ANTOINETTE: Changin’ of Seasons

Why hello there.

Alas, our 3-week summer break came and went. Summer, I hardly knew thee. While it was short, it was definitely sweet. Par for the course, I left the country on the first flight out of Atlanta for 3 glorious weeks in the motherland (‘Nam) and Thailand.

Now, 3 modules and a fall break later, we’re in the midst of delicious autumn. Fall gets me excited for cool nights, all things pumpkin, and the return of the sweater. But it also means our pre-clinical years are coming to an end and studying for the boards looms ahead. We did an exercise last week during small group where we had to write for 10 minutes about a critical experience that affected us during the last 18 months or so. I couldn’t come come up with a negative incident and instead, I just free-wrote.

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The patient sat atop the examining table as my preceptor looked into her ear with an otoscope. She’d had a history of otitis media and now presented with some hearing problems. But it wasn’t the patient that had my attention. It was the toddler laying in the stroller aside the table. She had piercing gray-blue eyes and was waking up from a nap. Before she could cry, I asked the patient if I could hold her. I gingerly picked her up and held her tight to my chest, rocking back and forth. Not a peep came out of her mouth and she looked at me with those big ol’ eyes as she clenched and unclenched her fists. I felt a pang in my ovaries and some tears in my eyes, but that’s not news. (My tears are pretty cheap these days). My preceptor looked at me and noted, “You’re good at that.” Somehow, this little child had completely made my day. I forgot I was in clinic for a moment and thought about my little cousins (I have 9 under the age of 7) and my family and how much I missed them. I walked to the Grady shuttle stop that day with a grin on my face and a bounce in my step…for no real reason.

And what struck me was how easy it’s been to retain my “humanity” in medical school. Everyone talks about the inevitability of cynicism and how cases can start becoming about the disease rather than the patient. Maybe it’s preemptive and presumptuous of me to say this, before I start clinical rotations and get worn down by the system and numbed by fatigue, but almost a year and a half into medical school, that’s not how I feel. As we share and confide in each other, I’m often struck by the awesome responsibility that we have ahead of us. And on those really tough days that’ll certainly arise, I have a feeling I’ll be repeating to myself “never stop caring” and “that patient is someone’s son, someone’s daughter.” Call me naïve, but to me, those kinds of lessons are invaluable.

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Nothing profound, slightly melodramatic but regardless, it was cathartic to put it on paper. It made me regret the fact that I haven’t journaled often during medical school: too tired, too busy, too whatever. But sometimes, it’s good to stop, reflect… and then jump into a pile of crunchy, dry leaves.

newly minted M2,
Antoinette