True Story…Best weekend….

1. I only live 5.5 hours from Asheville….I swear life will never be the same.

2. Mountains calm and center me.

3. As much drama on and off the stage….Parables was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. The people are my second family (along with Sacred Tuesday crowd). I can walk into a room with two parables one of whom I have barely seen in the last four years…and pick up right where we left off. Within 5 mins we can discuss death, books, chest tubes, Jesus and Africa. Its like coming home after a long trip.

(side note…10 mins in someone says…so do you want a team to go to Africa…because I think we should go….!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (squeal)….much prayer and contemplation)

4. I fail at relationships of the romantic variety.  If I have one more guy-girl relationship that turns into an awkward guy-girl friendship I will need therapy because i will no longer be able to hold myself in from doing something I will regret (like hitting people).  OH MY HECK. I am going to die an old maid (but with the greatest friends).

5.  There are functional churches that love people, Jesus, are made up of multiple races, political ideals and generations….they just don’t exist in this CITY.  But there is hope that at some point in my life I might live somewhere that has such a place.

6. Used book stores are AMAZING. (WHERE ARE THE USED BOOK STORES IN THE MIDWEST?!?!?!!?!?!?)

7. I need to talk about non medical things more often.

8. Board Games….why did I give you up? (MED SCHOOL…booo!)

9. Theology…..why did I stop studying you?  (MED SCHOOL!! booo!)

10. Can we do this again next weekend??? if only.

Changes

I usually am quite adaptable being a Navy Brat and a Gimp.

But on my third month’s of sleep deprivation in a ROW, I am anxious and a wee bit strung out. Easily in a state of anxiety. Somewhere in the mist of all that I finally got the courage to try out different churches.
My second try, I met a Kenyan and  a Ukrainian, we talked East African tribes, Swahili , sekuma (food item) and the Belarussian dictators, freedom of speech and about my Romanian babies. It was like coming home by remembering leaving home.  The Americans I met were nice too.  The church is less than a mile from my current one.

The Kenyan and I are getting together and making Kenyan food next Saturday so why do I feel anxious and why oh why do I feel sad about leaving a place that really not supported me well and/or theologically fed me entirely. Is it just because its March and Im exhausted? Is the Sam’s Purse situation? Is it the people I am leaving behind, one family in particular who is one of my best friends from the residency program?

or is it that I should just be the voice of change for the next 14 months and just stay where I am because no place is perfect? And either way I have new Kenyan friends….

The sorrow may last for the night….but J O Y comes in the morning

Child birth.

Let me tell you its messy for the mom, for the family, for the baby, for the doctor, etc. And not just physically messy. I delivered four babies and received about 40-60ish now (the pediatrician who resuscitates the baby in the delivery room or just dries them off depending how messy it all is).

Its painful and sometimes the sorrow in that room from things not going the way we all hoped is bottomless.

Pregnancy is painful.  Parenting is painful.

Believe while I don’t know personally, I live so close to it on a daily basis ,I know.

Last night I went to the woman’s bible study.  Because it was Monday and my Roommate is interviewing and eating grits (for the first time)  in Charleston, SC. She called me and said Amy, how did you ever leave the 60 degrees in Feb, the friendliness and the laid back, sit on your porch and watch the world go by kind of place.?  I told her I have no idea what came over me.  Basically I was homesick and lonely so I went to bible study even after telling myself that a bible study that looked at biblical womanhood in a church that currently loves Mark Driscoll a wee bit too much was a BAD BAD idea for me.

The passage we looked at was 1 Timothy 2, the part where we talk about not braiding our hair, not wearing gold or pearls and that we will be saved through childbearing.  We spent 45 minutes talking about the pain of womanhood from menstruation to labor to motherhood.  Don’t get me wrong, there are times where being a girl is not awesome but there was this sense of shame in the room. Shame about not controlling our emotions, shame about how painful pregnancy, childbirth, etc is.   I finally just came out and said what was flashing in my brain not out of anger but because I just couldn’t bear to watch the other ladies sit there squirming. And because I have worked 95+ hours in the last week and there is no filter anymore, there is just words.

There is no mold of a perfect woman in Christ, its not the secular mold, its not the evangelical mold (gasp).  This should be  liberating not condemning.  My comment actually was not poorly received, the word liberating caused some general discomfort (tragic…read Galatians…please).   Now I will give this church credit while I have never been to the men’s bible study naturally I have heard the sermon excerpts geared toward guys and they are equally hard on men which is a refreshing change in some ways from the norm.  So I don’t think this is one of those “Its all Eve’s fault” kind of things.  Yet I still don’t think most of those ladies left convicted and liberated.  Just convicted and guilty,

The elephant in the room….is when Paul says women will be saved through childbearing, I don’t think he meant the literal practice, I think he was using it as a metaphor. This is especially important because we take the rest of the passage as metaphoric (we still braid our hair and wear jewelery) , I don’t love the lets pick the metaphors out of literal sentence game…either this is a literal passage or its not. Don’t dance around it to the parts you like.

Child bearing results in children and for someone who spends a lot of time with babies….95 hours in the last 7 days.  Babies are complicated and messy and yes they can even bring us pain.  But for the 40-60 mothers who I passed their child to them for the first time….it was pure joy.  A joy that I don’t think happens to men in the same way and I don’t think there are many better pictures of unconditional love.  Being a woman means we have a special understanding of this because we have the capacity to bear children and experience this.So yes we (men too)  are saved through childbearing…through unconditional love, the kind of love that lays down one’s life for one child or one friend.

kind of like Jesus.

