No Pain…No Gain in sparkly letters in my dreams

I am 9 yo face down on a brown mat that smells like rubbing alcohol concentrating all my energy into the slightest movement of my right knee.  I feel the subtle grind of my tibia and femur moving in harmony a quarter of inch  inside plaster imprisonment.  This is physical therapy in a body cast. There is no accountability just someone standing over you telling you to move and you nodding.  No one can see or feel but you because your lower extremities are completely hidden.  Its painful, there are 3 -4-6 inch incisions that raw with sutures not a week old pulling up down my leg with each subtle movement. I have two legs that are broken in four places  held together by a Frankenstein-esque contraction.  I am type A. Even though there is no accountability, I have a desire to excel and a desire to prove myself and please those in authority over me. So I pull against the plaster as if my life depends on it.  I fear failure. I lift my eyes up from the brown mat and see in purple and orange and green sparkly letters a sign that says NO PAIN NO GAIN.  It becomes a mantra for 12 weeks and then really the rest of my life.

I broke my leg at 3 falling down the stairs, they called child protective services because I had a dislocated elbow the week before.  My poor terrified parents tearfully explained my lack of connective tissue while I tried to prove to everyone I was fine by walking around the exam room on a broken leg, devastated that everyone was so sad and angry because of me.  Ever since then my life has been in one or more of three states:  pre-rehab, in-rehab, post-rehab from a major orthopedic misadventure which may or may not been planned.  Sometimes like now I will be more than one or even all three: I am post-rehab from Lf shiny hip, in rehab for right broken elbow and pre-rehab for right shiny hip.   You never win. It just keeps going and going and going.

This wears on you. It gives you a constant sense of a mix of failure, victory and futility.

It also defines how I approach challenges.  On the one hand, its given a blind sense of determination and the stubbornness of a strong minded elephant set on ungrazed Savannah after a drought (seen this) which is good.  On the other hand its given me a fear of failure, a complex about never being good enough.

In my mind Residency=REHAB of medical knowledge/skills

this is bad and I am trying to break myself of it.

Because residency is not like rehab. Nothing bad happened for me to get here, I worked to get here, I earned it.  And I am not expected to know the answers, I am expected to learn them.   Also unlike rehab…there is no going back to rehab.  Residency is a process, a rite of passage.  Its a moment of time, not a state of being.  The best I can do is stop fighting.  Relax, ask questions, learn, be humbled, appreciate grace and enjoy it.

but in my mind…I half see everyone standing over me on that brown mat or watching me walk around with my broken leg just wanting to be good enough and strong enough to make everything ok and do everything perfectly.

if only I knew grace and contentment in my heart the same way i know them in my mind.

Its a beautiful day in the neighborhood, would you be mine?

Community.

Its a buzzword.  We all seem to want it but we don’t seem to know how to create it. Tonight I sat in a room with 20 other young women most of whom are new to Cincinnati and they all expressed the same desire to  be in community.  I too say that what I miss the most about NC is sense of community.

But what is it that is missing… I have people. I have friends. I have stuff to do in my free time. What is it that I am missing????

Community is not having to worry about how no product seems to flatten my hair, its moving over a pile of folded laundry so you can sit down on the sofa and tell someone about your day,  its listening and loving the new project or piece of music or art or dish that someone has created because you can see so much of the person in what they did, its not having to explain the 30 pages of back story that lead up to the event of great significance  that you are bursting to share with another human being,  its sharing a meal and doing the dishes, its the place where you can go and ask questions and have doubts and not feel ashamed and sometimes even find the answers, its a warm bed and cup of coffee in the morning on short notice, its not where everyone is like you but it is where everyone accepts you, its the good night hug from a 5 yo, its bad jokes that were not that funny in hindsight but with the people and the time and place was hilaro9us and still is,  its a prayer that is not just a prayer but an embrace of empathy,  its the people that when a medical catastrophe or life catastrophe happens: you lie on their coach or on their shoulder and cry for a little while they make you dinner or sit in the ED with you,  it sitting in the back of a big van and singing off key Broadway for 11 hours. Community is not just the touchy-feely-summer camp-kum-by-ya-campfire kind of gush of love. Its also messy. It means getting vulnerable before people, before your God, it means sharing  tragedies and failings. It means picking people off the floor after they fall from a height. It means  being there in the dark so that they can remember the light. Its also yes the people you fight with the hardest and the most but you also find a way to put yourselves back together,  community is not just your friends its the people you live and share life with.

I have come to a startling and somewhat depressing conclusion that there is no magic formula of team building exercises or awkward ice breakers or sharing of life stories/testimonies/etc that creates this.  It is not made, its born out of experiences, hardwork and time.   Real healthy,  community is rare.  But once you had it…you’ve had it.  You don’t want the cheap stuff from Wal-Mart.  You want the pricey wine.

In the end everyone wants it, its biblical, its human, its a need, we are all searching for it.  There is joy in the journey especially if you found the end before because you know it exists.  You know community is not just a buzzword or urban myth. It exists, its real and its vital to understanding ourselves and understanding God.

and the cow ran away with the spoon

I want to be the intern that I admire. I want to check all the boxes, ask all the questions, be supportive for the patient and their families and keep up with all the stuff I have to do while being extremely happy, go lucky, laid back and fun. I want to not be irritable  or short or snappy.  But I am inpatient, exceedingly inexperienced and 2 shifts in the ED is enough to make me feel like I ran a marathon.