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Metaphors and Medicine (Year I): Chapter 12

One of the dearest humans to me wrote me a letter before I left the U.S., told me to tuck it in my bag and not forget it. “You can only read it on the plane,” she said firmly. I am going to refer to this letter often along this trip because it was exactly what I needed to read upon beginning this journey. So as I am reflecting on my day today and what tomorrow will be, I can’t help but think of a sentence in her letter. She wrote, “This trip is just another line on the fingerprint of your life...except this time it’s a little different. It’s always a little different, and each time it’s a little deeper.”



I woke up to the sound of the call for prayer from the mosque’s loud speaker, echoing in the valley of the city. I watched the sunrise in the city this morning, heard the birds greet its residents. I kissed my grandmother’s hand, sipped my grandfather’s mint tea, and kept correcting my uncles as they repeatedly called me and greeted me as “doctor.” I thanked Allah for another visit, another chance to see everyone. I watched the sunset from my mother’s village and took a few minutes to watch it alone, to simply be.


It hasn’t hit me that I am home. It hasn’t hit me that tomorrow I will be at another hospital, collecting more stories to fuel me. Perhaps it is because I know how life-changing my last trip was that I became visibly emotional today while thinking about where I am and what tomorrow will be. I am excited but also nervous, and I realized that there are families coming from all over the country to bring their children to be seen, in search of hope, praying that one person would say, “yes, I can fix them and give them a better life.”


So no matter how nervous I am, I know tomorrow will be beautiful, and maybe it will be painful. The farther along I go in this journey, the more everything seems to hit me harder and sit with me longer. Perhaps that is the beauty of it all, that every experience is different, better, deeper. 

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