Stuck Between Stations

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was-- I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon."

-Jack Kerouac, On the Road

I read these lines for the first time today. Sweet serendipity. I understand what he means when he says "I didn't know who I was", because I've shared those very same thoughts as a lie in bed at night here in MC, with thoughts interrupted by the whir of scrappy mopeds, tossing and turning in bed as I try to endure the Dominican heat. The roosters start crowing at around 3 a.m. here, giving us more than enough to prepare for an 8 a.m. breakfast. How thoughtful. We're advised to wear earplugs, which don't do much good, so one guy, Will, has gone a step farther, designing a helmet contraption consisting of earplugs, a pillow wrapped horizontally by a bedsheet wrapped vertically around his noggin. It looks hilarious.
Strangely enough I'm living in what used to be a hotel (called "Coconuts"). We have an oscillating fan in our room that fields the needs of 2 bunkbeds, 4 bodies. Because of the layout our bunk gets roughly 1 of 10 seconds of wind in each cycle. I can't decide whether it'd be better to have no fan at all. For a few nights I had gotten in the habit of just sleeping in the hammock outside our room, because there's usually a nice breeze at night. But I eventually adjusted to the heat, I think through a combination of growing a tolerance for the climate and getting so tired at night that I just fall asleep once I lie down.

Back to the point though. The sites and sounds of a new environment, while educational in themselves, can be more profound when they catalyze a reflection on changes in our lives. So right now in the midst of the sensory overload that is OO and the DR, I have a lot of moments where I get that feeling of not knowing exactly who I am. I have reached that crossroads between Youth and Young Manhood, to continue the indie music allusions (for those readers not 'hip with the jive', "Stuck Between Stations" is a song by The Hold Steady, with a direct quote from On The Road in the first verse: "Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together." Youth and Young Manhood is the debut album of Kings of Leon. I was told by one reader that my blog is not 'indie' enough, so I thought I'd spruce it up with some pretentious references.), and much of the way I define myself right now is by what I am not.

I am not a college student, unlike all of the other summer interns here who will leave for home within a month from now. When they talk about their plans for going back to school next month I get all nostalgic for my college years, then I feel old when I realize I now refer to them as "my college years."

I am not a Dominican. I'm reminded of this by the daily cries of "Americanos!" when we walk through the streets of Montecristi. There are more embarassing examples, though, like when I got into Dr. Garcia's car on the first day of going to the bateys with him and said "Hola, como 'ta la vaina?" which I thought meant "how are things." He looked at me funny, and then starting laughing when he realized I didn't know how offensive that the word vaina is to say in a conversation with adults. I had heard it used constantly by teenagers over the first week of being here, but didn't catch on to its profane character. Whoops. Trying to learn a new dialect is hard.

Also, I am not a doctor. I don't know what it means to endure the trials and tribulations of medical school, residency, and beyond, and outside of diabetes, I have a limited knowledge of most medical problems. Science classes in college do not teach you things like differential diagnosis. Diseases and conditions are studied almost exclusively at the scientific level. I have learned what I thought was a good amount about many different fields in my clinical work, but a quick glance through my copy of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine reminds me just how little a college student can really know about any field of medicine. I have been reading a lot about infectious disease in Harrison's, and it's frustrating yet exciting to realize how much I have to learn.
It is sometimes difficult to explain exactly what stage I am at in my education. The Dominican schooling track for physicians is quite different than ours. They go directly from high school to medical school, so there's really no such thing as pre-medicine. I try to explain that I am taking a year off before medical school, but that's confusing for the health care professionals I work with, because I'm 22 years old. I should be in my last year of medical school right now. Also for the past 2 weeks we have had a group of high school girls from Baltimore work with us at the Institute, and some of them called me "the doctor", which was a nice ego massage. Coco told them that I was a medical student, because it's easier than saying a pre-med taking a year off before medical school, and some assumed I would know everything about their health problems. Apparently I am a dermatologist, because several times last week different girls came up to me and asked about rashes, bumps, or bruises. I told them I didn't know, if it hurts take ibuprofen, if it's really bothering you you could go to the local clinic and get it checked out. They were disappointed, and promptly stopped calling me doctor.

I'm in a new place, and it's helped me to distance myself from my college experience, and at the same time it's giving me a taste of things to come as a physician. I miss my college years, I really do, but it's time to move on, and I'm in the right place for that. Sometimes I feel like I am stuck between stations, no longer in my youth, but not quite an adult; graduated from college, but years away from entering the professional world. But I'm not scared, and I look forward to the new experiences, sometimes uncomfortable but always interesting, that each day here offers.

Dajabon and Batey Isabel posts coming soon.

Paz fuera.