Memorial Day is in the rearview mirror, and the summer of my Gap Year is officially here. This is shaping up to be the most important phase of the journey as I begin to seriously work on applications to low-residency MFA programs in creative writing. My heart and mind, though, remain anchored in clinical genetics. Yesterday I worked on an abstract for the annual ASHG meeting in December – a report about one of the cool calcium/calmodulin dependent protein kinases. I mean, who wouldn’t be gobsmacked?
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Memorial Day, of course, is significant as more than a seasonal marker. We are a species gifted with the capacity to remember, a sort of instinct surpassed only by the primal drive to publicly march and prance and give inspirational speeches. Here I poke only gentle fun at this particular holiday, as I am a veteran of foreign wars and have had certain experiences that, but for a few inches, would have left me a subject rather than an observer of the festivities.
Yesterday I wrote a few pages about Memorial Day and was poised to post them here. But there was a problem. My aim was to write something nice – a good effort, well-crafted, bespoke, and reverential. I took several long walks to have a good think, then made a detailed outline, and whittled away at the extraneous fluff. I wrote calmly and with a clear head. The words flowed onto the page.
Then I read it.
With wisdom gleaned from several short years of marriage (39), I gave the manuscript to my wife to read. She took an unusually long time to finish the first page. A fast reader, she could only have been re-reading some parts to confirm her impression. The verdict was slightly technical and apologetic. She’s so nice, but I understood what she meant. It was crap.
My precious essay! We laid it to eternal rest.
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“Can you take it?”
In the spring of 1980, Dr. Al Persson (top row, second from the left), a well-known vascular surgeon, asked this question in a basement corridor at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, MA. I was unemployed but hoping to get a job as a non-invasive vascular technician, and he was on the brink of hiring me – I had survived a few rounds of interviews, including a quiz on carotid artery physiology involving Bernoulli’s principle, and was a bit on edge.
“What?”
That was the best I could manage! Sheesh. I was 24 and broke, so I was trying to cloak my cluelessness with my eloquence. Dr. Persson didn’t find fault but expanded on the question.
“Can you take it. What I mean is can you take it when you make a wrong decision or make a mistake when you are caring for a patient? We all do, sooner or later. And when we do, that’s hard. You feel guilty and stunned that you hurt someone who trusted you. But it happens, and when it does, you have to be a professional. You have to emotionally deal with it while you are fixing the problem you created, and you can’t pull the covers over your head and say ‘I’m done, giving up.’ You have to get up the next day and go to work. That’s what I mean when I ask, ‘Can you take it?’ ”
I’m pretty sure I said, “Yes, sir.” He hired me.
I had to think about his question for some time before I really understood it. My answer in the affirmative was in fact a leap of faith. A very good leap.
The message has endured. Own the problem, dry your tears, get up and get back to work.
Yesterday my writing was not so good. Maybe even today, and other days, But I’ll try again.
With a 30 second conversation, Dr. Alfred Persson taught me more about professionalism than anyone else. He lived a good life, and the differences he made will endure. He died this year on April the 8th, a Monday.
Scott D. McLean, MD 