Pen

Sep 5

By: Alex Belzer, MD

Disorganized procrastinator.

Scatterbrained.

Flies by the seat of his pants.

My parents would be happy to tell you stories demonstrating my poor aptitude for personal logistics.

Roughly 10 broken or lost or disappeared cell phones since third grade. Countless homework assignments that fell through my famous ‘folded loose leaf paper in my pocket’ system. Countless more near-misses reconciled by my reproducing them from memory soon before coming due.

Déjà vu arguments with my dad that boiled down to his ‘if you don’t write it down you will forget it.’

College and early medical school had similar capers, though newly without a parental safety net. I scraped by. I dabbled with some now-long-lost legal pads. By then, my take on the matter had shifted from a resounding ‘fuck that, I’ll remember,’ to a sheepish ‘I’ve made it this far, why change?’

The answer was ‘clinical medicine.’ Maintaining a fortified mental compendium of nuggets of truth, lies, data, and ideas with high enough fidelity to care for patients is simply impossible.

I vented to my mom about it.

She offered me her pen.

A hefty, bare-metal, time-weathered Caran D’ache. Swiss made – intended to outlive the writer. A gift from her father upon finishing grad school, when she needed to grow up herself.

The idea of taking her pen scared the shit out of me. I’m no dummy – this pen was more likely than not to disappear from my warm, well-perfused hands within a year.

I had already been gifted several Caran D’ache pens in my life. All had been re-gifted to the ether.

I pushed off the offer for a while.

My capers continued.

It sank in that I must commit to change. Innovation is never without risk.

So I accepted the pen. And I carried it with me.

Phone, wallet, keys, pen.

Welcomed a small notebook to the rotation. Carried that with me too.

I committed, and found fidelity.

Truth, lies, data, ideas – immortalized.

With a notebook and that pen, I carried my patients.

I still do.