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Still Called?

August 23, 2010 in Faith, Work by Sara | 4 comments

Sometimes the call of God on and in my life confounds me. I will have a moment where I’m absolutely sure that I am making the exact right decision based on prayer and contemplation and how the events fell into place. I feel a peace about the decision and it just feels right.

Then the bottom falls out. And it all looks and feels and sounds wrong. What am I to make of this? Was I wrong? Did I hear His voice correctly or just mistake my own for His? When something takes a wrong turn, does it mean it was a wrong decision to begin with.

Here is what I think I understand. Sometimes we are called to something for the long haul and sometimes it is just for a short season. There is much to be learned from both. Perseverance for one. The ability to exit gracefully for another. Both good lessons to stick in my pocket.

I don’t know what all this upheaval in my work life is going to pan out to be. Maybe something I’m supposed to slog through and perhaps something from which I’m supposed to leave in a little bit.

What I do know is this. God has a plan for me. I can trust in that plan. All will be well.

A Different Drive

June 9, 2010 in Bloggable Moments, Work by Sara | 1 comment

I was driving to work this morning when it hit me what a different experience my drive to my little office out in the country is from the commute I used to make in northern Virginia.

In Virginia there were housing developments and privacy fences as far as the eye could see. In Ohio, there are corn and soybean fields spread for miles along side the roads I take to work.

In Virginia I could mark the passing of time by the progress made on the houses springing up on every side. Well, at least until the housing crisis hit. That kind of put a damper on the construction trade. In Ohio, I take note that the corn seems a foot taller on Monday morning than it did on Thursday afternoon. When I remarked to one old farmer how fast the corn seemed to grow he told me that if you stood outside in the fields at night you could actually hear the corn popping as it grew. I’m dying to see if he is right.

In Virginia there were certain places on my commute where I had to look out for recent immigrants to this country trying to cross the road in front of me. Evidently there are many places in the world where crosswalks are seen as mere suggestions rather than a rule to be followed in order to keep you from being run down by a large vehicle going 50 miles an hour. In Ohio, about the only thing I’ve had run out in front of me lately was what at first glance I thought was a large dog, but turned out to be a really large coyote.

On my way to work these days I often get the one finger salute from people I pass on the long straight roads I take. For those of you unfamiliar with this greeting, imagine your hand grasping the top of the steering wheel. When you pass someone, you merely raise your index finger off the wheel and extend it fully. It’s a shortcut to a wave. A way to say “howdy”. In Virginia, I often got a single digit greeting of an entirely different type. I’ll assume no explanation needed?

I’ll take my country commute over my city drive any day of the week.

Change

April 15, 2010 in Faith, Work by Sara | 4 comments

When I first started practicing, I thought I could fix everything.

What I’m learning is that here’s the thing about fixing people.

They gotta want to be fixed.

Like the guy with blood pressure so high I don’t know why his eyes weren’t bulging out of his head.

Or the lady with a blood sugar so high that I’ll bet she would actually taste sweet if you bit her. (ugh. but you get the point, right?)

How about the teen with serious mental issues who refused treatment?

Can we talk about the gal in a marriage that you and I couldn’t even begin to comprehend the difficulty of being in?

Sometimes I find myself raging about these people. Why can’t they see that if they would listen to me, they could change their lives. FOR PETE’S SAKE! These things are bad and they can turn them around. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

Huh.

Me, maybe?

If I’m honest, there are all kind of things about my life, both spiritual and nonspiritual that I know I could/should change. Sometimes I’ve even been told how to do it. Yet, I very often don’t.

Because change is hard. And frightening. And hard. Did I mention it was hard?

So maybe I better cut these folks some slack. And instead of raging, perhaps I should just encourage them.

Or as a wise man once said, “Better get the beam out of your own eye before you worry about the speck in your friend’s eye.”

Adrift

March 16, 2010 in Faith, Work by Sara | 2 comments

Today I walked into a room at work and found myself face to face with someone who actually appeared to be right smack dab in the middle of a good old fashioned nervous breakdown.

Now I’d love to tell you the story behind this but my husband has me so scared to death of upsetting the HIPAA police and being sued within an inch of my life that I’ll refrain. Just let me tell you that it was an awesome sight. And not in any kind of good way.

When things like this happen, I get this mental picture of someone just completely cut loose from their moorings and then finding themselves adrift with no land in sight. Sometimes it is a single incident that causes this to happen, but more often, it is a thousand little cuts into the rope that holds them to the shore until finally, the rope just snaps and there they go.

I subscribe to the “thousand little cuts” idea because if you ask these folks what’s going on in their lives, they can easily rattle off a whole bunch of things. But most of them, at first glance, don’t seem to be the sort of things that would make someone contemplate jumping off the nearest bridge. Stress at work, issues with kids and/or spouses, financial worries. Raise your hand if you haven’t had one or more of these things enter your life lately. Most of us cope. Some of us don’t.

I think that the ones that don’t have a couple of things in common. Now certainly I am generalizing here and I’m completely taking the ones with serious mental issues out of the picture. But that aside, I would say that the vast majority of people that I see in my practice that are falling apart at the seams are both lonely and spiritually empty.

