The exhaution does set in eventually. It's not that bad. But it's enough. It's the hours on end of concentration. Organizing your thoughts, your time, your day. Keeping updated on everything, flowing in towards you, random bombardments of packets of information. Thinking about the science, the evidence, dealing with your uncertanties, knowing that you don't know, constantly asking, sometimes groping to make a decision. Meanwhile walk into the room with a smile, or a solemn face, or something inbetween depending on which patient it may be, it's not insincere, it's just hard. Everyone is different. Every patient deals with varying degrees of illness in different ways. Family dynamics. Or complete and utter lonliness. Both are to be dealt with, across the hall from each other. Some are aloof, or cute, or just are, and talk endlessly, making your day difficult, making you feel bad that you wished they would just be quiet. Some are wonderfully positive, refreshing for you to interact with, they give something to you everyday when you visit them as you marvel and rejoice in basking in this person's positivity - yet feel a pain inside that perhaps they even don't feel because you know that they suffer. Some are lost in grief, and to those you put in energy, but the day's constraints hold you back, and after some effort you realize you can't solve the problem in 3, 5 or 15 minutes. But sometimes it really, really is - the "small" thing that makes a difference as cliche as it is. The compassion, the soft, sticky, organic side of us wrestles and plays and merges and breaks with the test tubes and the white coats and the machines. Day in and day out. Everyday, I get to know many people more intimately than most know them. I go inside them, inside their lives, their minds, I tell them about their kidneys, their heart, their veins, their lungs, and I sit next to them when they cry, hold their hands, make them laugh, tell them bad things and good things. Two intimate friends, but not close. And I make many of these friends every day. Yesterday I had 8 patients under my care, I knew them intimately, I spend time thinking about them, their problems, how to solve them, I fielded their different personalities - and today most of them are gone. I was immersed into their world for a day and then I tore myself out, with the words, "Ms. Franks is discharged."
If you did all that everyday. Wouldn't you be exhausted?
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2 comments:
Awesome seeing you posting again, I was about to ask what was up. This is so incredibly interesting to me. I wish I could just see the type of interactions that result from situations like this. I would assume that since doctors know such intimate details of a patients life, that the patient also ends up telling them about their "deep dark secrets." Since the only other people who know them so well are their closest of friends/family who they woul be telling their "deep dark secrets" anyway. Is this a correct assumption?
If it is, I wish I could just sit and watch. I swear if it weren't for my obsession with trying to learn everything and D.R.E.'s I would seriously consider being a doctor just to experience this kind of interaction.
hmmmm....a true social worker at heart....????
:)
you do such a wonderful job--you should be very proud of yourself.
:)
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