the not so sacred sacred moments

Why does the sacred have to be confined to places of worship? I recently realized my most sacred moments in life rarely happen in church. For example recently…

Holding the hand of a child as they fall asleep.

Watching my grandparents celebrate 50 years surrounded by their children and grandchildren. Listening to their stories and remembering the miracles of the past 50 years.

Singing and laughing tucked back in a grove of trees with the same folks as the sun sets.

For the first time, diagnosing a child (a 9 mon old) with cancer and hoping and grieving with her mother.

Waking up and finding this in my garden. I didn’t plant this. I have been so busy, I haven’t had time to weed….

Sitting on a stoop in hot, humid, sultry SC with old friends from the other side of the world. Laughing, talking and just simply enjoying the company of people interested in living beyond the America bubble.

Holding my very first well child check patient and watching her eat her first birthday cake. (no HIPPA in Romania mission clinic)

That’s whats up in my life. That and lot of studying for the surgery shelf (not really so sacred).

culture shock…

We are waiting on a Spanish interrupter and I am sitting trying to look busy while my attending and an the anesthesiologist talk. I am trying not to eavesdrop but they are talking right above me and its hard not to hear. They are talking about private schools in the area. They go on and on about the various pros and cons of each and various other attendings’ children who attend school X, Y and Z. The conversation moves on to Aspen. I shift uncomfortably in my chair. I will never be that stereotypical, American physician who sends their kids to private school, goes skiing in Aspen and drives a SUV. Its ironic really, here I am a doctor’s child, a third generation physician no less and such conversations make me uncomfortable. Its not that any of these things are inherently wrong I just seem to have very different priorities than most of my peers and mentors. Maybe its the navybrat, maybe its the wandering in Eastern Europe, maybe its my crazy hippee Christanity but for better or for worse I find myself in many ways in an alien culture of affluence and prestige that I am supposed to be excited about but am somewhat wary of.

On my first day of optho, I find myself explaining my life plan to an attending. I want to be a general pediatrician I explain. He asks me if I know how much the average pediatrician makes. I said yes. He looks at me strangely, you are too smart for that job, do a fellowship, this is a good medical school use your education wisely. I smiled and brushed off the comment but again was struck by how different my conception of using my education wisely was from this respected physician. It wasn’t that his ideas were wrong or less worthy, it was just very different from mine.

doctors yet again such strange people, I have much to learn of their ways before I ever understand them.

Life as we know it

I kind of lost it last week. I somehow managed to keep the insanity at bay till after the boards but then Tuesday morning or really Monday night I just suddenly couldn’t hold on any more.  And I just cried and cried more than I ever remember crying.  It wasn’t really the boards if anything it was the fact they were over and I now had to face going back to medical school which apparently was a very negative idea.  Really since last Sept I have been chronically disillusioned with my decision to pursue medicine. I have blogged about it but I haven’t really talked about it to anyone beyond a few very close friends and family members.  No one from medical school and very few people from my life in Winston even know. I never really decided it was a big secret but apparently it was.

So there I am sobbing on the porch swing on a gorgeous Spring Day with my Dad trying to figure out what the heck has happened.  I am just a mess of exhaustion, frustration and hysterics. Then slowly it just all spills out all my doubts, all my loathing for aspects of the medical profession and all my desires and fears of entrapment in a job I hate that consumes my life. I just laid it all out and I was shocked at how forthcoming I was. Once it was out there I was numb, spent.  I fled to an old haunt of mine high up away from civilization and just sat in silence for a while.

I woke up at dawn last Wed and packed my car, said good bye to my mom and drove south.  I was standing in the Dean’s Office by 9. I was composed and calm and I did exactly what I had done to my Dad (minus the hysterics, with considerably better diction and syntax) the day before.  I kept waiting to feel  foolish and melodramatic and vulernable but I didn’t. I felt incredibly relieved.  O (the Dean) didn’t shoot me down or tell me to suck it up.  He offered a single comment that wasn’t particularly profound or earth shattering. But it was something that strayed slightly from the party line of: life will get better third year, you will be a good doctor, look how well you are doing and we really need people like you in medicine.  He told me something to the effect: The problem with you and medicine is you already know exactly what you want in life and who you are. The average 23 yr old med student comes in looking for a system to fit into, you came in wanting the system to fit into your vision of what it should be.  Its not a problem necessarily he went on to say but its certainly makes life different. Think about your decision, he told me, but you will know what to do when its time to make it.

Somewhere over Mississippi I just came back together. It wasn’t the advice or the sobbing. It was the falling apart and admitting it.  I supposed somewhere in the mist of second year   I buried my theology for a time under a pile of endless notes, small disasters and an endless flood of personal perfectionism.  It is in our brokenness that we are whole.  It is admitting  our doubts we keep our faith in our God, in our visions and in ourselves.

the aftermath

The last 6 days have been down right glorious. There are few pleasures in life more sweet and more comforting than the affection and company of old friends and your family. The sort of people who you haven’t seen in a year or even two and despite the fact your life has changed and evolved, your relationship is the same.  Conversations, tea, gardens, long walks and quiet understanding of people who know you nearly as well you know yourself, in some ways better.

I spent a great deal of time outdoors in the Blue Ridge Mts with my Mom and sisters post-boards. I left my cell phone and computer and books in the corner and forgot that I have the cartilage of an 85 year old and wandered around my favorite mountain celebrating the tentative Virginia Spring with its red buds, Bradford Pear Trees, bulbs and shy buds. I had a long talk with my Dad about life then I moved my stuff back to Winston sans all my school stuff. I just left it in my basement. It was liberating.

I flew to Texas to see Karen and Jon. I soaked in the sunshine, the hippee-ness of Austin and the affection of dear friends. We cooked, talked, stayed up too late, wandered around San Antonio in the middle of the Final Four craziness, ate REAL Mexican food and Americanized Romanian food???, reconnected with a random kid I met in Romania and mostly just talked, solved the world’s problems, told stories and laughed. It was lovely.

On the school front, my life seems to be working out too well. I not only got the sced of my choice, I got the attendings I wanted for surgery which is completely a GOD thing because I never confided in anyone about such.

And now to bed since I have slept much in days…too much fun to be had.

wilds of the night

When I am stressed I have the strangest dreams. Usually these dreams are very vivid and typically they are all about me. I am some sort of crazy predictment running or falling or being consumed by some terrible illness or chased. When one is stresed, one is pretty self-absorbed. Its a good lesson really in learning to look beyond your own insignificant problems.

I expected crazy dreams this month. The Step 1 is intimidating on a good day and darn freaking terrifying on a bad one.  The odd thing is they are not about me.  Every member of my immediate family has died (including my dog), Bucharest was bombed, Parables got really lost and various other close friends have terrible things happen.  The dreams are insane and I dread them.

Yet again…no pysch-pathology over here…none at all.