Last week, with some trepidation and nervousness, I attended a reunion. A reunion of people who, over three decades ago spent three to six years in each others company at university. A reunion of long forgotten relationships and barely recalled events. A reunion that, mathematically at least, given the time we spent together and the time since, should not have mattered more than an interesting diversion, a trip for a weekend in Oxford, an opportunity for me to wear my Black Tie, meet a few old compatriots, drink some wine and wander around the Gleaming Spires admiring the architecture I so ignored all those years ago.

So as I walked through the porters lodge of St Hilda’s College, unrecognisable from the place I shuffled through in early October 1990 to present my first ever essay (The Functions of the Fibroblast), I was completely unprepared for the sudden wave of emotion that utterly enveloped me. Because this was not, in fact, a reunion of three-decade strangers. It was a reunion of people who shared a livid, intense, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes depressing, always exhausting and almost uniquely privileged experience. This was my medical school reunion.

We grew up together in those years: not just in the time we spent in each others’ pockets, but also as we transformed, becoming something new: men from boys, women from girls. Doctors from schoolchildren. Formed on the wards and lecture halls, operating theatres and labs, dissection tables and coffee tables from wide eyed and excited sixth-formers into the footsoldiers of healthcare. 

Those were tough times, long days, hard work, ridiculous exam questions with almost no relevance outside the cloistered enclave of Oxford Academia (“How valid is the concept of the canonical neocortical circuit?”), volumes of information I struggle to recall even a fraction of. How important it all seemed then and how little of it I use now. But we had each other and we shared and laughed and partied hard. 

Meeting up again felt like a window onto a lost world and was quite overwhelming: these old (-ish? – er?) men and women, celebrating their shared youth and collective experience. We are all closer to the end of our lives than the beginning, much closer to the end of our careers (and perhaps our meaning) than the beginning. We are now mature, maybe a little careworn, a little frayed at the edges, each with our own mental or physical battle scars from five-plus decades alive. Some scars visible, some hidden, some shared, some only hinted at, some, presumably deeply private, reflected in a furrow of the brow, a deeper wrinkle at the corner of the eye, a slight sadness in a smile. More interesting now as people with the patina of a life in healthcare (we are mostly still in healthcare) than the shiny clear skinned naive youths were were, arriving in Oxford in 1990 with utterly no idea of what we had signed up to.

How somehow quietly content, and self-assured we seemed, each comfortable in his or her skin. I sensed an unspoken shared wisdom. A resilience built by those experiences we have all almost certainly been through: seeing suffering, pain, new life, death, triumph over adversity or defeat in its face. Fantastic teamwork, mind numbing physical exhaustion, burnout, collaboration. Blood, pus, tears, sweat. The visceral thrill of a life saved, even if only for a short time; the pain, regret, self doubt and introspection of a failure or a mistake. 

Do other careers accumulate this wisdom or or is this perhaps unique to a career in healthcare? What does a reunion of war veterans feel like? Is that a fair analogy? Are we veterans in healthcare. Is what I am describing a kind of shared PTSD, because no-one but healthcare practitioners see some of the stuff we see, so often, with the only support on offer (at least historically) gallows humour, each other, and alcohol. “Feel free to cope”.

You’d expect this in any gathering of doctors of a certain age, but the difference last weekend was that we knew each other before we’d acquired this wisdom. We were clearly the same people in mannerism and (mostly) appearance, but also all changed. Changed utterly. The inexorable passage of time and it’s influence on those bright young things from long-ago almost palpable. Time both running out like sand though fingers, but bringing something different: refining, growing, evolving. Thinking back on it now raises an unexpected but somehow comforting lump in my throat. Writing this has brought, again, tears to my eyes.

I’ve learned a lot since I left medical school: I can report a chest radiograph (well, I probably can’t any more), I can punch a new channel through someone’s liver from their neck, I can fill a tumour with plastic beads. But the enduring lessons, the important ones, the ones that keep me going when my mood darkens, when my reserves of energy or my emotional capacity run dry are the ones strengthened by the bonds of experience at medical school and from the people around me. Friendship, support, empathy, laughter, kindness.

To my friends from the classes of 1990 and 1993, and to those in those years with whom I barely shared a word, then or last weekend, I am so privileged to have spent that time with you. Thank you.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!