Now that I’ve sort of refreshed my mind, I can focus on one thing.

I like the idea of making people well again, and I now that I have experience in volunteering at the hospital and shadowing doctors, I can say more confidently that medicine could easily become my passion.

I’d like to share my first example. It is set in the hospital’s aquatic rehab pool that I work at on Friday afternoons. My responsibilities are chiefly to make sure no one drowns. But since the recreational therapist is in the pool rehabilitating patients, there isn’t much to worry about. I interact with patients. Because this is a rehab pool they usually have difficulty walking on ground but some are surprisingly amble in the water and are able to walk and do exercises where they would not be able to on land. I am able to hold patients’ hands and help them walk laps between the sides of the pool. I talk to the patients and they are a lot of fun to get to know. All this was okay, I thought. It wasn’t all that exciting sometimes because I’m the youngest (supposedly strongest) person there and the patients need a lot of assistance sometimes. Thank goodness there are only seven or eight patients that come on Friday afternoon.

I think my mind changed about the rehab pool when a boy with cerebral palsy was strolled in by his mother. When the therapist gave me the okay to take the boy into the pool, I eagerly took the boy into my arms and he laughed as I lowered him into the warm 96 degree water. He bit me a couple times (for now it’s just gnawing) and his arms were sometimes unable to move the right way. His knees can’t bend, and he likes to arch forward, which is dangerous since he does not know how to hold his breath underwater and could easily gag if some water went down the wrong pipe.

As I held him, he would giggle. His eyes aimed at two different locations but I knew he was looking at me when I shot him up and down like a rocket (his favorite activity it seems). He laughed when I rowed him around in the water. He eagerly hugged me whenever I got tired from holding him and rested him on my shoulder.  He was absolutely wonderful, and he seemed to fulfill a need inside of me when he was being himself. After all, I like hugs, and I wish people were more open to them here. After a little bit, the therapist came over to do her fun exercises with the boy. She sang and helped him dance around in the water, and assessed his progress, etc. The encounter with the boy is one example why I would give everything I have to be able to help people.

In that boy, I saw courage, though he doesn’t really see it yet. When I volunteer in the hospital, I see so many patients, and some may be buried in stress and despair. However, there are others with hearts that are stronger than Kevlar. There was an old lady I met in the transitional care unit, and her faith in Christ literally kept her in good spirits. There were workers in the hospital whose passion and caring hearts could be seen wherever they went. In a place where people die, somehow people learn to live.

It’s so strange, though I would hate to see people die, at the same time I know that I would be so encouraged to witness the character and strength of individuals that face harsh circumstances. It’s moving to see sick people acting as though they weren’t sick. I love it when even though chemotherapy does not work on a patient, the patient is still smiling when she sees her grandchildren. So much strength… It’s like light in the darkness, like a flower among weeds… That smiling face tells me everything’s going to be all right when scientific data and biological analysis give grim statistics about the chance of life.

So yes, I will push papers, I will analyze data, I will read about how DNA connect and duplicate and give information in order to make proteins. I will study like a madman, continue on journey after journey to discover that the body is one big cluster of chemical reactions. I will learn everything about the body. But when that day comes where I walk into a patient’s room in a white coat and a clipboard, all this information will mean nothing. That is the moment I will learn to really love. Just like the boy in my arms chewing on my shoulder in the rehab pool, every patient has a heart.

All those years I will spend learning about medicine… for a chance to experience the depth of each person’s heart. What a glorious sacrifice! And for some reason, I think I’m going to love every step of it.

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