I am still that navybrat inside. I am still a homeless  nomad always in search of my next adventure. Or so I thought till I moved to the Midwest.  Yes my house was unpacked within 48 hours of hitting Ohio soil.  Yes by the time orientation started I had all my paperwork in to the state of ohio,  been to the grocery store and had house plants. I transplant well.  My family is still  like a moving machine.

But the difference is I am homesick. For first time in my 25 years of moving. I am truly homesick. Its not my parents, its not my school, its not even my friends that I miss. Its the sameness.  Its the culture. Its the manners: the thank you m’am, No Sir, hold the door open for a lady or a baby stroller every day occurrences that I have taken for granted.  Its the sunset over the mts in the summer all lavender and deep blue blending together. And its also the ability to get in my car and be at the ocean in 4 hours or with my grandparents in 4.5 or nearly all my best friends from college/high school and my family within 2-3.  Its the anticipation of basketball season even as early as July.  Its the accent, deep, slow and quick to laugh like a summer afternoon.  Its the people walking their dogs and waving at you while you water your plants. Its the neighbors who don’t need a reason to walk on over and shoot the breeze with when you get your mail. Its the check out lady at the grocery store who tells you about her dreams of becoming a famous artist while she rings up your ground turkey and bananas.

These things leave a hole deep down.  A hole that cannot be filled by amazing ice cream or my awesome, new friends who are just as nerdy and in love with pediatrics, global health and board games as I am or the best farmer’s market I have ever been too or a faith based pediatrics clinic that I get to be a real pediatrician one half day week for the next three years or my cute little emerging church…..

And I realize that I am no longer a nomad.  I have a home.   And its sort of rocks my world.  Because being a nomad is who I have been for 25 years.   I realize that for the better or for worse some time between 10th grade moving to Roanoke and May 17, 2010 graduating from Medical school.  Western NC/VA (very similar although unique in their own rights) became home.  Somehow the southern drawl, the BBQ, the outdoorsy, laid back, sweet tea, banjo music and James Taylor with a touch of class up Roanoke way has taken root and its not going to be able to weeded out by Ohio or probably anywhere else in the future.

It doesn’t mean that I am not glad to be here. That I don’t wake up and pinch myself that I get to learn pediatrics at one of the best (if not the best) children’s hospitals in the world.  Because I am still doing that.

It just means that when people ask me where I am from, for the first time in 25 years…I have an answer.   And it an answer that fills my heart with longing but also a sense of belonging, of being from…

And I think that doesn’t mean I won’t thrive anywhere, that I won’t thrive here, it just means I have a home.

and I didn’t know I needed one.  But I think perhaps I am a bit more whole now that I have one.

Child Pysch exploded this week with the start of school. We got a new attending and new third years and one of the acting interns went a-wall. We had three sexual abuse cases that nearly had us all in tears.  I got my NICU grade which contradicted my negative comment. I submitted my residency application after agonizing over whether to wait for the comment appeal.

My pain doubled from the stress and from what seems to be ever worsening hip health. Sleep is difficult and I keep having wild dreams from the pysch floor, the surgery and the general state of upheaval of my life.

There was strange good moments like James’ brilliant debut of his two new shows and Corinne’s beautiful new baby boy who seemed to whisper to my soul why that God is faithful and why I signed up for this insane profession.  The comment appeal went through and the comment will not be included in my letters. It will never leave Wake.

By Friday I was just grateful that it was over. That I could just get on with this surgery and the rest of my life. I was sitting waiting for my research adviser when it came.  AN RESIDENCY INTERVIEW INVITATION at Emory in Atlanta, GA. I had heard that peds got early interviews BUT STILL. In four days?!?!?!?!  I sat there and was ecstatically happy and grateful.  Not so much that I had an interview but just that there was forward motion. God saying HERE WE GO.

hold on to your hats. Sept is going to be bonkers.

Things are slightly better accessibility wise here. There is a van with a lift to help one get off the plane and lift into the terminal. I actually rode down the whole street today by myself in the green machine, curb cuts the whole way. I almost had tears in my eyes. Such freedom, my people here have never known such physical freedom. I learn so much of spiritual freedom from these simple things. God wants to free us from our sin and our own selfish selves but we have to let him tear down the walls (the curbs) in our life. I think often of my friend who was my initial introduction to the plight of my people who died soon after I met her. I am sad she did not live to see these days but happy to know she is with the Lord. We still have a long way to go education and health care wise, but enviromentally they are making an effort.

