“Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.” – Kahlil Gibran
Each time I have a nonagenarian patient in the hospital, I kid around with them to please reveal to me their secrets of their longevity. Most of them have similar things to say like ‘I have a great family,’ while others just chuckle and admit they have no idea why they’re so blessed. Every now and then I’m struck by something profound like one woman sharing ‘terrible things happened to me, but I didn’t let anything get to me.’ She was talking about losing her husband and then a child! One thing that’s almost universal is that at some point during our friendly interaction, the patient always mentions something like ‘it goes by so quick’ or ‘I remember being your age.’ On one occasion a gentleman very dramatically clicked his fingers in front of my face as I was auscultating as he emphasized that it went by in the blink of an eye.
Sometimes I look around the hospital and I see medical students and wonder whether I ever looked that young. I also wonder in amazement that this fall of 2023 will be 20 years since I entered medical school. Actually, I remember starting college a little while before that and worrying about MCATs and medical school admissions, and high school before that, and some silly seventh grade entrance exam before that (which I flunked). I guess what they say is right – the days are long but the years short.
Physicians and other healthcare professionals are surrounded by death and yet we sometimes forget our own mortality. This is likely because we must disengage from the tragedy we see routinely in our jobs, in order to live our lives outside the hospital. Of course, any of us can get sick or perish – COVID-19 reminded us of that. But unrelated to the pandemic, in the last decade I’ve had three physician friends and colleagues pass away. Their stories aren’t mine to share, but I think about them often. I think about the sacrifices they made to get where they were, the children one of them left behind, the careers abruptly ended, potential patients who would never know their craft, and the lives cut down in their prime.
Inherently most of us realize that one must be lucky to be blessed with any number of years into adulthood, but it is only human to wish for more time on this planet. It’s never enough time – even the families of 100 year olds grieve when they’re dying and wish for some more time. Living for the moment sounds good on paper, but it’s hard to do – essentially we are all caught between the past and the future.
Varun Verma M.D. is a board-certified internal medicine physician, entrepreneur, patient advocate and author. He is the co-founder of Andwise – a platform designed to empower physicians with the financial knowledge and resources they need to make smart non-clinical life decisions.