Personally, I hate making statements

I have come to the conclusion that my writing process is rather...odd.  I should clarify that the writing process I'm referring to is for formal writing (ie. the horrendous task of writing a personal statement).  I don't like having to write them.  I find it utterly unbearable having to write about myself. So of course, med school makes me write not only a personal statement (in first person) but my dean's letter (in third person). I'm officially tired of writing about myself for the sole purpose of getting someone to take me on as a resident.

But anyway, the actual process is tiring in and of itself. I usually start with a vague idea of what I want to write about. Read: I usually am in a full on panic because I sort of kind of but don't really know what I want to write about. It's a very nebulous start. Then I write something horrible. It doesn't flow, it makes no sense, and generally, has nothing to do with what I actually intended to write about. This is followed by completely giving up for a day or so. Then an outline. Then another failed attempt at writing the actual paper. Followed by another outline that saves maybe a sentence or two from the second attempt. Then another paper. Then rewording about half of the third attempt. 

At this point, you can see, I'm a very indecisive writer when it comes to the personal statement. I can spend days to weeks before I come up with something I would be willing to let other people edit. Which is the next step. This step usually involves tearing apart the fourth attempt and creating attempts five, six and seven. In a nutshell, it takes me almost a month to actually write a personal statement that I'm proud of and willing to send out. I've always been this way with formal writing. I guess because there's always the thought that my life is depending on it. Not really sure though, seeing as most people I know don't go through this ridiculousness... I guess I should start getting my personal statement for fellowship together now, just to have some of this mess out of the way, right?

So, the residency application opened yesterday. I started getting some stuff into it. It just feels weird being at this point. If you'd asked me during first year (esp. during biochem), I probably would have told you that I would have never made it to this point. Yet, here I am. I love being a doctor, and I can't wait to start the next phase...even if I still don't know where I want it to be!

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?

Fail?

I'm not one to do movie reviews, and frankly, this isn't really a movie review at all. It's more like a reflection in the sense that "A Complete History of my Sexual Failures" got me thinking about my past relationships. I found it interesting that at the end of the movie, the narrator/failure/guy behind and sometimes in front of the camera found someone that he enjoyed spending time with. That, without making this movie, he would never had been running around in the street with high doses of Viagra coursing through his...well, let's just not go there...and he would have never met his newest girlfriend. Without rehashing his past failed relationships (and those numbers were astronomical) he would not have met someone so compatible. He's an independent filmmaker, and she's a journalist. I didn't expect this movie to get me thinking...in all honesty, I just imagined it would be an awkward 1.5 hrs of me on the couch embarrassed for the poor guy.

In reality, it had its super awkward moments (like the S&M part...so not into that). And it had its moments where I wanted to run and hide for the poor girls that had to sit in front of the camera and tell this guy about what was wrong with him. But it also got me thinking about what my past relationships would say about me. I suppose the entire purpose of dating other people is selecting potential long-term partners. But as we progress through the process, do we evolve in some way? By the looks of this movie, it seems quite easy to get stuck in a rut. Yet, it was a self-induced rut. Instead of taking the time to process why his longest relationship with someone he truly loved ended, he just threw himself into many relationships that were meaningless to him. He continued to try to move on without really moving on.

I think if there's anything that I have walked away with, it's an understanding that in order to move on to a better relationship, you have to find some way to come to terms with your past. I'm not sure I can say the best way to do this, and I'm not saying that we need to all go out and make movies of awkward interviews with people we've broken up with. I'm also not saying that I'm going to air my own, personal, dirty laundry here for the world to see. But, I think, perhaps, in the sanctity of my own private journal, I might actually take the time to figure out just what it is that I have been stuck on the past couple years. I think that was ultimately what "A Complete History of my Sexual Failures" amounted to. This movie was a public display of this guy's personal coming to terms with why he seemed to be dating the same person over and over with the same outcome of being dumped. It wasn't until he realized that he was still in love with his longest girlfriend that he could process why no other girl seemed to work for him. And thanks to his mother, he realized that this girl would never have been compatible with him. She wanted different things than he did (ie. kids and a family), and at the time when they were dating, they weren't on the same page.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this. It's most likely the fact that I haven't really watched a movie in a while that made me think quite as much as this one. Maybe I'm reaching a point right now where I can take the time to rehash my own life. Maybe it's because I can feel how close I am to the edge of something new. Perhaps it's the fact that sometimes I feel like I've been sliding backwards down a slippery slope, and I'm not entirely sure my feet will catch hold and allow me to move forward again. Perhaps it's more that I wish I were at the end of my movie, sometimes, and that I had the ability to look back and see how all my past failures have made it possible for one true beautiful, loving friendship to form. Or perhaps even to see that friendship has already started, and that right now, I can't see it for what it is. If only I had the ability to look into the future and see what it holds in the partner department. All I can do is sit back and enjoy the leg of the journey I'm on right now, and hope that I will one day know what it's like to be with someone who truly understands me and I him.

