Beats Working

My sister’s boyfriend likes to do puzzles.  My sister’s boyfriend is also very strange, so we usually just roll our eyes and laugh when he talks about doing his puzzles, but I started thinking today about how the human body is kind of like a 3D puzzle.  This morning I watched my mentor remove a giant, very vascularized (read - very bloody) carotid body (read – in the neck) tumor.  Watching him work through the anatomy of the neck was like working through a very complex puzzle… one that occasional sprayed blood in your face.  It is such an incredible thing to posses the knowledge that enables one to cut into a human, remove the problem, and then put them back together again.  Watching something like that…its like time, spreadsheets, food, school, nothing else exists except for that giant 3D puzzle that needs to be put back together.    

My Dad always says that, “any day in the OR beats working.”  I never really understood what he meant by that until I actually worked a 9-5 job and then set foot in an OR.  Yes, I only just finished my first year of medical school, which means I know next to nothing when it comes to medicine or surgery for that matter, but there is just something consuming about being in an OR and watching a surgeon work out the puzzle.  Maybe that will change for me one day, but at this point in my life, it really does beat working.