Archive for the ‘The Graduate School’ Category

I have this situation at school that is just eating at me. I’m trying not to over think it or let it bother me too much, but it’s just…I don’t know.

A few weeks ago I got an email from one of my teachers and she asked me if I would come into class a few minutes early so she could put some tape on my back that would cause me to walk like a patient who had a stroke for a gait class and I agreed. They had me walk back and forth across the room several times and my classmates analyzed the gait patterns. When they had finished the gait analysis, they removed the tape and asked me if I’d walk across the room again so they could compare to my normal gait pattern.

Unsurprisingly, the normal gait evaluation showed that I have weakness in the muscles in my hips. I’ve had significant decrease in strength since last year and the multiple weeks of bedrest and it’s something that has been frustrating for me, and it’s also likely largely responsible for the knee issues I was having a few months ago. A week of true bedrest can weaken muscles so much that it takes up to a yea to rebuild strength.

Anyway, one of my classmates, someone I would not consider a friend, finds the fact that my hips are weak HILARIOUS. Over the course of the past few weeks, every time he has seen me he has asked if I’m any stronger. He asks if I’ve been doing exercises. He perpetually asks obnoxious questions about those stupid weak muscles.

And this past week it’s gotten worse. I was studying with friends in our exercise lab and he broke into our conversation to say that maybe I should study that exercise more since it would help my weak muscles. He saw me after a lab where we analyzed our foot pressure spots and asked if my weak muscles had shown up on my foot map, which of course it hadn’t, he was just taking a shot at me. Again.

It’s just…I don’t know. It would be one thing if this guy thought we were friends (and he’s not hitting on me, trust me). It would be one thing if we were having a conversation at the time and he wasn’t just walking up to me to make a snide remark.

But it’s not that.

It feels more malicious. It bothers me. It makes me feel uncomfortable. It makes me feel inferior, weak. Inadequate. And I hate that. I hate that someone has that power over me right now. And that it’s someone that I don’t even like. And it’s an extra struggle because I hate confrontation and this would be a pretty awkward one too.

I just don’t know. I don’t know if he thinks he’s being funny or friendly, or if he is intentionally harassing me. I’m hesitant to throw the word “bullying” onto this situation, but that is increasingly what it feels like. It feels like he’s enjoying putting me down in front of other people. It feels like he’s doing this because making me feel crappy is fun for him.

And I honestly do not know what to do about it.

I noticed when I was cleaning out old drafts a few weeks ago that I started a blog post a year ago. I never finished it, and that’s not normal for me. I don’t have so many extra ideas floating around that I can leave one open. I’m just not that creative.

So I looked to see what I had started to write about.

“About once a day, I toil around with the idea of quitting of school. I think about what I could do for money or for insurance and if I really hated teaching as much as I think I did. I wonder what the process of quitting would go like, if I could just stop going one day and that would be it or if there would need”

And that’s as far as I got.

I remember writing it. And I remember stopping, because I was crying too hard to see the words on the page.

A year ago I was at rock bottom in school. I was ready to quit, I cried every single day. Few of my friends realize how serious I was about quitting. How close I came. How ready I was to walk away and never come back. Or how I actually called the program director to tell her I was done, but I had to leave a message and my husband talked me down before she had time to call me back.

What a difference a year has made.

School is still incredibly tough. I’m still fighting battles on multiple fields and yes, my grades are probably not as good as they could be, but they are good enough. And today I started my second clinical rotation, which though very, very different from the last one, is going to be good and I am certain I’m going to learn a lot.

It’s hard for me to think about last year. It’s hard for me to imagine where I’d be if I had given up, if I had quit and walked away.

But what matters is that I didn’t. I didn’t quit. I didn’t walk away. I’m still giving it every ounce of my strength, my (metaphorical) blood, sweat and more (literal) tears than it probably deserves.

Considering how much things have changed in this year, I can only hope that this next year is even better.

(The really awesome giveaway is up on the review site, go and win yourself something awesome!)

I have been dealt some crap. That’s no secret. I mean, 14 months of headache. That’s a crappy hand of cards. It just is. Plain and simple. I seem to generate bad luck, or crazy coincidences. It’s just one of my many gifts. It is, admittedly, one I’d like to give back.

Last week I wrote about being placed in my upcoming clinical in the same hospital that my grandma died in (because what are the freaking odds of that?). After days of anxiety I finally went and spoke to the director of clinical education. I leveled with him. I told him my fears (he almost immediately determined that I am “one of those people who needs to be in control.” Which apparently is a fact that I may as well tattoo on my arm because apparently I don’t hide my issues very well.) and he listened.

