Posted on 06.08.10 by Sharon Lin, DO

Another year of residency is coming to an end. Wow, what a crazy (but wonderful) year it has been.  I spend my entire R-2 year pregnant and as a new mom.  As I am typing, my two-and-a-half-month old is sleeping in my lap in a postprandial coma.  I began - and now I am ending -this year on an OB rotation-a highly pheromone driven year! 

This time last year, when asked how I wanted my R-2 year to be, I said decisively that I wanted it to be "delicious."  I wanted life to be delicious, using food as a metaphor for sensations.  Food lost its flavors and became bland during the process of becoming a doctor.  As an intern, I was being fashioned into an efficient well-oiled medicine machine, but that left me craving the intimacy and mindfulness of the art of the healing - the delicious part where you could take your time and actually listen and reflect on patients' stories like subtle flavors you roll around in your mouth.  I didn't want life to be bland, I want life to be rich in flavor.  I wanted it to be DELICIOUS!

Be careful what you ask for because I had NO IDEA that "delicious" would play out the way it did. I ate my way through my pregnancy loving everything and wanting seconds - and thirds. Food never tasted as good as when I was pregnant.

In a few weeks I will no longer be an R-2.  How do I want my R-3 year to be?  Well, I still want it to be delicious.  The rest, I haven't yet decided.