Published by
Amy under
Disability Stuff on
October 18, 2010
I love socks. I have Halloween socks, Christmas Socks, St. Patrick’s day socks, snowmen socks, socks with cacti, socks , with frogs, butterflies with maple leaves, socks with bears, moose and sheep. Socks with polka dots, stripes and solids. Rainbow socks. I have two big bins of socks in my closest. Every morning I wake up and I go pick out my socks and my selection and the smiles I get from my patients and their families and ladies in the grocery store make my day. Its a simple pleasure.
In medical school, in one of our orthopedics lecture I was outted. We were discussing the hip exam and the ortho comments a good question to ask your patients with hip pain is how are they doing putting on their socks… I know I turned beet red for a moment. My secret seemed exposed.
Ironically even though I love socks. Putting on my socks is the worse three minutes of my day. And yes it takes three minutes….sometimes longer. The good leg which has recently switched s/p shiny new hip is easy, 20 second flat. The bad leg on a bad day is a struggle. I pull my foot back as far it will go and stretch down my leg…wait for it…wait for it…there it is a throbbing, sharp pain that stops me in my tracks mid toe. Sometimes it will take multiple attempts. I admit I have to get pedicures now because I can’t cut my toe nails on the right side.
You would think that the second time around I would somehow be less hysterical and less neurotic. However, I am most certainly NOT. I tried though to be better this time. I e-mailed my doctor way earlier than last time. And then I got a response and I freaked. FREAKED and completely needlessly. He was just trying to help, to offer me a myriad of pain relief options before we jumped to the steroid shots that worked last time. He was being a good doctor but I am not a good patient. I have trust issues. And I don’t want options, I just want to get through this with minimal interruption of my life…
because in the end thats what it all comes down to…I am yet again terrified as I was three years ago when the left one started going and I was convinced I would never graduate and be a doctor. Well now I don’t want to give it up. I like it too much. I want to be a resident so badly and the thought of admitting that I might have to take time off or that I am struggling kills me, it kills me.
It kills me even more than putting my socks on the day after a NICU call and a hip effusion.
Published by
Amy under
Children,
Disability Stuff,
Friends,
Jesus,
Patient-ness,
Residency,
Romania on
October 10, 2010
In a room full of young, enthusiastic, Christian physicians who come from all over the US (and the world!) to study here, a question is asked by the one gray aged seasoned doctor in the room: Have you ever known a patient who was healed but still sick, still dying?
Everyone shifts uncomfortably. We have had 8-12 years of brainwashing that tells us rationally healing is brought about by time, careful calculated interventions and sleep deprivation on our part. Plus faith healing makes us uncomfortable. Not only does it seem to contradict our brainwashing…if we as Christian physicians start advocating for faith healing we will be seen as crazy, fundamentalist, religious freaks by our professional peers. We can’t explain it, we can’t know it and therefore it makes us feel uncomfortable.
I find myself smiling knowingly. It’s not faith healing that our leader is preaching, its wholeness. Its realization that what we see as doctors, as humans is only a small part of what makes a person. The illnesses we seem so keen on fighting are a part of a larger whole. He is talking about how people are never bad outcomes. But as I look at my peers’ expression I shift uncomfortably. I realize that I am once again in the minority. I get this because this is fundametal to who I am, to how I see the world as a wounded healer. To my young, healthy, ambitious peers this is a very hard concept.
He goes further and begins to tip another sacred cow of medicine… He says a word that we say all the time in church but really has lost the luster it had centuries ago: L E P E R. He tells the story of St. Francis of Assisi walking down the road and hearing the clanging of a cow bell. He tried to get out of the way but found himself transfixed to the spot in the middle of the road as a leper with a warning bell around his neck approaches. He talks to the LEPER who is shocked that he is spoken to. As he turns to go, the LEPER turns into Jesus for a split second. St. Francis is brought to his knees.
I have never met a patient with leprosy. But I know about LEPERS.
I was rolling down the dirt path in the Green Machine, making small talk with my dear Belorussian friend when all of the sudden…Its raining money. A beautiful gypsy women is dropping money in my lap. I sit their startled. This woman is a beggar and she is giving me the money she has managed to get because I as a disabled person am worse than the beggars.
