God shows up

It's important, especially in the midst of sorrow and trial, to remember the good things, too.

I just finished listening to a presentation on the history of physician involvement in prison torture.  I won't...can't...say much else except that there were visuals.  Which is why I'm grateful to God for what happened next:

I went upstairs and grabbed a table so that I could try to "emerge", so to speak...and had barely been sitting here for five minutes when another student approached me on his way out for lunch.  TP is a retired family medicine practitioner, silver-haired but still remarkably sharp, and I've found over the past week that he has contributed much to discussions simply by virtue of his extensive life experience.  I haven't spent much time actually talking to him.  But today, he gave me a bit of a shocker when he just walked up to me and said:

"So when you eventually become a doctor, just remember the old guy who was in a class with you once...because I'll be one of your patients pretty soon."  At this, I began to stammer in my self-deprecating way, whereupon he cut me off and continued: "I have to say that I'm really impressed with you - the way you answer questions, the compassion in your heart, your kindness toward everyone you meet."  "But you've only known me for a week!" I exclaimed.  His reply: "But I can tell already...and I can't wait to be your patient."

Wow.

Forever and almost always

Once in a while, I encounter a song that puts some kind of invisible-but-very-real bind around my chest.  Take, for example, these lyrics penned by Kate Voegele herself (who, I must say, has a beautifully smooth voice in addition to an attentive songwriting-mind.  Well done, Pandora):

I'll be fine; just love me when you can

And I'll wait patiently

I'll wake up every day just hoping that you still care

S says that "[I] have better things to wake up for."  Not right now, I don't.  Right now, this is all I want.  Ugh...that's stubborn of me.  Even the words, as they appear on my screen, look like belligerence.  Here's the thing, though: after a full day of vacillating between fragility and refusing to break, I'm ending the day feeling...steely.  (It makes sense, especially physiologically, that I'd need a break from all of the crying, although it may not be the healthiest choice to run to the other extreme and decide to try to not feel anything.)  But I'm tired of battling this expectation (whether it's from others or just from myself) to be happy and fun and bubbly and social and light all the time.  God meets me where I am.  He is, as I learned in church this morning, compassionate...and compassionate for me.  Yes, He meets me where I am, and where I am is none of those things...not today.  And I need to let that be okay.

A balancing act

[This is my first journal entry (a reflective writing exercise) for my Health and Human Values class.]

Toward the close of today’s lecture session, Dr. M posed the following question: “How are we motivated by the joy of others to join in their joy, and by the suffering of others to do something to relieve it?”  (He went on to attribute such responses to the activity of mirror neurons in the brain.)  This question drove me to reflect on one aspect of medicine which I expect will challenge me in the near future, especially once I am permitted to interact with patients: the necessary balance between maintaining emotional distance from their pain, and allowing compassion and empathy to inform my caregiving.

A dear friend of mine recently commented to me, “S, you are no passive observer of life.”  Not only am I inclined to agree with him, but I am also convinced that this kind of fire will serve me well as a physician.  The passion itself deserves explanation, of course, as it is a manifold creature – it includes anger (both righteous and unrighteous, I admit) as well as compassion.  In the context of my fast-approaching entry into medical school, I often feel compelled to consider my capacities for all of these emotions, but I want to use this particular space now to focus on compassion.

I am, by nature, the kind of person who feels deeply, no matter what the emotion.  Naturally, this character trait has always rewarded me with substantial and fulfilling relationships in my life.  However, it also comes with an important limitation: its tendency to drive me into distress, and sometimes even incapacitation (at which point, of course, I always try to employ appropriate coping strategies).  Seeing another person’s pain occasionally causes me to wonder what kind of significant difference I, a single physician, will ever be able to make in this broken world.  It’s a paralyzing experience indeed, and one that hits hardest when I encounter the stories of patients who suffer from illnesses with which I have a personal connection.  (I have already had one such experience in class, and today was only the second day!)  So I expect that both as a medical student and as a physician, I would do well to constantly check myself – to ensure that I am never becoming too emotionally involved with my patients.  At this point, I am not sure about how best to conduct this kind of self-evaluation.  However, I expect that I will learn more than enough about this at medical school (if not formally, then at least experientially).

I am reminded now of something written by Ann Voskamp, a favorite blogger of mine: “Compassion isn’t merely a vague sense – but a feeling so strong that it causes you to bend: it shapes your body, your life, into a response…it’s birthed out of the Latin ‘pati’ and ‘cum’ and it means ‘to suffer with’.  Compassion chooses to suffer with the sick, to be kicked in the gut, to weep with the weak, to pray with the powerless, to cry with the castoffs.  Compassion is the condition of being fully with.”[i]  Indeed, there will come a day when another human being entrusts himself/herself to my professional care, and I will gladly accept that challenge, that person’s burden.  I want to be shaped into a person who, as well as “suffering with” her patients, has the ability and acumen to respond with a therapeutic touch, whatever that may mean (i.e. a drug, a referral, or even just a simple conversation).

That has always been my reason for pursuing medicine: I want to be with those who hurt, firstly so that we can be human together…and then, using all of the knowledge and experience I will accrue in the years to come, so that I can heal.  To use Voskamp’s phrasing, I want to bend.  But like any human response, bending involves complexities of which any future physician should be prepared to address on a personal level.  I want to bend, yes, but not to the point where I break and cannot serve.  I want to be motivated by suffering, yes, but not to the point where suffering is all I can see.  So it’s my hope, now, that the next chapter of my education will teach me how to find the balance I need.

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[i] Voskamp, Ann.  “When Compassion becomes a Gold Rush.”  Web log post.  A Holy Experience.  N.P., 12 Nov. 2011.  12 Nov. 2011.  http://www.aholyexperience.com/2011/11/when-compassion-becomes-a-gold-rush/.