In five weeks, I will begin medical school at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) in Jackson. In preparation for the semester, UMMC sent all of the soon-to-be M1 students the book Kitchen Table Wisdom by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen. Dr. Remen began her career as a pediatrician, but eventually became a pioneer of holistic and integrative medicine. Her biography on the back cover of the book explains that she has "trained many thousands of physicians to practice medicine from the heart." The book is compilation of short stories from her career counseling a myriad of patients suffering from chronic and terminal illness.
One short story that stood out to me was titled Grace. One of Dr. Remen's patients, a physician with cancer, told Dr. Remen a parable of a miserably poor man walking down a road. Shiva and Shakti, the Divine Couple of Hinduism, were watching the man from their heavenly abode. Shakti turned to her husband and begged him to give the man gold. Shiva explained to his wife that he could not do that because the man was not ready to receive it. Shakti continued to beg her husband to help the man, so Shiva eventually dropped a bag of gold in the poor man's path. As the poor man got closer to the gold, he thought to himself, "Look there, a large rock. How fortunate that I have seen it. I might have torn these poor sandals of mine even further." He carefully stepped over the bag of gold and went on his way.
Dr. Remen explains that life often drops bags of gold in our path, but they rarely look like what they are. When she asked her patient if life had ever given him an unrecognizable bag of gold that he had used to enrich his life he smiled and said, "Cancer."
Like cancer for Dr. Remen's patient, diabetes has been a bag of gold that has enriched my life. As a teenager, I learned discipline from the disease, which translated into academic and personal success that continues today. My diagnosis also provided me the opportunity to learn from an early age how precious the gift of life really is. Our days on Earth are numbered and we do not know how many we will get. Therefore, I try to live in the present. When I hear music, I dance. When I hear a song, I sing. I try to tell the people whom I love that I love them. I smile and laugh often and don't sweat the small things. I also know that my daily struggle with diabetes will make me a compassionate and empathetic physician. I will be able to relate to patients who live with pain, fatigue, or some other ailment. Diabetes has taken things away from me -- money, a few nights of good sleep, and the ability to eat foods without thinking how it will disrupt my body -- but it has given me so much more. It has been a bag of gold that has enriched my life.
