Compassion Rejuvenation

My life revolves around stories.  My stories. other peoples stories, fantasies.  I love every opportunity I get to hear new stories about people's lives.  How they lived, where they lived, what shapes them into who they become.  In hearing other people's stories, I am rejuvenated.  I take part of their life and make it part of mine.  I allow it to become a new creek feeding into the river that carries me along.  Stories of overcoming what others would see has hardships touch me the most.  They provide me the greatest amount of strength to do better for those I care for.  They remind me of the importance of family, and the power of friends.  They remind me that even those who can no longer communicate with us, also have a story.  These people are the ones we need to listen to the most.  How many elderly people have lives that we never know about because they can no longer tell us about them?  How many times do I wish I'd spent more time learning about my grandmother and great-grandmother who passed away during my lifetime?  Their stories are fading in my memory.

I went to see a dance/film presentation on the life of Pete Pihos today.  It really got me energized.  I know that most people don't generally associated positive feelings with Alzheimer's or other dementias, but I draw strength from these stories.  Not so much the steady decline of the disease, but who the person is.  I say is, because that person is still there inside the deteriorating frame.  He or she is still there through the people that love them, that can remember who s/he was.  People get so bogged down in the negative, they sometimes forget that those with dementia are still with us.  They are still people who deserve our love and respect.  Watching this show reminded me that I should try my hardest to take the time to learn about who each of my patients are, even if they can't tell me themselves.  I just feel like they deserve that honor and respect, just as I have gained the honor to treat them as a physician.  Each day I fall more and more in love with what I have chosen to do as my career.  I'm just so excited to meet all the new people along my journey that I know I have already begun but feel I'm still waiting to start moving.

I am Rebecca L. Omlor, fourth year medical student.  I am compassionate about providing the highest level of care, respect and understanding I can to the people I have the honor of caring for.  I cannot wait to meet you all wherever you are, if we get a chance, even in passing.  We are all beautiful, special people with wonderful stories that deserve to be shared.  I love each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart.

The Art of Flight

Have you ever mourned the ending of a book?  Felt like you’ve just lost a close friend?  Known that you will never be able to hold the same sensations, same feelings as the first time you read it?  I have never tried to explain to someone how I feel when I finish a book that has moved me.  There is no way for me to be able to explain how it touched me, or even why it touched me the ways it did.  There are so many times I wish I could share the thoughts, feelings, emotions that are racing through me, but words fail.  Ironic, really.  Words are what brought these emotions into being, and yet words are incapable of even touching on what’s running through my head and heart.  It frustrates me sometimes to feel like I can’t even share my deepest thoughts and feelings with the people around me.  I want them to be touched as I was, to have the sensation of meeting a new friend that I get from reading.  When I finish a book, I feel like I am letting go of a dear friend that I will never be able to see again.  Even though I can read the book again, it’s not the same feeling as when I read it the first time through.

There are some books that hit me like nothing else.  I can’t put them down.  I forget the world that is around me.  In books is when I truly feel like I can fly.  There are so many times in my life when I feel in the way, feel useless, clumsy and uncoordinated.  But in reading, I can shed my poor excuse for a physical body and soar.  I can fly higher and farther and faster than I ever even thought possible.  I can visit lands that I have never seen or heard of before.  I can see and hear and touch objects, emotions, thoughts, that I have no other way of understanding.  Through books, I gain the grace that I always wish I have in my daily life.

Books, for me, allow me the opportunity to explore myself.  By the emotions conjured through reading, I learn more about who I am, what I stand for, what I believe and want.  I can relive parts of my past that are painful, but somehow these times feel less daunting in the world of a book.  I can draw parallels between the worlds of books.  Even down to feeling like I’ve seen or read something before only to realize that it was merely a similar thought on different pages.  In exploration, I gain closure.  I regain composure, a part of me I thought had been lost.  I feel like I am not judged for the transgressions I have made against the world.  I am allowed an opportunity to make peace with the past and make way for my future, my new self. 

I much prefer the books to movies, always.  Books allow the imagination to run rampant.  The worlds I imagine in books are far more fantastic than any movie can create for me.  I have more opportunity to set my own pace in a book.  The more exciting parts I can read through quickly.  I feel my heartbeat increasing; I find myself having to catch my breath at the end, slowing as the characters slow.  In passion, I can feel each caress; I can recreate the beauty of the moment, of two souls becoming one, intricately bound to each other for eternity.  In these moments, I can feel only what I have imagined true love to feel like.  I slow and allow each breath, movement, flight its due course.  I can feel the anger and disillusionment rising in me when one character betrays another.  I feel overwhelming joy when two parted souls can finally be together again, if only to die in each other’s arms.

