Matthew Lee

September 4, 2015
Doctoring: Field Note 1
Goojha & Feller
Transi

tion

Welcome back to
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
Millionayuh
Millionaie
Millionaire?
D:
When a caterpillar wraps itself to sleep,
And lets the chemicals react,
Does it know it will awake a butterfly?
What if a dream never ends?
To be pimped
Hit me.
Institutionalized
I love it when Im in it.
Final answer.

The poem is to gin as this prose is to beerextra calories with less flavor. Both medical
school preclinical exams and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? are multiple-choice. Both offer
a few lifelines. Both require preparation, practice, and luckon the part of both contestant and
host. Its hard to be memorable, unless (and even if) you actually win a million dollars.
Sometimes, to idiosyncratically pronounce a word is ones best shot at leaving a legacy.
For a long time now, med school was the dream, the goal. Now that it is happening, I am
both excited and wary. Im not having second thoughts, but I am setting out on a career path that
will guide the rest of my life. Im sure hiking the mountain that is med school and residency
(and fellowship) will be worth it, not only for the views. The peak just looks so high right now.
I feel like a caterpillar who has just started building a cocoon. Wings take a while to build, but
they are worth it, not only for the views. (While writing the poem, I listened to Kendrick

Lamars album To Pimp a Butterfly, which has set in motion a revolution in hip-hop music.
Likewise, the Affordable Care Act in healthcare.)
I have heard about pimping in rounds. The prospect makes my heart beat faster. I think
its exhilaration.
I am the kind of person who has joked that movements with names are too organized, like
Anarchy. To become a physician is to join an institution, and I dont only mean the American
Academy of [Specialty]. I am privileged to undergo the initiation process, and though the
exclusive handshake may be cool, I have ambivalent feelings about becoming part of the
healthcare industrial complex. While physicians enjoy a degree of autonomy unknown to other
occupations, they are also being weighed down by multiplying restrictions and regulations.
Bureaucracy is necessary but too often composed of paper and tape in the wrong, albeit easy-toreach, places.
Practicing physicians have told me that they are uncertain about the future of medicine.
Everyones uncertain about the future. But if we never let go of good intentions, if we apply
knowledge to ease suffering, and if we are present and open to the needs of others, our
trajectories as individuals and our trajectory as a society will warrant fewer ad hoc corrections.