Paige Taylor, M.D. She felt as though she had been handed the Medal of Honor. All the long hard years of work and study were summed up in those brief words. Paige Taylor, M.D.
Nurse Spencer was watching her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Paige smiled. “I’m just fine, thank you. Where do I …?”
“Doctors’ dressing room is down the corridor to the left. You’ll be making rounds, so you’ll want to change.”
“Thank you.”
Paige walked down the corridor, amazed at the amount of activity around her. The corridor was crowded with doctors, nurses, technicians, and patients, hurrying to various destinations. The insistent chatter of the public address system added to the din.
“Dr. Keenan … OR Three …. Dr. Keenan … OR Three.”
“Dr. Talbot … Emergency Room One. Stat … Dr. Talbot … Emergency Room One. Stat.”
“Dr. Engel … Room 212 …. Dr. Engel … Room 212.”
Paige approached a door marked DOCTORS’ DRESSING ROOM and opened it. Inside there were a dozen doctors in various stages of undress. Two of them were totally naked. They turned to stare at Paige as the door opened.
“Oh! I … I’m sorry,” Paige mumbled, and quickly closed the door. She stood there, uncertain about what to do. A few feet down the corridor, she saw a door marked NURSES’ DRESSING ROOM. Paige walked over to it and opened the door. Inside, several nurses were changing into their uniforms.
One of them looked up. “Hello. Are you one of the new nurses?”
“No,” Paige said tightly. “I’m not.” She closed the door and walked back to the doctors’ dressing room. She stood there a moment, then took a deep breath and entered. The conversation came to a stop.
One of the men said, “Sorry, honey. This room is for doctors.”
“I’m a doctor,” Paige said.
They turned to look at one another. “Oh? Well, er … welcome.”
“Thank you.” She hesitated a moment, then walked over to an empty locker. The men watched as she put her hospital clothes into the locker. She looked at the men for a moment, then slowly started to unbutton her blouse.
The doctors stood there, not sure what to do. One of them said, “Maybe we should—er—give the little lady some privacy, gentlemen.”
The little lady! “Thank you,” Paige said. She stood there, waiting, as the doctors finished dressing and left the room. Am I going to have to go through this every day? she wondered.
In hospital rounds, there is a traditional formation that never varies. The attending physician is always in the lead, followed by the senior resident, then the other residents, and one or two medical students. The attending physician Paige had been assigned to was Dr. William Radnor. Paige and five other residents were gathered in the hallway, waiting to meet him.
In the group was a young Chinese doctor. He held out his hand. “Tom Chang,” he said. “I hope you’re all as nervous as I am.”
Paige liked him immediately.
A man was approaching the group. “Good morning,” he said. “I’m Dr. Radnor.” He was soft-spoken, with sparkling blue eyes. Each resident introduced himself.
“This is your first day of rounds. I want you to pay close attention to everything you see and hear, but at the same time, it’s important to appear relaxed.”
Paige made a mental note. Pay close attention, but appear to be relaxed.
“If the patients see that you’re tense, they’re going to be tense, and they’ll probably think they’re dying of some disease you aren’t telling them about.”
Don’t make patients tense.
“Remember, from now on, you’re going to be responsible for the lives of other human beings.”
Now responsible for other lives. Oh, my God!
The longer Dr. Radnor talked, the more nervous Paige became, and by the time he was finished, her self-confidence had completely vanished. I’m not ready for this! she thought. I don’t know what I’m doing. Who ever said I could be a doctor? What if I kill somebody?
Dr. Radnor was going on, “I will expect detailed notes on each one of your patients—lab work, blood, electrolytes, everything. Is that clear?”
There were murmurs of “Yes, doctor.”
“There are always thirty to forty surgical patients here at one time. It’s your job to make sure that everything is properly organized for them. We’ll start the morning rounds now. In the afternoon, we’ll make the same rounds again.”
It had all seemed so easy at medical school. Paige thought about the four years she had spent there. There had been one hundred and fifty students, and only fifteen women. She would never forget the first day of Gross Anatomy class. The students had walked into a large white tiled room with twenty tables lined up in rows, each table covered with a yellow sheet. Five students were assigned to each table.
The professor had said, “All right, pull back the sheets.” And there, in front of Paige, was her first cadaver. She had been afraid that she would faint or be sick, but she felt strangely calm. The cadaver had been preserved, which somehow removed it one step from humanity.
In the beginning the students had been hushed and respectful in the anatomy laboratory. But, incredibly to Paige, within a week, they were eating sandwiches during the dissections, and making rude jokes. It was a form of self-defense, a denial of their own mortality. They gave the corpses names, and treated them like old friends. Paige tried to force herself to act as casually as the other students, but she found it difficult. She looked at the cadaver she was working on, and thought: Here was a man with a home and a family. He went to an office every day, and once a year he took a vacation with his wife and children. He probably loved sports and enjoyed movies and plays, and he laughed and cried, and he watched his children grow up and he shared their joys and their sorrows, and he had big, wonderful dreams. I hope they all came true … A bittersweet sadness engulfed her because he was dead and she was alive.
In time, even to Paige, the dissections became routine. Open the chest, examine the ribs, lungs, pericardial sac covering the heart, the veins, arteries, and nerves.
Much of the first two years of medical school was spent memorizing long lists that the students referred to as the Organ Recital. First the cranial nerves: olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear, trigeminal, abducens, facial, auditory, glossopharyngeal, vagus, spinal, and hypoglossal.
The students used mnemonics to help them remember. The classic one was “On old Olympus’s towering tops, a French and German vended some hops.“ The modern male version was ”Oh, oh, oh, to touch and feel a girl’s vagina—such heaven.”
The
