Thoughts on a year.

        I expected Africa to be different than the US. Clinics filled with HIV-positive patients on ARV day, elephant sightings, strange bugs, ridiculous rain leading to ridiculous pot holes, bargaining at the market, red dirt that gets everywhere… I expected all this. Well, maybe I couldn’t have predicted how much I actually like nshima, or learning to cook all sorts of plants (pumpkin leaves in peanut sauce, anyone?), or clinics that lack drug A through X (and tape, and sutures, and whatever) and are entirely run by the maid, or regularly wearing chitenge to the office, but more or less I expected things to be different.

         What I didn’t expect was how much I think this year marks a transition in life for me. When I think about where I was last year, and where I am now, it’s pretty unfathomable. Exactly 12 months ago, I was a full time med student, sporting scrubs through my 30-hour shifts in OB/GYN out in Boise, Idaho, fitting in 6-8 hour breaks (include sleep, eat, shower, in that order) between stretches. I was loving the OR, especially surgery with the super cool DaVinci machine, wielded by a rockstar Gyn/Onc. Kings of Leon playing while we whipped through a para-aortic dissection of lymph nodes invaded with cervical cancer. Dinner usually consisted of cafeteria pudding, coffee, and wilted salad or other unidentifiables. All of my shopping, I hate to say, was at WinCo, which was a convenient 500 meters from the apartment. My favorite run took me out in the desert, past scrub and flowering grasses, where mountain bike trails criss-crossed over streams and steep rocks turned red and sandy gold at sunset. Once, I took a risk on a slowly progressing patient and went for a run while on call. Of course, my pager went off. Twice. I convinced a passing rollerblader that I needed to borrow her cellphone (saying hospital is like a free pass), and set a personal best for the miles home.

          Looking back on the past year as a whole, my life was full. I was set to graduate in a less than two years from medical school, had just signed a lease on a great apartment, and had a fantastic boyfriend. I applied for a few fellowships on the off chance they would deliver, thinking that it was the time to do these things before residency, buying a house, maybe getting married, and the other milestones that one expects at that point of life (heck, I was toying with the idea of a pet!). Now, one year later, I have walked away from all of that for one reason or another (don’t worry Dad, I am going back to med school!). It seems Africa, and her promises of adventure, has a way of coming to call and staying for a lifetime.

This all begs the inevitable: Now what? And that is a darn good question.