Small Blessings

I think we've all received this text message:

Little birdie in the sky
Dropped a poopoo in my eye
then something like
I thank the Lord, that cows don't fly.

You get the message, right?

I couldn't help but remember this message as residency life goes on for me (gasp, going 4 months of Internal Medicine, who would have thunk it?).

I went on rounds with one of my consultants the other day and came to a really well-off patient in the suite room on my floor. While doing the usual check-up -- BP, physical examination, pulse rate, a random scan of the labs and ECG -- the usual chit chat came to discuss his many medical problems and previous hospitalizations. He had Coronary Artery Disease (fancy medical term for heart blood vessel blockage), hypertension, Diabetes Mellitus and had underwent bypass grafting, percutaneous transluminal angioplasty, and a pacemaker insertion all in the last 8 years.

He casually chuckled and said that he had too many problems and it was all because of how old he was.

My consultant shared a laugh and said, "Well, you have lived a full life."

My patient said, "Well, you know, life is like money, you can never have enough of it."

There it was, the lesson for the day.

Well, this statement was coming from a guy who owned companies (plural) and had loads of money, but he longed for more days to his life as well. It helps that you have money to spend during those additional days too, but what caught me was how simple a thought it all boiled down to: You can never have enough of life.

Then I was brought back to how I measured my own life -- the sleepless nights, the endless reports and assignments, the proddings from our superiors, the way we drag ourselves out of bed EVERY morning -- and stopped.

I realized, I didn't have to look at it that way. I'll try my darndest to look at the small blessings -- the extra hour of sleep I get for finishing work early, sharing a cup of coffee, studying with the beautiful woman reading William's Obstetrics across from me, helping people get well, the mystery and allure of diagnosis that got me into IM in the first place -- the small blessings.

It's true, you can never get enough of life. One would want to suck it's marrow for how many days we are given. But the funny thing about it is that we don't have that expiration date stamped across our foreheads, so even though how much likening the need for life to money, it isn't measured with the latter, it's measured in blessings -- the blessings of how we lived it.

So thank God for the small blessings.

Thank you for yet another day.

Off to do rounds again.