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Spring cleaning on my file cabinet today netted a rediscovery of a short essay by C.M. Callahan and published in JAMA, 271(22), p. 1746 as part of the “A Piece of My Mind” series. I couldn’t find it anywhere online or in print. Here is a scanned pdf of it.

It is a powerful piece brought to my attention by my father, also a physician, pointing out the psychic costs that come with a medical training. From the last paragraph:

The early horrors change you on the inside forever. They quietly steal away innocence and dignity and mystery, while providing the protection and insulation of experience. You don’t notice it at first because on the outside they are the very same horrors that provide our baptism by fire, and we aggressively sought out a baptism by fire because we knew it would catapult us among the ranks of the experienced. Most of us asked for the ride, the bath, and the view. But it takes a while to see what you really chose, and what it really cost. That’s what happens with a baptism. Welcome to the family.

I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? It is not quite true that you can’t go home again…. But it gets less likely…. we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places.

—Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose