In April, I believe, a grizzled-looking University doctor read my blood tests and informed me that I had hemochromatosis, that this meant iron was building up in my liver, and that I had about 8 years (or so) to live. Also, I probably couldn't join the Peace Corps and would have to find a less romantic(ized) way to spend the next two years. After graduating in December, I thought I was out of the woods with respect to my liver - and that I had a place to put myself for the next two years.
I spent the rest of that day at 826, mostly being quiet and painting a back room to look, as Amy put it, like a 10 year-old boy's bedroom. After the weekend, after a poorly spent weekend, the doctor called me back in and, as bashful as his grizzled face would allow, inquired if I was taking any nutritional supplements. My fatal illness turned out to be the consequence of an iron-rich vitamin's effect on my blood samples. I was, in fact, in perfect health. I finished my internship at 826 and got a letter from Peace Corps saying that I would be doing all sorts of different things, including teaching, in Mongolia.
That was the most dramatic story I picked up while interning at 826, but it has sort of disappeared, only to be revived when I need a funny/shocking story about an incompetent doctor and to emphasize How Happy I Am to Be Here (wherever I am). Over the next three years, it was a lot more important that I had picked up how to interact with students, to understand the stories they had to tell, to make sure they had a voice in my classroom, and (to the dismay of my fellow teachers in Mongolia) to insist on calling them 'students,' not kids. And now I'm back in Kansas, three years older, wearing tighter pants, newly unemployed, and finally realizing the how exactly 826 fit into this last bit of my life. So, like, thanks.
