A Country Doctor Writes:

I have missed some anniversaries in my career. Ten years ago, I wrote a post titled “A Thirty Year Anniversary and I Missed It” about my graduation from medical school.

Well, guess what, I won’t miss my fortieth. Sad to say, I don’t know what day I graduated because Swedes don’t do things with pomp and circumstance, funny tasseled hats and funky walks, like American graduations.

My medical school ended some time in June, 1979 with the last day of my last rotation. I do remember putting my bag with my stethoscope and other professional paraphernalia on the rack behind the saddle of my blue bicycle and pedaling home to my apartment on the outskirts of Uppsala.

My “diploma”, which was just a transcript with a bureaucratic looking stamp on it, came later in the mail.

The last ten years sure slipped by a lot faster than the first, during which I did a rotating internship in Sweden, emigrated to the US with my (first) American wife, did a Family Practice Residency, adopted two babies and worked for three different clinics.

This summer, I guess I’ll pick a random date in June to hold my celebration. I don’t own a bicycle anymore, so I think I’ll drive down to the town landing and walk a ways out on the pebble beach, sit on one of the barnacled rocks and listen to the waves of the big water I crossed to come to my new home country on June 6, 1981.

That is the spot I went to when each of my two previous Arabians had died, and it is the one place around here where I feel completely alone without the trappings of a lifetime of work, family, people and possessions.

After that day of solemn, solitary contemplation, I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a very long time: I will stay away from work for the better part of a month. I will take some time to think about how I can make my remaining years as a physician as meaningful and fulfilling as possible. I will enter a time of gratitude and bewonderment at where life has brought me, a daydreaming introverted schoolboy seemingly suddenly turned gray haired senior physician, old enough to retire but not until now in the prime of my grasp of what it means to be a doctor.

Until that day I will make a point of watching some more episodes of Marcus Welby, M.D. on my iPad and maybe reread some of the books that inspired me or kept my spirits up during the first forty years of my career.

And before this summer slips by, I hope to finish my first book in the “A Country Doctor Writes” series…