Grey's Anatomy: The Intern Formerly Known as Steve

You Are Invited

You are cordially invited to join Intern #2 (←That’s me!) on an expedition into… (drum roll please…) THE PAST! My past.

We will travel back to those first months of my internship at Seattle Grace Hospital. Back to a time when life was simple and not everybody knew my name. And once we’ve seen it all, we will come back to the future where we’ll find out what else happened on that fateful day that the sparkle pager returned the mojo to Dr. Yang. We will travel back to the future just in time to meet---The Girl Who Lived.

For all those brave enough to walk the fine line of the space-time continuum…The ferry boat will depart every Thursday night at 10:01pm (PST) sharp, beginning June 12th. Brace yourselves for an adventure of epic proportion. Anchors away!

Ode to the Sacred Sparkle

Dear Sparkle Pager,

Some say you’re just a pager covered in glue and sparkly stuff. Sacrilege! You are so much more than that. More than sparkle and accessory. More than a prize in a contest (albeit, like the coolest, most hardcore contest ever). You, Sparkle Pager, are the holy grail of pagers. You give people the gift of ANY surgery they want! With you, it’s like Christmas morning--every morning. And for those of us who have yet to experience the honor of clipping you onto our scrubs, you give us something to aspire to. Because at the end of yet another long day, with all the death and the sadness, sometimes it’s tough to stay positive, and remember why we are here. In those times, it’s you, Sparkle Pager and that sacred sparkle of yours, that keeps us all going.

For quite some time now, Dr. Yang has needed a little Sparkle Pager love. You see, she has been sad. Like, really sad. And when Dr. Yang is sad, she tends to take it out on us (as in #1-4). But you know that. Your keen Sparkle Pager instincts alerted you to her distress code, and subsequently to ours. You knew her mojo was beep-beeping away, and you did something about it. You granted Dr. Grey’s wish to have your powers transferred to Dr. Yang in her time of need. And I know the separation was difficult. You liked Dr. Grey. Heck, we all do. She is AMAZING. I mean, what she did today… Sparkle Pager, I guess what I am trying to say here is that you were there for Dr. Yang when she needed you most. When she’d almost completely lost hope, you gave her the chance to scrub in on not just any surgery, but on possibly the greatest trauma this hospital has ever seen.

It’s a ferry crash victim…It’s a bomb inside a patient…It’s a…Cement Boy?!!?!!? And no, this is not the indestructible younger cousin of Awake Man. (Although Awake Man should have a cousin…) This is the kid whose life you, Sparkle Pager, helped save today. Remember? He wasn’t made of cement, he was encased in it. ENCASED! IN! CEMENT! As in stuck in a big chunk of sidewalk? (Oooh, Sidewalk Boy! But then what would his superhero power be---getting walked all over? Hmm…)

The thing is that cement didn’t magically form around this Hans Solo reincarnation. No magic wand was waved here. This boy actually made the conscious decision to lie down in that cement. And he wasn’t sleepwalking or drunk or on drugs. It was much worse than that. He was in love. Now everyone knows that love can make you do crazy things. (Like performing the Electric Slide with a pool cue in front of all your co-workers with the hope of making a certain nurse laugh. And that was just “like.”) But lying in cement? That puts the “x” in extreme. That is the do-no-try-this-at-home gesture of all romantic gestures. So, Sparkle Pager, can I make a suggestion please? (…waiting for the “okay” beep…) If you ever have a certain lady sparkle who you are trying to impress…DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!!

Why not, you ask? Because this is almost completely uncharted territory. The instruction manual has yet to be written. I know this because the Chief came to George for answers. And George came to me for backup! ME! I mean, how cool is that!?! We were like Lewis and Clark; exploring uncharted territory one google search at a time. Well, actually it was George who scoured the Net. I hit the books. And the results were slim to none. We didn’t exactly discover the fountain of youth. (But wait, that was Ponce De Leon, right?) Anyhow, my point is that there is not very much out there in the way of documented accounts of cement encasement.

