“Annual leave already?? You’ve barely done any work!” - my dad jokes when I make the journey home for a few days during my much longed for annual leave.
I jump to justify my need for time off, time away from the hospital using physical, measurable aspects of the job - how I’d worked almost 120 hours over the previous two weeks, how I’d been alternating sets of nights and days, how often I’d end up eating my packed lunch for dinner, how I’d discovered that if you ignore the desire to pee long enough - it goes away. Tangibly difficult things about the job.
And just like that I realise there are aspects of my job that I will probably never discuss with my parents. My parents are not medical, they work in STEM fields, but they’re not medical and there are things about what I do that I think just would never even occur to them.
How just two short months post graduation I’ve pondered the absolute craziness that I, as a fresh faced doctor of a couple weeks experience, have had to manage the emotional fallout of -
Writing “this may represent a terminal event” in multiple peoples notes, all times of the day - and the weight of what those words carry
Waking people up in the night to quietly inform them that they have indeed had a heart attack - and that one time a quiet voice in the dark just replied to me “I knew it”
Experiencing that fear that washes over you when you turn the corner to see the patient you’ve been called about and realise that this is a patient who needs a senior review now, before I’ve even introduced myself, before I even check their obs or their drug kardex
Shouting “can I get some help in here please” in exactly that tone and cadence that every healthcare professional understands is enough to convey that something very serious is occurring behind this curtain
Explaining to grief stricken relatives, the precise process of confirming their loved one is dead, and asking whether they would like to go and have a cup of tea whilst I do this job - and the quiet stillness of the room when they leave
That I, as a 25 year old who continues to celebrate the arrival of a pay check as if it is a miracle I thought may never happen, have had discussions with relatives over a strangers mobile phone, advising them that perhaps if they feel like they need to come in, that they should come in but that I could not predict whether they should come in, if you know what I mean.
Me - the 25 year old with no life experience and mismatching socks and who woke up too late to have breakfast and who keeps of forgetting to phone home at a reasonable hour - I have experienced these staggering, emotionally charged, emotionally draining scenarios. And then I just go home and make my dinner and watch some tv and go to bed.
And sitting on the train or standing in the queue at Tesco’s and thinking that to everybody else around me I’m yet another 25 year old who looks like 21, and how the world has no clue what has happened, and that even when the worst happens and it feels like the world should have stopped - people keep on going, the clocks keep on turning.
That bizarre freedom that nobody knows who I am, nobody looks at me as if I should know exactly what is going on and exactly what to do about it.
My parents will probably never understand how it feels to gently hold a persons hand as they struggle to breathe, with the hopes of managing to soothe them enough so they can tolerate their non-invasive ventilation mask. And why should they?
It’s a massive, and quite true, stereotype that whenever medics get together, conversation will always regress into chat about work. And actually - how could it not? Now I look at my fellow FY1s and realise that we’re all becoming slowly filled with these intimate, delicate, highly charged experiences, and that drive to offload is there - but only to somebody who understands.
It’s a completely, utterly, unbelievably bizarre world we’ve found ourselves in - and we’ve just got to muddle our way through it somehow.
jbbartram-illu
gummygunk
romaincrisis
stormborns
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