Recognition

When I started this blog, it was with the intent of letting others in on the absolutely surreal quality that my first foray into Emergency Medicine had been taking on. Lately, as I've been working nights that have taken on a more familiar quality, this has been perhaps subsiding a bit, but yesterday the feeling came back in full force.

I was out at dinner and saw someone on the street. I did a double take, as they looked very familiar, and after a minute it dawned on me that it was a patient that I had transported, and that was where I had seen them. It completely knocked me off my feet for a few minutes, as this was the first time it had happened. I don't know if they saw or recognized me, and I wouldn't have been able to communicate at the time if they had - it was too odd seeing them in such a wildly different context.

I'd better get used to it.