Luckily Cement Boy came to Seattle Grace Hospital. If he’d gone somewhere else, who knows if they would've cracked the puzzle. But here we’ve got the best of the best. And they all put their genius brains together and found a way to remove that boy from the cement without killing him. (Of course, I wasn’t actually IN the room to witness all this because no interns were allowed. So I can’t give you the details. But if the Chief ever gets into blogging, I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it…)

It was later in the OR when Cement Boy was all open and vulnerable that you, Sparkle Pager, truly made the difference. It was because of you that Dr. Yang was by Cement Boy’s side when the clot formed in his right pulmonary artery. You see, Dr. Yang might not be a lot of things, but she sure is an excellent cardiothoracic-surgeon-in-training. She knew the best way to resolve the issue was to get in there immediately and perform a thoracotomy. And she did it!!! DR. YANG FLEW SOLO ON A THORACOTOMY AND SAVED CEMENT BOY’S LIFE!!!

Now don’t be modest Sparkle Pager. (It doesn’t suit you and your sparkle.) Dr. Yang’s skills alone didn’t get her there. YOU put her in that room and on that particular case. I know there was a moment this morning when Dr. Stevens and Dr. Yang came pretty darn close to throwing down over who got to spend the day with you. But you put your foot down. You gave your power to Dr. Yang, and in doing so not only saved a patient’s life, but also put Dr. Stevens exactly where she needed to be—with Dr. Karev and that patient/girlfriend scenario of his, which I don’t really understand. (She’s pregnant, she’s not pregnant, she’s crazy, she’s….I am so confused.)

I’d like to state for the record that I am officially tired of hearing the Dr. Karev/Dr. Stevens play-by-play. Ever since the Stevens vs. Torres Fight debacle, Laura and Graciella haven’t stopped talking about the weirdness between Dr. Stevens and Dr. Karev. I swear it’s like they are writing a script for a TV series about those two. Graciella is totally convinced they are in love. But really? Is cursing indicative of love? Because according to Nurse Debbie, Dr. Karev called Dr. Stevens a really, really bad word. A your-mother-is-going-to-wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap-so-quickly-you-never-saw-it-coming kind of word. The kind you never say—especially not to a lady. The B word.

But I gotta give Dr. Stevens some credit here. She didn’t let it faze her. She totally held her ground, and did the right thing for that patient. I guess Leo witnessed it all because possibly the biggest surprise of the day was that somehow you managed to make a human being out of Leo. It was Leo, of all people, who was practically gushing over Dr. Stevens’ behavior. LEO, who has never ever shown respect for his superior. LEO!!! And he has seriously not stopped talking about it. The guy is like two Dr. Stevens-saves-the-day moments away from lying down in cement for her. (Hmm… I wonder if I’d be given the chance to scrub in on Cement Leo’s surgery… Horrible, horrible thoughts #2. Time to look to the sacred sparkle for guidance.)

I’ve got to salute you Sparkle Pager. SGH is a better place because of you. Cement boy is alive. Dr. Stevens took a stand. Leo showed some respect. Dr. Yang got her mojo back. And we, the numbers, may have just gotten ourselves a teacher. Because after you gave Dr. Yang her mojo back, she returned the favor to Lexie by teaching her the running whip stitch on a banana, which in turn Lexie taught me. And then I taught #4, who then taught #1, who taught Megan, who taught Pierce, who taught Mitch, who taught Laura, who taught Lucy, who taught Aasif, who taught Graciella, who taught Claire, who taught Leo, who taught James, who taught Joe the Bartender (Ok, maybe James took it one step too far, but he was excited)… And it’s all because of you.

Your Friend Always,

#2

Stay Tuned...

Greetings Blog-iverse!

It’s been way too long since my last blog. Eons and eons. Well, maybe just hours and hours. But I’ve been there. I know how time can stand still when you are surfing the wild waves of the Internet waiting for the Great White Shark that is a new blog entry to appear.

Anyhow, I think it has felt like such an eternity to me because I am coming off of a fifty-hour shift at the hospital. No, your eyes did not deceive you, I said fifty hours. Fifty hours that have changed, yes changed, my life.

Something truly incredible happened in those hours. Something I am dying to tell you readers about. Something that is going to blow your minds. It certainly blew mine. (There’s a pun in there that you won’t get until later. Sorry.)

But I can’t tell you just yet. Not if I want to tell you the right way. Not if I want to tell you the way that you deserve to be told. Because, sadly, Awake Man never imbued me with his special powers, which means that pretty soon I’ll be waltzing through a little realm I like to call REM. (Hey, real men do waltz.)

