Cure This - Recommended Diaries

surviving

ms_noemi — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 06:05:13 GMT

How do we not let and prevent what goes on around us (external forces) from influencing our minds, hearts and bodies?
When I think about it, these external forces are not so external. When I write and repost about women of color that have been killed by their ex lovers or spouses, when I write about young children of color being murdered by their mothers; when I stop to contemplate and think about the murder about the killings that took place 100 years ago in a part of Texas where I will be passing by; when I stop to think about all these "external" influences and how they influence who I am today, how they influence my thinking and writing, my moods and heartbeats. But all these affect who I am and who I have become, how I/we got here and where we are going.

I have been working for a few years with survivors of domestic violence and survivors of human trafficking (not direct services, but legal services) yet I still find the stories lingering afterwards.

dropped from space

poppyseed — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:43:49 GMT

so we switched services yesterday-- which means that today is my first day at a new hospital. the strange feeling that i get on the first day of any service is back-- like i just woke up here one morning, no idea where i was, no idea who all these people are, can't find the bathroom or the call room or the cafeteria or most of the patients and then somebody hands me a pager and it all starts again.

family medicine, as a discipline, adds another layer-- you're rotating from adults to kids to pregnant people, you're in an emergency room or an ICU or an outpatient clinic: each of these kingdoms has its own rules, its own norms, its own routines and you can barely remember any of them and while you're still searching for the supply closet the service pager goes off.

so it's a few hours in and i've figured out where my patients are and can find their charts with relative assurance, but there's still this dreamy feeling that the real world is suspended somewhere and, for now, it's time for me to play a whole new role in a whole new world until i wake up and the dream starts over, in another hospital, in another specialty, where i will again feel like i've been dropped without warning straight into someone else's life.

leaving

poppyseed — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:35:46 GMT

it's very hard to leave the hospital. specifcally, it's very hard to leave the hospital at the hospital.

i'm sleeping very badly-- fragmented, non-restorative sleep-- tiny bits of dreams that take place in deserted, brightly lit hallways, long hours awake turning over and over, checking the clock, checking the clock, checking the clock, knowing that it's not working, knowing that i'm on in a dwindling number of hours, knowing that i need to sleep and that it's just not going to happen.

last night i was out to dinner with my boyfriend and his parents and i kept hearing the monitors going off. i kept trying to focus on what they were saying but my mind kept drifting back to the patients i'd seen that day-- i'd see little flashes of their faces or of the blood and pus from the abscess we drained that day.

the only thing that seems to help so far is my dog, who goes out of his mind with joy when i come home. right now, he's the only thing that can get me to really be home when i'm home.

hoping that maybe i'll maybe sleep some tonight

poppyseed — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:56:07 GMT

so tomorrow is my first real day as an intern. there's clinic from 9-noon and then i pull a shift at the ER, 4PM-midnight.

today, we sat around a big table and talked about our fears, jumping out of orientation and into the hospital, separated from one another, stranded in our separate services, scattered throughout the medical center. i sort of didn't even want to say what i was afraid of, as they're pretty big fears, but it did help to hear that everyone else was afraid of the same things-- hurting somebody, killing somebody, freezing under pressure... medical school is empowering in many ways, but it does kind of strip you of your sense of adequacy-- faced with all that nature can throw at a person, we're pretty small. we've all stood helpless at the bedside watching someone go through hell. the thing is, there was always someone else in charge, someone else who was supposed to think of something (anything!) to do.

now it's us, and i don't think we've ever felt so small.