The Best and the Worst

Today I was asked a great question about my residency experience to date, "What's the best and worst thing that has happened?" After a little more thought I have a better answer than I initially gave, and I thought I'd share--

Let's start with the worst and get it out of the way.

I'm going to spare any details. But the worst thing I experience as a physician is death. Luckily, as an Ob/Gyn this isn't a terribly common thing. But it happens. And it's always tragic and reminds me of my own mortality. There's a lot of super spiritual things I could insert here, but all I wanna say is that death is crappy.

Wow. That was warm.

Now, the best thing....life!

There are so many good things it's hard to pick just one, but the following story is my personal favorite.

One day after work I was taking out the trash at my apartment in the 112 degree heat when a man in a suit chased me down in the parking lot. I was quite creeped out and acted like I didn't see him despite his obvious attempts to get my attention. Eventually, however, in his persistence he caught up to me.

"Hey, hey! You work at Baylor!"

Yeah, crazy, stop being a creeper.

"I remember you!"

Ugh, I just need to throw my trash out so I can go to bed. Please don't ask me a medical question.

"You delivered my son!"

Now I feel like a jerk.

"Yeah, you did the c-section."

Yikes, I cut this dude's wife.

"I remember you because I was trying so hard to keep my composure in the OR and you just looked so confident."

Maybe this guy doesn't know the difference between fear and confidence?! Maybe I should just accept his compliment?

After my initial inner dialogue quieted down, we stood in the parking lot making small talk about his new son. He radiated with that new father pride. And it was fun. I mean, I delivered my neighbor's child! How crazy is that? How cool is that?

Being an Ob/Gyn is incredible. And I love it.

Top 10 Lessons Learned My First Month as a Doctor

Disclaimer: No patients were harmed in the making of this list.

10. You're sure to get super excited in your first c-section so be sure to tie your mask just right so you don't get all fogged up--that's one thing you're gonna want to do by sight and not by faith the first time.

9. If you're going to break someone's bag of water AND sit on the end of her bed make sure you brought a fresh change of drawers…you just may need them.

8. When a patient begins a conversation with, "Doctor, do you think something could have crawled inside me and be living in there..." pray your pager goes off STAT.

7. If you struggled to tie your shoe as a child, those knots in the OR are gonna be a booger for you. Practice makes perfect.

6. If someone says they heard it was pouring in triage don't just assume that means there is an abundance of patients. Who knows, water just may be gushing from the ceiling.

5. Warm chocolate chip cookies on a busy day are the best, just make sure you get all the chocolate off your face before you go see a patient. A delivery is the worst time to discover you have something on your face that may or may not be chocolate.

4. Wear a mask or make a conscience effort to keep your mouth closed during a delivery. See #5.

3. Don't ever tell a patient she is "grossly ruptured." Just because that's normal talk to you, her husband thinks you're saying she's disgusting, and you’re going to feel rather silly explaining the use of the word “gross” to him.

2. Being an OB/GYN is the coolest job in the world.

1. Nothing is impossible—in every sense of the expression.

Janice Mitchell, MD

Today I will graduate from medical school.

I cannot believe this day has come. When I was a little girl I had a Fisher Price doctor kit. I took good care of my baby dolls. I even delivered my own babies. Here is some evidence...

5 years old and about 42 weeks pregnant--Haha!

5 years old making house calls

Today I will leave my short white coat of medical school education and don the stitches of the long white coat I have earned.

Today I will become Janice Mitchell, MD.

Thanks be to God, the One who keeps me from stumbling and presents me blameless before His throne, my Rock and my Refuge, my Refiner and Disciplinarian, my Lover and closest Friend, my Creator and Sustainer.

What an incredible day!

Shout for joy to God, all the earth;

sing the glory of his name;

give to him glorious praise!

Say to God, "How awesome are your deeds!

Come and see what God has done:

he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man.

Bless our God, O peoples;

let the sound of his praise be heard,

For you, O God, have tested us;

you have tried us as silver is tried.

You brought us into the net;

you laid a crushing burden on our backs;

you let men ride over our heads;

we went through fire and through water;

yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.

Come and hear, all you who fear God,

and I will tell what he has done for my soul.

But truly God has listened;

he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

~Psalm 66:1-3,5,8-12,16,19~

Confessions.

I am terrified of wasting my life.

There--I said it.