Foreign Country

I was walking down the hallway in the hospital today on my way to clinic. As I passed by several empty rooms with their beds made and ready for their new occupants, I thought about what it must be like for a new patient coming into the hospital. I don't mean a patient with any sort of medical background or even a patient with a friend or relative with medical background; I'm talking about any patient off the street with little to no medical knowledge other than what his or her family doctor has told him or her. I imagined how overwhelming it would be. Forget the ED right now, the patient is brought to their new cubicle of a room that probably overlooks the wall of the adjacent building. They are swooped in upon by a couple people in scrubs that they assume are nurses. These people strip them bare, attach multiple cords to them that then make all sorts of loud beeping noises, they get stuck with needles that are then attached to more tubing. Another machine is squawking at them now. Then, when all this is done, the nurses leave. Just leave, and the patient is now alone in this tiny room, attached to multiple machines, with only a TV for company. At some point, the patient is descended upon by an army of people in white coats, the doctors, and are told a bunch of things that sound really scary. Are these things explained? Probably not. Does the patient ask for enlightenment? No. Why? Because he or she doesn't want the doctors to think he or she is ignorant or stupid. 

It was disheartening for me to think about how I walk into the hospital each day of my own free will. How I have some semblance of an idea of how everything is connected together. I understand the language to some degree. I just can't imagine the fear the average hospital visitor would have on entering. It's like a foreign country minus the tour guide/interpreter. Except, I would think it's worse because at least in a foreign country, you can ask the mundane questions without feeling completely humiliated. But in the hospital, there's a level of humiliation in the process. The patients know the doctors are speaking the same language thus making it all the more difficult for them to say simply, "I don't understand" or "please explain". The way we tell our patients what is wrong with them is in an air of superiority, again, making it difficult to allow the patient the security to pipe up when he or she is lost in the jargon. The constant sense of urgency, of lack of time, of rush makes the patient feel even more compelled to remain quiet. The "well, I just don't want to make my doctor angry by making them more late with my stupid questions" takes over. Sometimes I wish we could be more patient with the patients. 

Ramblings of the Sleep Deprived Student

I love cooking. Like writing, I don't think I realize how much I enjoy either activity until I take it up again after a period of inactivity. Surgery has been my two months of inactivity, but I'm starting to break free. On the weekends, I force myself to take time just for me. Like this weekend. Yesterday I spent the better part of the afternoon planting, enjoying the sun on my back, the soft, loamy first between my fingers, and the beautiful green of newly planted tomatoes and herbs. I await the day that the secrets of the seeds and corms I planted burst forth in splashes of color, a welcome "hello" from Mother Earth, herself. 

Today, I invented "everything but the kitchen sink" breakfast quiche. I threw whatever veggies I could find into a pan to cook, added eggs, milk cheese, and poured it all over a wonderfully toasty hashbrown crust. See cooking for me is something entirely different from baking (except bread). Certainly, similar tools are used, but cooking is much more like art, while baking is something of a science. Baking requires exact measurements, exact times, exact exactness. My life is the human version of baking. I have to be exact, precise, no more, no less. When I get home, I shed my perfectionistic skin for something more fluid, more dynamic. Like cooking. Cooking is all about a little of this, a little of that. Timing is when it's done. The ingredients change each time I make the dish, so it's never a clone of the time before. I like it that way. I have in my head an idea of what the end result will be, but the road to get there rambles, visiting different areas each time. It never looks the same.

