Below is the second installment from the beginning of my revised memoir. This part is newly added and does not appear in the original Bending the Twig (See here). As I explained in my previous post, the revised manuscript is as yet unpublished.

            I was twenty-six when I enrolled in medical school, older than most of my classmates, but not necessarily more mature. I spent four years in the Air Force before completing my undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin, studying diligently for the first time in my life and graduating with high honors, and high hopes.

            I expected medical school to be more inspiring than my undergraduate courses, more interesting, more challenging. How could it not be? I sprinted off from the opening bell, racing through every course in the head of the pack. Everything was new and exciting, everything was different. I galloped happily along for some weeks until I suddenly realized what had become obvious. This different wasn’t what I had expected. This different was dull memorization. This different numbed my brain. This different meant we students were to salt away every name of the tiniest branches of ordinary arteries and recall them by rote for one single purpose, to provide answers to questions on anatomy examinations, even though we knew with certainty that such minutia would not inform the diagnosis or treatment of one single patient during our entire lifetimes. To be fair, parts of our curriculum were valuable for fledgling physicians, but I discounted those and bemoaned the dreary memorization. My classmates grumbled, yet nearly all of them adapted to the program, shrugging off its obvious weaknesses and dutifully shoveling micro-facts into their heads. But it was too much for me. I belly-flopped into rebellion.

            While my classmates continued to pull doggedly on their oars, I splashed behind, trying not to take on too much water. Disaffected and disappointed, I cut lectures and avoided laboratory sessions. I read novels, short stories, and poetry rather than textbooks. I played the perfect fool. I was embarrassed by my untoward behavior, miserable day and night, but too stubborn to hit the brakes. For most of that dismal year, I was a frazzled mess, my fuel gauge bumping against zero, my digestive tract in painful overdrive. Finally, after an eternity, the school term ended, and I, fool to the end, capped off my most annoying course with one final defiant act, one so unruly and recalcitrant that I expected to be drummed out of medical school on that very day. But rather than getting the boot, I received a stunning gift, one that eased me into summer and propelled me, triumphantly I thought, into the second year of medical school. I’ll come to that story, but even now that dark year pains me. I have no explanation for why I behaved so badly, why my life at times has gone off track, but others have suggested that my formative years, those unrolled in these pages, may have planted fertile seeds of rebellion.

As I confessed in my previous post, I have ulterior motives for introducing these paragraphs (see that here). First of all, I’d like to whet your appetite to read my revised book (assuming it ever becomes one).

Another motive is a bit more twisted. I’ll try to explain. The published version of Bending the Twig, is basically the story of my first nineteen years. Little of my life after my less-than-perfect start is mentioned in that book. A number of readers have suggested that I cap my childhood memoir off with one describing my later life.

I’ve always brushed that suggestion aside, saying my early years were much more interesting than anything that went on since. Truthfully, I have had a string of uncommon escapades throughout my lifetime, but I doubt I’ll ever squeeze my adult years into a book.

Why? Certain blemishes in my adulthood would be embarrassing to reveal. Case in point. My first year of medical school, sketched briefly in those three paragraphs above, stuck painfully in my memory for decades. Finally, a few years ago, I eased my ache by writing about that nasty year, but stealthily disguising it as fiction. I wrote a novel, calling it The Colors of Medicine, and revealing in it how I botched that disastrous year.

Writing about that ugly time was an adventure! I had no inkling how much work it would require, and I made more wrong turns than a mouse in a maze. I wrote entire scenes, many of them in excruciating detail, and then decided to dump them, many hours of effort down the drain.

Still, in the end, it was all worthwhile, for I managed to create my version of the world and to send my protagonist, Martin Cromlech, to medical school at the University of Wisconsin. In four long chapters I fiendishly forced Martin, as a first year medical student, to follow a course much like mine. That set me on fire!  I actually grinned at times while striving to make Martin stumble almost as badly as I once had stumbled.

Remembering this, recalling how I bumbled along while writing the novel, made me wonder whether others might enjoy learning how I, an obvious tyro, tripped over every obstacle known to writers. So I’ve decided to serialize my novel here, posting brief installments of The Colors of Medicine, probably daily, and often adding what I was thinking, rightly or wrongly, while I wrote that part.

But I’ll hold off until after the holidays. Starting early in January, I’ll begin posting small installments of The Colors of Medicine here, often accompanied by comments describing what I was thinking as I wrote, and continue until I’ve gone through the entire novel. If you know of anyone who might enjoy this sort of thing, please pass the word along.

I will of course continue to post other essays as I have done over the past year. Stay tuned!