Sacred Touch

It's been a pretty big week for us PA students. Particularly this student.
We've completed the majority of two classes, took several exams and geared down to slip quietly into a week of turkey, long lost friends, family dysfunction, the occasional assignment, uninterrupted guiltless sleep and perhaps most importantly -
giving thanks.

As I've shared previously, this fall has dramatically taken its toll and consumed our lives as individuals. I don't think I've been on such a rapid journey of ups and downs, victories and defeats as I have this fall. Each week is its own lifetime beginning with challenging Monday exams and ending with weekends full of studying at every local coffee shop we can find.
It's quite relentless.

Thanksgiving this year includes:
we have succeeded thus far.
we are alive, as are our patients
we are playing soccer, going to the beach, playing pick-up basketball and having baby showers - [short ones]
I still fit into my clothes
I'm still married to my husband
he still likes me
God is faithful - I am healthy
I have clean clothes most of the time
my friends mostly remember me
and...
I've actually learned a few things

I can share that last line with confidence because it was evidenced this Monday night.
Each month we volunteer at a free community clinic where low income migrants and local citizens can receive healthcare - from both STUDENTS and practitioners of all kinds. Upon arriving this week I was quickly ushered to join a Nurse Practitioner whom I'd worked with before. She's a very no-nonsense HANDS ON instructor.
So - she made me get my hands on.
And I don't just mean the basic 'open and say ahhh' - I mean the 'turn your head and cough'.
As amusing or scary or unbelievable it is - the truth is - I've seen my first few patients.
I know I'm not ready or competent or legal.
But for 2 hours the other night that didn't matter. From start to finish I questioned, listened and responded to patient's stories. I then performed exams, postulated, came to conclusions and elicited treatment.
And I performed it.
Under strict supervision of course.
But I did it.
I was allowed to place my hands on someone's body. It's the only precious thing each of us own - whom nobody else [sans God] lays claim - and as a stranger, I touched them.
Humbling isn't the word.
It was sacred.

As the Hippocratic oath implies, we're being taught an art. It's a beautiful, complex art of listening, processing, integrating, touching, testing, challenging - distilling and discerning - the state of your health. My hand will touch and assess you different than his hand, or her hand. It is connected to my brain, to my experience, to my faith and my very heart.
You are being touched by ME.
And those two unsuspecting gentlemen who came in Monday night, with garden variety complaints - painful this and frustrating that - have no idea what kind of impact they had on this young lady.

Their bodies
Their property
Their health
My brain
My heart
My being
Sacred