When you do what I do and commit large amounts of your time to something where the reward is far off, you start to wonder if it’s worth it. I’m almost there and so the reward feels much closer, but the sacrifice starts to feel a lot larger too. As you go along, you start to see the trouble it’s caused in your relationships, you start to realize that the time you so easily gave up with your loved ones, you can’t get back. In the back of my mind, I have a fear that I’ll get hit by a car or die suddenly, all of my work and sacrifice suddenly for not, or that I'll lose another loved one and feel the lost time even more. I had an acquaintance in medical school that went off to residency up north, she tried driving after an all-night stint and was killed in the resultant car accident. When I heard that, I was horrified, not only at her death but at the massive unfairness of it. I wonder if she knew about her impending death, would she still do it? Would she still use up these years of her life, in the cocoon waiting to emerge?
Imagine some mysterious man came up to you and made this offer, “If you will disappear for 7 years of your life starting now, when you reappear you’ll gain instant prestige and respect, you’ll be 100 times over wiser than you are now, you’ll be paid well for a job that you would do for free, and everyday you’ll make a huge difference in people’s lives, sometimes even in those of your family and friends. You’ll be so much more than you are now. But for those years you give me, you will be mine, you will be tested in punishing and sometimes horrible ways and you’ll lose some of your friends and family along the way. When you awake you’ll be greatly changed and the world you knew will be in large gone, for better or worse, you will never get that time back or the relationships I will take during your 7 year slumber. ” It sounds mystical, but it’s not far off from the truth of it.
When you are young it’s so easy to sacrifice your future, you have so much of it. You feel as if you will live forever. Now looking back, it should have been a much bigger decision. It’s a gamble, I might die tomorrow…was it worth it? I don’t know…I think it has been thus far, but who knows what the future holds. Would you take that man up on his offer?
Newbie Doc
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Stockholm Syndrome
I'm going on to PICU for my last stint of it during residency, considering the job that I'm taking it will actually be my last month of it EVER. I have mixed emotions regarding this. Stockholm syndrome is a phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. I've found time and time again that when placed in an overly "abusive" environment I begin to identify with the "abuser", in this instance it's the PICU, other times it has been Wards. It's odd, but while I know it's a punishing environment I begin to love it a little, to look forward to the intensity. Am I crazy? I think it's a coping stratagy, I do this with attendings who stress me out...typically I find myself trying to emulate them in some way. I think this attitude developed from being picked on in high school, I adapted and “survived” by becoming more similar to the people slinging the shit. Maybe I was born with this behavior in my blood, who knows.
I’m nervous before going into the PICU. It’s not that I’m scared that I will hurt a patient or that they will die, it’s what I’m going to see. The last time I was in the PICU was over a year ago, yet there are patients I still see vividly.
There’s the kid who drowned, but lived enough to be a vegetable on a ventilator. How about the kid who was hit by a car and his brain got infected leaving a huge bucket of puss where his brain should have been. Sadder yet is the kids who look like my sons, there’s the four year old who playing with his brother mildly hit his belly on the couch and started bleeding internally, he was diagnosed here with a very aggressive metastatic tumor of the kidney, I still remember his name and his parents faces. How about the kid who came in with headaches and fever an MRI scan revealed that his brain looked like swiss cheese, a fungus was eating him alive. I could go on and on. It’s a little like going to war I imagine. I’m a little nervous about working there, but much more overwhelming is the dread I feel in the proposition of carrying more of these stories around with me at the end of the month.
Paradoxically, mixed in that fear/dread is a sweat taste of hard work, earning my keep, helping people…somewhere in there is mixed a little love for the PICU…and that makes me wonder if I’m going insane.
Newbie Doc
I’m nervous before going into the PICU. It’s not that I’m scared that I will hurt a patient or that they will die, it’s what I’m going to see. The last time I was in the PICU was over a year ago, yet there are patients I still see vividly.
There’s the kid who drowned, but lived enough to be a vegetable on a ventilator. How about the kid who was hit by a car and his brain got infected leaving a huge bucket of puss where his brain should have been. Sadder yet is the kids who look like my sons, there’s the four year old who playing with his brother mildly hit his belly on the couch and started bleeding internally, he was diagnosed here with a very aggressive metastatic tumor of the kidney, I still remember his name and his parents faces. How about the kid who came in with headaches and fever an MRI scan revealed that his brain looked like swiss cheese, a fungus was eating him alive. I could go on and on. It’s a little like going to war I imagine. I’m a little nervous about working there, but much more overwhelming is the dread I feel in the proposition of carrying more of these stories around with me at the end of the month.
Paradoxically, mixed in that fear/dread is a sweat taste of hard work, earning my keep, helping people…somewhere in there is mixed a little love for the PICU…and that makes me wonder if I’m going insane.
Newbie Doc
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