Today I have decided to create a blog! In the past, I have created blogs for trips or I have created shared blogs. However, I've never had an ongoing blog for "daily life." I am realizing more and more that each and every day can be so very rich, whether one is on a trip or not. Even the most "mundane" or "ordinary" days can be quite extraordinary and meaningful.
I am excited to write. I enjoy posting on Facebook and such; however, I notice that I desire to write more than just one to two sentence updates. To have a place to quietly share my thoughts, to process and to reflect feels very therapeutic and relaxing. And at times quite cathartic. This impulse to write has been especially strong these past 5 weeks as I've been on ICU -- 3 weeks of day ICU and 2 weeks of night ICU. As I wrote on Facebook "Just finished 5 weeks of ICU! So grateful for such a rich, challenging, educational, and humbling experience! I feel so lucky to work here at CCRMC with so many compassionate, dedicated, and brilliant colleagues. Thank you all for making coming to work such a joy. And a huge thank you to all of my patients who continue to teach me so much about vulnerability, courage and grace." My desire to write was so strong sometimes I felt my chest almost bursting at the seams. Writing can be such a powerful exercise and it continues to fascinate and humble me how many new insights and connections arise during the writing process. Something happens when things are written down; experiences can be seen in a whole new light, can be transformed, solidified and digested.
It's 8:54PM yet it feels like it's midnight at least. Makes sense as I woke up at 2AM after sleeping 12 hours during the day yesterday. I know it will take some time to adjust to daytime but I am going to try to get home to go to bed ASAP. My body is tired. Today was lovely and strange being in sunlight and seeing friends. The light was almost blinding. Much joy bubbled up as I hung out with my friends. I feel so lucky to be here and to be working with such incredible people! What a wonderful community this is. Everyone was so sweet and said "Welcome back to days!" Feels good to be back and I also miss certain parts of nights. I had a fabulous team of residents, nurses and attendings. I also like the pace of nights (as long as it's not too crazy!) There is a certain peace when all the lights are out and there is less overall movement around the hospital. I very much enjoyed working with the nurses. They have taught me and continue to teach me so much. Many attendings also generously stayed in house. It was wonderful having them around to run things by. We had some very sick patients, and I am so grateful for their guidance. It blows my mind that some of my attendings just graduated from our program last year! They are so smart and their clinical acumen is quite impressive. I think they are intrinsically very smart and I think our program rocks! CCRMC is such an empowering learning environment. We are so lucky to be here. I feel like I've fallen more and more in love with CCRMC over this past year. :) Residency is certainly challenging, but I'm so grateful to be in such a robust learning environment with such passionate and caring docs and other staff!
It's strange to suddenly be out of the ICU. It feels abrupt. I miss my patients, their families, my inpatient colleagues and just being in the hospital. I am slowly acclimating back to the outpatient world. Today I had clinic. 8 patients showed. I haven't had clinic in awhile since I've been on ICU. It felt great to be back, and I also felt a little rusty in terms of clinic flow. Still, it was really nice to see some of my regular pts. The more I am in clinic the more I think about social determinants of health and "upstream" issues. I am curious where my path will take me but I've been noticing that in addition to palliative care and integrative medicine, something I'm really passionate about is FOOD. Food justice is what I think people are calling it. Access to food. So many of my patient's health issues directly result from poor diet, but one can't blame them at times because the cheapest food in our society is typically very unhealthy. Patients need to be motivated and take responsibility for their health AND we need to set people up for success and surround them with healthy options so that they CAN make these decisions. I think back to Greg Downey's awesome class at ND "Cultural Difference, Social Change." We read "When Corporations Rule the World" and watched part of "The Corporation." I feel like the corporate model underlies so many of our problems today --> it's all about the tragedy of the commons. Wait. Brain tired. Want to be rested when writing more about this. I want to explore this more, this intersection between food access and health. And education. Will return to this.
For now, will try to take care of my health :) and pull myself away from clinic and go to bed. All in all, very grateful to have survived ICU (relieved in fact) and very grateful for that incredible opportunity. I think it's definitely been one the highlights of residency for me. I had been nervous about it for quite sometime but everyone was so supportive and it ended up being one of the most meaningful, rich and positive experiences in that past 1.5+ years here at Co Co County. Dr. Fish told me "You should note that. Think about what you really love and don't as you go from rotation to rotation. Let this guide you as you think about what you want to do later." Hmm good point. Interesting because I didn't realize I would like critical care so much. I reflect on what I enjoyed the most and I think a big part of it was that the learning was so rich. I think Western medicine shines in critical care (vs chronic conditions. Andrew Weil wrote about this in his book "Health and Healing," and I've found this to be true, though it's gradually improving). I faced some fears both conscious and I believe subconscious. In varying degrees, being in the ICU has been somewhat difficult since Daddy passed away. Seeing patients with ARDS has been hard. Seeing families of pts has been particularly hard. It was just yesterday that we were in their shoes. We know what it's like...a mixture of fear, grief, denial, hope, shock, confusion, love. Such an emotional time. One of our patient's passed away while I was on service. I would like to write more about this in a future post. It was a very moving experience.
Well, I feel I am fading. Please forgive me if anything above is incoherent or misspelled etc. I shall now rest. Goodnight and I give thanks for this day of transition back to the World of Daylight.
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