Monday, July 11, 2011

Tragedy

The past few weeks have presented me and my family with the opportunity to work through the rigors of PA school while undergoing family tragedy.  There have been a number of aspects to this struggle, as most of you have experienced with your own personal tragedies.  We are by no means unique in this, but I am relating the story to share the experience with others so that they might better understand or at least commiserate with PA students and students of other medical professions.  Again I apologize for being purposefully vague, but the details belong to us.

It began about three weeks ago when a routine doctor visit yielded bad news.  News that we had dreaded, yet it came nonetheless.  I was thankful for compassionate preceptors who allowed me some time to deal with the bad news, but the next day I was back at work trying to make good decisions and be precise through a muddied mind, distracted (gladly so) by grief.  I was grateful that I had a supportive environment and a can-do family, otherwise I would have been unable to bear the weight of everything going on.

The second chapter (or the last half of the first) came today - another phone call striking me in my emotional gut, leaving me distracted and unable to think about anything but my family for quite a while.  But today, right after the phone call, I entered a patient room and the nice lady sitting there immediately started crying.  It seems our life tragedies had coincided on this day.  The difficulty I had was that my mind wanted to be elsewhere, my emotions were flowing in the equivalent of a re-entry tachy-arrhythmia - feeding upon themselves and blunting my empathy.  I was able to push it aside for our hour-long (though it was only intended to be a 1/2 hour) appointment and we even made some progress... for the patient.  Following that patient, I saw a lady I have been treating for depression and we worked through her struggles.  At the end of this day, my mind is numb, I lack much emotion and despite the weight of what is going on around me, I feel less than engaged, not as present as I should be. 

Thus today I had a valuable experience - balancing the emotional needs of my patients with the emotional needs of my family have become truly competing demands and I have worked through the first in what I am sure will be a long series of such episodes.  I can't say I have achieved success - it is too early to tell.  But I have survived the day, my family is resting at apparent peace, and my patients ambled back through the waiting room with many a thank you, appearing content with meds in the pharmacy and consults/referrals ordered. 

God is good, even in times of great trial.  May we never forget it. 

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