God is doing interesting things in my heart. I love this land and I love Eastern Europe. But Romania is chaning rapidly. Romania will need less and less missionary doctors over time. The medical missionaries who run the clinic are thinking about retiring. There is still much work to be done here but I am not sure if this is where God has me to come for the long term. So where Russia? Ukraine? Africa? I recently received an e-mail from one of my future supervisors in Africa he is asking for pediatricians with a passion for the disabled to run a rehab center in Tanzania, they want to start a series of these throughout the continent.  I am going to work in one of them in Kenya in Jan. They were very clear, that my elective is a window to employment, they are almost recruiting me 5 years early it seems. Also on my way here, I ran into a guy who works for Samarthian’s Purse who gave me his card and wants me to e-mail their medical missions dept. It seems possible jobs are growing on trees at the moment…

 

,.,,,there is so much to tell about being back here and about Spain and Italy and France…but it will take me a while to get back to speed with my blog. I am also writing my reisdency personal statement wich is a painful endless process.

I was dreading telling my Daddy (yes its Daddy I am from the south deal with it) .  There is a saying in our family: Victoria will laugh at what Dad says to do, Emily will do it to the letter and I will do the oppositte.  0:)  I love him and we are close. But lets be honest he is overprotective (perhaps for good reason).  If I had listened to hm I would have never gone to Romania, never gone to medical school , never gone to Wake Med and probaly would be living in my parents’ basement.  SO somewhere around the age of 16 I decided that while I loved him. He would always see me as far more physically and emotionally fragile than I saw myself.

Now don’t go thinking he is awful. He is really good at admitting he was wrong. And tells everyone he knows about his oldest daugther double major at Wake who is now going to do medical missions when she graduates Wake Med….he loves to hear my travel stories and we have read lot of good Russian literature and I photographed lots of WWII landmarks for him in my travels.

I could just hear exactly what he was going to say as I told him…are you crazy…you are almost done with your third year…do you really think now is a good time for a femur head fracture….and I would still go but I would feel uneasy and guilty for at least the first 24hrs.

so the day came and I called him and told him.  And then I nearly fell over and broke hip.  “That sounds like fun, a great way to blow off steam…just wear a helmet and use common sense.”  he said.  he was actually happy for me, excited for me.  WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH DADDY?

I decided he was either A. intoxicated, B. is using some sort of weird reverse psychology on me or C. has grown to see me much as I see myself or at lest in the same galaxy.   I like C so I am going with it.

you know we always talk about children growing up, but I think parents grow along the way too.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

I took a NBME (national medical board of  medical examiners) exam this morning that was supposed to be a practice test for the boards (its strictly for baseline purposes no relevance on any grades). It had the making of a disaster and the gloom and panic of my class was down right infectious after four hours of torture. I have never seen so many 20, 30 year olds so close to tears all at the same time in public not at a funeral. I ate lunch with some friends and then headed for the hills (literally) from the panic. It took me a little while to decompress but by the time I hit the border I was calmer. Spring is just beginning here, its lovely.

On a lighter note. Because I cope with stress by humor…Some thoughts on the exam: (not all of these will make sense to non-medical folk and some will not make sense to non-Wake med kids but some are universally corny )

You may need to study more for the Step 1 if you had some of the following thoughts when doing practice questions:

-You asked yourself on each professionalism question: What would Ober do? You were disappointed that there was no choice like the following:

Z. tell the family member about the death of their loved one with a lot of hand waving and introspection.

-Your micro pharm knowledge is something along the lines of! Fever?!?! Need more cowbell

-Your renal pharm knowledge is a lot like losing to your your little sister (varsity tennis star in high school) or college friends (in the case of Wake kids and I): ACE, ACE, ACE

-You found yourself answering a clinical scenario with the thought oh I saw that on ER (or HOUSE) once.

-You said a prayer of thanks for your own medical problems/family’s medical problems that got you a question or two. (Collagen II, Osteo Imperfecta and Breast Cancer, go team)

-When you didn’t have a clue all you could think was LUPUS.

-All those aliens do a lot of talking…I wish they would talk to me and tell me the answer to these questions.

-On the intoxication questions your mind was fairly blank beyond the pharse… “Why is all the Rum gone?”

-You answered at least one psych question thinking this is me in four weeks after all the studying I have to do…

-When you saw a puncture… I mean punctuate rash…you wanted to put: vampire bite as the etiology.

-When choosing agars…you chose chocolate because it tastes the best (not really its mostly blood)

0:)

I have been taking pictures but I left my photo cord up here by accident so I need to steal it back from my sisters before I post them.