Another lesson in humility

The other day I did particularly well on an exam and was feeling good about myself. Heather, I thought, you’re becoming quite clever and quite mature. I settled down to a focused, disciplined afternoon and evening studying anatomy. We have a big test coming up in a few days, and all of us were a little stressed about learning the huge volume of information in the little time we had left.
Well, I must have sat at my computer for about 5 or 6 hours, cramming my mature little brain full of the geography of the body, and by the end of it, I was feeling a little shattered.
We have a pleasant evening ritual, Vem, Brendan and I. After we’ve finished our evening studying, we sit together and have a drink and watch an episode of a very funny tv show. Sometimes two episodes. And then we all go to bed.
I could tell we’d been studying too long because of the spaced-out looks on everyone’s faces. Vem had been wearing his purple contact lenses and his eyes were bloodshot from staring at the computer and he looked like he’d walked out of a horror movie. Shomaila had collapsed on her bed and was comatose. Rebecca and Yanira were asleep. Brendan hadn’t shaved in I don’t know how many days and was looking like a truck had run over him. I sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to focus on the computer screen with the tv show but my eyes closed while I was sitting up and I just about fell over.
“Let’s play cards.” Someone suggested. (Okay, it might have been me.) “We always watch tv. We should do something else instead.”
I pulled out my deck of cards and we started a game of blackjack.
“What shall we bet?”
Not money, we decided, cause none of us had much of it. Not clothes, either, because the last time we’d played cards I’d lost 6 rounds in a row. We finally decided on push-ups.
The first round, the ante was 5 pushups and Vem raised it to 10 and Brendan folded and I turned up 20 to Vem’s 21. No prob. I did 10 push-ups.
The second round, I was dealt 21 and Vem raised to 15, and I called. Brendan folded at the ante and did his 5 pushups. I turned over my ace and ten and Vem had an ace and a jack. Fifteen pushups.
We poured rum and coke and dealt the third round.
“Are you allowed to bet if you’re already over 21?” Brendan asked.
“Of course!” I answered. “That’s called bluffing. It’s a really good strategy to flush out another player. You just have to keep a poker face.”
Vem was an exceptional card player; he had a poker face like nothing else and he was cool and collected. He’d been bragging about how many pushups he could do and I was itching to make him lose.
I was dealt 14. Brendan asked for another card and I could tell by the look on his face that he was over. Vem raised the bets to ten, and I called and raised it to 20. I asked for another card. He dealt me an eight. I looked at it in my hand and looked up at Brendan’s flushed face and then Vem’s cool and collected one. Well, if they could bluff, so could I.
“Raise to 35.” Vem said confidently.
No way he could win three hands in a row. Brendan threw down his cards. Drat. Now I’d have to bluff against Vem.
“Raise to 50.” I said coolly.
Vem had a funny smile on his face. “Raise to 75.” He said.
I suddenly was overcome with this panicky feeling. What if he wasn’t bluffing after all?
“Call.” I said in a small voice.
We laid down our cards. My 22 and Vem’s 21.
Well, they laughed long and hard.
I got down on the termite infested floor and cranked off 15 pushups. They laughed and laughed. Then another 35. They kept laughing.
I didn’t make it to 75, they agreed to let me finish my pushups the next night. We put away the cards and sat in front of the computer screen, exhausted, and watched tv until some ridiculous hour of the morning.
But I couldn’t get it out of my head, all night.
It wasn’t really about the 75 pushups and my aching pectoralis muscles. It was about my attitude towards life.
I’ve always had an overdeveloped sense of self-confidence and the ability to talk my way in and out of things. If someone asks me a question that I have no idea about, it’s not that I make up an answer, but I just find the best one that I can possibly think of and I deliver it as if it was the 100% guaranteed truth. It’s not lying; it’s being assertive, creative and responding to challenges with a positive attitude. Or so I’ve always thought.
I realized last night what it really is. It’s bluffing, or more accurately, another word that isn’t quite polite to print here but starts with the same letter.
My worst fear is that someday I’ll be at a patient’s bedside and I’ll make a call with their life in the balance and my b.s. answer will cost them their life. I know I’ll make mistakes, I know I’ll have patients die, but I don’t want it to be because I am so overconfident in my abilities to gamble that I can’t say “I don’t know.”
I’m learning to say “I don’t know.” It’s not easy, but it’s important. And I have the feeling that it’s one of the most important lessons I can learn here.
That and how foolish it is to keep betting when I’m over the limit in blackjack. So if you’ll excuse me, I have 25 pushups to go do….