My Driveway Moment: The Scalpel vs. the Paintbrush
Personal Statement by Alpenmed
NPR calls them "driveway moments," and it was one such moment that first sparked my interest in surgery. At the time, I was finishing up a BA in Fine Art at the University of Washington and had quite artfully avoided all pre-med requirements. But on this particular day, while driving home from painting class, I was transfixed by NPR's profile with a photojournalist who had recently published a book exposing the privileged realm of the operating room. The interview with Max Aguilera-Hellweg was only half-finished by the time I pulled into the driveway, so there I remained: engine running; bucket of paintbrushes beside me; completely riveted by the world of surgery coming to life over the crackly car radio.
My driveway moment would take a few years to truly park itself in my life, but my copy of Sacred Heart arrived almost immediately. The glossy color-plates were my first real look at surgery and I was mesmerized by the gloved hands deep in the guts of a living person and of a sectioned skull revealing a gray brain glistening under bright lights it was never meant to see. My first, self-righteous, thought was "Who dares violate the human body in such a manner?" After learning of the patients' histories and grasping their life-or-death needs, my thoughts quickly changed: "Who would dare not to do this?"
Several years later, I entered Columbia University's Post-Bacc Pre-Med program, unknowingly following in the footsteps of Aguilera-Hellweg, who went into medicine after his visceral experiences in the O.R. Being an observer was no longer enough for him. And it was no longer enough for me.
The first day of my general surgery rotation began with the excision of a simple lipoma and finished off with a grueling upper lobectomy. It was perfect. And somewhere in the middle of that 16-hour day I knew, with certainty, that I had to become a surgeon. One of my most poignant moments came after a late night return call to the hospital for a possible appendicitis in a truly miserable six year-old: It was thrilling-- one of the most memorable moments of my life-- being able to perform most of the open appendectomy myself under the guidance of Dr. _____. But my true satisfaction came upon returning to the hospital early the next morning to find an adorable little girl in pink pajamas watching cartoons in Spanish and smiling.
My acute sense of completion that morning stemmed, I believe, from my innate desire to intervene directly in my patients' health. What I love about surgery most might be that it comes with this unique privilege: making a connection that extends beyond pontificating or pharmaceutical remedies.
I still like to experience the world through my hands as well as through my mind, and surgery allows me a medical career especially well-suited to my extensive artistic training. As surgeon Leonard Shlain puts it in his book Art & Physics: "...a surgeon is both artist and scientist. The craft demands a finely honed sense of aesthetics: A maxim of the profession is if an operation does not 'look' beautiful it most likely will not function beautifully..."
There have been many--many--medical books in my life since I first opened Sacred Heart. And, since my "driveway moment," I have been exposed to an expansive array of medicine. While I enjoy many aspects of other disciplines in medicine and love the challenges offered by several, it is surgery and surgery alone that ties all of my passions together in a way that is truly fulfilling.
Here is Max Aguilera-Hellweg's fantastic website: http://maxaguilerahellweg.com/
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