“It’s hard to watch the decline and sometimes hard to visit but it weighs on me not to,” she said. Her father had always been an elaborate storyteller and an alive, vibrant man with a big voice.
Although he had been through many stressful experiences in his life and recently, he always held onto his positive outlook. He took particular care to use words intentionally, paying attention to their connotations, so that his positivity extended to those that he interacted with as well.
She was tired after working twelve straight days on her current rotation. It was her third year of medical school, and she was already feeling burnt out. “I have five more years like this,” she said. “My sister tells me, ‘Keep pushing, you can get through it,’ but I don’t know if I can.”