Really why I can’t just suck it up and drank a shot of kool aide

I’m a mess. Here I am an almost doctor. I hug mothers who are losing their children, I write orders and call consults and I do procedures and I diagnosis pertussis and stickler’s syndrome in forgein countries without decent resources or back up.  But you put me in the chair on the other side of the exam table and I am a non-believer. I’m skeptic. I’m in denial.

I traveled 14 hours for a steroid shot in Balitmore because I can’t sit still in morning report in more. I have to get up and go to the bathroom every day because I can’t sit for a 45 min lecture. I can’t use the chair on rounds becuase it hurts too much to sit down.  I had to get the steroid shot.  The PA ushers me into the room after 7 hours of shifting my position every 10 mins from North Carolina to Balitmore.  She taller than me like a foot and half. Why is that all orthopedists make me look like the size of a middler schooler?  I feel for my little poeple friends who must have to constantly look up to talk to their orthopedist even when everyone is sitting down.

We talk about school and pediatrics and neonatology and how PAs started in Carolina de Nord. I fiddle and wait for an hour while the attending finishes his case down in the OR. I look at the latex gloves lined up neatly under the cabients above the counter. I have the strangest desire to put them on because that’s what I do when I walk into a procedure room. I note the amt of ccs in the syringe and the type of alchol prep. I want to fiddle with the fluro machine and I read the Joint commission safety guidelines. My Mom and sister sneak in and we play 20 questions the way we used to play I Spy and I would trick everyone with the tiny blue stickers on the ceiling that the navy used to mark ventilation ducts. They go out to find granola bars and I try to read. Finally the PA comes back and asks me “Are you ready?”

I jump up strip at the waist, wrap my lower body in a gown. The attending came in, he is not my doctor I knew my doctor was on vacation. He is young probaly 7-8 years older than me or so. Hestands at the end of the table and asks me what surgeries I have had…4 sets of osteomonies feumr, tibias and 2 humerus osteomonies (among others). Why he asks? I nearly sit up and look right at him so he can see the exploative crossing in my skeptic’s brain. Because I have Kniest Dysplasia I say politely. He has that look the look of WTF is that. It like sticklers but rarer and earlier onset.  And you are in medical school he says as he approaches.  “Yes.” WHere? Wake. What are you going to do? Pediatrics? Where are you going. next.. His technique was not nearly as smooth as my doctor but effective.  The PA holds a sheet for me as I change and apologies ‘the boss’ wasn’t there. I assure her I knew he was out of town and this worked best for my schedule. I told her I wanted an appt with him along my shot in Nov to iron out my last questions about alinginment and stuff. She nods.  I tell her I’m planning for Mar 22 four days after Match Day. She nods, sounds good.  She wishes me a safe drive home and I make a beeline for the waiting room and for my sister and Mom.
On the outside, I am professional and friendly and confidence as if having one’s hip fall apart at 24 is the most normal everyday occurence in the world. Inside I am terrified. Terrified of losing all the things that I love to do, my indepedence from my parents, my ability to travel, my career with my babies, my ministry even silly things like standing up to sing in church and dancing at weddings and mono-skiing. I tell people that walking isn’t everything or being normal isn’t everything but I’m fraud because when its me on the exam table I fight like a angry hornet for these abilities and run like a child scared of the monsters under bed when faced with my own medical  reality.

But the professional in me doesn’t want t to show that, doesn’t want look like a rebellious adolescent afraid of losing some privileges to the point of being illogical and competely unreasonable. So I stand tall and limp away down the elevator, to my car and curl up and watch the mountains pass me by and push the feelings of doubt deep down filed away inbetween infant vaccination schedules and how to treat an acute asthma excerbation or a sickle cell patient with a fever. Becuase there it is safe and ok. There it is hidden in the place where I feel in control and confident and at home.

If I was my patient I would give me a hug and tell me that I was doing the right thing.