Sleep apnoea
It doesn’t matter how many people have told you “medicine isn’t a fair world”. You were there, with thousands of bright ideas which came and went out of your head and you couldn’t stop them or, at least, not at that point. The machine had started and you couldn’t interrupt its progress.
The process is long, laborious and painful, but it seems like you do not realize it.
To invent someone who doesn’t exist, to become someone you don’t know. It is part of the game. What are your interests? What are your plans for the future? You are in the middle of the whirl and you think that to give a right answer to these questions, you would need a considerable dose of clairvoyance. So you can just breath, smile and sell your story.
Everything started by chance, a strange carousel of events, but a part of you has always known it. Helping people, becoming a point of reference, feeling in a way different from others.
No questions, no plan, just the will to do something special, to leave a mark. You got up one morning and decided that it was your way to happiness. The right occasion, the right place, a fair dose of luck. You don’t know how yet, but it will happen, you are sure.
But this isn’t all, this isn’t exactly the truth. Because there aren’t enough books to explain what you are going to cope with, there aren’t enough courses to prepare yourself to look at someone in the eyes and tell him that he won’t make it. You will spend sleepless nights reading in the search of a solution or in front a monitor which doesn’t stop to sound. Like a rejected lover, waiting for a sign, a clue that says you are going the right way, at least for a while. Because failing is a part of your job and you know well. The truth is that you are alone and no matter how hard you try, things won’t change. You have just to follow your dream, look ahead, agree to a compromise as a part of your future. You will do several different jobs, you will like just a few, you will stagger helplessly on the way that drives to wisdom. You will meet several people, people who should lead you along the way, people who instead will leave you alone with your doubts and your shortcomings. You are going ahead, despite them, despite the desire of messing up everything. A bad judge is waiting for your mistakes, your weaknesses and your too slow answers to questions that have never been closed. Drop by drop, you will lose your passion, your time and devotion in favour of a new challenge or time consuming activity. You will create a character who will live your dream and will gather up the pieces when you will fall down. Look at yourself, where is your thirst for knowledge now? Where is your confidence? Stop for a moment, just the time to see in the mirror someone else, someone with the signs of an old disillusion, someone you don’t know any more. Suffering in a corner, waiting for a new page of your life. A time when you will grow up and you won’t have fear any more.
Nevertheless, sometimes things change, just how much you need it, just enough to drive you to change your mind. Because you are still the same, the same with the mad idea to improve this world, just older and more heart-broken than before. A right diagnosis, a smile or thanks that you don’t expect, a sensation of lightness that takes you back in time. Someone or something will give you the strength to carry on. Then, sooner or later, in whichever day, the courage will find you. While your shoes are sinking in the damp ground, a moment before you get into the hospital, something will change inside you. Without paying attention, without becoming aware of it, you will walk through its doors and leave melancholy outside. The sense of loss, however, will probably come with you for a long time. Because the answers, if there are any, are elsewhere. There will be new patients, new stories, new challenges to cope with and there will be several times when you will feel inadequate.
Nevertheless, sometimes, you will fall asleep not too much disappointed to tell yourself “Goodnight, in the end, you know that you were right”.