We talked for a half an hour longer than the meeting was scheduled. We talked 20 minutes longer than he even wanted to stay at school. It was Friday afternoon, after all. I cried. I chewed on my fingernails until they were nubs.

And forty five minutes later, a decision had been made. That clinical rotation was not the best thing for me.

I have been placed into a different environment, one that doesn’t make me want to cry. One that isn’t keeping me up late at night. One that doesn’t require me to be on constant anxiety medication.

Because besides my often crazy crappy hands of cards, one of the things I’ve been blessed with is extremely understanding people in my life. With people who care about me, who care about my well being, my safety.

And I’m guessing in a year or two, I won’t remember that this ever happened. I won’t remember the anxiety, the nail biting, the crying.

But I will remember that someone cared. That someone helped me.

Because I’m blessed with a lot of things. And some of them are pretty great.

For my monumental 1,001st post, I’m popping in, oh so briefly, to tell you that I am alive and mostly well-ish. I just happen to be buried underneath a huge pile of studying for tests and learning why procrastination is bad.

Though, seeing as how I’m posting this at 12:24 am, I may still have a ways to go on that whole procrastination lesson.

To entertain you in my absence (which should only be until Tuesday night, I hope), I recommend that you watch these videos (first this, then this), in order. Not at work probably. Unless your work is made of awesome.

You’re welcome.

Tonight is one of those nights where I just need to write something out.

I have a clinical rotation coming up later this month. It’s just a two weeker, so compared to the 7 weeks this summer, it’s not a huge deal. All my friends got their placements a few weeks ago and most of them were set up with some really amazing clinics and facilities. Two of them are going to the same place my sister works at (where I’m not allowed to go, unfortunately), others are getting the exact places they requested.

We each had a meeting with the director of clinical education before we created our “wish lists” for this clinical. I told him that I really, desperately want to work in pediatrics. I want to experience NICU and PICU rotations and see a variety of inpatient and outpatient peds settings. I have no doubt that pediatrics is where I am meant to work.

In the meeting I also explained that I have pretty severe strength deficits in my left hand. I don’t go around just shouting that from the rooftop, I only mentioned it because in our field there are settings where I need to be able to physically support the weight of adults by myself and frankly, I don’t feel safe doing it. We have always been encouraged to consider our safety and our patient’s safety first, and I politely expressed concern over that very thing.

The clin ed director was nice, but not concerned with my hand or my safety. If anything, he seemed to want to prove to me that I can work in any setting, hand be damned. Which is a nice thought, but we all have limits and I really think that’s one of mine.

So when I got my placement by email last night I was upset. I’d even say angry.

I didn’t get placed in pediatrics, which is frustrating, but not the end of the world. I have several more clinicals left to go, and there is still time for me to experience pediatrics. But I got placed in pretty much the exact setting I told him I wasn’t comfortable in. And I got placed in my hometown, which wouldn’t be such a big deal except one of the 2 weeks of the clinical is the same time as Slappy’s only remaining week off in 2010. And he really don’t want to vacation at my mom’s house (no offense mom).

But it gets worse.

It turns out that this setting isn’t just tough for my physically, it’s also going to be tough mentally. Because it is an ICU. Which is really something I’d hoped to avoid.

And wait, we’re not done yet.

It’s not just any ICU. It’s the ICU that my grandma died in. It’s in the hospital where I last saw my grandma alive. That hospital. That ICU.

My anger dissolved quickly. Because it wasn’t really anger in the first place. It was fear and it was sadness all along, I just didn’t recognize it.

This setting scares me. The ICU scares me. And visiting one with my class a few weeks ago did not help. If anything, it scared me more. I managed to not hyperventilate or pass out in my 45 minutes there, but I also struggled to do anything except spend the entire time focusing on not hyperventilating and not passing out.

And now I have to do it for two weeks. In the place my grandma died.

It’s just fear on top of fear on top of grief.

And it’s a tough situation because, yes, this would be a great learning experience. And I want to learn, that’s why I devote most of my working non-internet hours to school. I want to be a better clinician, I want to hone my skills and become well rounded. But I feel like there is a finite number of fears I can conquer at once and this is too many.

I can’t seem to collect myself to figure out how to deal with this. How to make this work when it seems so entirely unworkable. How to talk to the director of clin ed and explain my concerns without sounding silly.

I don’t know what to do.

But for the record, crying and worrying hasn’t helped much. Yet.

