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I didn't know you were so stressed out...

When we first start out in medicine, we're all told it's coming:

One day you'll find yourself in court.

What they don't actually tell us:

How do you deal after you testify under oath for the first time?

To the Doctor Struggling with Burnout:

My friend,

I remember being where you are, feeling like there wasn't anyone who could possibly understand the darkness I found myself in.

The isolation.

The inability to explain the full weight of what I dealt with as a primary care physician every day to my very well-intentioned non-medical tribe.

The difficulty reconciling the knowledge that I was "living the dream" but in reality was merely existing in a living nightmare, my own personal hell I had spent my entire adult life trying to achieve.

I resisted for a long time to share my story - it's not an easy thing to do... it took me 2 years to even admit to my husband that I was struggling, and that in and of itself felt like a failure.

Because we should be stronger than this, right?  We knew what we were getting into, we logically understood that we would see and endure a lot of suffering.

But to know this is different than to live this reality.

Death of a Primary Care Physician's Career: Part One

These last 11 months, I’ve been telling my story of burnout, but I suppose I should rename it Death of a Primary Care Physician's Career.

I’m letting go of the person, the doctor, I wanted to be.

Ironically, she is the person who dug this 6 foot hole for me, and now I’m laying her in it after 3 long years.

If You Could See Medicine Through My Eyes:

Millennial Doctor

It is no secret medicine has changed significantly over the last 30-40 years.

As a self-described “realist” with a healthy dose of cynicism, I’m not one for nostalgia. There is no true “Golden Age” – history is written by the victors, and of course they will paint their deeds in a positive light while leaving out the not so wonderful details. Each generation thinks they’ve had it harder than the one before them. Since the beginning of time, every generation has thought the next is annoying, lazy and entitled, making it a universal truth that teenagers are seen as the absolute worst.

I’m not sure we are so drastically different among generations, but we certainly are coming in at different stages of the boiling frog tale, thus our responses have changed accordingly.

Do You Remember Why You're Here?

Coronavirus is here.

The world has changed.

In the midst of all this anxiety and uncertainty, should you stay or should you go?

Do you remember why you're here?

About

Storyteller.

Millennial Doctor.

Former primary care physician turned hospitalist.

Wannabe photographer.

M.

I'm pulling back the veil on physician burnout to start some real and honest conversations.

It's time to show the emotion and humanity of medicine from the physician's point of view.

We no longer have to live in the shadows of fear and shame.

There is another way to live our lives.

And we don't need to go it alone.

Come join me.

Let's keep the conversation going!

Follow me on Instagram (stories) HERE where you can read my unfiltered reflections in real time!

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Talk soon,

M

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I didn’t know you were so stressed out…

Even then, I knew.

I knew it would hunt me down some day.  I knew the name before the police office laid the subpoena down on the table, stepping away quickly so we could maintain 6 feet for social distancing while I reluctantly picked the heavy envelope up.

The prosecutor was grateful for my meticulous level of detail – courteous, deferential even.

It wasn’t me on trial, after all.

I don’t know how you do it

“I just watched her… suffocating.  In her own fluids.

I kept asking if she wanted more help, if she wanted to go on the ventilator and all she was able to say was, ‘No’.  

I don’t know what to do, M.  I don’t know how to help her.  I can’t…

I can’t watch her suffer anymore.”

Pixelated tears turned into currents streaming down the face I’ve loved since I was 13.

Do You Miss It?

“I can’t send him back to that place.  This is my father.  Please, help me take care of him.”

The rollercoaster of emotions of that moment threatened to run me over again even now: struggling to stuff down the frustration of having to adjust course after I was THISCLOSE to discharging him back to his skilled nursing facility, to the remorse washing over me as I spotted tears in this herculean man’s eyes while he squeezed the limp hand of D’s half paralyzed body.

How could I not be moved by the determination in his melodic Arabic voice as he made the decision to take on caring for his father who was suffering from a recent stroke?

So… who’s looking for a new job?

“So… who’s looking for a new job?”

We scanned each other’s eyes over the Zoom screen, as if the miniature windows of these four pixelated beauties could reveal any hidden truths.

Nothing.

Taking a sip of my pinot gris, I soaked in the uncomfortable silence.

Conversation was always going to land here.  Months spent on Slack commiserating over this foreign new world of startup culture, complaining about our ineffective EMR, griping about entitled patients – and yet, this topic had never been breached.

It clearly had been top of mind as I watched everyone glance away from their screens, yet no one wanted to answer.  No one wanted to shatter the illusion that we didn’t know one of us would eventually walk away from our unexpected support group.

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