I don’t think I ever posted about this… so back about a year ago now, it became clear that my Dad would not be there for my med school graduation. I feel as if I’m repeating myself but it was something that was important to all of us.

While I was at a wedding, my parents worked on a graduation gift for me from my Dad. Although my Dad was never strongly Japanese in raising me (minus the vigorous academic pressure) he still held a lot of the ideas about Japanese culture. My parents decided on a necklace because I usually will wear a necklace. I don’t have to worry about removing it for the OR like rings/bracelets and I get less metal allergies with them. Having a necklace say something like “to my daughter love Dad” is just not the right taste – I don’t know how to explain it really. They did toy with the idea of putting the characters for father and daughter but it just wasn’t right. He finally decided on the characters for doctor. :) I think it was the right choice – although I probably would say that with nearly anything! It just is something I can imagine him picking out. Maybe when I’m rushing about, trying to get a handle on my intern duties, it will catch the light just the right way – a little signal I’m doing ok, I miss him much, but carrying on :)

So today I started internship, but I’m finally uploaded graduation pics! Graduation felt like a blur – it was just so unreal that I was at the point that I was all done. It was really good though, good to be there with family and friends and celebrate the accomplishment! :)

So if anyone asks me when I’m done I first say May 18th! 2009!! And then I say that I have x number of days left, with even more exclamation marks! I’m on rotations right up to graduation (graduation is a monday, my last day of rotations is the Friday before). I have two weeks to make up due to the time I took off for my Dad and that’s why I’ll be a little later in finishing than the rest of my classmates. There’s wiggle room between the end of school and internship for these sorts of life things.

I know I’ll say it a million times between now and graduation, and have already said so oh, 234 million times, but it’s really crazy how these four years of my life are drawing to a close. I began medical school a different person, different dreams, different framework of thought, different computer ;) – but same love of caffeine free diet coke, chocolate, wolfie, and being pushed and challenged. I learned to accept patients for who they were, what they might do, what they would never do … I learned to see them in a light I didn’t even know existed … and learned to talk to them in a role that was something I barely understood as I wrote those essays for medical school declaring my love for helping people… And not knowing that a desire to help someone wouldn’t cure them of their mortality… I watched patients whose life was shortly gone… I laughed and smiled with patients who tolerated my fumbling interviews and physical exams… I saw compassion and utter disrespect… I was the first to hold life as it entered the world – and I saw life that’s only home it knew was the womb… I came home some nights so depressed that I had worked so hard to be treated as I had been… and I came home some nights with my eyes shining with the wondrous things I had done that day… but most important, I’ve come out still me and hopefully someone that will help people. Not just a medical way, but in a way so that when there’s a sunny day – they can just enjoy it a tiny bit more because they have been cared for. :)