This question was orinigally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Meghann Kaiser She lived on the sixth floor, in a paid-off steel and glass-walled condominium. Her baby grand piano gleamed in the picture window overlooking Newport Beach. Once a week, her mother’s chef would spend the afternoon in Megan’s gourmet, Tuscany-style kitchen, kneading fresh bread and boiling up lobster ravioli from scratch. I know, because Thursday nights we would gather together into her place in threadbare scrubs, smudged mascara and drooping ponytails. We called it Babes with Blades. All the female surgical residents— that is, all of us that weren’t on-call that night— gorged ourselves, drank wine we couldn’t pronounce, and complained in perpetuity about our lives, or lack thereof. Including Megan. Yes, we had the same name. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Especially when I drove home afterwards to my tiny one-bedroom in the depths of Santa Ana, where I would bang around in the bathroom searching for an aspirin in the dark and trying my best not to wake the hubs. He took the first shift at Starbucks, and if he was well-rested I could count on a MochaNut latte (that’s a mocha made with coconut milk, which tastes like a an Almond Joy) delivered hot to the ER Friday morning when he got off. Most days it felt like I existed solely for those MochaNuts. After rising at 3, pre-rounding at 4, rounding at 6, pre-opping my first OR case at 7, taking out a rather tenacious gallbladder at 8, and running a few scattered traumas all the meanwhile— well, my sweet, caffeinated delight could literally be considered a life-saver. It was a good thing that Nate worked at the ‘bux— there was no other way I could’ve afforded such an extravagance on a regular basis. After all, I was lucky enough to go to med school on a full scholarship, but that didn’t cover even the most basic living expenses in Southern California, and neither did the part-time tutoring job I worked throughout. I had to take out loans, and those loans hovered above my head the duration of residency when I made less per hour with a doctorate than the average waiter. I could barely afford to pay the interest. Savoring that first sip after one particularly long morning, I found myself yet again in a mental Freaky Friday with Megan. I stared off into space at the nurses station for a slow luxurious moment, and traded her in-home private theater for my discounted chocolatey coffee. Maybe one day. One day, when I was out of residency, paid off my debts, and had built up a thriving private practice, I could finally afford to live a decimal of Megan’s kind of life. Wait. I startled back to the present and glanced around. Where WAS Megan? Why hadn’t she shown up to help me with that gallbladder? There was a panic. Nobody had seen her. Surgical residents don’t just not come into work for five hours. Had she been in an accident? Nobody knew. But she wasn’t answering her phone. Eventually, I passed off my pager and dashed out to NB to find her. There she was, in her pink flannel Victoria’s Secret pajamas, crashed out over the front row of her theater, eating homemade donuts that somehow didn’t devastate her perfect figure. That was the morning she decided she didn’t need it anymore. So she quit, just like that. She already had everything she wanted, her parents paid for medical school, and she just couldn’t stomach the idea of another high trauma patient spitting on her at 4 am. What’s more, she didn’t have to. But I did. And that’s how MochaNuts, debt and a dream kept me going, through four years of undergrad, four years of med school, six years of residency and another of fellowship. I have to admit that some days—- like this morning, when a drunk homeless man pukes all over (and through) my scrubs— when my goodwill toward humanity is exhausted and I just can’t seem to remember why I went into surgery to begin with, these thoroughly selfish, superficial goals are ALL that keep me going. And thank god. Because after I down that last lukewarm gulp and toss the cup, it all comes back to me. The real reasons. Saving lives. Bringing hope. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Source
