Bruce Ruoff:  

Spiritual but not religious middle-aged (that grouping gets more inclusive regularly) poet, survivor of many things. Equanimitous by training. Curious by nature. Now in the midst of transitioning from profession to avocation. I thought that I wanted a devoted young wife, more children, and a "simple life". You know, hang around the house, work in the garden, feed the compost pile, and that kind of thing. As I continue to "heal" however and especially being here in the DC Metro area I realize how much of the world I missed by being in medicine all my life. It is absolutely true as Ellen Pompei¿s character, Meredith Grey on Grey¿s Anatomy said,(and I paraphrase) ¿We spend our early years studying to get into med school, then four more years studying in med school so that when we finally graduate from med school, we have all of the ¿real world¿ experience and knowledge of an 18-year ¿old. I have to add that by the time one gets finished with a residency of 3 to 7 years and possibly another 1-2 years of subspecialty fellowship, one still has only the ¿real world¿ experiences of a 19 year-old or 20-something. True, during that time of living within the confines of the medical environment as a doctor, you experience many things first hand that few people experience. In my case as a general and vascular surgeon for example, I had people tell me that they were going to die then proceeded to do just that in spite of all our efforts to avoid it happening. For example when I was a medical student, I remember responding to a code blue on an aged frail nun who looked up at us with glazed eyes and rasped "I'm going to die" and proceeded to do just that. Another time however, while I was an attending surgeon on the trauma team, an Hispanic field worker who had a tractor ...Expand for more