Residency Rap
 

House Cleaning

by Jarrod Shapiro, DPM
PRESENT Resident Editor
Botsford General Hospital
Farmington Hills, MI

Hello once again friends and colleagues. It’s a bittersweet week here in Michigan. Sweet because the fall colors are almost in full bloom with fiery yellows and deep reds and browns.

 It’s a feast for the eyes for someone who has lived twenty years in Arizona! However, with the sweet comes the bitter – winter is on its way. It’s already in the 30’s at night. Soon those of us in the North will be slogging our way through inches of frigid snow and freezing wind.

This transition into the new season had me motivated to do some “winter cleaning” this weekend. Over the past several years, I’ve managed to accumulate a rather large amount of podiatry-associated paperwork – notes, ads, booklets, op reports, etc. I’d say it’s more than a large amount. Mountain may be a more descriptive term! It’s amazing how much material we residents manage to accumulate over the course of our training.
I determined to do away with the clutter, downsize my collection of papers, and organize myself. I was set to throw away piles of papers and end up with an organized office.

As I was doing so, though, I realized, just as with the change in seasons, the bittersweet nature of my reorganization. You see, I wasn’t just throwing away a bunch of papers. I was actually discarding a representation of the past several years of my life. Just like all of you, I’ve devoted the past years of my life (blood, sweat, and tears) to podiatry. Along with that dedication I’ve met many interesting people, made lifelong friends, and had some truly wonderful--and some truly frightening--experiences. I pulled out a review about erythromelalgia and immediately remembered the friends I made during my four months of externship at the VA Medical Center in Phoenix. Or I look over notes from school and remember the jokes from one of my professors. I’ll bet anyone in my class can tell you about Dr Stamps. These papers I’d accumulated were in many ways a physical marker of those experiences.

Like many of you, I’m nearing the midpoint in my final year of residency, and graduation will mark another turning point in life – a new location, a new job, new associates, and new challenges. So, while I was throwing away superfluous papers from prior portions of my life I started wondering, “Would I be repeating this same ritual at some later point in my life?” I started to feel melancholy until I looked at my beautiful seven-month-old son smiling at me, and I was reminded that most cycles, though repetitive, bring change. And all change, though often painful, leads to better things. Enjoy the leaves in your part of the country….

Have a great week, embrace the change and savor the joys of Autumn !

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