What gets you out of bed in the morning?

I can't believe my last post was on my birthday. It's amazing how quickly the days pass by and begin to blurr together.

Four weeks of my Surgical run is behind me; two weeks left. Wow. But I've been really enjoying it on the whole. The team I chose for my surgical run is an amalgamation of the two teams I was on as a fourth year student, and it's honestly one of the best decisions I made this year. I really lucked out, with the nicest, most approachable Registrar, a super competent and knowledgeable House Surgeon (who I'm learning SO much from), and consultant surgeons whose idiosyncrasies I'm well familiar with which is half the battle, really. My team is the unofficial "Breast" team, with two general surgeons who specialise in breast cancer, and the two Plastic surgeons.

I have to admit, leading into this run I was a wee bit worried -- I enjoyed surgery so much in fourth year, but since then a part of me has wondered was it just infatuation? The high of scrubbing into surgery for the first time? Enjoying the busy-ness of surgery as a student, but with no responsibility. Would this change as I got a glimpse of the "reality" now that I'm further on in my training and... be disappointed?

But no. It wasn't infatuation. It's true love.

I think I made up my mind in fourth year that Surgery was the way to go; and now, what's more, two weeks from unofficially finishing med school, I think I've made up my mind that Plastic Surgery is It. I couldn't really see myself doing anything else. It's so... creative... and controlled... and tantamount to... PERFECTION. I could watch our Plastic Surgeon ALL DAY LONG. It's... thrilling... and... intoxicating... and... addictive. I can't seem to get enough. And as I watch, I find myself wanting to be in the driver's seat more and more.

Deciding a speciality in medicine is ultimately as much about lifestyle than it is about the actual medicine. And I know that this path is TIRING. And long. And will require sacrifices. But, when something brings you that much joy and satisfaction, those sacrifices become easier and easier to make. Even this morning, I stopped by for the post-take ward round, 8am on a Saturday, and then stuck around to discharge some of our patients and update the paperwork of some others; before I knew it, it was already past lunchtime! But... I didn't mind being there. And, what's even scarier, I wanted to be there. I felt a sort of ownership of the work our team is doing, an ownership of the care we are providing our patients. Sure, in the most negative light it might feel like it's paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork; sometimes we allow ourselves to get so inundated by the daily seemingly mundane "paperwork" -- we lose ourselves to those little tasks we're overwhelmed with -- that we forget to take a step back and recognise that, actually, remembering to write that referral (and writing it effectively) will mean that 16year old with Crohns -- who's life has been dictated by this disease -- will be seen by the gastroenterologist; and taking those extra three minutes to talk at the bedside with the post-op breast cancer patient about the discharge summary will give her a chance to... cry.

We... I so often become so wrapped up by my work, crossing off items on my to-do list, and my tiredness... that I forget that so many around me are suffering, on the most basic and fundamental level... life and death.

All this study. All these years. All this angst and worry and stress about "school"... pales in comparison to the suffering of so many around me.

As my post-op breast cancer patient started to apologise for crying, embarrassed and reassuring me that she was okay, I found myself tearing up as well. A woman who's face was under the drapes for three hours as I assisted the surgeon on Friday morning; a woman who I had met for the first time just that morning on post-op ward round; a woman who I was sending back home with cancer removed... but, as I came to realise, whose broken heart is far from healed.

This is why you're here. This is why it is a privilege. There are too many broken hearts in this world to let it go unanswered. This is what gets you out of bed in the morning.

"I carry your heart"

It's my birthday today.

I'm 23.

Eight hours and twenty one minutes into it and already have felt many outpourings of love from the people in my life who have claimed a piece of my heart these years past.


Birthdays, for me, are an awesome reminder to pause and take stock of another year that has passed. So much has changed this past year -- so much growth -- but the greatest lesson I have learnt, I think, or at least the most valuable, has been the maturing of my knowledge and experience of Love.

We live in a society that holds such a rigid, limited, 2-dimensional definition of Love -- when lust, infatuation, friendship, companionship remain within their boundaries, and there is no scope for creativity, fluidity.

But if I had to sum up my growth in my relationship with God -- and with that, growth in and of myself -- it would be this renewing of my definition and fourth-dimensional experience of Love. His Love for me. My Love for Him. My Love for those around me. A Love that is quiet, but immutable; a Love that is humble, but revolutionary; a Love that is fluid, but strength -- each thought, each word, each interaction, each moment, each day, each year that passes by.

I have made peace with my limitations in being able to Love on my own strength and, ironically enough, through that, have been able to REVEL in Love. In God. And God is Love.


As I sit here in bed, typing away, in an apartment that used to be a halfway house for the crazy; as I sit here in bed, typing away, with my earthly family at the other end of my country; as I sit here in bed, soaking in the glorious orange hue of the early morning sunrise pouring in through the window on another clear, crisp, perfectly still Dunedin morning... as I sit here, one year older, I am, content. I am, at peace. And I remember, that I am loved. And what is life... without love.

Happy birthday 23 year old Anna. From, 22 year old Anna.


"I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)
I am never without it (anywhere I go, you go my dear;
and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear
No fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)
I want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
And it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
And whatever a sun will always sing is you

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
And the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
And this is the wonder that's keeping the starts apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)"

-E.E. Cummings