I am riding on the Romanian subway with Emily. One of our friends who is covered in scabies from the streets comes on the train at one of the stops. He stops by and talks to us. Every eye on the train is either horrified or shocked by this turn of the events. The boy says goodbye and begins his dramatic speech begging for money. But the stares continued…who are these strange American girls who are friends with beggar children?
I am sitting on a bed holding a sobbing teenager, 15 yo, not married whose new born baby just died from a Fatal birth defect. Earlier someone had made a comment that she got what was coming to her for the choices she made.
He comes to the ED every other weekend, high, drunk or when they run out of beds at the homeless shelter with one complaint or another. He is a frequent flyer and we draw straws over who has to go examine him because he smells.
He is 5 yo, he has TB, AIDS and a pneumonia. His Mom is HIV positive but refused to test her son till now because of the shame it would bring upon her and her family in her village.
He is 22 and he comes in once a month just to make sure that he is remembering to take his medicines. He is healthy but has required anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medicines since his parents kicked him out when he came out as gay.
She is 12 days old and she is going through withdrawal. Her Mom’s BAC and ethanol level were through the roof 12 days ago. Mom is on methadone and sometimes other pain meds. Baby can’t eat, sometimes she doesn’t even wake up when you mess with her.
What if we turned the story of St. Francis story around and each of these people turned for a moment into Christ? Would it change way we view them? Would we treat them differently as doctors? As human beings?
These are all real stories of real people who I have met who all needed physical healing of some sort but what they really needed was understanding and compassion. Some of them had done things to themselves but most were a vicitim of how they were born, somone’s else choices or worst of all society’s warped conception of their lives.
I took a chance and tell perhaps the least offensive story for my audience (the one about the street child on the subway). At the end I briefly mention some of the other new forms of lepsory that exisit in our medical and wider culture.
It makes us all cringe a bit.
But I think that is the bibical meaning of the word Leper….it was not meant to be PC or assuage our sensitivites it was to call us to radical wholeness, compassion and sharing of brokeness with our fellow man.
Published by
Amy under
Children,
Disability Stuff,
Patient-ness,
Residency on
October 7, 2010
My first delivery as a pediatrician. I was pretty excited even though I knew this was the worst kind of delivery.
C-section. 25 weeks 5 days. Mom has preeclampsia to the point that she has uncontrollable hypertension, elevated LFTs, etc. The only cure is to get the babies out. The babies are 25 weeks 5 and have twin-twin transfusion syndrome. We were on rounds when the OB found us. My attending was like really, really…you realize that has like a 90% or so mortality rate, the babies die of heart failure half the time and with the extreme prematurity and that…the odds are astoundingly low that they will survive .
The parents wanted us to be as aggressive as possible. Long awaited twins…
So in the OR, I naturally did less than nothing because well the babies were dying (and I was pushed aside as a very green intern) as soon as they hit the warmers, quickly intubated and some chest compressions and the little hearts fluttered on back up to normal ranges.
Dad comes over and takes pictures and is texting on his cell phone. I stare down at my patient who really could try to die at any minute. And I look back at the Dad and his proud eyes and I can’t help but wonder that for all our attempts to explain it, how much does he understand? And what is he imagining? His babies growing up? Because barring miracles these babies won’t make it out of the NICU and they certainly if they do will be members of my tribe. Does he know that? Would I make the same decision he did?
I got to put in the UV and UA lines on one of the twins. It was amazing. I felt like a rockstar. And then I looked back down at the little one at her chest rising and falling and I realized that she belonged to someone. How quickly I forget what matters? How quickly I buy into the poor outcome theory. How quickly that I forget that at one point in my life I was set aside as a poor outcome. Yes there are some babies we should not resuscitate and who knows maybe this is one of those. But its still someone’s baby and who am I to make the decision for a parent?
I congratulate the Dad ….its still his child…his first born child. And earlier we told them that we might not even be able to resuscitate the baby and now here she is surviving. Hope is a powerful thing and I of all people should not crush it.
