Tag: emergency medicine residency

Betrayed

Published on by Mindy NLeave a comment

In 2018, I was a third year Emergency Medicine resident who was worried about starting a work out program, when I was going to get my final chest tubes so I could mark them off my procedure log, and when the f***k I could get out of Michigan. I had no clue what was about to happen. I, along with the rest of the world, didn’t know that our entire world would be turned upside down. I didn’t know that medicine, this thing that I had loved and worked towards my entire life, would turn into this angry thing that had betrayed me.

I started 2019 in much of the same way. I woke up, studied, and went to work. I had my life pre-programmed for me by yet another aspect of medical education. What rotation I worked, what hospital I worked at, and my schedule was all set by someone else. I was just beginning to become really confident in who I was as a doctor. I could finally really focus on emergency medicine and how I wanted to practice. And then, November happened…and with it a change no one was expecting. COVID was initially thought of as just another viral flu-like illness. And Michigan wasn’t in the hot seat, yet. But that soon changed. And our entire lives became overwhelmed with the thought of COVID – both professionally and personally. We were restricted to our homes, forced to wear masks for the first time in public, and isolated from others.

But even that wasn’t when I felt like medicine had betrayed me.

I went into 2020 excited to graduate and move home. I had a new job, a new apartment, and a new start. I was excited! And then I had issues getting my medical license for California because COVID slowed all paperwork down. So I sat in my new apartment and waited. Waited to be able to leave my house, waited to be able to work….waited.

And yet, my betrayal hadn’t happened yet.

I started my attending career during the second large surge of COVID in 2020 in California. I was overwhelmed with having crashing patients in new hospitals where I didn’t know the staff, let alone where the bathroom was. I was overwhelmed with the amount of CODES and death I was having to handle and deal with. I was overwhelmed with the sadness I had when I came home from every shift. I was overwhelmed with the amount of fatigue and exhaustion I was feeling as well as my staff. I was overwhelmed.

And still, my betrayal was waiting around the corner.

Soon, our COVID numbers declined and I was able to take a breathe again. But with that quiet, I was able to think. I second guessed every small decision, my hands shook when I had to do a procedure, and I started to have panic attacks. I would sit in the bathtub, crying, and dreading when I had to return to the hospital. I would turn my phone off in fear that someone would ask me to cover a shift or even worse, ask me about a case. I would snap at nurses, friends, and family. I researched careers in which I could use my medical degree without being in medicine. Even going so far as to research careers where I could just escape my medical degree altogether. I just kept repeating that life was supposed to be better as an attending! Attending status was the “golden ring” that I had been working towards since high school…..and it was tarnished and rusty.

I didn’t know what to do. I knew that I couldn’t continue like that. I had given up so much of my life to become a doctor that my job was basically my life, so hating my job meant that I hated my life. As a child, I had grown up in the hospital and fell in love. I had decided at a young age that my career was going to be medicine. My identity had been entwined with the idea/pursuit of becoming a doctor so much that giving medicine up felt like giving up my life.

And that’s when I realized that medicine had betrayed me.

While all my colleagues were experiencing burnout highly related to COVID, I was experiencing burnout just from medicine. No one else was crying in their bathtubs. No one else was researching how to open a small bakery in a New England town. No one else was struggling like I was.

I had been physically isolated due to COVID (for about 2 years now…) and while that was hard, this isolation struck much deeper. I didn’t know how to reconcile the freedom and happiness that was supposed to come with attending hood and what I was experiencing. I didn’t know how others could feel happy going to their job. I didn’t know how others weren’t paralyzed in self doubt with every patient. I didn’t know exactly what I was expecting from being an attending but it definitely wasn’t this.

I sat alone in this struggle for about a year. I went through the motions that accompany life – waking up, eating, showering, and seeing patients. I focused on my shortcomings and how I was failing as a doctor or not as good as my colleagues. Any praise or support was easily brushed aside in favor of my anxiety-ridden inner monologue. I cried in the bathroom again and again.

I reached out for help with my friends from medical school and residency. Ones who have sat in that library with me or in the pit of the ER. Ones who knew me and had also gone through the physical and mental rigors of the medical education marathon. I started to prioritize therapy focused on imposter syndrome, meditation, affirmations, and meditation. And these changes greatly improved my life and outlook.

However, I still saw this as a personal betrayal of my childhood love.

I wasn’t aware of how much this happens to people when they start out as attendings for the first time. I didn’t know that others, some much closer that I could have realized, experienced the same kind of fear and anxiety. The feeling that this thing that we loved, that we worked and sacrificed for could turn into something that we dread and hated.

And while I spent a lot of last year in silence, marinating in that feeling of betrayal. This year, I am being loud about my friendship with medicine. While I can’t say that I’m quite back to being infatuated with medicine like I was as a sweet, innocent medical student in the library, I can say that I don’t cry before shifts anymore. I’m excited to go to work and help people – from something as easy as a turkey sandwich to intense resuscitations. I’m comfortable asking for help when needed and not seeing that as a failure – but as a strength! I’m focused on being the doctor I always wanted to be.

