The Hill I Will Die On, or: Ambivalence on a Career in Medicine

By: Henry Slone, MD

Matter has only 

four states, 

and I've lived in six. 

Six points on a map 

I can trace with my finger:

down, up, then across. 

Moving five thousand miles

in pursuit of a dream 

means leaving things behind. 

I was told I would miss 

weddings, reunions, 

my grandmother's funeral– 

I barely managed 

to scatter my best friend's ashes

on the shore of Lake Michigan. 

My phone gently suggests

typing names that still hurt

after “Goodnight.”

Reminders of loss scale with distance;

I have loved many 

that I couldn't keep. 

I watch people die for a living;

I get intimate 

with human suffering

as colleagues change 

and begin to run dry; 

if you cannot bend, you break. 

To study history means looking back,

wishing you could wake the dead,

make the past whole; 

and who among us 

has not left something behind

and wished the same?

Henry Slone is a second-year internal medicine resident at OHSU. He loves in no particular order: reading, running, and movies. He hopes to one day be an academic physician and is undecided on specialty (although he has, at times, described himself as “Cards curious”). Henry plans to continue writing regardless of his future specialty/career and hopes some pieces of his reflections can add something to the lives of others given life is about sharing things with others.