Here's to friendship...

...and to time standing still when it comes to it.

What a surprise I had yesterday! I got a call from some guy with an accent, asking if I was Lara Montero (lo and behold! I had forgotten that name...) Finally my brain started clicking, and I figured I should switch to Spanish, since it was clear this was someone from my Peruvian past. I got thrown off by a slight Chilean accent (huh?), and finally the mystery caller identified himself as Fernando Cossio.

Fernando and I met when I was in the academy preparing for the test at the Medical School at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima. We were part of a group that spent a lot of time studying, stressing out, and dreaming about the day when we'd finally get into a program that only took 50 people once a year. When we finally made it in, we all became glued. There really is no other way to describe it. We had suffered together, we had dreamed together, and now we were starting together down the road of sweat, blood and tears. Ok, so maybe that's a bit dramatic, but I have to say not too far off.

I left Lima a year and a half later, and while I did keep in touch with a few people, with others who were very close to my heart I lost contact. Fernando was one of them. And now he's managed to track me down while on a plastic surgery rotation in Chicago.

And here comes the point of this blog - yeah... finally. Here's to friendship. The kind that can be put on hold when life takes us on opposite directions. The one that is remembered not as a pretty thing of the past, but as a constant in your present, all with a single phone call. The one that you realize you can continue to count on, even if you have become lousy at keeping up with those close to you.

Here's to friendship, and to my friends. You are the fabric of my life.