I’m just going to rant today because quite frankly I need it and it may not all be coherent or make sense but here it goes...
So today is a rougher day than usual. I get up and it’s harder and harder every day to just keep pushing along. No one said this journey was easy and for some reason, I can’t get hold of the emotions. I am supposed to be studying all day every day since, let’s be honest, in a few years I’ll have people’s lives in my hands, but I find that there is such a pressure to be beyond human. No matter what is going on in my life, lectures come, exams get closer, practicals loom... I got sick this passed weekend and it has put me so behind it is not funny. I am wearing myself out just to be able to catch up and yesterday I thought I had it for sure, but a family issue came up that I had to address. There was no postponing that and now I’m back where I started. Behind way more than I should be. I don’t have time to be human here. It is so fast paced and I know that my classmates are going through somewhat similar experiences but I look from the outside and they seem so on top of it. Do they just fake it better than I do?
It makes me wonder if I was really ready to start this journey... was I too ambitious? I have so much riding on me- people where I come from do not get this far in life. I was expected to get pregnant and end up at some random job wishing that I had made better choices in my life. I overcame that just to get all the way to this point and wonder if I’m made for this.
We had a professor say that we are all smart enough to be here but it is our work ethic or lack thereof that gets in our own way. I can definitely say that I understand there have been a few times where I could have studied but I didn’t but how do I stay sane while being all about books all the time? I can’t.
I want to help people. I want to make sure your daughter is born with all 10 fingers and 10 toes. I want to make sure your grandfather is well taken care of regardless of whether he was a janitor or the superintendent. I want to catch the pulmonary embolism in your sister’s lungs not just because she’s got 2 kids and a husband that depend on her, but because she’s a human being and she’s MY patient. I want these things. I’ve seen them. I put on the white coat with every confidence that I would be great. I would be amazing.. and yet now as I flounder and try to figure out a balance for my life, I wonder if my dreams were too big for me. Am I not working hard enough? Am I not managing the stress enough? Am I really just not smart enough? Do I have the stamina?
How we do in class has been traditionally indicative of how we do on our Boards and your Boards determine what you do for the next 40 years of practice... I don’t even know what I want to do yet but that test is what determines not what I should do but what I CAN do...not what is best fit in my opinion, but what the test has determined I am ABLE to do. So quite frankly, if I don’t get my shit together, and get it together fast, I will have busted my ass, scraped and clawed my way through the last 26 years of my life to spend the next 40 stuck, wishing I would have, thinking I maybe could have done better.
Okay. Feet back on the ground. The gravity of the exams and the pressure of doing well for the future and the lack of room to feel human... these are real... These are the emotions I suppress because I can’t feel this and do what I need to do. These are the emotions that sneak up on me, and overwhelm me when they have been suppressed too long because the reality is I cannot function the way I need to and feel. I need to suppress it all to do what I need to do. It’s just like my days in the hospital. Yes I watched a patient die. Yes I watched his family all ball their eyes out and scream their lungs out at the loss they were feeling. Yes I want to cry but I can’t. I stuff it all down because the woman in the next room has not died and still needs me to be clear and level headed. I’ve learned to suppress my need to express myself for the greater good, but there are moments when my humanity overtakes me and I need a cry, I need a hug, I need a nap, I need to write... and that’s okay. I work through it and go back. I have so much more respect for all the doctors I’ve ever been rude to, or judged because I was thinking about me and mine-I am now working to be that person who is not allowed to make mistakes, not allowed to need sleep, not allowed to be human...
But I make my own reality and I have decided that my reality is that I am human and that’s okay. I am going to do well. I am going to be okay. Time to shed a tear, write and go back to working my ass off now so I can save someone else’s life later.
