Today I lived.

February 7, 2013

Yesterday I got the rare chance to walk outside in the middle of my work day. Often times, because we have no windows in the OR or even our break room, I never even know what the day looks like. But yesterday, my last case in the cath lab (an area we only occasionally service with anesthesia) got cancelled around 2 p.m. I knew there would not be any other cases in the cath lab and I also knew I would not be asked to relieve anyone until about 15 till 3 p.m. So I had about 45 minutes of uninterrupted, indulgent time!

So I walked outside. It was so nice that I just kept walking, through our parking lot, just past the parking garage, and over to this little area that had a grassy hill in front of one of the medical school buildings. There was a brick wall that I could sit behind so patient's wouldn't see me, and so I sat there just soaking in a little bit of the sunshine that I had missed out on that day.

It had been a hectic day. Nothing too stressful, but just some small annoying stuff. Being in this area where they aren't use to having anesthesia services, they don't really know how to involve us so it always seems it's a lot of "hurry up and wait" for us. But in reality, it was just another, typical day. One I was just trying to get through. One that wouldn't go down in the record books as a bad day or a good day. Just a day.

As I was sitting in the grass, I looked at my Facebook newsfeed on my phone and saw one of my old highschool friends from Oregon had posted this question, "What has made you happy so far today?"

Almost instantaneously a little smile tugged on the corner of my mouth and I thought, "probably this question!" To be honest, until that very second, I hadn't even taken the time to think about "THIS DAY". I hadn't really paid attention to the fact that this was a day, separate from all others, one that would never be repeated. For me, it had just been another snippet of my life that existed without emotion. A day, like thousands of others, that I would never remember again... and in some ways felt had no particular importance or meaning. But the question had made me think about the seconds that had compiled the hours that had compiled what was my life for the last eight hours. I had lived. Nothing grand or exciting. But I had breathed. I had worked. I had earned money. I had taken care of patients. I had done what I trained and dreamed of doing years ago. It was like this, "ah ha" moment. Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that THIS IS REAL LIFE. This is where my years are going, and so much of the time, I'm inattentive to the very seconds of time I have been blessed with. These "mundane" days are what my patient's would give anything for. The ability to have gotten up and to have had energy to come into work... it's a good thing.

I think most days we can't see anything special about it at all. Life that is. It's just full of the seconds that become the hours that pass without any great achievement or memory made. It's full of moments that we will never even remember. But this day, while I was thinking about it, I realized that this is what makes life good. Cancer patients, for example, remember lots of stuff. They would love a mundane, just normal kind of day... one filled with boring tasks. The boring is where our years go. But that shouldn't make us sad. It should make us grateful that we get to have normal lives. :)