“Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs” by Michael Collins

BY AHMAD NISAR – Few medical students decide to pursue a career in medicine in their late 20s; fewer still come into medical school fresh from working in a construction crew. Michael J. Collins, author of Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs: The Making of a Surgeon, overcame both of these obstacles — and not only achieved his goal of becoming an orthopedic surgeon, but gained valuable introspection on the nature of human life,  medicine, and his relationships with patients, family and friends. 

Collins’ street-smart wit and flair for the dramatic gives the reader  a birds’ eye-view of his journey, with all the highs and lows of medical life. Included are the long nights spent cramming pedantic facts and figures for an upcoming exam and the despair of consoling the family of a terminally-ill patient. But also included are the joy of delivering a child into the world and realizing the earnest impact a doctor can have on a patient’s life (and vice versa). 

Collins’ story begins at a lull in his life. Having spent his years since graduating college on a road-gang breaking up Chicago’s streets, Collins was content. Or was he? Since getting his degree from Notre Dame, he’d been on a hiatus from education. Sure, he comes home sore and exhausted everyday, tearing up and lugging around massive chunks of pavement whether rain, shine or snow, but he never felt as if he were doing anything worthwhile, whether he was really living up to his full potential. Growing up in a lower-class Irish family, surrounded by rough-and-tumble brothers, Collins had fought with his heart and soul to do everything he had accomplished thus far– but he knew there was still more to aspire to. After a sweltering day of work that had most of the crew near a state of collapse, Collins describes how an older coworker implores him to utilize the opportunities he’d been given — a college education and many years of youth ahead of him — instead of whittling them away at construction until he too was middle-aged and brittle-boned, full of regrets. 

How is this relevant to the average pre-med student? Collins makes it clear that though his life is odd, the rules for success that he set for himself — a determination to meet and even exceed one’s own limits  — were what propelled him to take up medicine. This, Collins makes clear, is a goal all students can take inspiration from.

And although Collins had thought that ‘pushing pencils’ in med school wouldn’t compare to the back-breaking manual labor he was used to, the variety of difficulties he was presented with in his long medical journey, from mental and physical to emotional and moral, tested his determination like nothing else had. From feeling like an blue-collar outcast among a cohort of verbose colleagues to frustratingly learning the what of medicine while wanting to ruminate on the why, Collins struggles with feelings of insecurity, futility and stress — as we all struggle with at some point in our lives. Still, for him, the journey is worth it.

 In medicine, Collins is intimidated by the many afflictions on our fragile bodies and lives, but for the first time, he feels capable and responsible for tackling them head-on. An interesting moment in the book comes when Collins witnesses the birth of an anencephalic baby. Here, we witness an interesting point in his transformation into a doctor — although the infant is technically not ‘human’ in a biological sense (having no developed brain), Collins feels  a compulsion to care for these unfortunate souls regardless of the biology of it all. A suffering being is a suffering being, and the physician’s prime duty is to treat the patient as a breathing, feeling human, not as a statistic, customer or cadaver. This, Collins realizes, is the crux of medicine. 

At around 300 pages, Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs is very readable for a busy student. It is not too heavy on monologuing, nor is it too cerebral — Collins interspedes his philosophizing with fun anecdotes from his personal life and a cast of colorful characters from school, the construction crew and on rounds shadowing doctors and surgeons. Whether you’re interested in viewing medicine outside of a traditional vantage point or just looking for an entertaining story full of ups and downs, Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs is certain to entertain. 

Editor: Maria Flower

Photography Source:   Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs