Last Word: Thriving amidst changes
It’s 3 a.m. on a Wednesday as I adjust the ventilator and IV drip settings for a middle-aged man struggling in Room 5. I’ve been his ICU-critical care doctor for the last seven hours. When he arrived I was simply his ER doctor. But there are no open ICU beds in the state. So, for now, he gets me.
Last week I was the obstetrician for a young woman in labor at term. I practice in an “OB desert” with no specialty services for about 60 miles, so she got me. In the last several years emergency medicine physicians have been pressed into service well beyond the scope of their expertise. Mine are just a few daily examples.
I think I’m managing the stress of all that pretty well. I try to be … mindful. My amazing wife reminds me what a privilege it is to participate in a career where I get to make a difference to someone at least a few times in a 12-hour shift. Like most things in life, she’s right, again. But something else that helps mitigate the stress is a familiarity with managing change.
I remember walking out of Law Hall as a freshman in the fall of 1987. In those days students had to reserve a timeslot to use one of eight computers to craft and then print essays on a dot matrix printer. My paper in hand, I felt pretty good as the autumn leaves swirled around my feet. I recall having a palpable awareness that everything I was doing in those times was an investment in who and what I would become.
Cornell transformed me. The block schedule forced us to adapt to new subjects and new professors every month. In nearly every class the craft of writing was emphasized. For me, anthropology didn’t stress what to believe, but instead taught me to understand why I held certain beliefs. And in all of this, we learned to navigate change.
Darwin proposed the concept that it’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. When I think about the polarity and conflict in current public discourse, I can’t help but think that resistance or simple discomfort with change is sometimes at the heart of so much rancor.
I am grateful for the lessons learned on the Hilltop. Steeped in the Cornell experience, each of us evolved. The world needs us to apply those lessons to connect, to endure, to empathize, to lead, to participate—to thrive amidst the changes.
Lance VanGundy ’91, M.D., graduated with a B.S.S. in anthropology and biology. He married his high school sweetheart after his sophomore year and hasn’t scared her away after more than 30 years of marriage. They raised three daughters. He has practiced emergency medicine in his hometown of Marshalltown, Iowa, since 1998 and is a published author of epic fantasy.
