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I have always toyed with the idea that I may have depression. Numerous times I have looked over the various depression diagnoses and their criteria. But then I settle on the idea that my thoughts and emotions and struggle are not severe enough. Everyone experiences sadness. Everyone experiences grief.
You knock on the door. “Come in.” When you enter the room, a gowned patient sits calmly atop the examination table. For the next 15 to 20 minutes, you spend your time in the small, cramped and surveillanced room with this individual to tease out the mystery of their chief complaint.
Medical school is a constant, never-ending cycle between success and failure — sometimes one occurring within moments of the other. To be a medical student is to fail. We fail at the small things: working out three times a week, being on time for a friend’s birthday dinner, working on the research that has been on our desk for months. We also fail at the big things like exams, practical skills, asking for help when we most need it and sometimes letting ourselves sulk for too long.
She just sat there and listened — what else could she do? Did he really think it was the first time she had heard this? Was the rehearsed monologue supposed to elicit some sort of epiphany? One of our pre-clinical instructors told us a story about how she went to the doctor’s office to get a refill, only to receive a 20-minute lecture about her weight by a resident. She walked out of the office both irritated and empty-handed, her refill not completed: “I know I need to lose weight!” But, at that juncture, and in that manner, she felt it simply was not the appropriate discussion.
Across the street from the Public Health Research Institute of India (PHRII) is a laundry, where laundrymen, women and children undertake their quotidian task of hanging white linen sheets before daybreak. They cover the long ropes that run by the dusty, red road with countless numbers of alabaster white sheets. The sheets spread to cover the walls, wrought-iron fences and wooden posts transforming the city street into effervescent maze that billows under the hot mid-day sun.
Cadaver. The word itself seems devoid of life. And, so too does the white plastic bag lying unceremoniously before me. It’s the first day of anatomy, and I unzip the tarp and stare down at a wet, grey lump of clay. There it is. There is what, exactly? What was I expecting? Some warm human soul, freshly sprung from the loins of life? No. That’s not this. The essence of life is gone — absolutely, irrevocably, unquestionably, gone.
I climbed into bed on October 11 excited: for the first time in years, I could pinpoint what I was feeling — I was happy. Pure, simple happiness, something that had eluded me for years in the throes of depression and anxiety as a teenager, was a feeling I could recognize again. Wow, I thought, maybe this will be my year.
My cadaver has pink fingernails. I saw them on the first day of class, after we pulled back the white plastic sheet with the number “22” scrawled on it with permanent marker, and cut away the damp cloth that had been covering her cold skin. Her arms were folded across her chest, and on her fingers was a sparkly, ballet-pink polish, not chipped or peeling despite having been there for the 13 months since she’d died. I don’t know why it’s there. I don’t know if she painted them thinking she was going to survive to enjoy it, or if she was someone who always wanted to look her best, even in death.
Before starting medical school, I had the opportunity to travel to Japan and visit an array of Buddhist cities peppered with ancient temples and samurai villages. As I explored these breath-taking communities, I discovered the samurai’s commitment to the pursuit of perfection in lifestyle and skill. Now, as I face the challenges of being a medical student, I find myself turning to the canon of the samurai.
I consider myself a woman of science. I believe that a human exists as a collection of cells. I believe that the depth of our emotions runs only as deep as our cisterns of neurotransmitters. I believe that birth and death are neither miracles nor tragedies, but parts of the natural circle of life.
Administrative assistant, nurse and high school volunteer were just a few of the titles people assumed I was when they saw me sitting in the office of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. Often to their surprise, I was a medical student starting my summer research project between my first and second year. It became immediately clear that seeing a young woman associated with orthopedic surgery was not something many people were used to.
My dad taught me how to swing a golf club at an early age. No, not with the overbearing exactitude of an Earl Dennison Woods. Robert Mooney Jr., a brilliant emergency physician with a respectable high school swimming career, never wished to live vicariously through my future sporting exploits. Perhaps having personally authored the genetics of scrawny paleness into my genetic constitution, he knew a losing battle when he saw one.
Contributing Writer
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Trevor Mooney is a Class of 2018 medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He grew up in the East Bay Area, and attended undergrad at Stanford University, where he majored in Human Biology and somehow found a way to get into medical school.
In his free time, he enjoys humor writing, playing basketball, jogging, watching television, and Skyping Luka (his family's German Shepherd).
