|
|
Do
you remember the feeling? Floating twenty-three feet above the ground
after your first procedure, your first “save”? Likely
you were in your healthcare training. If you’re a doc, do you
remember in your early medical student days, when your unblemished
white coat still sported those just-been-unfolded creases, how thrilled
you were with every opportunity to interact with a patient, any
patient? Do
you feel like that about your health care career now? There
are many reasons for your ‘thrill-o-penia’. You might
have had one too many angry patients or one too many night shifts.
One too many interrupted family moments. Another cost-cutting move
by your hospital. Another regulation foisted upon you by the insurance
industry or the government. A lawsuit. A bad clinical environment.
Anything. There is an old medical saying: all bleeding stops eventually. Either we heal or we die. In this context, death implies continuing on the same path -- disliking our career, practices, colleagues, and patients -- or quitting and walking away from all we have built. Or,
we can choose to heal. I
recently contemplated the reason I chose my medical specialty. Milton
felt like my thirty-seventh admission that January night on call
for Internal Medicine; a drunk, vomiting blood. I smelled him before
I saw him, a mixture of distillery and slaughterhouse. The ICU room
lights were off, and in the greenish light of the monitors, he glowed
with an unearthly hue. There was more blood on him than in him.
He was very successfully attempting to bleed to death. The
room lights flashed on, temporarily blinding us. The GI fellow on
call rattled in behind the endoscopy cart, briefly and efficiently
examined Milton, and started in on his routine endoscopic ‘poke
and choke’. I’d
never seen anything like it before. Arching vermilion rainbows of
blood splashing against a salmon pink mucosal sky. Undulating plump
varices wending their way to the patient’s very soul. The musty
smell of the melena, the crisp draw of the suction. It was amazing.
And so beautiful. Really. The
fellow quickly found the bleeding vessel, efficiently stopped the
hemorrhage, pulled out the scope, and trundled off to bed. The fellow
had done a routine procedure, Milt’d had his life restored,
and I’d experienced a direct download from God. After thirty-six hours on call, I finally made it home, and immediately rushed to phone my parents. I rhapsodized to my mother about the smells, the sounds, the blood, the save. My mom’s only question when I petered out was … ”Did it make your ears wiggle?” Does
it make your ears wiggle? That
might sound strange to you, but in my family, we understand. To
my mother, if your ears wiggle you are in your own unique place
in the universe… your spot, your bliss. She was a realtor at
the time, and wouldn’t sell you a house if you couldn’t
honestly say that you ears wiggled as you walked up the front walk.
Gastroenterology
and medicine did, and still do, make my ears wiggle today. The procedures,
the interactions with the patients, the opportunity to educate.
The beauty and peristaltic dance of the magnificent gastrointestinal
tract. But after the stresses of the long hours, speed and acuity
of today’s medical care, a malpractice suit (dismissed, eventually),
and a board recertification, all occurring simultaneously, I found
I needed more. I cut back my practice to a level that I could love,
increased my creative side, and started to focus on myself and “Turn
Care Inward”. How about you? What about health care made your ears wiggle? Take
a moment to think back beyond all the cranky patents, the tired
physicians, and the stressed staff. Do not think about where you
are, only where you were when this was all new, back at the dawn
of your career. Consider
what you do verses what you loved. Maybe you can get yourself back
into the part of the profession you enjoy. It could be as simple
as shifting your duties and minimizing the part that doesn’t
make you happy, to something as sweeping as changing careers to
embrace the aspect of medicine for which you used to feel passion. We
can’t provide answers, not to everyone. But we can illuminate
possibilities. That’s what Rx For Sanity is all about. Let’s make your ears wiggle again.
|
 |
About Dr. Raymond • Speaking Topics • Articles • The Sanity Store • Sensational Free Stuff Subscribe to Passionate Health Care Newsletter Subscribe to Your Health Choice Newsletter Patricia L. Raymond, MD FACP FACG 757-547-0368 • 757-547-7727(Fax) • PLRaymond at RxForSanity.com All Rights Reserved. © 2007 Patricia L. Raymond |
 |