The afternoon began like any other day in medical school. Students arrived at the lecture hall and took their seats. An individual with long blue-and-white hair and handlebar mustache entered the room wearing oversized fish-print pants, a loose-fitting clown shirt, and a single earing fashioned out of a bent fork. He casually strolled up to the front, introduced himself as Dr. Patch Adams, and told us that the next several hours would be some of the most important in all of our medical training.
We learned about the Gesundheit! Institute, a community that has provided care to thousands of patients without charge for over 40 years. We watched videos of terminally-ill Russian children in orphanages beaming with delight as a posse of clown doctors burst through the door squeaking red balls on their noses. We engaged in interactive exercises that required us to give bear hugs, look each other in the eyes, and say “I love you.” At the end of the day, Patch pulled out a gigantic pair of underwear for us all to fit into and took a class picture. He departed by giving everyone hugs and wishing us the best of luck in our career endeavors, leaving us as starry-eyed, first-year medical students ready to change the world.
Six years and several training hospitals later, I became a burnt out resident. Waking up was the most difficult part …because that meant I had to crawl out of bed before the sun, look at myself in the mirror with dark eyes and whitening hair, and realize that I was spending “the best years of my life” striving to be productive in a giant money-making machine called U.S. health care.
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