Professionally Speaking

For the past five weeks I've been temping at a medical facility, doctor's office type of thing--in the medical records department. It's customer service, but not entirely on the telephone, so a little better than some jobs I've had. My first day, I confess, I was really irritated with the situation having been burned from the last job I had, but it hasn't turned out to be too terrible.

I even had some interesting things to think about the last few days I was working there. See, one of the doctors in the Gastro-Intestinal department had dumped a large pile of old paperwork that needed to be prepared for scanning, which meant removing staples and taping xrays down against paper, and assuring the patients' id numbers were there as well as his signature. That part wasn't terribly interesting. I didn't particularly care to look at all of the xrays much either. Seeing people's innerds doesn't strongly appeal to me. Thinking that someone else found that fascinating, however, was interesting.

What intrigued and got me to thinking that this doctor really enjoyed what he did was seeing that not only did he have xrays, but he also drew little diagrams for his patients of the organs in a way people are a little more accustomed to seeing them, like in a health book. Of course, like his patients, I've seen the organ lay out a few times before, so it's not that that intrigued me, but that he drew these diagrams over and over. If it had bored him, he might have just found some picture from a health book to point things out to his patients.

So I got to wondering, what kind of a person thinks to himself as a child, "Oh boy, I can't wait to study more about people's bowels. Making sure people can poop less painfully is the most important thing I can see myself doing with my life." Maybe a small child, but after a certain point, some people might wonder if the child was stuck in the anal stage of growth a little bit too long. Yet obviously, seeing that he's a successful gastro-intestinal doctor now, obviously he wasn't. And many, many people are grateful he has a fascination with intestines.

Of course, maybe he wasn't like that as a child. Perhaps the specific interest didn't come until he was in medical school, or at some other point. Who knows. But still, to think that at some point, he chose that specific field. But then it extends beyond that. To think that so many women and men like him are needed around the country and around the world. And not only these gastro-intestinal people, but so many other specific fields of interest. The lungs, the feet, the liver, etc. Things that aren't as high profile as the heart or the brain, yet so very important. Isn't the diversity of interests in the world a testimony of God in itself?

I remember a cute Sesame Street sketch from when I was a kid where the monsters were going to have a potluck picnic, but they didn't assign anyone what they would bring, and so everyone brought potato salad. I'm sure it followed with two or three more trip-ups, as comedy sketches go, but I remember it was funny, and a good lesson about organization, communication and cooperation. Sometimes that is needed. So when it works out without everyone convening to decide who's going to do what, you kind of have to think, Someone else's hand must be in this.