For the record, I have never spent a millisecond of my life sitting cross legged on the hospital floor with my laptop, working on my CaRMS application. Every time I go to the CaRMS website I wish they would put a more accurate photo of a red-eyed, sleep deprived, medical student wearing sweat pants, sitting at a kitchen table, stress eating and yelling at their laptop.
That would be more like it.
With props given to the folks behind this, Matt and I shamelessly twisted it for our own purposes. Prepare for a possible stream of these over the next few days.
Scenes from an afternoon in ‘Auntie’ Land…
Buzzed on mini-doughnuts and caffeine = quality time with my hilarious niece today.
—
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver
He both craved the familiarity of a private personal domestic space and loathed the idea of being fettered by permanence or possession.
-Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates
“Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart”. -Anonymous
My current flatmate has a magnet with that quote stuck to her fridge. I see it every morning as I prepare my breakfast. It was always just a passing line that I only half read before rushing out the door to the hospital.
Yesterday, I was in the emergency department. There were several sick babies crying, call bells singing, monitor alarms binging. I was assessing a 1 month old with RSV who looked quite dehydrated and unwell. We had called in the anesthetist to attempt an I.V insertion, he was getting another needle for a second jab while I held my fingers in a circular tourniquet on the baby’s little arm. The patient coughed and sputtered while the lab tech fished for culture bottles and Dr. J tapped his little hand. I had been nervously and awkwardly assisting in the operating theater all day but here in the ED I felt like I’d walked into a familiar river which was gently carrying me along. I felt comfortable, at peace, even. The quote appeared in my mind and took on a different meaning. Yes. Sometimes familiar chaos can be calming.
Now to develop that calm in unfamiliar chaos.
Awoke to this sight this morning. In an attempt to foil British Airways baggage fees I packed only for rain. This is why one requires TWO suitcases for trans-Atlantic flights in March…
Ocean view, table for one.
After my cycle around the Dingle peninsula this afternoon I did my routine freezing dip in the ocean. The people bundled up in winter coats and hats actually gawked as I peeled off my clothes on the beach and walked into the water. Comedy. I was able to stay in until my feet went numb with cold and I unsteadily ambled back to the car. There I enjoyed a nice post-ride sunset picnic before driving to town and collapsing in the sauna.
I am taking myself on such sweet dates these days. Starting to think this could turn into a serious relationship.
So there I am standing in the pet food aisle, pondering ways to put off heading home to my dark and empty house on this cold and windy Friday night.
I could go to the gym but my gear is at home. Movie? It’s only 1800h. I could go out and have a beach walk, it’s pitch black.
I realize that I have been standing there for a while and that I have no pets.
I look into the basket on my arm, it contains one large coffee mug and a hot water bottle.
I wish I was still on my hospital rotations because that way I could just go and do a round on the team’s patients. Then I catch the fact that I just wished I could go into the hospital and round on patients that I have no responsibility for.
I sense fear creeping into my thoughts. Is this what lies ahead for me if I stay on the surgical path? Is this what will happen when I have no life outside the hospital? That my evening plans on a Friday night will include stopping at Dunnes for a coffee mug and a water bottle before heading home to work on my research project and possibly watch a rerun of Parks and Recreation?
Should I drop this basket and get on the next flight back to Canada, get married, and start having babies? Is this the last chance before the sliding-door moment goes into the ‘no life’ story versus the ‘well rounded and happily fulfilled in all ways’ story?
And I actively decide that I will not feel sorry for myself. Not feel forlorn. Not with all these gifts and blessings.
I then feel forlorn and sorry for myself.
I walk into my dark house, set down my nearly comical collection of things from the grocery store: plain yogurt, chocolate milk, hot water bottle, mug, vanilla candle.
My phone buzzes with a text from M.C.
Yesterday I discovered an abdominal mass on one of my patients in GP so I sent him into M.C’s surgical clinic on an urgent referral. The text tells me, “CT found a large colonic mass and renal mass, likely mets, biopsy, might need Rt hemicolectomy and nephrectomy. Well done you!” I feel a little chuffed (for picking it up) and sad for the patient at the same time. Amazing how egos find their way, even into devastating news for patients.
Last night when I was falling asleep I had been questioning my assessment and my decision to ask M.C’s secretary to fit the patient into an already bursting outpatient clinic. She did it as a favor to me with the warning, “if this patient isn’t sick, consider this your one and only urgent referral”. Suppose that would count as sick.
It’s late now. The house is still quiet. I am just off the phone with my mother who is also feeling lonely and out of touch with the world. The pair of us.
The wind is causing the doors on my closet to rattle and the windows to shake. I suppose it is just going to be one of those stormy nights.
