My first surgical operation was on a pigeon. He literally fell out of the sky into the street in front of me one day, wing broken from a BB gun pellet and orange eyes glazed from the pain. After trying to bandage his wing, he continued to trip on the broken wing, slowly ripping it apart. A week later his condition was decidedly worse, so I considered amputating the bad wing. It took a good amount of time before I found the courage to carry out such an operation. After carefully examining the bird's wound, I took a pair of scissors, positioned the blades. Birds have giant arteries in their wings, so a mistake could easily cost him his life. I took a deep breath, and cut.
It's been a year and a half since, and my pigeon's grown chubby and spoiled albeit one wing short. He takes naps on my arm, struts about the kitchen, and refuses to eat sunflower seeds that haven't been hand-shelled to perfection. The conversation I had with animal control before the operation remains fresh in my memory: they would have euthanized him immediately, as they did not have the time and resources to care for an injured pigeon, and besides, he might have been carrying diseases. Had I handed him over, as per their recommendation, he would never have had the chance to live. Though he can never fly again, my pigeon has gained a loving family instead. It would have been so easy for me to give up on him, but by choosing to operate on him myself, I realized that what's easy isn't necessarily what's right.
As a pre-medical student at UCLA, I'm often asked why I chose this route. After all, becoming a surgeon requires years upon years of additional schooling, and entails hellish hours after finally making it to the work force. It was hardly an easy decision, but I'm certain it was the right one. While volunteering at the hospital, I realized that I love seeing empty patient rooms – beds made, tables cleared, machines off, sun shining quietly through the scrubbed windows into the halls – because it meant that another patient was discharged, reunited with their family. And the whole time I think, though I couldn't give my pigeon his wing back, maybe I can help people get their lives back so that they can fly toward their own dreams.
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