University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine

My first stethoscope, retired now after 29 years.

Congratulations, Pritzker School of Medicine Class of 1999! It’s been 25 years.

Look how far we’ve come! Many of us were babies when we started–in our early 20s, brains not even fully formed, enrolled straight out of college, innocent and arrogant at the same time. Now some of our own children are that exact age, and we look at them hiding knowing smirks. Oh, they’ll learn life in good time, these kids.

Being with so many of you this weekend, some not since we graduated, filled my heart with such expansive warmth and joy. We are all now still who we were then–same smiles, postures, mannerisms, quirks. And we have all definitely ‘matured.’ Some of us now sport lighter hair and heavier bodies. Others, damn you, exhibit no observable physical changes. Our greatest acquisition, however, is our hard-earned wisdom and character–that which can only come with lived experience. Med school was no joke, and residency a trial by fire. We have all witnessed life at its first and last breaths, and among all of us, everything in between. We listen, watch, palpate, percuss, incise, excise, medicate, compress, intubate, ventilate, inject, evacuate, saw, cauterize, staple, and suture. We research, write, present, teach, and lead. We are the experts in our fields. And yet, our age and work have taught us humility, made us reverent, lifelong learners first. As technology accelerates and we increasingly inhabit a world of human creation, with which we are not physiologically equipped to cope, we, the Class of 1999 and our colleagues of other years, persist in our oath to care for our fellow humans to the best of our ability. We commit to Helping however we can, to comforting even when we cannot relieve or cure.

I feel a kind of double vision, seeing us as we were then when I look at us now. The playful comaraderie, the stories, the shop talk–it’s as if no time has gone by–we are still us, Pritzker ’99. This is how deep, bonded belonging feels. How many of us marveled repeatedly this weekend over tacos, drinks, snacks, and dessert at the special-ness of it all? We are a tribe within a tribe, a cluster of diversity unified over time, experience, and age. Differences between and among us in youth feel almost irrelevant now, frictions dissipated, shared memories cemented. Interdisciplinary stereotypes and tensions evaporate among us as classmates. We knew and know one another first as whole people, in the same boat from the outset, rowing together, ever forward. HA! We grew from undifferentiated, pluripotent stem cells into fully functioning end organ tissues, now differentiated and still attuned to one another–like a nascent, then seasoned orchestra playing an ever larger and more complex repertoire.

OH, how I reveled in the hugs, the smiles, the recollections, reflections, and communion, the hopes and plans for future sustained connection. It felt honest and vulnerable, soft and strong, professional and personal–safe–one of you said it felt like coming home. Yes.

*sigh*

I had no idea 25 years ago that it would feel this way now. It’s the best, most heartwarming surprise. I wrote about our 20 year reunion, which I only just now remembered. Clearly, these events move me immediately and deeply, this time even more so than last.

My greatest wish for us all, my dear classmates, is that we may continue bravely, wholeheartedly, generously, joyfully, and humbly, on the mission of our esteemed profession, for many years yet. My greatest hope is that we maintain and tighten our bonds, holding one another up in spirit across the miles and over the coming decades. My greatest joy is that we may stay connected, no matter what happens in our careers and lives.

Peace, love, and light to you all. May our collective affection and bond call forth the best in us, for ourselves, our patients, loved ones, institutions, and all of humanity that we have the privilege to touch.

It was July 1997.

Maria C. and I had just started our third year of medical school, rotating on general surgery. We stood on evening rounds–it was already dark outside on this balmy summer night. The hospital hallway was quiet and half the lights were off. We visited a little old lady who had had surgery in the prior days. She looked frail, but also like she had been spry once. Her lips protruded the way my grandmother’s did when she took her dentures out at night. She wore a round fuchsia sleeping bonnet, a little askew atop her head. She looked half asleep, barely aware of our presence, and had slid down in the bed such that the pillow and blankets had effectively swallowed her.

We were tired, Maria and I. It was not a fun rotation for me. I had witnessed our attending throw a bloody sponge across the OR that month. He was not particularly interested in us, I don’t recall any direct teaching (but there could have been), and the sleep deprivation was killing me. But I had Maria. She always had a smile, always an encouraging word, and she loved surgery. Her energy held me up. We stood dutifully, trying our best to pay attention and learn something.

