The smell is clinical and familiar. Latex, Purel, steel. Dermatomal maps hang on the wall, to what end, I’m unsure. Maybe the anatomical charts make patients feel better. Maybe they make the doctors feel better, reminding them of their training. Or, more likely, something has to hang on the wall and the maps were cheaper than Thomas Kinkade prints.
In a cold plastic chair, I wait for the doctor and our pending electromyography (EMG)—a test where needles are driven into muscle, then electrified to discern how the nerves are communicating—and stare deeper into the anatomical maps, tracking the median nerve’s route into the thumb, hoping this test provides clarity as to how I have carpal tunnel, something I didn’t have before hand surgery two months ago.
Knock. Knock.“You’re here for left arm electromyography, correct?” says a spectacled middle-aged man in scrubs, head and shoulders peering inside the door. I nod. “Good! Because I do electomyography!”
This can’t be a doctor, I think. He’s too happy.
Calmly, he explains the test and expectations. Yes, he says. It will hurt. But not for long. This is my doctor. Wow. Charged needles dive into my forearm and hand, signals popping on the computer like jagged mountain horizons. He follows the patterns closely, small-talking throughout. We connect over the shared portions of our career journeys. Then, the test is over. It’s likely swelling compressing the nerve, he says. This is good news.
“How’d you end up doing EMGs?” I ask as he tidies up the room. I never witnessed an EMG during my training.
“Well, when I was a third-year medical student and looked around at the residents and attendings I was working with, they were mostly miserable. Hated their lives. This was obviously concerning… but I met one PM&R (Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation) attending who loved her job. And she had hobbies! Like real things she was passionate about outside the hospital. And I thought, ‘I want that.’ Next thing you know, I’m doing EMGs and enjoying my work. And I still have my hobbies.”
That was Wednesday afternoon. Here on Friday morning, I still can’t nail an overarching moral to this experience other than how nice it was to be around someone that enjoyed their work. It spurred hope. And what’s more healing than that? Whether the doctor’s in medicine or not.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
