As a resident doctor, I remember the intense days with overnight shifts, very little sleep, and emotional roller coasters. Most patients come to the hospital at their lowest. Over time, I just became numb to the endless cycle of new faces with the same problems—chest pain, fever, abdominal pain, shortness of breath, and only sometimes something new.
“Did you see the chest pain in room four?”
“Yes,” I said. In our emergency room, we referred to the problem instead of the name for patient privacy reasons. But how much privacy can you have in the emergency room? Room number four in this hospital was just a curtain away from three and lucky to have a wall on the other side.
On a good day, there was good news. Take this medicine for heartburn. You just have too much acid in your stomach. On a bad day, we rushed the patient to surgery. Much of the time, it was the nurse that did most of the explaining. I was busy making the phone calls, calling in the specialists, writing the transfer orders. On really bad days, there was not much that we could do. Between all of this, I was completely unprepared for the emotional exhaustion that would occur.
Ok, so I exaggerate. There were hints.
Years earlier, as a medical student working in one of the clinics, the entire staff would meet in the morning to discuss the day ahead. The attending doctor – the main doctor in charge – would often be the last into the room, take off his hat and coat, and sometimes be a little out of breath.
“I used to drive to work every day,” he said one day. “I lived forty-five minutes away. When I moved closer to work, it was only a five minute drive. I love the new house, and I was happy to not have to commute. But something changed in my mood; I started to get irritable and anxious. It took me awhile to realize that I no longer had the time to decompress. That’s when I decided to walk to work. It takes me about twenty minutes. When I arrive at work, my mind feels clear again. In the evening when I get home, instead of feeling all wound up, I feel settled.”
Those words have echoed in my head many times. Well placed words to a student can be so meaningful.
At the time, I did not value them as much as I do today.
I think of the spectrum of body, mind, emotions, and spirit. There are days where I am physically exhausted, and I know that I need to sleep. There are other days that the mental fatigue is prominent, I just need something mindless that lets my thoughts relax. Other days are so emotionally charged, I need to decompress, process through the emotions in one of many ways. At other times, the existential crisis comes up. On those days, I work to reconnect to the things that inspire me. I have since learned that fatigue can have many faces.
As a medical student, I was prepared for the physical stress of the training. It was much later that I would learn to deal with the mental, emotional, and spiritual stresses.
When the fatigue sets in and the mind can no longer think, I remember the advice of one doctor to a student so long ago. I remember that the answer to my problem can be as simple as “walking home.”