Merlixse Ventura - White Coats and Red Wigs

 

 

Okay. So, as a kid, everyone always asks you, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And some of us said ballerinas or we said astronauts or superheroes. But me, I always wanted to be in medicine. At six years old, I got this book called Animals A Through Zzzz. And I instantly decided I wanted to be a vet. But as I grew older, I realized I've never had a pet ever. I had a cat once, but she doesn't really count. [audience laughter] And so, I decided to go with this idea of being a doctor. And so, now when everyone would ask me, "Oh, what do you want to be when you grow up?" I would say, "I'm going to be a doctor." It made me feel so safe and so secure, like I had this set path.

 

So, I started to give up my Saturdays and my entire month of July to be a part of this program called the Lang Youth Medical Program. And so, two years into the program, I started my first internship. They hand me this huge list. And on the list is all the opportunities that I could choose from to intern in the hospital. I'd just go straight to P, because I knew I wanted to be in pediatrics, and I picked the first one, pediatrics oncology. And so, I walk into my internship on July 1st, and I walk in with my white coat and my black slacks, and I sit in this tiny room for a meeting. It's my first info meeting. Probably until three seconds before my mentor walks in, I didn't know what pediatrics oncology was.

 

And so, pediatrics oncology is the division of the hospital that deals with children who have cancer. And so, she walks in with this manual that's probably this thick of rules and regulations that I needed to know, because I was in this division. She looks at me and she tells me all the rules. I just soak those in, because I know there are things that I actually have to do. And so, at the end of the meeting, she tells me, she's like, "Oh, and one last thing. You're not supposed to keep in contact with these patients." I just brushed that one off because I was like, "Okay, so, doctors don't keep in contact with their patients. So, I'm going to try and not keep in contact with mine, and it's going to go great."

 

So, I head out and start to do my rounds. I take all the best video games and all the best board games and cards, because I want to be the fun intern who gets to play with everyone, and I start to do my rounds. But then, I get to this room. And on this door, there's this big pink sign with glitter all over it that says, "Ivana's Room." I get so excited, because when I was six years old, I had this big pink sign on my door that said "Merlixse's Room" in glitter. So, I knew there was a spunky little girl in there who was just like me.

 

So, I run in and I push back the curtain, and this little girl runs up to me with her curly short hair and her pink glasses and says, "Hi, I'm Ivana. What's your name?" My name's Merlixse. So, I was just like, "I'm Merlixse." She didn't get it, so I just left it alone. And she asks me, "What do you do?" And so, I told her, "I do everything." So, I became the everything nurse. I went back every single day. I went back for four weeks. You're not supposed to do that. That's not the point of this internship. You're supposed to visit different patients every day for three hours, you see someone different. But I felt the need to stay with her, because she was such a little girl in such an adult situation and I felt like she didn't have the freedom to be a child.

 

She was constantly having her vital signs checked, and she was constantly learning on her own teddy bears what they were going to do to her in her surgery, And I felt the need to just be there for her and be the person who kept her a kid. So, as time progressed, I started to fall in love with the way that she lined up her animals in front of her windowsill in size, place, order. And I fell in love with the way that she kept a calendar underneath her television that marked off the days until her surgery. And I fell in love with the way that we watch Tangled every single day, and it's the story about this princess who has to cut off her hair to save herself.

 

And so, one day, I walk into the room, and Ivana's not in the bathroom and she's not in her bed. So, I run out and find her nurse, and I'm like, "Where's Ivana?" She looks at me like I'm a little crazy, because it was the day of her surgery. I have this shadow of questions going through my head, like, "Is she going to have her pajamas? Is she going to have her favorite teddy bear? Is she going to have her ice chips?" And then, I instantly become so angry at myself, because I know I feel so helpless. And in a situation when I'm supposed to be helping her, I feel helpless.

 

So, the next day, when Ivana is okay to play, I walk in and I see her playing with all her different wigs that she had just gotten, because she had lost all of her hair in the surgery. She's wearing this red wig, and she walks up to me and hands me one of my own. I realized I don't want to be a doctor. I don't want to have to walk into someone's life and have to walk away. I don't want to wear this white coat. I'd rather wear a red wig. Thank you.