Just like writing. I can write ten different poems about the same thing, and they will say it all in different ways. Each will have its own rhythm, some will rhyme, many won't. Some will be a more somber view, some seductive, others downright risque, but all talking about the same entity. When poems become too rigid, their meaning disintegrates, the reader is left feeling like they just weren't quite to the full meaning, and the author is left frustrated by the lack of communication. But fluidity, allowing for a moment the suspension of rules, constraints, the weights of life, and that's when ideas soar and communication meets understanding. Like love.

Love is indescribable. Everyone knows when they've felt true love, but no one can describe what it is. We all have images, moments that we describe when asked about true love. Mine is knowing that I never have to go through the most difficult parts of being a doctor alone; knowing that I can always talk to my mom and dad, that they will understand what I'm going through because they have been there before. Mine is knowing that my life jar is overflowing with the rocks that keep it full and steady, that make less room for the unimportant sandy small stuff while still providing support for the pebbles that ultimately help to fill out the enriched life I live. Love is knowing that there's one more special rock out there for me, and we're going to bump into each other one day while he's using my yellow umbrella to keep the rain off him (HIMYM reference, fyi). Love is being patient enough to allow that moment to happen when and where it's supposed to. Like life.

Life is one's rambling across the timeline of the world. We each are like ants following the scented trail. We all have an idea of where we are coming from, and a semblance of an idea of where we're going. But watch the ants sometime. Although they are all following the same trail, each one has his or her own unique way of tracking it. Each ducks, weaves, and swerves across the path in a different way. We are all like those ants, we know where we've come from and where we are going, but our paths are all different. I suppose at this point I've rambled on enough about nothing and everything. I have lost found and relost my train of thought, my organization waxes and wanes. Perhaps one day I'll be able to make sense of it all.

A New Nugget

I feel my creativity has all but run dry recently. I have had the energy sucked out of me by keeping it up for everyone around me. I think it's part of being a medical student. I can easily put on the face at the hospital. That's not to say that I don't love what I do. I just find that all of my energies go into being the best I can at the hospital. I just feel like when I'm done with the day, I have little energy for anything else. I wish there was a way to have more energy.

I also feel like I need to write more. I need to do more creative writing. I miss it. I've decided I'm going to start writing stories about my new pet. His name is nugget, and he is a monkey. He's actually a stuffed animal, but I think it would be fun to come up with adventures for this new little guy. He is precious and I'm sure quite mischievous. Right now, though, he is a little subdued. He's trying to get used to his new house. He says that the store where my cousin found him was horrid! He had to sit on a shelf with little food and it would get so cold and dark at night! He is very glad to be here, and has found a favorite spot to sit:

He is still working on getting used to Chewy. He finds that Chewy reminds him a bit of a lion. I keep telling him that Chewy won't eat him and probably doesn't care about him at all, but Nugget doesn't quite believe me yet. I'm sure he'll get used to Chewy, but for now, he much prefers sticking as close to me as possible :) Needless to say, I'm sure he'll have plenty of fun adventures in the new year for me to write about and allow me to use my creative writing minor for something other than a conversation piece.

Hope is a Sense of Calm in a Sea of Turmoil

Today I learned probably the greatest lesson in medicine. It had nothing to do with learning about asthma from probably the smartest man in pediatrics at Wake Forest. And nothing about learning about various chemotherapies, their uses, side effects, etc. etc. It had nothing to do with the biochemical, physical, biological mumbo-gumbo that makes us doctors pretend we're smart. I learned today that sometimes, the greatest message a person can bring is one of hope. Hope that, even though it's the darkest hour of treatment, you are not alone. There are others that have gone through these same exact moments before you, even at the same time as you. I learned that simply by saying, "everything is normal", it provides hope. Hope that as scary is it may seem right now, everything is going exactly as expected. That after feeling awful for right now, you'll start to feel better. I am awed by the power a message of hope carries. Humbled that I can provide that message. It's such a wonderful feeling knowing that simply by being present and continuing to be present, even after I've rotated off-service, I can help someone keep fighting through even the worst parts of their treatment. I am humbled and honored to be a doctor-to-be.