So while medicine might have betrayed me, she’s making some amends.

Stolen Joy

Published on by Mindy NLeave a comment

30 years old.

Block 3 of my third year of residency.

According to Numerology, the number 3 has ” a powerful need to express feelings, ideas, and visions of the imagination”. And isn’t it beautiful that I felt the need to start blogging again? When the number 3 is repeating itself so much in my life right now.

I’m laying in my bed, and all I can think about is how much I was afraid to turn 30. Afraid to be a senior resident. Afraid to not live up to my own ideal of what I was supposed to be when I turned this milestone.

As a child, I had a clear vision. By 30, I would be a successful doctor, married to the love of my life, and mother to two cute but sassy children. I would be an attending, saving lives and taking names at work but starting to think of academia or administration. I would have a loving husband who also had a good job and had the same values as me. We would have one night a week carved out for “date night” in which we would go out to dinner or cuddle up on the couch and watch movies. I would have a house that had a big kitchen with an island in the middle. Seasonal flowers would constantly be on that island that over looked bowls of cereal. Happy memories to go with those two children who bounced off to preschool and elementary school. I would be the mom that had it together, remembering when the bake sale was and who had practice at what time. I would be an adult. A real adult. An “adultier adult”.

Instead, I’m a single woman who lives in a one bedroom apartment who is trying to find time between ER shifts to make sure my laundry is done. I have a cat who I’m still surprised to find her cat bowl empty sometimes. I swear I refill that thing at least three times a day! How can it be empty? I’m smelling scrubs before I put them on again to work. I’m the one eating cereal over the sink – not those two children.

Because of that beautiful daydream that has stuck in my head, and so closely tied to my 30th birthday – my summer was rough. Full of transitions. I transitioned from a junior resident who could always think “well there’s going to be someone more senior-y than me” to the senior resident. I transitioned from a young adult who could always think “well there’s going to be someone more adult-y than me” to the adult. And constantly seeing how different my real life was from my daydream.

Comparison-is-the-thief-of-joy-sized

Theodore Roosevelt said that “Comparison is the thief of joy”. And let me tell you, I lived in that comparison all summer. I bathed in the sadness that came with seeing how much I lacked in my life compared to that daydream. I sat rooted to the spot and watched the seconds count down to my birthday, each second like a timer on a bomb. Tick, tick, tick. With each second, I could feel myself become older. With each second, I could feel myself become sadder. With each second, I could feel myself become farther and farther from that daydream. So I sat some more. And let more seconds pass. And let more distance come between my current state and my daydream.

And then it happened. My birthday happened. Luckily, I was at work on trauma and had patients facing life and death to distract me. But I looked at the clock and it was already 1am. I had been 30 for a whole hour and nothing bad had happened. The bomb didn’t go off, the skies didn’t tear apart, no fire came raining down from heaven. I was still breathing, walking, and talking just like I had been an hour before. I hadn’t suddenly aged to a wrinkly, old woman who was unable to remember her name or what year it was. I hadn’t suddenly become less of a woman or a doctor. I hadn’t suddenly become anything. I was still me.

My celebration was quiet and uneventful; I went home and had a piece of the cake the ER nurses had been so kind to get me. My cat came up and cuddled up to me. And I went to sleep watching a murder documentary on Netflix. Like any other day.

So how had this “monumental” occasion, which had been the obsession of my mind, come and gone with not so much of a whisper?

How had I become an adult, a real adult, with no big consequential change?

Because I was still me. Turning 30 hadn’t really meant anything, really. True, it meant that I had been on this Earth for another year. But it didn’t change who I was or what was expected of me. The comparison between my real life and that daydream – the one I was sure everyone else could see and judge – had robbed me of celebrating. Of celebrating the joy of being another year older, wiser, and being the senior resident. My mother and father didn’t care that I didn’t have those children yet. In fact, their daydream of what my life was to be like by the time I was 30 was vastly different than the daydream I had. My attendings didn’t care that I was suddenly a senior resident. They just wanted to continue to see my grow and learn. My friends didn’t care that I didn’t have a husband who doted on me. They just wanted to see me happy. No one cared that I was an “adultier adult”. They just wanted to know that someone else was eating cereal over their sink too.

So I woke up the next day, I put on those scrubs (with the habitual sniff test), tied my shoes, and walked out the door. The sun was still shining, the heat was still unbearable, the hospital still smelled like antiseptic. Everything was the same.

My daydream is still what I want to have – I’m very much looking forward to wiping milk off of faces who are smiling at those seasonal flowers on that big kitchen island. But it doesn’t have to have a deadline. That daydream doesn’t become any less special or beautiful because it happened when I was a little older. Those children aren’t going to look at their mom and think “if only she had this when she was 30”. That husband isn’t going to be less because I found him later in life.

So maybe I did change when I turned 30. Maybe I did become an “adultier adult”. Or maybe I just learned that life doesn’t listen to deadlines. And my joy is too important to be stolen.