So please, don’t go anywhere. Wait right here. In a few days, I’ll be back. I promise, I’ll be right back…

...Zzzzzzzzzzz…

My Friend SCUT

S.C.U.T.  Some. Common. Unfinished. Task.  Basically it’s all the mundane stuff in the hospital that nobody wants to do, but that someone has to get done.  We go way back—SCUT and I.  Way. Back.  Back to med school, where we were first introduced.  And I’ll admit, back then we didn’t totally click.  I hadn’t yet mastered the hassle-free discharge or the bump-free gurney ride.  And finding medical supplies wasn’t exactly my forte because I was still learning the difference between a catgut suture and a chromic suture.  But now--SCUT and I are old friends.   Like Einstein and Kodel.   Or Marty McFly and the Doc.   I know SCUT very, very well.  Perhaps--too well, because now even when I’m running on empty, without sleep or Jose’s meatloaf, SCUT no longer feels like a challenge.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve learned a lot from SCUT.  I respect SCUT.  I value SCUT.  And I know that SCUT and I will always continue to have an important relationship.  All I’m saying is that it may be time for us to take a little breather.  Even Marty and the Doc didn’t time travel together forever.  The Doc had other time traveling machines to invent (like that rockin’ train at the end of BTTF 3, how cool was that?!) and school teachers from the past to marry, and Doc Juniors to bring into the world.  It was good while it lasted, even great, but after a certain point they were both ready to move on.  Well, SCUT, it’s my turn to time travel solo for a while; to find my own train (if you get my drift).  This is me, #2, saying right here, right now that I am ready to branch out and make some new friends.  Like cardiothoracic surgery.   Like neurosurgery.  Like any kind of actual surgery…Please, God, PLEASE… 

Amazing things happen in this hospital every day.  Extraordinary things.  UNCOMMON things.  The kind of things we all dedicated four years of our lives to cadavers and textbooks and Ramen noodles to hopefully someday be a part of.  Everyone has their own dream surgical scenario.  For Mitch, it’s a facial reconstruction.  For Lucy, it’s a heart transplant. For me, well, mine is to play a role, even the smallest of small roles, really any role at all in Dr. Grey and Dr. Shepherd’s totally amazing, totally groundbreaking clinical trial.  But the thing is, it has been X days, X hours, and X minutes since the trial began.  X patients have died.  X lives have been saved.  Not that I’m counting. [*Due to a strict hospital policy, I cannot release these numbers to the general public. So you’ll just have to use your imagination.]  And, yeah, I’ve sort of, kind of…well, have yet to…scrub in. 

And I’m ready.  I’ve done my research.  I could pass a pop quiz with 100%, 105% if 5 points of extra credit were available.  I mean, I even dream about this clinical trial.  I dream about Dr. Grey inviting me to join her team of interns on this incredible journey into the brain.  (Even if she and Dr. Shepherd didn’t have the best day. Even if their combined bedside manner this afternoon was like a game of tug-of-war gone wrong—or so says Megan. But so what?  Every team has their not-so-great days.  Doesn’t mean they lose their place in my book of best teams EVER!)  The only way that I could live and breathe the clinical trial any more, would be if I was actually participating in it.  But these surgeries are so “hot” right now, it would probably be easier for me to get Super Bowl tickets. 

You see Dr. Shepherd is kind of a popular guy.  Apparently I am not the only person in this hospital that admires him.  When I first arrived I was all ready to initiate a fan club, nominate myself as president, choose my vice, appoint my cabinet members, etc.  But as it turned out Dr. Shepherd already had a fan club.  Well, actually he has five.  And apparently none of them are ‘actively’ looking for new members right now.  Whatever, I’m the only one who likes him for all the right reasons.  Do any of the members of “We Triple Heart McDreamy” or “Nurses for the Dream” even know the name of his first solo surgery?  No.  Can they even truly appreciate the IL2 for the glorious, potentially-brain-tumor-killing protein that it is?  I think not.  They just like the way the guy looks, which is completely irrelevant.   So what if his hair is awesome.  His brain is AWESOME-ER.  And these folks, a certain treasurer of “Derek is My Shepherd,” and a certain social chair of “Derelicious,” are the ones that get to actually scrub in and be there right next to him while he’s experimenting with saving lives!   

