Rules || Jaehyun Jung

The rules

Rules are important. And they are established almost everywhere. Without rules, we would be running around like headless chickens. Without rules, people freak out. Without rules, careless mistakes are made.

As a doctor, there are many rules to follow. I mean to this day I am still learning more and more rules. But before I started working at Massachusetts General, I had three main rules. I believed that if I followed these rules, I might have lived a great and successful life. I thought that I would even become one of the greats. Well, what the hell did I know?

Rule #1: Don't fear blood.

It sounds like a stupid rule, actually. How can you be a doctor and fear blood? We see blood get extracted from people and see blood being inserted into people. It's impossible to avoid it.  It's like a teacher who is afraid of children. Or being a chef who is afraid of knives, I mean the list goes on.

But believe it or not, many doctors start off afraid of their own blood. I wasn't one of them. In med school, I was asked a question. If I was in a serious accident, what would be the one thing I wouldn't fear? And I said, losing blood. My professor asked me why and I just gave a simple answer. There will always be blood for me. People are always donating blood and our hospitals have blood banks filled with liters of blood. I can not be afraid of losing it when there is an endless supply of it.

I should have kept my mouth closed.

I had gotten in an accident so bad that I needed surgery. How Ironic is that? A surgical resident needing surgery. Yeah well, believe it or not, it happens. I would get into detail about the accident, but don't worry you'll probably find out more about it later. Anyway, they went to go draw some blood when they realized that something was off.

That was the first time in all my life that I had gotten my blood drawn. Can you believe that? I was a doctor and I never thought to check my own blood? Well, I should have done it a long time ago. Maybe I could have a donor on standby or something.

See, I have a rare blood type called Rh-null, also known as Golden blood. It's so rare that only 43 people in the entire world, one of those people being me, are known to have it. It means that my body lacks all 61 possible antigens. I can only receive blood from other people with golden blood, and that's not saying much. Only 42 other people in the world can donate their blood to me. And that kind of sucks when you're lying in a hospital bed, waiting for them to get enough blood to fix your internal injuries. It really sucks. So as I sat there for the first time in my life I had realized that I feared the one thing that I was told not to fear. My own blood. Guess I broke rule number 1.

Rule #2: Never ever... EVER fall in love with a fellow coworker

I mean I know that it's not that hard. There are plenty of other men and women out there who you can fall in love with. I told myself that it would never happen. But as a surgical resident in their third year, you barely go anywhere. You're in the hospital more than you're in your own home. So maybe it is a little harder to find someone outside of the hospital... if you never leave the hospital.

I told myself that I wouldn't become like all the residents in grey's anatomy who fall in love with their attending. I mean me with an attending? Talk about subordination. Most of the male attendings are just arrogant and self-centered. A major turn off for me.

Especially this one guy. Just thinking about him makes my blood boil... correction, made my blood boil. Until one day he did a stupid little, caring thing. And it made me see him as a caring loving man. And suddenly all the thoughts about subordination and risks escaped from my mind and all I wanted was him. Guess I also broke rule number two. But I still got rule number three right?

Rule #3: Don't break rules 1 and 2

Well shit.

Since those rules didn't work out for me I guess I still had to figure out the real rules... a specific list of things I had to do to become a surgeon. The question is, how the hell was I supposed to figure that out?