fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

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Sleeping Now

“I can’t sleep,” I repeatedly told my PCP. I told him I would lie in bed at night, my mind racing from one topic to another: work, errands, kids, pets, yardwork. I would turn the light back on and play solitaire until my eyes were blurry, then give sleeping another try. Getting up at 4:00 a.m. was usual for me, which meant getting to sleep between 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. was essential.

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Destinies

I know how to care for my seriously mentally ill patients, while shielding myself from the pain of this work–how to let the ache go and not bring it home. But I’ve been away for a while, my guard has dropped, and there is no Star-Trek–like force field to keep my heart safe today.
My job as a psychiatrist in a large county jail provides some protections; cell doors and corrections officers guard my body. And unlike the young man I’m meeting with today, I started life in relative safety. I was not born with a congenital brain malformation giving

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Secrets and Suicides

I must disguise the truth.

Because of HIPAA.

I must hold these heavy truths within my small-framed body. Because of HIPAA, I can’t tell you the real reasons I’m so upset–the death tolls, the suicides, the real-life people who are my patients and the real tragedies that they suffer. I have to change the identifying facts about this person or these people to the point that they are unrecognizable. They are my secret, my deep, dark secret that can fester inside of me and cause me to feel terrible. Incapable of saving. Inadequate at what I do, because what I

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Zipped

 

“What do you think?”

“How long does she have?”

…”We need you here.”

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25 Minutes

Pager rings. Just 5 minutes to get to the ED. Calling down as I rush to the trauma elevators, they tell me over the phone “Shots fired at a hotel in downtown Los Angeles.” I know that place…

At least 3 people arriving. The ED is bustling, preparing for their arrival. Blade and Prolene stitch in my scrub pocket, I am ready. We are ready.

For a moment the ED almost seems silent.

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Timeline

It’s 8:00 pm. You check your work inbox and prepare for the following day: reply to emails, fill prescriptions, prep your notes.

You wake at 5:00 am. You exercise, eat, rush your daughter to school. You arrive to work at 7:30 and review the schedule with your team. You see a man with shortness of breath and a new arrhythmia, a walk-in patient with a severe headache, a teenager there for a sports physical who admits she’s binging and purging. You’re already running behind.

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Sertraline for Diabetes

 
She was here for her diabetes.  Her blood pressure was high, she said, because she expected me to scold her.  She hadn’t brought her log, but her sugars were in the 200s overall.  Not good.  She hadn’t been exercising, but she had been taking all her medications.

Again we talked about options: cut out carbohydrates, increase exercise, add medicines.  She admitted a predilection for bread, and I talked about mood eating: how stress can drive us to eat.  She smiled back at me, shaking her head.  I mentioned our counselors and the option of coming just to talk.  She shook her

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Inner Turmoil

 
As a third-year medical student, I know I have a beautiful purpose in life. I care deeply about my patients. But the one person I am having difficulty treating is myself.

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Expectations

 
Before the start of every school year, from the time I was nine up through middle school, I would make the same school-year resolution: to become shy.

I have always been too enthusiastic. Out of all my classmates, I sang the loudest at birthdays, I laughed the longest at jokes and I asked more questions than anyone else. In fifth grade, a firefighter visited my class; after I’d asked my third question about how fire suits actually work, I remember hearing some classmates groan and seeing my friend Thom lift his arms up and, in mock agony,

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Choices

 
My current life as a locum tenens–a doctor who travels around to fill in for vacationing or ill physicians–is lonely. I spend endless days in hotel rooms, away from my family. But I chose this existence as an antidote to the professional exhaustion that threatened to end my surgical career. Regular panic attacks, maladaptive coping behaviors and compassion fatigue had turned me into a person I did not like or recognize.
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Reverse Burnout

 
I have a long commute to the hospital where I work. I’ve been doing this for a long time and have thought about retirement. So when I’m stuck on the turnpike in morning rush-hour traffic, when it takes me 60 to 90 minutes to get in to work, I often say to myslf, “Why am I doing this? Why not just quit, retire and enjoy life at home? I don’t need this aggravation.”
 
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My Puzzled Self

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” -Jiddu Krishnamurti

How many times have I tried to begin writing about my experience of stress and burnout?

I’ve lost count.

Each time I begin to write, detachment renders me into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. Where are the straight edges? Where is the frame? What is supposed to be where all of these empty spaces are? Where is the box lid with a picture to guide me?

A few years ago the medical library where I had worked for six

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