Here's the thing. I've spent most of the last 11 years of my young life trying to find my place in this world, trying to do something that will count. Something that will change lives for eternity. Something that will bring unchanging hope and peace to the darkest corners of the world. I've dreamt about it. I've tossed and turned in my bed many sleepless nights wondering how on earth my life can change someone else's.

One thing has lead to another and here I am today in my third year of med school, arriving rather firmly and affirmedly at a decision to pursue OB/GYN. I love OB/GYN and have for a long time. I love the primary care, the surgery, the babies, the ladies, the whole nacho.

And while my passion to live a life that affects change and inspires hope in the lives of others around the globe has remained unchanged, let's not lie--my life for the past 4 years has been all about none other than me, me, me, and well, me. How will I get into med school? Where will I go to med school? How will I survive med school? How will I make the grades? Where will I go to residency? Will I get to go where I want to go? How much longer do I have to stay at this dreary hospital today? I take call how often?! When do I get to nap?! Do I really have to do that?! And I guess, partly it has to be this way--I do need to study. I do need to work. And, well, the good Lord knows, I do need some sleep from time to time too. And it would also be nice to make sure I have some plan as to what I'm doing when I graduate next year.

(Geez, if I had that many new I's all the blind folk in Texas would be able to see by next week.)

However, I feel rather self-absorbed lately thinking and planning and scheming and trying my best to sell myself to attendings to make the grade and get favorable evaluations. And I often have to stop and recollect and ask myself why I really do all this anyhow. What was that thing about changing the world again? And is that even possible? And will I be old and grey and disillusioned once I am finally trained to do all this stuff? Oh, and do I have to go there ALONE? O geez... A whole 'nother fear for a whole 'nother blog!

But I have these friends who, and read blogs about and hear of folks, just normal folks like me, who are doing INCREDIBLE things right now to reach the nations with clean water and save women from human trafficking and help starving kids learn how to grow crops for whole villages and do just about anything to suffer with the suffering and shed any amount of the light of hope possible into dark, dark places.

My heart about beats out of my chest when I read of it.

And I wonder if my life will ever amount to anything....

I wonder if I will ever finish all this doctor-making stuff, first of all!

Then, I wonder when it's all said and done, if I will bite into the American "dream" and find myself in 10 years buying a new house and driving a new car and living in the suburbs sending a few dollars over every now and again so I can feel good about myself and feel like I am helping out. I wonder if I will find myself living the doctor high life and never having done anything that really matters.

I wonder if I will get too chicken to ever make the wild, crazy, risky decision to just GO. To drop what the world has convinced me I "deserve" and go somewhere dark and bleak and miserable and hard and uncomfortable and joyous and beautiful.

I wonder if I will be bold enough to follow those dreams that often haunt me at night and that come to life when I read of others willing to give their lives for something beyond themselves.

So, in short, I am afraid of wasting my life. Of settling for less. Of becoming numb to suffering around the world and not daring to do something about it. Of getting tired and jaded and of feeling as if I deserve comforts and trinkets and treasures.

I am afraid of forfeiting all my dreams and what I've worked so hard to obtain only for an empty box of perishable goods.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says it like this in "The Cost of Discipleship"--

Costly Grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciples leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.

May my heart not be lured so much toward the world and all its trimmings and trappings, but to the grace which costs me my life that I may find my only true life!


-J

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

-Jim Elliot, missionary and matryr

Palm Reading

The scene: Day 1 of my new internal medicine rotation with my new team and new attending nervously beginning my first presentation of a patient I just met a few minutes ago.

Me: Ms. So-and-So is a 20 year old on hospital day number 3 admitted for end stage renal disease and severe anemia. She is--

Attending: (Dramatic stopping gesture.) Woah. Woah. (Looking to my team.) What have we got here?

(Long, awkward pause.)

Me: (Trembling quietly, fearing I have said something wrong in just the first sentence of my presentation.)

Attending: (Looking back at me.) Let me see your hands, young lady.

Me: (Timidly tucking my notes under my arms and stretching out my hands.)

Attending: Turn them over!

Me: (Timidly allowing him to examine my hands.)

Attending: I knew it all along!

Me: (Flushed, fluttered, and terrified of my attending's palm reading skills.)

Attending: (Looking back at the team with a eureka sparkle in his eye.) I knew it! We have ourselves an OB/GYN!




Guess there's no escaping the OB/GYN in me!

-J