"I can't solve the world's problems . . . but if you've got broken people, you put them back together. That just makes sense to me."

I saw the movie Living in Emergency, about Doctors without Borders today, and it was as excellent as I had guessed it would be. I first became aware of the movie yesterday, while driving home from Trader Joe's with Chloe. We drove past the Neptune, and the sign outside had the movie's full title, Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors without Borders. Being the complete and utter medical dork that I am, I got all excited and pointed and said "Hey Chloe, look! Look at that!!" I may have literally stopped the car. I believe her response was something like "That's awesome . . . uh, the light's green."

Anyway, today the delightful Flannery agreed to go see it with me. It's a documentary that follows four doctors to Liberia and the Congo on their missions with MSF. There's some really amazing footage, from a medical point of view; one patient featured is this woman with a hernia so huge it literally looks like a second abdomen. Some of the medical footage is really intense, if you have issues with blood I definitely wouldn't recommend it; there's one scene where you actually watch a leg amputation, and another where you see close-up as the doctors trim off infected portions of a bowel and then put the rest back in the abdomen.

I think for me, the most interesting part of the movie was seeing how the four doctors dealt so differently with what they were faced with on their missions. One was this young guy, probably not too far out of residency, who had been placed in charge of a 40-bed hospital out in the middle of nowhere and was clearly just falling apart. One is a veteran, who's done a bunch of missions, and says from the beginning of the movie that this is going to be his last one. Another was this older guy who had practiced for 20+ years before starting work with MSF, and was on his first mission but seemed to be really thriving. And the fourth one was this French doctor who was just badass. Seriously, I want to be this woman when I grow up.

Anyway, the movie made me think about how I've been getting steadily more and more attracted to the idea of working in a rural area without many resources, how even though I've always said I want to be a pediatrician, I've been thinking about doing family practice with OB, and maybe getting double boarded in ER medicine, so I can work in an area like that. And I really think I want to try to do at least one mission with MSF in my life. I'm not sure what it is about it that I feel so drawn to. I think part of it is the idea of helping people who really, truly need help and would not be getting it if I weren't there. I think that's most of it. But then of course, there's also a more selfish level. When I went to Ephrata for HCASB this year, there were four doctors in the whole town, who saw patients in clinic and covered the ER. Those four guys run the show in that little town, and every day they get to see and do things that no single doctor, especially not a family practice doctor, in a big city is going to get to do. Something about that, about getting to be in charge and autonomous like that, really appeals to me. I mentioned that to one of the docs I work with once, and he smiled and said "Let's see if you still feel that way when it's you on the line . . . it's a lot different when you're not just watching." And he has a point. I have no idea if I'm cut out for that kind of work, especially the MSF part of it. I have no idea how much I can handle, or really even what I can handle. But, somehow, I know that I really want to find out.