As we listened to the discussion of the nice lady’s plan of care, suddenly I heard a loud, resonant, and prolonged PPPPPPPTHTHTHTHAAAAAARRRRRRRRTTTT. Our somnolent charge had just passed the longest breath of colon gas I had ever heard, before or since. And it didn’t phase anybody. The team continued to discuss her plan of care as if nothing had happened. I don’t know, maybe they were encouraged, as flatulence is the first step to oral feeds and eventual discharge after abdominal surgery. They forged on without acknowledgement. I wondered if I had imagined it. But when I caught Maria’s eye, within seconds we could both barely contain ourselves. Maybe we were just slap happy from too little sleep, or we just needed something to break the tension. But it was too much, we had to step out. Back out in the dim hallway we laughed out loud as quietly as we could, to the point of gasping for breath, hanging onto the wall and each other to keep from falling down. Even today, 22 years later, I cannot help but smile at that moment. Either we went back inside after composing ourselves, or the team emerged eventually, I don’t remember. Rounds continued and I tucked away this little memory as one of the best bonding experiences of all my years in training.

*****

The Class of 1999 returned to The University of Chicago this past weekend to celebrate 20 years since graduation. I had only signed up for a couple events, in my usual non-committal way. I arrived at the breakfast venue, a building that did not exist when we were students. I glanced over at the tables and saw only people much older than me, and my heart sank a little. Where were my peeps? Then at a back table an old friend stood up and waved, and my spirits lifted instantly. We ate and laughed, and shared photos and anecdotes of surly teenagers at home. As I had made no other plans that day, I met people again for lunch and we walked through campus, which I had not done in years. The peonies in the quad burst with color and fullness, welcoming us all back.

I’m so proud of our class. We are general internists and pediatricians, hospitalists, cardiologists, allergists, emergency medicine doctors, and orthopaedic surgeons. We do neurologic interventional radiology, microvascular plastic surgery, and private equity. We are medical directors, section chiefs, and NIH researchers; we teach medical students, residents, fellows and colleagues. We advocate for immigrant health and lead international research teams to win the war on disease. We are parents of toddlers and college students, single, married, and divorced. But mostly we are just older versions of our younger selves, in love with the science of medicine and driven by something deeper within to care for our fellow humans, relieve suffering, and make the world better for our having lived. This weekend gave us the opportunity to reconnect deeply on that level, to recall and relive those bonding memories tucked away all these years. I had a chance to catch up with classmates whom I had always wanted to know better in school. What a blessing.

Our specialties are widely diverse, as are our life experiences, before and since medical school. But we also share so much in common. Many of us have had painful experiences as patients or family of patients, and that has impacted our attitudes as physicians. We collectively recall the stages and transitions of training as both trial and reward. And everybody has something to say about the current, broken state of American healthcare. But the overarching feeling of the weekend was camaraderie and love. Emails poured in from classmates across the country and around the world who could not make it back; I count almost 60/100 of us included in our communications thus far. We were just waiting for the chance to find one another again.

*****

In our current geopolitical climate of division, competition, and polarization, reunion is the antidote. In this vital ritual of humanity, we reconnect with those who knew us in a more innocent phase of life, when we bonded through shared struggle, with whom our diversity and shared experience are paradoxically complementary in the best ways. Our souls are fed by one another, in person, surrounded by food, back at our first professional home. Relationships long dormant stand revived, and we are lifted.

It occurs to me, in this lovefest of reconnection: How can we leverage this energy? What if we could sustain these bonds, reforged and hot in this moment? If we connected like this more often or regularly, across specialties, geography, and practice structure, how much better could we all be at what we do every day? How much more empathy could we have for those who don’t do what we do, whom we see as competing for resources or otherwise trying to undermine us? How would our patients feel in our presence? Our support staff? Our hospital leaders? Gatherings like this prove that we have the capacity to just be together, appreciate one another, and support each other with generosity and grace. So much potential for positive synergy among this group.

We have big plans for our 25^th reunion, but I have a feeling our renewed relationships will find powerful expression long before then. So stay tuned, my friends. We are Pritzker Class of 1999, and we’ got work to do.