Perfect love drives out all fear, drives out sin and pain and brokenness. That’s the gospel.  God has made a curse into something beautiful.

but we didn’t talk about that. and my 95+ hour work brain couldn’t articulate as well I wanted to in the moment.

Peace and Pediatrics

My intern on nights with me this past week was a south spoken Syrian.  He spent two years working to get a visa to come and study pediatrics here. He wants to be a pediatric cardiologist. He will be one of the only in the entire nation and even surrounding nations when he goes home.

He left Syria in the mist of a near civil war where every day there are reports of people dying.  The Arab Spring of 2011 has not ended well in his homeland.

But for now, he is here with me taking care of ward of children who have succumbed to the various demons of winter.

Late one night, we admitted a Somali toddlerl for observation after drinking some cleaner.  When the ED called to tell us about her, both of us got excited. Me because I took care of Somali refugees in Kenya and him because many Somali folks speak Arabic.

After we had her settled in, we found ourselves walking for midnight shack in the cafeteria. We talk about the famine in Somalia  that no one is talking about, the children who are dying. How our pediatrician hearts break for the children who are caught in the crossfire of country at war with self and a divided world who cant seem to understand each other.  The West has turned their back on Somalia because they harbor terrorists. But the terrorists who have friends in high places elsewhere are not dying, its the women and children.

Our conversation turns to the ground that divides us.  How hard it was for him to get a visa because he is from the other half. How many of my countrymen suspect something of this quiet soft spoken pediatrician because of his passport and his religion. They haven’t heard his heart for children who are dying of repairable heart defects or watched him play trains with a terrified 3 yo to soothe him. And how his countrymen suspect something of me as an American, as a Christian, as a Navy brat, as a global health doctor surely, surely she is an imperialist. Surely she wants the whole world to be like America. Surely she must be like that man in FL who burned the Koran (which apparently is a popular viral you tube like video in the Middle East).  They don’t know that I took an Islam class, read the Koran and that my best friend from medical school is a Muslim. They don’t know that in the end I love the diversity of the world and dress like a Kenyan, cover my head in Eastern Europe and am mildly horrified at how viral McDonalds is much less the rest of my culture.

And our conversation stops for a quiet reflective moment.

In the end, we conclude. It all comes down to pediatrics.

No really it does.

We want a better world for our children.  A safer world. A more peaceful world.  A world where our children are not hungry, are not sick, go to school and grow up free.

We smile.  We eat our snacks and rush back to the havoc of the wards in the winter.

If only we could put aside our fear, our pride, put down our guns and realize for a moment just how simple it really is.

It renewed my desire to be a global pediatrician, to be part of the solution.

Trasition Saga Part II

SO I called my PMD (a real one who is not a geneticist, does Pap Smears and make me feel not like a pariah) and while I am waiting for her to call me back. One of my classmates over hears me talking in the house staff lounge and suggests PMR (Physical Medicine and Rehab)gently and sweetly. I get a referral and then call to make an appointment:

Amy:  Hi, this is Amy. I’m a patient of Dr. PMD. I need to make a PMR appointment.

Random Medical Assistant (RMA): OK well when are you free?

Amy: July 25 and 26.

RMA: When else?

Amy: July 25 and 26

RMA: Are you going out of town?

Amy: No. I work as a pediatric resident at Childrens.

RMA: What are your hours?

Amy: 6 AM to 6PM and every fourth day 3o hours.

RMA: Oh…. Let me transfer you.

…

Amy: Hi, this is Amy, Patient of Dr. PMD. I need to make a PMR appointment and I have some scheduling issues. I am a resident at Childrens.

RMA2: What do you need out of the PMR appointment?

Amy: I have a rare form of arthritis that I was born with. I had a hip replacement in 2009. The other hip now is deteriorating. I need a steroid shot to help me be able to keep working.

RMA2: Oh….well how about Dr. PMR1, she is an expert in acupuncture.

(oh for the love)

Amy: Does she do hip injections?

RMA2:  Yes and acupuncture. You could also see Dr. PMR 2.

Amy: Whats the difference?

RMA2: Well PMR 1 is a girl, PMR 2 is a guy. and PMR 1 does acupuncture.

Amy: Do they both do hip injections.

RMA2: Oh yes.

Amy: Who can see me July 25/26?

…..a 15 minute repetitive conversation ensues about the fact that I work 80 hours a week and have these two days off….finally I secure a appt with Dr. PMR 1 who of course only has availability at an office 30 minutes away from where I live.

RMA2: Do you have back pain? Neck pain?  Knee Pain? ….

Amy: No…No…No…No…just hip pain.

RM2: Is this a worker’s comp case?

Amy (who has now been on the phone for 35 minutes):  No its a being born comp.

RMA2: You were born with hip pain?

Amy (at the point of throwing the phone across the room): SO July 25 7:45 at Office Far, Far, Far Away and Dr. PMR 1 can do a hip injection that day and you scheduled enough time for this?

RMA2: Oh yes, yes, yes plenty of time for her to do acunputure or the shot.

Amy: Thank you.

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