An interesting thing happened to me 20 years ago this month, after I had suffered the first in a series of professional burnouts from the relentless stress of emergency medicine. I had just resigned from my hospital position and was living with my Labrador retriever, Katie, in an old whaler’s shack in San Jose Canyon, just across the street from Monastery Beach in Carmel, California. I was engrossed in building a radio-controlled balsa wood and fabric model of a Piper Cub at my drafting desk when the telephone jingled (yes, telephones jingled back then).
“How would you like to go to Rwanda?” It was Eric, an ex-fellow emergency resident and board member of Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World). “But you need to leave within 48 hours.” Hmmm. A country that has just gone through 5 months of horror and genocide. No resources other than what we could carry on our backs. Complete chaos with no discernable government or sense of control. Banishment of anyone with white skin—I would be the first allowed back in. Lots of automatic weaponry in addition to the machetes and clubs responsible for the majority of the killing. And I was suffering from PTSD. Sure, why not?
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