Hey Mom.

So, today was my first day of school, which I know you know, but not everyone else does and since I’m sharing this with the rest of the world, I thought I should give some background.

I wasn’t really nervous, but I couldn’t sleep last night. It really helped that my husband threw his back out right about the time that we were both planning on going to bed, so we were delayed for an hour while I mocked him worked on his back a little. And then, just as I was falling asleep, I realized that my parking permit was in my mail pile instead of a logical place like in my car or on my windshield where it’s supposed to be (and then I put it on while driving today. Which was both unsafe and a pretty bad idea considering that I didn’t really want it at such a jaunty angle. File that under life lesson, I guess.)

So, I got up really early this morning, and you know how much I love mornings. I showered, got ready and headed out the door to sit in traffic for an hour. Thankfully I gave myself plenty of time, which would be totally unnecessary if people stopped staring at car accidents as they drive by them. I mean, what do they think is going to happen? It’s a car accident, not an art installation. DRIVE YOUR CARS.

Sorry. A little off track.

My first class seems like it’s going to be awesome, which makes up for the second and third class. The sad thing is, I think you’d probably love my third class. It’s all research and appraisal and boring crap like that. I feel about that class the way you feel about geology. Just no.

But I know that you’re really only reading this for one reason and it’s for the coveted first day of school photo. Yes, I remembered, I always remember. I just rarely remember to show them to you. I want you to know that it took me a solid 10 minutes to get a decent picture for you because as it turns out, my photography skills are still leaving a little to be desired.

Hmmm…

Closer…

This will have to do.

But no matter what, it’s already about 100 times better than my first day of school picture last year. It was obviously the camera’s fault.

p.s. Did you see this yet?

Tomorrow,

I finish my first clinical rotation.

I finish my first full year of graduate school.

I will have succeeded at something I thought I’d fail at.

I will have succeeded at something that I was told by some that I should quit.

I will have exceeded expectations. Including my own.

I know it seems silly. There are 95 other people in my program alone who are finishing a clinical (though it is their second, since I missed my first), it’s not really a noteworthy occasion in and of itself.

But when you finish your first year of graduate school having been on medical leave of absence twice, in addition to having a 5 pound lifting restriction for 3 months of the second semester and missing more than 15 days in the first semester, then, well, it at least feels noteworthy. Sometimes it feels parade worthy, if we’re being honest.

And not only did I finish, not only did I accomplish this goal, I did a really good job. I have received really great evaluations, positive feedback and really great constructive criticism. I’ve learned so much and I feel like I’ve grown in this profession. I feel reaffirmed in my career choice, I feel like I can actually do this. Like I want to actually do this.

And I feel so thankful for those who supported me, who wouldn’t let me quit all the times I tried. Who let me cry to them when it seemed hopeless, and cry some more when it seemed even more hopeless. Who told me they’d love me no mattered what happened.

This happened. Thank you for loving me through it.

33 days down, just 1 more to go.

Today I reached the halfway point for my clinical rotation. TODAY I REACHED THE HALFWAY POINT. I know, you don’t like the shouting, but I just felt like that needed to be yelled, because it’s kind of a big deal to me.

In honor of today being such a big landmark for me, my body decided to pull out all the stops. My left hand which is normally week and clumsy, was all kinds of screwed up. I couldn’t feel my 4th and 5th fingers on my left hand at all, and I could barely coordinate the movements of it. My head has been a special brand of miserable, and on like 5 different occasions I was totally convinced I was sitting through an earthquake. I wasn’t.

Thankfully no one seemed to notice.

Each day, I fight pain, I fight anxiety, I fight whatever that day is going to hold both from my body and from my patient list, and I do the best that I can. I don’t remember everything I’ve learned or everything I’ve been told to do. I don’t remember some of the things I should and sometimes I’m not as great at what I’m doing as I’d like to be.

But I am doing the best that I can, and so far, it’s enough. It’s more than enough. I’m not just surviving, honestly, I’m succeeding. I’m getting compliments, I’m getting some praise. I’m getting told by my clinical instructor that I’m managing more than she did when she was at my level in her education. I’m getting told by my patients that I’m making a difference.

I am imperfect and I’m accepting that. I fumble a lot, I struggle, I still mumble and second guess myself about a thousand times a day, but I am succeeding.

I can scarcely tell you how close I came to quitting school last year. My husband talked me down off a ledge I was more than ready to jump head first off of. I had drafted the letter to my program director, I had told some friends. I didn’t think there was any way I’d pass my classes that semester, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to actually go on a clinical. I didn’t think this was possible. I cried for hours at the thought of watching this dream dissolve, a dream I had already worked hard for.

