Learning to touch

Here, Kelly narrates her personal experiences as a doctor. She glances up from the computer, already reviewing Emily's blood results, physical examination complete. Despite Emily's list of illnesses, physical evidence of disease is minimal -- an irregular heartbeat in keeping with her atrial fibrillation, and some bony wear and tear of her knee and ankle joints, as expected for someone in her eighties. They move on to discuss lifestyle changes and medication. She thinks back to her first experience touching a "real" patient -- not the formaldehyde-preserved, leather-stiff body she dissected in the anatomy laboratory, but a live one, in hospital. After 2 years of practicing maneuvers, cramming anatomy and physiology, she was thrilled to make it to the wards, at last.