I remember walking around Grand Central Station in NYC. There were these shoe shiners who would polish the shoes of all these people in suits. Shoes seem like such an important thing. Like they define how successful you are in life and how important of a person you are.

So, I was in medical school during a rotation shooting the shit with the senior resident. She started telling me how she always kept her hospital shoes out of her home and how dirty they were. I looked at her shoes and thought they looked pretty good. Standard pair of clean Danzcos. She proceeded to tell me how nasty the bacteria on the hospital floor was and how gross shoes get in the hospital. This is my 4th year of medical school and I already had a year where I was walking around my apartment with the shoes I would wear at the hospital.

Fast forward, I matched and got into residency. There is nothing like two years of being in the trenches to get your shoes to be a little funky. It seemed that everything had spilled onto my Birkenstock clogs during that time. Vomit, blood, urine, feces and... secretions. I want you to take a moment and read that last thing again… secretions. Moist, sticky secretions. Secretions that come out of the body from places not thought to be possible. Secretions. Hope I made you barf. LIFE HACK: If you ever want to get out of a day of work just say you have secretions. No one will ask any more questions. In fact, you’ll probably be encouraged to stay at home.

Ok so it was one of my last patients during a busy R2 shift. I walked back to tell a patient that everything checked out and she was good to go home. As I talked to her, her service dog walked over, sniffed my right shoe, and licked it. I didn’t really know what to do. I didn’t want to reprimand a helpful dog. I mean, this dog is helping a disabled person so it obviously had a heart of gold, and it’s not like it's humping my leg. So I finished telling my patient what’s up and walked out.

Two minutes later I remembered that I forgot to tell her something so I head back in the room. To my shock I see the dog stretched out yacking. It’s doing this weird down dog yoga-like position and retching. There was a puddle of puke in front of him. FYI, the puddle definitely had some chunks in it. I looked up at the woman and she nonchalantly said, “I guess he got sick.” She must have not seen the dog licking my shoe. I tell her what I needed to tell her and quickly ran out of the room. I guess this was when I learned that I should stop bringing my shoes into the apartment.

I think the only way for you to get a visual of this dog barfing is for you to see a picture...So I decided to draw one.