Read Online Morgue by Dr. Vincent DiMaio - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dr. Vincent DiMaio
Ads: Link
college graduates; the other, State University of New Yorkâs Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, less than three miles from where I grew up, left its door slightly open. It was all the encouragement I needed.
So, at nineteen years old, I passed the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), sent in my application, and even went to SUNY for a nervous interview with some administrator in the medical school.
During a blizzard in February 1961, I went out to buy a newspaper for my mother. When I returned, cold and wet, I handed her the paper, and she handed me a letter from SUNY.
I had been accepted to medical school without a college diploma. I was to start that fall.
The first day of med school, the faculty gathered all the new students in a lecture hall for a pep talk. âDonât sweat about graduating,â they said soothingly as they delivered sobering stats on graduation rates. The more they assured us, the more we worried. Imagine somebody telling you, âItâs completely safe to fly in an airplane; only one in ten of you will die in a fiery crash.â Thatâs when I knew this wouldnât be a walk in the park, but failure wasnât an option. I couldnât be anything but a doctor.
Truth be told, I detested medical school. It was four years of Marine boot camp, but not as pleasant.
The first two years involved continuous sleep deprivation. Every day we did about twenty-six hours worth of studyânot a misprintâon six hours of sleep. The next two years involved the same sleep deprivation and study but added hands-on procedures. We suddenly found ourselves doing things we never thought we could (or would) do.
Gushes of real-life amniotic fluid ruined my shoes. I went home at night with flecks of blood and vomit on my clothes. I discovered that patients often lie. I saw that it was actually pretty hard to kill somebody. And I learned to sleep standing up, braced against the walls during rounds or with my eyes wide open while a professor lectured. To this day, when I must wait, whether in an airport or in a courtroom hallway, I try to sleep.
But we also learned to stay calm, no matter the situation. I always thought doctors would be good in combat for their coolness under fire.
Everyone who was accepted to SUNY was certainly smart enough to get an MD. Lack of intellect didnât wash them out. The ones who left just didnât have the fortitude, the persistence, or the determination to survive the professorsâ withering cross fire. It took me a couple of years to realize what they were doing. They were brainwashing us, teaching us to think like doctors. Not lawyers, not accountants, not stockbrokers. Doctors think differently. We were beginning to adopt a certain emotional distance, learning not to get so close to patients that we couldnât do our work or so far from them that we couldnât hear what they had to say about their pain and fear.
Not every lesson was in a textbook. We learned to think logically, to not always accept what we were told, and to question what seems obvious. Non-physicians often jump from A to D, but a good doctor goes from A to B to C to D. One must attempt to accumulate all the facts.
My classmates were fascinating, too. There was Barbara Delano, who loved to argue politics with me in those heady days of the mid-1960s, as America tilted toward the worst days of Vietnam, racial strife, and campus revolt in a tectonic shift of our cultural plates. Once she accused me of holding thirteenth-century political notions. âNo,â I corrected her brusquely, âtheyâre definitely tenth-century.â (She later chaired Downstateâs School of Public Health.)
And there was Chester Chin, who was so thin that the campus nurses tried to fatten him up with daily chocolate shakes. It didnât work, and he came to detest medical school (and probably chocolate shakes). After graduation, he became an orthopedic surgeon and refused to
So, at nineteen years old, I passed the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), sent in my application, and even went to SUNY for a nervous interview with some administrator in the medical school.
During a blizzard in February 1961, I went out to buy a newspaper for my mother. When I returned, cold and wet, I handed her the paper, and she handed me a letter from SUNY.
I had been accepted to medical school without a college diploma. I was to start that fall.
The first day of med school, the faculty gathered all the new students in a lecture hall for a pep talk. âDonât sweat about graduating,â they said soothingly as they delivered sobering stats on graduation rates. The more they assured us, the more we worried. Imagine somebody telling you, âItâs completely safe to fly in an airplane; only one in ten of you will die in a fiery crash.â Thatâs when I knew this wouldnât be a walk in the park, but failure wasnât an option. I couldnât be anything but a doctor.
Truth be told, I detested medical school. It was four years of Marine boot camp, but not as pleasant.
The first two years involved continuous sleep deprivation. Every day we did about twenty-six hours worth of studyânot a misprintâon six hours of sleep. The next two years involved the same sleep deprivation and study but added hands-on procedures. We suddenly found ourselves doing things we never thought we could (or would) do.
Gushes of real-life amniotic fluid ruined my shoes. I went home at night with flecks of blood and vomit on my clothes. I discovered that patients often lie. I saw that it was actually pretty hard to kill somebody. And I learned to sleep standing up, braced against the walls during rounds or with my eyes wide open while a professor lectured. To this day, when I must wait, whether in an airport or in a courtroom hallway, I try to sleep.
But we also learned to stay calm, no matter the situation. I always thought doctors would be good in combat for their coolness under fire.
Everyone who was accepted to SUNY was certainly smart enough to get an MD. Lack of intellect didnât wash them out. The ones who left just didnât have the fortitude, the persistence, or the determination to survive the professorsâ withering cross fire. It took me a couple of years to realize what they were doing. They were brainwashing us, teaching us to think like doctors. Not lawyers, not accountants, not stockbrokers. Doctors think differently. We were beginning to adopt a certain emotional distance, learning not to get so close to patients that we couldnât do our work or so far from them that we couldnât hear what they had to say about their pain and fear.
Not every lesson was in a textbook. We learned to think logically, to not always accept what we were told, and to question what seems obvious. Non-physicians often jump from A to D, but a good doctor goes from A to B to C to D. One must attempt to accumulate all the facts.
My classmates were fascinating, too. There was Barbara Delano, who loved to argue politics with me in those heady days of the mid-1960s, as America tilted toward the worst days of Vietnam, racial strife, and campus revolt in a tectonic shift of our cultural plates. Once she accused me of holding thirteenth-century political notions. âNo,â I corrected her brusquely, âtheyâre definitely tenth-century.â (She later chaired Downstateâs School of Public Health.)
And there was Chester Chin, who was so thin that the campus nurses tried to fatten him up with daily chocolate shakes. It didnât work, and he came to detest medical school (and probably chocolate shakes). After graduation, he became an orthopedic surgeon and refused to
Similar Books