It’s possible. I am succeeding. I am still working so incredibly hard for it.

I know you’re all probably tired of hearing it. I know this isn’t exciting to a lot of you, but it’s something I’m just incredibly proud of, something I want and need to celebrate. I haven’t had all that many things to celebrate in the last 12 months, or many things that I felt like celebrating.

I’m celebrating this. I’m celebrating surviving. I’m celebrating managing. I’m celebrating success.

I’m halfway.

I saw a new patient today at my clinical. Her referral listed a simple diagnosis, but it was apparent from the moment she walked in that she’d be anything but simple.

She was near to my age, lived near me and well, the more I read on her chart, the more I found that we had in common. This girl who was so much like me on paper, was also obviously in a lot of pain. She later told me that on a scale of 0 to 10, her pain was a 30. And you know what? I believed her. There are many people who say their pain is a 12 out of 10, and it’s not that I don’t believe them, but I often wonder if I could tolerate their pain. You know? I wonder if their 10 is the same as my 10.

Not this girl.

I looked this girl in the eye and I saw bits of myself. I saw sadness and defeat. I saw hope that was dwindling, but still present. But I also saw pain that if I’m lucky, I will never understand. I saw hardship that she doesn’t deserve, that I’m not sure she can handle, that I’m not sure anyone can handle.

I wanted to take her hand and tell her all about the chronic pain resources I know, about all the wonderful people on the internet, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t for a number of reasons, but mostly because I was so completely beside myself that I couldn’t hardly utter any words besides the ones I have rehearsed in my head hundreds of times for patient interviews.

I looked this girl in the eye, I heard about her pain and I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry for her. Because I saw the fear in her eyes, and I just sat there, feeling impotent. Feeling helpless. I can’t help this girl. It’s entirely possible that no one can, but I’m going to have to be one of the first to break that reality to her.

The more I’ve thought about this girl, the more I’ve considered what happened today, what she told me, what I heard and saw, the more I understand some of the reactions I get from people, from doctors, from my own family. I saw someone suffer today. I had someone tell me that she’d do anything to make her pain stop, I had someone say to me sentences that I’ve said to others, that I’ve written here in my most desperate hours.

I understand things now.

I understand why people walk away from those in pain. It’s terrifying to watch someone shrink from pain. And it’s soul crushing to not be able to do anything for it.

I understand why doctors fire patients, why some respond to chronic pain patients the way they do. It’s horrible to see something you don’t know much about, that you can’t fix. That no book or lecture can ever help you understand the realities of.

I understand why family and friends cry for those who are suffering. It’s because sometimes it’s all you can do.

I am not saying that I understand this girl’s pain, because if I put my pain on the same scale as hers, even tonight when it’s relentless and gnawing, I don’t think that it would hold a candle to hers. But I understand a lot of what she’s feeling right now, and some of what she’s gone through and will soon face.

And for the first time, I understand how it feels to watch someone suffer. I understand how helpless you feel when you stare pain in the eye and have no answer, no help.

I understand now.

I almost wish that I didn’t.

I do have more to say about Utah, but I’m interrupting that to talk a little about what a big freaking day today was. Because it was.

Back in March, I wasn’t allowed to do a clinical rotation because of lifting restrictions from the blood patch nightmare in January. I had to watch as all my classmates went off and did hands on learning, while I was again, couch bound. I had to hear about the highs and lows of my classmate’s clinicals for weeks afterwards, and explain why I had no stories. I had to feel different, defective, again.

I tried to stay positive. I failed.

When you throw missing the first hands-on experience on top of a never-ending headache, missing a crapload of school and a ridiculous amount of stress, positive is not an state of mind that is easily found.

But this morning I got up, showered, did my hair, put on ironed clothes and went to my first day of a 7 week clinical. It wasn’t a perfect day, by any means. I didn’t know the answer to every question I was asked. I hurt over every inch of my body from standing up for 11 hours, my headache is massive. I am exhausted.

But

I didn’t have to quit.

I didn’t have to ask for a break.

I didn’t have to miss out, again.

I know that making it through one full day of work doesn’t seem important or significant. I know it’s probably silly to celebrate a feat that most of you accomplish every single day. I know that.

And yet I’m celebrating.

I’m still in significant pain, but I’m living with and in spite of it. I’m managing. I’m succeeding.

One day down, 33 to go.