the sum of the day

There are moments when the sum of the day adds up to more than it should be; when I get to return to the sacred buildings of learning and exchange words with those deep, profound souls whose very presence calms my fear and my anxiety and slows my heart to a normal rhythm.

It is with these people that I find strength, encouragement and joy.

He asked me to ponder which I like better – the diagnostic struggle or the treatment of the disease.

What if I like both? What if I want both? 

These past three weeks with patients of all different sizes, shapes, and colors, I have loved seeing them every day, listening to their valves open, letting blood pass like a well guarded city gate, with every myocardial beat and the alveoli fill with air as this patient breathes in life.

 The depths of my heart, though, still beats with the drums of Africa and cries out for the chaos of poverty.

I miss the feel of bowel in my hands, of scooping to the depths of the retroperitoneum. The sacred spaces my hands navigate when the abdomen is open and the pelvis exposed; keeping time with the pulse of the iliac thumping against the pelvic sidewall.  And when the enlarged ovary or nobular uterus are finally free of  the pelvic confines the profound sense of victory is intoxicating.

I’ll delay the commitment a day longer, holding close indecision like a quilt wrapped around my shoulders buffered against the winter. I’ll keep living my questions and hold to the hope that soon enough I will also be living my answer.