A Blink Of The Eye

What does a young doctor know?

You scowl at me across the examining table suspiciously.  And indeed, the occasional spasms of pain that jolt my back are nothing in comparison to the strangling vines that form a vice grip around your lumbar spine.  I have diagnosed stenosis thousands of times, but never tasted the bitterness of singed nerves roasted on burning coals.

You hold your chest in agony, and I can only compare to the fleeting fire of bronchitis.  I have studied the inflections of countless electrocardiograms, but coronary artery disease for me is still just a conception.  I can't really tell you how it feels.

Yet there are things that you don't know.  I have endured loss in all it's various manifestations.  I stood by while death snuck up and smite it's foe with little warning.  I paused for what seemed like years as the grim reaper danced a slow and elegant waltz in my direction.  I have been acquainted with almost every form of pain and suffering.  And unlike you who lived all those years in sweet oblivion, I know exactly what awaits me.

We all walk down the same narrow precipice.  Although the paths may vary, missteps are common and many vines are dressed with thorns.  You may be a blink of the eye ahead and I a foot fall behind, but none of us escapes unscathed.  None of us.

Maybe it would lessen your burden to know that we are all in this together.  Maybe you will see the situation as I do.

The difference in years need not form an insurmountable divide.

You and I are much the same.