Note to self: BREATHE.  [Diaphragm and intercostals muscles contract…Diaphragm and intercostals muscles relax…] I can afford to practice the art of patience.  My OR time will come because I have something none of the other Shepherd fan clubs’ members have.  I am an intern.  Now in the normal pecking order of the world that is SGH, that means that I have no voice and no power, and am basically only half-a-step above the gurneys and other items that the hospital owns.  But the pyramid of power has recently shifted, thanks to a certain stellar intern.  Yeah, you guessed it.  Intern extraordinaire, George O’Malley, strikes again!  George has single-handedly elevated the intern; increased the value of our currency (especially after it was devalued by a certain intern of Dr. Stevens—Yes, Leo, that is you.)  Important people have interns because of him.  THE CHIEF has an intern!  And George is his guy.  So now he’s in the know about all the secrets of this place.  He’s gotten to see behind the curtain and, let me tell you, he is totally tight with the Wizard.

So here’s what I’m thinking.  Obviously I’m no George O’Malley (not yet anyhow, I mean that’s something to aspire to.)  BUT I’m also no 007.  So would it be totally unfathomable that perhaps one day a certain neurosurgeon would find a need to have his own special intern; specifically me?  Ok, so I may have already created an application.  And I may have filled it out.  Five times.  Or twelve.   But I’m a doctor!  (For those of you not familiar with this shorthand, announcing that you’re a doctor in the context of a scenario in which you’re required to put pen to paper is pretty much the most accepted method of getting away with having not-so-perfect handwriting.  Try it some time.  It works.)  So I took my time making it look nice.  So what?  I mean this could be the most important document of my life—potentially. (Not that my birth certificate wasn’t important, Mom.  I’m not denying the miracle that was my birth or the seventy-two hours of misery and pain that I put you through during labor.  Thank you!!)  So give it some thought folks, but I personally think that Steady Hand Steve could be an ideal candidate for this position-to-be. 

If Dr. Shepherd still remembers me.  All the SCUT Dr. Yang has me doing seems to be keeping me from crossing paths with him.  But hey, that’s fine.  I’m not expecting her to have my back, or to have me over to her house for Thanksgiving.  (Although an invite would have been nice. Whatever, I had other plans; a.k.a. work.)  Regardless of whether she assigns me neuro cases or ever utters the words “Dr. Mostow,” Dr. Yang is my boss.  And, therefore, I do what she tells me.  Her wish is my command.  However, (and this is just between us), she is totally coding.  And not in the usual sense of her trying to impress Dr. Hahn and getting shut down, but in a new and really disturbing way. 

Remember how I mentioned that extraordinary things have been going on in this hospital?  Well, today was no exception.  Yes.  The rumors are all true. (Except for the one about George and Dr. Stevens.  And George and Dr. Torres.  And George and Nurse Olivia.  He’s not like that.  He’s a good guy.  I’ve met him.)   One of the founding fathers of cardiothoracic surgery visited our very own hospital.  The Godfather was here. DR. WALTER TAPLEY.  This is the guy who invented the modified bypass.  Even outside of cardio circles, this man is a legend.  And he chose us, Seattle Grace Hospital, as the place he wanted to come for the most important surgery of his life.

Everyone wanted in on his double valve replacement.  And I mean, EVERYONE.  Lucy tried to get out of the clinical trial to get into it! (Oh how I would switch places with you in a second, Lucy. Not that I actually got to scrub in on the Tapley bypass.  But still.)  Claire totally camped out about ten feet from the room—and she wasn’t even on duty.  And she still didn’t get OR time.  Now normally, Dr. Yang would be first in line on the suck-up train to Tapley’s heart, and would have enlisted us for additional support.  But not today.  No, today she was too “busy.”  And what pray tell was she so “busy” with that she couldn’t find time to spend with Tapley?  Charting.  No, sadly that was no typo.  I repeat; Dr. Yang spent the day that Walter Tapley was here--charting.  CHARTING?!?  And while she was doing the SCUT work she should have assigned us (I mean she’s a resident.  It’s her right to delegate!), something happened that I’m sure Dr. Yang will later regret.  One of her interns, Lexie, (the one she refers to as #3) won the prize they’d all been competing for.  She got to scrub in and see the inside of Walter Tapley’s heart! 

Later at Joe’s when Lexie was giving a bunch of us the play-by-play of Tapley’s surgery, it became clear to me that this surgery was to her what time in the OR with Dr. Shepherd is to me.  With all the long hours and the lack of sleep and the constant SCUT, sometimes we all lose sight of why we are here.  But then one day there’s an amazing surgery and someone actually invites you to scrub in, and you’re right there with this patient at the most vulnerable moment in all of their existence, helping the experts make sure that that existence continues beyond the OR.  You see as much as SCUT stinks, it’s a stepping stone to something bigger, something better—saving lives. 

