Transformers

Life, they always tell you eventually you’ll grow up. That where ever you are right now will be very different in a few years. I’ve often wondered how a change like adulthood takes place. I’m 23 and at times still feel like a teenager wondering through life. How does it happen? I’ve noticed that almost every elderly lady I see has cute short silver hair, easy to fix and maintain. But so many women have long hair, when do they decide they’re old enough to cut it short?  Does it just get on their nerves so much one day they chop it all off? Do they cut it off slowly so that maybe you could tell a women’s age by the length of her hair?

The last 2 years I have felt this tug between growing up and wanting to stay a kid. Some days I’m ready to be married and have my own family, and other days I want to move back home. It’s probably a really good thing I have 6 more years of school before I’m out in the real world. I also seriously wondered how VCOM could take the bunch of students we are and transform us into physicians. I remember my first standardized patient encounter. All we had to do was ask this actor a medical, social family history etc, and check lymph’s nodes to see if they were swollen. The encounter is recorded and you and 5 other students as well as a physician watch it together and critique everything you do. I was such a nervous wreck my hands were shaking all over the place while I tried to feel for swollen lymph nodes. I had forgotten my pen going into the room and so with all of the questions I was asking I couldn’t write a single answer down. When the patient told the meds she was on I had no idea what they were and so I didn’t catch on to the fact that she was abusing prescription drugs. When I left that encounter I felt like there was no way in this world I could be a physician. But yet I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I was exactly where God wanted me to be.

Now, I’m sitting at the edge of the Atlantic taking in the vastness of the ocean. It accurately portrays the wealth of knowledge the human body has to offer and now I hold about a coffee cup’s worth of it. The strangest thing has happened in this first year of medical school. I have changed and I call tell. The change didn’t come from being blasted with information, like trying to drink from a fire hydrant and just getting blown over instead, it wasn’t the indoctrination into the medical world, honestly I don’t know what it was other than time, but I’m different. I think I have actually grown up.

My last standardized patient I only practiced for about 2 days before. This is a major change from the 2 weeks I agonized over how to do my first one. I was much more confident, I remembered my pen and my exam flowed rather nicely. Ha, and believe it or not, I diagnosed my patient correctly! Not to mention ordered the right tests and medications for him. The physician who reviewed my tape with me actually stopped to ask me what kind of medicine I wanted to go into. When I told her probably family med she smiled and said that’s what she thought because it fits me. Some how since August a major change has taken place. I’m no longer so fearful of med school, I’ve figured out how to study and have fun, and somewhere in there I learned to act like a physician. Maybe that’s why I feel different. I’ve learned to live on my own and I like it now. I think as crazy as it sounds that God is actually making me into the person He wants me to be. ;-) ok I know, we all know of course He does that. So why am I so in awe of what He has done in me? So many days I just wanted to be at this place. Confident in what I had learned, confident in who I am, knowing how much to study and how much to relax and take a break. But the process is slow, and it must be for the reward to be so great. I just can’t wait to see where He takes me in the next 6 years, especially if I’ve grown so much this year.

But do you know what makes this even more of God and just plane amazing? This first year started out so difficult I began to wonder how could I ever live over seas and serve those who are in most need? I mean it was a struggle! So much so that I could barely get through my classes and I certainly wasn’t being useful for anything! I really began to doubt if God had really called me to serve Him in other country. I knew He would not call me to anything that he would not supply what I needed to obey, so on faith I continued on. Through this process I learned to not plan the future as I so often try to do. I must be content with where I am and what God has for me now. Yes, He has given me the heart to sever over-seas, but I’m not going to say in what way He wants me to server or when He wants me to do so. I am going to worry about today and if the day comes where He tells me to leave, with joy I will do so knowing He will guide me every step. And if that day never comes, with joy I will serve Him wherever He puts me for as long as He says so.

So I guess in short, it has taken a year, but I finally feel like student doctor Ogle, I feel like an adult ready to be used. Ready to ‘be’ right where I am.