, my mind was left in overdrive, allowing my mental capacity to grow. I memorized faster and understood better because there were no distractions.
In an everyday situation, when one performs a simple task, like taking out the garbage, eating lunch, or even just reading a book, the brain is completely active, creating, moving, or removing billions of brain cells through synapsis. Synaptic events take valuable electrical energy that the body needs on a daily basis. Understanding that the body only had an allotted amount of electrical energy within a 24 hour period, which of course varies with diet and exercise, I learned to localize and allow my mind to concentrate on just the present and be conservative with my allotted electrical synaptic triggers, which has been no effortless defeat.
I grabbed my charts quickly and confidently. My morning rounds went as expected and without any meaningful event occurring. It wasn’t until the afternoon that things started to change.
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