Mighty Masticators - Team 8

I seem to remember a post on this blog - not too long ago that thoughtfully ended with - "thank you for the rain...let it come".
Well it has come.
Both literally and figuratively.
I don't have any statistics for you regarding record rain fall in Porland Oregon this week or month or season. Or if there even IS record rain fall. All I know is it's raining and it's raining a lot. I thought Seattle was pretty wet or at least very damp - but I must be mistaken. The other night's weather segment involved a guy (in makeup and a bad blue suit) pointing at a picture of the 'low pressure' off the Oregon coast with clouds streaming straight into our state. Not streaming into Washington, not into California. Just us.
It literally looked like the water from a fire hose shooting straight for the big Port Land.
It has been hard to handle.

In addition to the actual H2O that flows from heaven there are dark clouds over the land of PA school. These pre-holiday weeks are dark days. The classes, the lectures, the drugs, the mechanisms, the systems, the tests, the examinations, the heartsounds, bowel sounds, lung sounds ... it's pouring. It's these days that they warned us about way back when - those days so long ago - June I think it was, where they said it would 'get bad'.
Don't get me wrong. I love it.... I hate it. I am schizophrenic, manic, paranoid. I have thoracic outlet syndrome, seasonal affect disorder, fibro myalgia from sitting, lordosis from standing, I have antiretrograde amnesia, crepitus joints, sciatica, hypochondria.....

okay.
I'm back now.

What I really wanted to share this time was my thankfulness for a team - my classmates who inspire me, instruct me and take me down on the soccer field each week. There is something so healthy about being in relationship, fellowship, worship and physically harmful sports with folks who are working toward the same goal as you. Struggling, succeeding, overcoming all hardships and doubt to become clinicians. Each with our school faces on each day, stethoscope around our necks, white coats and dress slacks to complete the 'professional' picture.
...and then on Fridays - get out the shin guards - because you'll need 'em with these hard kickers.

I can't begin to say how freeing and refreshing it is to kick and run and yell and sweat and take a hard kicked ball to the kidney. (don't worry - no hematuria here, kidney's fine) Or watch the otherwise quiet classmates take charge of the field and charge the goal running as fast as they can to score - possibly taking an opponent out in the process. Amazing!

It is medicine, the best medicine for learning the art of medicine.
addictive
therapeutic
exhilarating