So today, I didn’t make any new friends.  Surgical friends, that is.  But who knows what tomorrow will bring?  Maybe, just maybe, one of us interns will score a front row seat to the cutting room table.  But at least one thing’s for sure, no matter what, I’ll always have SCUT. 

Well, I’m off to join the others before rounds for a quick round of a game we like to call “YA CODED—Can ya conjugate it?”  But more on that later…

Steady Hand, Steve?

Dr. Yang has not been sleeping. (Ok, so there’s been some napping, but it hasn’t been quality and there were definitely no major Zzzs seen or heard.)  My point is that when Dr. Yang doesn’t sleep, we (as in #1-4) don’t sleep.  When Dr. Yang doesn’t go home, we don’t go home.  We don’t even think about home (or what it would be like to sink into our own beds and cuddle up to our 7th grade homemade models of the occipital lobe, that we’ve nicknamed Oxi.  Not that we have those.  Not that we name things.)  We don’t dare to even dream of dreaming about these simple life pleasures, because there has been something much more pressing in the world that is Seattle Grace Hospital.  Something more important than sleep, or happiness, or the comfort of clean scrubs and pleasant smelling co-workers (I hate to break it to you, Nurse Debbie, but not everyone can smell like freshly baked cookies ALL the time.)  Something bigger than you or me, or even medicine itself…  So in a gesture of good faith, I am extending an olive branch to you—the faithful readers of this blog, victims yourselves of this all encompassing event—by revealing right here, right now the thing that’s denied you of my insights for over two weeks…

THE CONTEST.  And Cindy, this isn’t like an ‘I’ll-race-you-to-the-stop-sign’ or ‘I-dare-you-to-drink-that-bottle-of-hot-sauce’ kind of contest.  This is a BIG DEAL.  This is a challenge.  A struggle.  An expedition into the unknown.  Ergasiophobes need not apply. Well, pretty much no one can just apply.  You have to be a 2nd year resident at Seattle Grace Hospital.  (So dream on Mercy residents, you are not getting in.)  And if you’re in it for the ribbons or gold prizes, well that’s your loss, because there are none.  But that’s the point because the contest is not about decorations. There is no hiding behind that stuff.  The contest is bare bones.  It’s about surgical skill, and smarts, and endurance, and…the X-factor.

This year WE were Dr. Yang’s X-factor.  We were her eyes and ears.  We were everywhere she was, and everywhere she could not be.  We provided her caffeine and fresh pairs of socks.  We were out there trolling for traumas, scouring patient files for medical mysteries, and, of course, vigilantly holding Hahn Watch.  But we weren’t the only ones out there looking for these things.  There were other interns of other residents with loyalties of their own.  Interns who have things to gain from stealing your ten points by slipping in a cardio cath while you’ve run to tell Dr. Yang about it. (Megan, I know that was you. Not cool!)  Bottom line: in this contest you’ve always got to secure your patient.  Oh, and another tip for future contestants’ interns—Never ever doze off, not even for a second. (Sadly, Laura learned that the hard way when her Zzzs caused her to miss a major trauma. Now she’s paying the price.  Starting tomorrow, Dr. Karev’s got her doing rectal disimpactions. Yikes.)

Which is why I’d like to take this moment to reveal a new brand of superhero. Of the medical variety. …Drum roll please…AWAKE MAN. (You’ll have to forgive me, Phil.  I know we always flesh out new superhero ideas together before revealing them to the general public--ie. Barney, but the contest prevented me from paying my phone bill and my Internet bill. Oh, and my dog ate my homework.)  So this superhero doctor, he doesn’t need sleep or really any form of rest at all.  Awake Man laughs in the face of exhaustion.  Staying awake is his spinach.  The more he stays awake, the more his concentration grows and the steadier his hands become. 

