Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs

April 6, 2009
An orthopedic surgeon whose Mayo Clinic residency he recalled in Hot Lights, Cold Steel,
Collins reaches further back to tell of his days as a Chicago construction worker and, later, medical student. For a few years after college, Collins enjoyed the physicality of constructing curbs and gutters and drinking beer with his pals. But Collins, the oldest of eight boys in a close-knit Irish Catholic family, felt a vague yearning for something more meaningful, which finally coalesced into the dream of becoming a doctor. The Notre Dame graduate went back to college for two years of pre-med courses and entered Loyola at the ripe old age of 26. The next few years were a reality check: the rote memorization in medical school, the petty tasks assigned to an on-call med student and the shock, in his last year of medical school, of finding his intern had committed suicide. Collins received a battlefield promotion to intern. He eventually found himself right at home with the “orthopods,” who lack the pretension of the other surgical specialists. This is a perceptive, no-frills memoir of a surgeon who succeeded by dint of hard work and brains.