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Stop Your
Hemorrhage; Start to Wiggle! "Saving
someone's life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world.
For days, sometimes weeks afterwards, you walk the streets, making
infinite whatever you see. Once, for a few weeks, I couldn't feel
the earth -- everything I touched became lighter. Horns played in
my shoes. Flowers fell from my pockets." Do you feel
like that about your health carecareer 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. 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 How about you?
What about health care made your ears wiggle? So now it’s
your chance. It’s time to tell your own story. Take a moment
to think back beyond all the cranky patents, the tired partners,
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. Get out a pad
of paper and a pen. Sit and think about these questions for five
minutes before beginning. Answer each fully, as at least a brief
essay, before moving on to the next. Ready to start?
Okay, let’s take a trip down memory lane. What made you
decide on a career in medicine? Recount the moment of your decision.
How did you decide what specialty of health care you would enter?
What ‘made your ears wiggle’ about it? What excited
you once you were in our profession? What aspect of medicine brought
you the greatest happiness? Good work. Look
over your answers, from the point of view of the here-and-now. Do
they still apply? Can you find that love for your profession again?
Or has healthcare become something you can no longer identify with? Consider what
you do verses what you said 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. Let’s make
your ears wiggle again. Virginia Beach
gastroenterologist, Patricia L. Raymond M.D. FACG is an author and
consultant, who speaks to nurses and physicians through hospital
systems and medical conventions. With her company Rx For Sanity™,
she humorously leads physicians and nurses to rediscover their joy
in medicine and to learn to first “Turn Care Inward”.
Her book, “Don’t Jettison Medicine: Resuscitate Your Passion
For The Career You Loved!” is available now. Visit www.RxForSanity.com
soon for complimentary information and links to better care for
yourself and for your staff, and to subscribe to our FREE monthly
newsletter, Rx For Sanity™ eNews, with medical humor and simple tips
to enhance your life in Medicine.
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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 |
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