“It was the best of
times, it was the worst of times…” Charles Dickens
The Brain Trust and I are officially graduates of our
fellowship program after three long years.
We started seven members deep that summer of 2010 and the last of us
limped jubilantly across the finish line last week.
I have spent nearly a quarter of my life in surgical
training. Though one could argue that I
have spent the majority of my life moving towards this day, it is an odd anticlimax. To an individual
finishing 8 years of surgical training, it feels like the entire world should
stop, if only for a moment, to recognize.
The honest truth of it is; however, July 1 was a day like any
other. And the cycle of medical training
life turned as always.
The three Brain Trust members that remained from our class
had a final farewell lunch before we all headed home for the final push on
papers and packing. The talk was the
usual stuff: war stories about recent cases, what’s the next big thing in
surgical research, cackling at the fate of the “fresh meat” new fellows.
While we were in the thick fellowship, all we wanted was for
the days to pass quickly to get to that future as an attending where the grass is
clearly greener. Sitting with my co-fellows at lunch, I realized that being an
attending is going to be great, but I will always have nostalgia for these very
special 3 years in the safe nest of surgical fellowship.
The best part of fellowship is the fellows. We have been in the trenches together. We learned and grew professionally and
personally with very little risk to our careers or ourselves. We spent hours in the fellows office discussing
hard cases and doing impressions of our attendings. We singlehandedly kept our local Starbucks in
business. In the same vein, we
singlehandedly kept our local bar in business.
We wrote papers together. We
covered each other when needed—both in the clinic/OR and emotionally. When I look back on it, it’s hard to remember
the nights of incessant pages and attending tantrums. It’s easy to remember the OR cases, happy
hours, coffee breaks, lunches, and hours in the fellows office.
Though we discussed the usual things at our last lunch, talk
turned to new things as well. We each
described the new homes we are renting, plans for cross-country moves,
weddings, and new lives. A couple of the
Brain Trust members have recently gotten engaged. Even I, the perpetual SFS, have found myself
in love with a wonderful man that I randomly and serendipitously met at a college alumni mixer in
December.
As I recounted in a previous post, Thor said that during
fellowship, “Your life is on hiatus.” For
the Brain Trust, the hiatus is over. In
many places, graduation is called “commencement.” We’re commencing the start of our lives.
