Garden State Diner.  Newark airport.  Sipping Pinot Gregio and listening to oldies on the resturant stereo.  Three and a half hour layover en route from Sarasota, FL. to Halifax, Nova Scotia for the Humanities Days conference at Dalhousie University School of Medicine, my alma mater.

    I have a love-hate relationship with flying. 

    I love to travel, to see and explore new places and revisit old haunts.  The hate part comes from the fact that, though I understand basic physics and know intellectually that the plane really does want to fly, there is a part of me that just cannot understand how something so big, with passengers on board who are actually fatter than I am, along with all that luggage and cargo, can stay airborne after that exciting take off

    Once we're up there I tend to relax.  After all, I figure even if the engines fail, any pilot worth his or her salt should be able to glide a plane to a safe landing.  Perhaps that thought only illustrates my ignorance of commercial jet flying.  Maybe it's not as easy as I think to glide land a 737.

    I was home in Nova Scotia just last month and did not intend to return so soon, but an invitation to speak at the conference re my writings and website was just too much to pass up.  As Oscar Wilde said "I can resist anything but temptation".

    I am going to speak to medical students and others from Dalhousie, University of Alberta and Stanford.  I can think of many things to say.  I am seldom at a loss for words.

    But what do they want to hear?  Do they merely want to be entertained for an hour?  Do they want to know how I do what I do so they can do the same?  Or are they perhaps expecting some words of wisdom they can carry with them throughout their medical school journey and beyond?

    My connecting flight to Halifax is overbooked and I am bumped, along with three other passengers.  I spend the night at a lovely hotel at the airport, getting to bed rather late.  This morning I am preparing to catch a shuttle back to the departure area for a 9:00 AM flight.  Let's hope this one goes off without a hitch.  Already this trip is becoming more interesting and unpredictable than expected. 

    Kind of like life in general.

Marlene Buckler, MD, FACEP     wwww.StayOutOfMyER.com.