Before I knew it, I was waist deep in notecards and PowerPoint
slides for health assessment, nursing research and pharmacology. One day per
week was spent on campus attending lectures. It was a full day with little time
for breaks. As much I enjoyed my schooling (and truly, I did), I found by the
end of each Tuesday, my legs, involuntarily and ever so wildly, bobbed through
the last ninety minutes of lecture- a likely consequence of having consumed
three cups of coffee, knowing full well my body was done a long time ago. But a
girl had to do what a girl had to do to get through.
Two full days per week were still spent at the hospital
working as a nurse. I had been on my own in an apartment for some time, and I wasn’t
willing to move back home just to complete school if I didn’t truly need to.
More, I knew my experiences at the hospital would certainly enrich my growing knowledge
base. It also didn’t hurt being in close proximity to those whose careers
mimicked exactly what I had been striving toward. And I made certain to
capitalize on such opportunities with many seemingly spontaneous (yet previously
considered) questions about various roles in the profession.
Two additional days per week were spent at various clinical
locations, oddly left to our own choosing and our own finding. The idea of
trying different specialties on for size was invigorating. I was getting closer
to actually living out what I had been dreaming of for so long. And now I could
taste it.
Even still, a smart part of me couldn’t help but acknowledge
the nagging thoughts that had been smoldering below the surface. I half
wondered if this was all going to be too much. Full time graduate school and
part time nursing. I secretly wondered if the deck of cards I had been building
was going to come crashing down on me at any given moment. I didn’t know if I
could do it. I wasn’t sure it would all work. After all, my body hadn’t
tolerated working full time as a nurse. And truly, it was all I could do to
work the hours I had been assigned. Now, to add on full time schooling. I
couldn’t be sure.
But I also knew there was only one way to find out.
I began my rotations in a primary care setting, an area of
particular interest, where I cared for patients with a variety of health
concerns, young and old alike. As a novice, I was comforted by the idea that a
challenging patient would often be referred on to a specialist. There wasn’t
pressure to be the ‘know all be all’ for any given patient. Or so I thought.
More, I liked the idea of building rapport with patients and being afforded the
opportunity to cultivate deeper relationships over time.
I knew I would never be the practitioner to run head first
into a burning building. I wasn’t leading the charge when a patient coded, nor
was I the first to straddle a patient to perform lifesaving CPR. I did,
however, know when to get help and when to ask for it; and I wasn’t too
prideful to do so. Emergency medicine was not in the cards for me, and I was
okay with that. As a nurse, I had always found emergent situations to be
somewhat draining and rattling, and the last thing I needed was some external
stressor to trigger a flare.
And so, I eagerly focused my efforts toward outpatient
medicine. I spent my first rotation working with a young primary care physician
with short brown hair and worn brown dress shoes. He wore a white coat and a
warm smile. His patients liked him, and I could see why. Eager to teach as we
went through the day, I found myself vigorously jotting down notes between
cases, knowing I was gaining precious knowledge that I wouldn’t have otherwise
extrapolated from my textbooks. Some things were just better learned in person.
A lot of things actually.
My second rotation was also in a primary care setting with a
physician who happened to be very aware of his appearance, frequently
discussing his food intake as well as salsa dancing after work. Patient
interactions felt rushed and insincere as we raced through the day, seeing
upwards of forty patients per day (nearly double what I had seen in my prior
rotation). I was afforded little time for questions but was instead handed
several medical books to read and memorize. My workload had already reached a
staggering level, and it frustrated me that he would add to that. The volume of
knowledge we were expected to learn and retain was bordering ridiculous.
Doctors had four years to learn what we were expected to crank out in two! Nonetheless,
I sat in the back room of his office, book in hand, feebly wondering where I would
fall as things shook out over the next few years.
My rotations continued. Gynecology, orthopedics and gastroenterology.
As time passed I came to see the primary care glove was not the perfect fit to
my hand as I had once imagined. Instead, I found myself drawn to specialty medicine,
namely gastroenterology. I was intrigued by the diversity of the field in
caring for everything from autoimmune conditions to gallbladder and pancreatic
diseases to irritable bowel syndrome to the screening and discovery of various
forms of cancer. More, I had seen and cared for a good number of GI patients on
the infectious disease unit at the hospital as a nurse. Somehow, it seemed to
be an area of medicine that just made sense to me. I knew I would require much
on the job training, as I had been in an adult medicine program geared at nurse
practitioners working in the field of primary care. More, I hadn’t attended a
GI fellowship like that of my physician colleagues. Even still, something in me
was up for the challenge.
A few months passed, and before I knew it my clinical
rotations were drawing to a close. I couldn’t help but pause for a moment,
noting there was far more gray to the medical field than I had originally
anticipated. Sure, certain things would always be black and white. A hematocrit
of eight would always mean anemia, and a platelet count of 75,000 would always signify
thrombocytopenia (low platelets). But there seemed to be quite a bit of gray in
the profession as well. This gray area transcended personality types and social
skills. It included big things like decision making. There were nuances.
Moments of judgment requiring critical thinking, often left to the discretion
of the provider based on a given patient’s particular case. I had come to see
firsthand that lines weren’t always clearly etched which was both riveting and
terrifying.
See, I was always more of a rules girl. I excelled in
boundaries. I liked clear-cut solutions and believed hard work should always
pay off. “A” plus “B” should always equal “C” and never “D”, “E” or “Z”. But,
it turns out, like many things in life, medicine just wasn’t always so black
and white.
Black and white, it seems, had been the goggles I had
unknowingly worn for as long as I could remember. It was how I saw my
profession and even more, it was how I saw my life. This lens of cause and
effect was how I, at times (too many times if we’re being honest), judgmentally
viewed my friends and family. More, it was how I viewed my faith. It was why I anguished
over my rejection from medical school. All the pieces fit, or so I had thought.
Why wouldn’t God help me so that I
could help him? I was going to be a medical missionary after all. I had been a
good Christian, why wouldn’t God make
me healthy? Why wouldn’t he make my
father healthy? I had turned my life back to him, why wouldn’t God bring a man into my life?
But it wasn’t about me. A lesson I fear I needed on repeat
for many years to come. I had much to learn regarding the sovereignty of God. Regarding
his power. Regarding grace. And love.
These dreadful short-sighted goggles it turns out, revealed only
what was directly in front of me, completely handicapping my vision of God and
what he was doing unknowingly all around me.
Maybe, just maybe, it was time to take the goggles off.
Maybe it was time to see through a different lens.
Sure seemed scary to me. And with the changes occurring in
grad school coming to a close and things at church feeling less settled, I
found myself clinging harder than ever to my frail illusion of control. And so
I stubbornly duct- taped those bent goggles of mine and adorned them as I had
so many times before.
It was going to be a while before I would come to understand
what it meant to really see.
And really live free.
