Microstory 972: Medicine

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I’ve talked a lot about the future of medical science, but I haven’t much gotten into how it pertains to me specifically. In my younger days, science was everything. I figured I might help cure cancer, and travel to other planets, and be one of the first to know about every major scientific breakthrough. Over time, these interests waned, making room for new ones. As time has continued even further, however, some of this has returned to my mind. I never thought I would become a doctor, or a nurse, or a pre-hospital technician, but I realize now I shouldn’t have rule out the possibilities. During the years I spent looking for a permanent position, I seriously considered a number of jobs in the medical field. From pharmacy technician, to surge technician, to emergency medical technician (all the techs, apparently) I looked into a lot. The thing that always kept me from going for these roles was the amount of time and effort they take. It’s not just that I didn’t want to spend the time getting educated, but I was always worried I would end up not liking it, and then it would have been a major waste of time, and money. I’m happy where I am, and never watch an ambulance racing down the street with a sad look on my face, wondering about what could have been. I do know that, if alternate realities existed, a number of these include me taking the chance. I did end up taking a free emergency medical responder class a couple years back, because it was available, and risk-free. I even used this as an inspiration for two completely unrelated characters in my stories, which I only now discovered when I ran a search on my own website. I suppose medical science is important to me because it’s one of the few professions I believe totally necessary to the world. We don’t truly need vehicle manufacturers, or telephone sanitizers. We would be able to survive without them, but we can’t survive if we have no way of treating traumas and illnesses. That’s just basic, and that’s what makes it so beautiful. It took a long time for our species to invent the telephone when you think about how quickly we started thinking about how to keep going after getting hurt. It’s not the oldest profession, but it’s older than what everyone thinks is the oldest. Hunting, by the way. Hunting is the actual oldest profession. The first thing humans did was figure out how to kill other things.