Sometimes I wonder if I am truly to be as rooted in reality as medicine makes me.  Am I, the flighty, imaginative Pisces allowed to be so grounded?  What happens when I find my imagined world more real than the world of my career?  Will someone capture me from the air and clip my wings?  Will someone hook me on their line and remove my fins?  Is it possible for me to remain rooted in reality while still allowing my imagination the space it needs?  And will there ever be someone to understand my wild flights?  Will I find someone who cherishes my wild imagination, helps to cultivate it, help keep it alive?  Is there someone out there who understands the world of books as I do, or am I destined to accept the fact that the world of books are for me alone to treasure and hold as my own, my one true escape.

Medical Care is like Car Maintenance

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Dream Weaver

I have been known to have strange dreams in the past.  I have had enough situations where I've woken up feeling dazed and confused.  Most of my dreams really make no sense (see this post).  In other words, I have come to terms with the way my mind works when I am sleeping, and I deal with it.  But last night's dream was really, really too logical for my normal dreams...

Apparently, some time in the next 3 years, I decide to go on a six month mission trip to some remote village in Africa (think Sudan/Ethiopia/Kenya area).  It was actually that realistic.  I knew I was south of Egypt, and in an area of great unrest.  I also apparently was traveling with "The Next Food Network Star" crew because we were filming an episode that involved cooking ribs in the style of the native village where we were living (so much for being realistic...).  We were supposed to be safe, but in the middle of the rib cooking event, gunfire breaks out.  We have a group of about 15 US citizens, including some rich woman and her four year old daughter Christina, and as far as I can tell, our camp only had one African woman and her two to three year old little girl.  Anyway, I scoop up the two little girls, and we hide in a pile of clothes in a closet (because that was clearly the safest option to running, right?...maybe I lied.  Maybe my dream wasn't logical at all).  I remember telling the girls to be quiet (which somehow they were...not in typical little girl style for sure, another discrepancy with reality).  Our camp gets searched, but somehow our pile of laundry hideout is spared, and the next day we walk out to the utter destruction of the surrounding village.

At this point, the dream turns into

1.  Must find the rest of the Americans because they clearly won't be able to survive without my expertise.  I come to find out that along with being, well, a doctor, I'm also apparently a master navigator, fisher-woman, rock climber, musician, and general team morale booster...oh the coats I wear!

2.  Must navigate from Kenya (which I'm pretty sure is where I was, come to think of it) to the US embassy in Egypt (not sure why I picked Egypt, guess it seemed like a good idea at the time)

So I collect the girls (the little African girl's mother was killed by the ambushers, so in fine American style, Christina and I name her Natalie); I collect all the medical supplies I need (which conveniently fit in a single backpack and is enough to take care of the 20 person crew for the entire trek to Egypt) and my guitar (because I now know how to play said instrument, and frankly, it kept the family together) and we head off in search of the rest of our pack.  Which we find and I proceed to keep everyone alive and get us to the US embassy in Egypt, and we all become great heroes in the US...yeah, I know, ridiculous ending.  But, in a nutshell, that's about how it went.  I teach everyone how to fish (and we somehow don't all get dysentery and die in good ol' "Oregon Trail" fashion); I know how to use a compass (just follow the needle pointing north, right??); and when we finally land in NY, I lead everyone off the plane in a resounding chorus of "After the Storm" (Mumford and Sons, my current musical obsession).  I also am told by the embassy that I can just take little Natalie to the US with me, no need to fill out any paperwork or go through the usual adoption hoops, she's just mine.  And I teach her our own version of sign language (the sign for "family" is rubbing your left chest in a circular pattern, "dad" is stroking your chin like you have a beard, and "mom" is stroking your hair...yeah, super creative).

Oh, and there's a documentary because the Food Network film crew wasn't going to just let us idly walk through the treacherous jungle without something to vouch for our efforts.  The dream ended with the entire Frends Crew (wearefrends.com ... yet another obsession of mine, gotta love my snowboarders) greets me at the airport with my family because they are just so pumped by the story of our epic journey through Africa (disregard the lack of pow to shred...or really me being at all cool enough for them, anyway).

So, I think this dream most likely stems from the fact that I feel inadequate and useless sitting around studying for eight hours of the day.  In other words, I apparently need to be having ridiculously memorable adventures somewhere that doesn't involve my living room!  I think I'll start with something a little closer to home than a war-torn country, though.  Can't get too adventurous too quickly, now can we?