I haven't had much to blog about lately. I think that is because I am already tired of writing about work. No matter how hard I try to put my experiences into words, the fact remains I am just not a good enough writer to convey what I have been experiencing. That is a little frustrating to me because the experiences themselves have been life altering to me, and yet, when I go back and read what I have to say it all seems a little...saccharin.  Really, I think what it comes down to is a combination of things.  Writing has never been a strength of mine, first of all. Second of all, it is really easy to complain about how hard life as a resident is. It is easy to fall into the same "my life is so hard" trap every time I sit down to write because, well frankly, this process is hard! There is a reason there are so many books, TV shows, and just anecdotal stories about what life is like in residency. In fact, just before I started writing this I was reading the blog of a really good friend of Jordan and I. She was talking about pushing the limits and working while sick. We all do this and I am pretty sure a lot of people outside of medicine do too. But that raises an interesting question, how sick is too sick? If I were, say, a barista, how sick is too sick to pour coffee? One could argue that perhaps being sick at all should preclude that person from working since they could spread whatever illness they may be experiencing to their unknowing customers. Of course, if we eliminated the contagious argument, then we start to get to the point I am trying to make. I would be fairly comfortable with my barista pouring me coffee if they felt ill, perhaps to the point of feeling, say, 50% of normal (again, assuming they were not contagious). Now let's carry this noncontagious individual over to the medical world. How sick is too sick to be a doctor? Would you want a physician caring for your loved one if he or she felt any less than a 100%? Is it okay for the doctor to be caring for your mother if that doctor were only feeling about 80% of his or her potential? What about 50%? Would the hospital even be able to function if everyone that worked there only worked when they were 100%? I suppose it probably wouldn't.

I don't really have the answers to this, we as health care providers are human and just doing the best we can, but I just wonder if the best we can is good enough. All of this gets me thinking about another strange set of feelings that are pulled out of me as a result of my training.  As a resident in training, a lot of my time is still spent dedicated to learning and education (I suppose that will be true of my entire career in medicine, but that just helps drive this point home, I think).  Never before has my learning and education had a direct impact on the lives of others. If I make a mistake in my learning it doesn't just count towards my grade, instead it directly affects others' lives.  There are times this really scares me, but that is not the point I am trying to make. What I am so poorly conveying is sometimes it is easy to lose site of reality. It seems strange to me how often I have to remind myself that I am working with patients, their families, and their lives. When I tell a patient the results of her echocardiogram show she now has a diagnosis of heart failure on top of the cancer she already knew she had, I am completely altering the course of her life as she knows it. What I am not doing is winning the game of discovering the correct medical problem and then getting bonus points for conveying that information to a patient in a caring way in which they can understand the diagnosis. And yet, I continue to fall into that trap daily. Maybe that's my way of separating myself a little bit emotionally, but at the same time, I really need to be careful to not lose sight that this not a game.

Well, I honestly thought this was going to be a short little blog saying I had nothing really to say, because I don't know how to say it or even what I want to say, but I guess not. If you are reading this, please know that while I have disappeared some, I am thinking about all of my friends and family all of the time. I am working really hard, but I am making a lot of progress. I feel more and more like a doctor every day, and I think this sacrifice will definitely be worth it. I will do my best to try to bring more to this blog in an interesting way so as to keep you up to date on my life, my training, and whatever random thoughts pop into my head on any given day. Thanks for reading, thanks for supporting Jord and I, and most importantly, thanks for loving us!

~vaya con dios