{"id":876,"date":"2020-07-31T01:01:51","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T01:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/?p=876"},"modified":"2024-09-04T21:09:02","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T21:09:02","slug":"dying-or-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/dying-or-flying\/","title":{"rendered":"Dying or Flying?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Kenneth R Taylor, MD<\/em><br \/>\n<em>School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences<\/em><br \/>\n<em>2020<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Essay<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There are people in my life who think I\u2019m crazy for doing what I\u2019m doing.\u00a0 And they\u2019re probably right.\u00a0 Let\u2019s face it: I\u2019ve now reached my 10th year of medical training and my title is \u201cFirst Year Resident.\u201d\u00a0 Other people think that I\u2019m enlightened, pursuing a paramount ideal that all strive to attain: well-being for our fellow humans.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to think that they are right too.\u00a0 But, insane or enlightened, it\u2019s all pretty close I would say.\u00a0 It\u2019s just how you look at it, a narrow boundary, as thin as my budget.<\/p>\n<p>No, you don\u2019t come to enjoy studying hard, no one likes that.\u00a0 Yes, it gets easier the more times you do it, as one \u201cmost important test of my life\u201d fades into another.\u00a0 And no, you don\u2019t get used to watching people die, though in the course of the last ten years I have done more of that than I would like to admit.\u00a0 Yet somehow, I am still ok putting my time and emotion on the line for the most beautiful expression of my life and others\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>You see, it\u2019s all a little bit about uncertainty.\u00a0 At the boundaries of the ability to survive, that is where this profession is defined.\u00a0 As doctors we are like mountain climbers: always striving to reach the apex of what is possible.\u00a0 We grapple with rock and ice, trying to block out the empty space below, trying to forget that one misstep may mean falling and death.\u00a0 But, when you have finally gathered enough good equipment, you can embrace the possibility of failure. \u00a0Then, it is no longer fear that defines your journey.\u00a0 And then you realize that the empty space which before meant death is really just opportunity that you once saw as insurmountable.\u00a0 Now, the windier the day, the more overhanging the pitch, the more covered the wall is with crumbling hoarfrost, the more chance that you will separate from the ice.\u00a0 But if you packed a parachute beforehand, you don\u2019t just fall, you glide gracefully away from the mountain on newfound wings.\u00a0 Maybe you even catch a thermal, soaring quickly beyond the tops of even the highest mountains towards the sun.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kenneth R Taylor, MD School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences 2020 Essay &nbsp; There are people in my life who think I\u2019m crazy for doing what I\u2019m doing.\u00a0 And they\u2019re probably right.\u00a0 Let\u2019s face it: I\u2019ve now reached my 10th year of medical training and my title is \u201cFirst&hellip; <\/p>\n<div class=\"readmore-wrapper\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/dying-or-flying\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read <\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,10],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inaugural-issue","category-writing","tag-essay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3106,"href":"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions\/3106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebling.library.wisc.edu\/corpus-callosum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}