Back when I had sleep and was actually performing small medical procedures and observing surgeries, I had the steady hands.  My hands were so steady, in fact, Dr. Derek Shepherd nicknamed me…Steady Hand Steve! Ok, so the inflection may have been on the “steady hand.”  And when he said it he may have been warning me against accidentally jabbing the probe I was holding into super-sensitive, super-important brain tissue.  But here’s the thing…he said it.  And I did keep that hand steady, and no brain damage was caused by me.  So I kinda had this thought that maybe this could become like our thing.  He’d start passing me in the halls and be all “Hey, Steady Hand Steve, how’s it shakin’?  Remember back when you helped me save a life with your insanely steady hand?”  The Chief’s desk would get piled sky high with requests from Dr. Shepherd to put his man, Steady Hand Steve, on ALL his cases.  I’d be his right hand man.  Literally.  The guy you can trust to lend a steady hand in a crisis.  During brain surgery.  When a patient crashes.  When a computer malfunctions.  I was that guy.  In my head, I was that guy. 

Now I’m the guy who dodges—yes dodges--Dr. Shepherd, the man I would have walked 500 miles to see. (Yes, I know that’s a song. And my apologies in advance for those of you who will now have it stuck in your head for the duration of this day.)  For two weeks I’ve been sneaking under the Nurse’s Station desk, slipping into the cafeteria kitchen (and trust me, what they’ve got going behind the scenes there is not a pretty sight), and diving into supply closets, which happen to also be #3’s favorite spot. (See the supply closet is to interns what Ikea is to people who actually get time off to go shopping; great prices (free!) and jam-packed with essential home goods; only the screaming children aren’t in the store, they’re outside in the halls reminding you that you should probably be helping them rather than perusing the inventory.)  Anyhow, I’ve been avoiding my future mentor because unlike Awake Man, my hands are not so steady anymore.  And I’m afraid that if Dr. Shepherd asks me to scrub in and he sees my unsteady hands in action, he won’t ever call on me again, and Steady Hand Steve will never be. 

But I feel guilty for even thinking about Steady Hand Steve when the contest that Dr. Yang has lived and breathed for two weeks---that we’ve lived and breathed for two weeks—is over.  It’s over and she lost.  We ALL lost.  And we can blame it on Dr. Grey for following in the footsteps of her amazing mom by basically being a neuro genius and finding a brain tumor in a patient who came in for something else entirely.   We can blame it on José for running out of the meatloaf. (I mean that’s truly the stuff that carried as through.)  We can blame it on Dr. Hahn for intentionally sabotaging the points Dr. Yang was going to earn suturing by asking her to scrub in, something she knew she would never turn down.  And Dr. Yang, of course, can blame it on us, her interns.  Which she does, of course.  Because there’s no one else she can blame who will take it. 

It’s part of our job, I am learning, to suck it up and take the hit regardless of whether we are right or wrong.  We’re like those characters in the old Wile E. Coyote cartoons. No matter how many times we get flattened by the train, we manage to get back up and become all three-dimensional again (even if it does take us a bit of time to regain our balance and our pride.)  Sometimes I forget that just last year, the residents were in our place.  We had our heads in our textbooks while they were the cartoon characters, and their bosses were competing in the contest.  Well, I don’t know about the rest of you interns out there, but I, for one, am ready for that ink-sketched version of myself to pop off the page and become the live-action contest winner I know I can be.  Steady Hand Steve, here I come!

What’s in a Number?

***Note to all my dedicated readers. Mom. Aunt June. Phil. Barney. You know who you are. Forget the name you used to address me by in all your former blog comments. It seems fitting that in theme with my first day as a surgical intern that I should get a new name. You shall now refer to me as…#2.

Hey, Prince has his symbol--I have my digit. Oh--and Mom, this name thing is not some sort of quarterlife rebellion. No need to make a mad dash for the hose again. I will not be burning down any more tree houses. I swear. You see I didn’t pick this name--I was assigned it. That is actually how my very first shift as an actual doctor at an actual hospital began. It began with my resident Dr. Cristina Yang taking away my name and assigning me the #2.

Don’t get me wrong, life as a number at Seattle Grace has its perks. Not only do I get to sport this awesome white lab coat, (I so rock the Doc from Back to the Future ‘the early years’ look), but I get to save lives. So maybe I haven’t saved any yet. So maybe delivering labs and learning how to get from OR-2 to the Pit doesn’t fit everyone’s definition of practicing medicine. But so what? I am learning. And today I got to do the thing most first-day-old interns only dream of. That’s right, folks, I, Stephen Christopher Mostow, #2, got to…(brace yourselves please)…SCRUB IN!!

And it wasn’t just some old appendectomy. I got to be there in the OR–all decked out in surgical mask, gown, gloves, and skullcap--to observe a SPINAL FUSION surgery! On a guy who came in totally DOA, but as it turns out was very much alive and INTERNALLY DECAPITATED! (I guess being a “number” isn’t as lame as you thought, Leo…A little more exciting than being a “name” who spends the entire day dissing his resident for trying to save the life of a deer, don’t ya think?)

Believe it or not, I’ve actually skipped over the truly incredible part. The part that makes me want to jump from bedpans and rollerblade through the halls of this hospital in my birthday suit. Of all the surgeons in all the hospitals in the world, you’ll never guess who walked into my OR… Him. The Man. DR. DEREK SHEPHERD. We went to the same college (Bowdoin Forever!). We share the same middle name. Everyone knows he’s like my own personal Jesus. I mean this is the guy that I want to BE someday. The guy who dared to attempt the sagittal sinus bypass, and performed a hemispherectomy and a hypothermic cardiac standstill on cases other surgeons thought hopeless. He’s brilliant!! And I got to stand there right next to him (or four-and-a-half feet away) and watch him literally fuse two pieces of the human body back together. That moment alone made all those high school years of being called “Ribbit” completely worth it. (See Curtis Huntley, taking an interest in dissecting frogs does pay off. Now I’m Dr. Ribbit to you!)

So after the surgery, when I could no longer feel my legs and Dr. Yang shouted something in my direction about #2 cleaning up feces in the Pit, I thought about how I’d just witnessed my idol potentially saving the life of somebody’s Dad; and I realized that this number thing is actually kind of awesome. I bet there’s even a chance that Dr. Shepherd started out as a number as well. Maybe he was a #2? Oh yeah, if he was a number, he’d DEFINITELY be #2.

You just can’t deny that “two” is a great number. I mean, look---it’s prime. All even numbers are divisible by it. It’s the third number in the Fibonacci sequence (Thank you Mathnet!). It’s shorthand for the word “to,” as in “Boys 2 Men” (Not that I’ve ever listened to them. Not that I ever borrowed Evolution and didn’t return it, Cindy. That was all Mom. All. Mom.) It’s the minimum number of geese needed to form a gaggle…

SOME people (ehhhhem…#1) think that #1 is better than #2. But, seriously, let’s take a look at the history of that digit. For starters, “one” is the loneliest number. So there’s that. And you know what they say about 1st, right? Well, it’s the worst. (Plus you’re sort of a suckup #1. I mean who learns their resident’s favorite coffee concoction before day one. Really, it’s kind of creepy.) And 2nd is the best. (<-- That’s me!) I’m pretty jazzed I’m not #3 because 3rd’s got the hairy chest. Well, or the treasure chest depending on your version. (But Lexie, if you’re reading this, you are definitely not the hairy chest. Also, thanks again for loaning me your stethoscope. That was really nice of you.)

So I guess this is my very roundabout way of saying that I’m happy with my number assignment. I think Dr. Yang is going to remember #2 the next time she needs a cardio cath, or someone to scrub in, or get her coffee, or mop up bile, or bungee jump off the space needle (yeah, I’ll admit it, I’d do pretty much anything for her, especially after seeing the way she handled the decap patient today---but more on that in my next entry). And maybe she won’t, but at least I’ll know that I lucked out in the beginning with all this numbers stuff. Because if you have to lose your name to a number, wouldn’t you rather it be a number you like?

The truth of the matter is that we’re all numbers now. Even those interns who got to keep their names. (Special shout out to my new friend, Pierce--we bonded in the caf over our mutual love for green jello and all things neuro). We’re all in this together--this crazy, intense learning of the life-saving business.

I’ve watched Dr. Yang (and not in a scary serial killer/stalker kind of way, but in a she’s-my-mentor-and-my-boss-and-I’m positively-terrified-of-her—kind of way.) I see how she interacts with the other new residents, the ones that were in her intern class last year. I see how they all gather in the tunnels like they are part of this exclusive club, this uber-secret society. Like they’ve been through battle together and have come out the other side--survivors…warriors…doctors.

Now it’s our turn. We have our own battles to fight. We have our own lives to save. (And one of us—George--already created a life today! He delivered a baby!!) And I for one am pretty thrilled to be a member of this cavalry.

Oh--and speaking of which--I’m fairly gifted at Stratego. So if anyone ever wants to get a game going in the lounge, #2 is so there. GAME ON #1!