Our pastor touched on this a bit this past weekend. He does a lot of counseling in his line of work and he said that he vast majority who find their lives upended have no one outside their family with whom they are sharing life with. They are essentially trying to do it on their own.

I think my work and his work are very similar in some ways. Except that people expect him to come back with some spiritual advice while that is not always welcome in my exam rooms. I try to do it in round about ways. Suggesting that maybe they have a pastor they could talk to or that they find a support group to join. Mostly they are resistant to this.

I think I know why.

We don’t like to admit we can’t do it on our own. I know that that is true of me. I think I can handle everything! Just ask my husband, or better yet, my poor siblings. I have always valued my independence fiercely. And it has been to my great detriment at times.

We aren’t meant to do life alone. We are made for relationships. We need someone outside our immediate families who knows us well and loves us anyway. Who is not afraid to speak sometimes hard truths into our lives.

And we need a spiritual mooring. A belief system that we can hang on to when life seems to spin out of control.

Otherwise, we are just adrift.

And from what I’ve seen, that’s a terrible and frightening place to be.

Control

February 4, 2010 in Work by Sara | 5 comments

The parallel lines on her forearm were still fresh enough to have scabs on them.

“Want to tell me about those?” I asked her quietly.

Tears welled up as she looked away and told me she didn’t want to talk about it.

So I dropped it.

For five minutes or so. I went on focusing on the reason she was in my office to begin with. Something unrelated. And certainly less complicated.

Then I asked again. “How long have you been cutting yourself?”

The story spilled out of her in fits and starts. Years of fighting depression. Begging her parents for help and being told she should just learn to wake up and choose to be happy. Still living at home at 22 and working for her dad. Wanting to get away, be independent and unable to make the break. Having crying fits and anxiety attacks over things such as having too many apples in the pantry. Things that she can’t explain and she can’t control.

“It’s the one thing I can control. I can control how much this hurts me. I can’t do that with anything else.”

At times like those I feel sadly inadequate for the task at hand. Where do you begin to unravel a problem like that in a short office visit?

Ten years in family practice is teaching me that I can’t fix everything for everyone.

I do what I can.

Today that meant listening and making sure she felt heard. Giving her some resources and hoping she’ll choose to use them. And extracting a promise of a return visit in a month. Which she may or may not keep.

I hope she does.

Strike Two

February 3, 2010 in Work by Sara | 2 comments

So today my second little old lady fell out and had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital.

I think the EMT’s are going to start talking about me…………..

I guess this is what I can expect from a practice where so far the average age seems to be 82.

In An Instant

January 22, 2010 in Work by Sara | 1 comment

So I was feeling pretty good about being back to work. Things were going smoothly. I love the folks I’m working with. I had not, in fact, forgotten everything I knew in the six months I had been away.

Then today an elderly woman tried her hardest to die right in front of me.

Now, I don’t know how many of you have ever watched someone die but it can be slow and agonizing or it can be fast and furious.

This would fall into the fast and furious column.

I was going along minding my own business, when one of the gals at the front desk said, “Hey, I’ve got someone here who can’t breathe.”

Really, in my experience, that’s never been a good thing to hear.

I look up to see this poor elderly woman gasping for breath. We quickly got her into a wheelchair and one of the girls asked if we should call the squad.

Yes.

Absolutely yes.

Now the squad was there in less than 5 minutes, but I would have sworn it was 5 years. Time slowed down in some crazy kind of way. We got oxygen on her and watched her oxygen saturation recover only to plummet right down to dangerous again. She got sweaty and anxious and kept gasping “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” She felt sick to her stomach and she hurt all over and I swear I was standing there trying to calm her down and watching the very life leave her.

And in that moment I had a total understanding of “the peace that passes all understanding”. It was like I was watching this all happen from the ceiling or something. I have been in situations similar to this and could hardly keep my knees from buckling. I would feel my heart beating so hard that I was afraid I was going to join the patient on the floor. My mind would be swirling a thousand different directions.

But this time that didn’t happened. My heart stayed calm, my hands didn’t sweat and my thoughts were focused. My legs held me up. (Yes, Jim, I totally know who to thank for that!)

The squad got there and got her on the stretcher. And though I didn’t think it possible, she continued to look worse and worse. She turned a shade of gray that was just wrong in so many ways.

They loaded her up and out the door they went.

(Meanwhile her husband, who I’m just going to give the benefit of the doubt and say that he was unaware of how serious it all was, continued checking out and telling our very distracted office manager about his recent knee operation.)

After they were all gone we just looked at each other.

Because I think we all realized just how quickly your life can change. How quickly it can end.

We learned a little bit later that she crashed in the ambulance right outside our door and they had to work hard at getting her breathing again. She was later admitted to ICU in acute respiratory failure.

Not five minutes before this all happened, she had been talking to our receptionist and taking care of some business while we drew some blood from her husband.

And in an instant.

It all changed.

Where I Put My Nose Back To The Grindstone

January 19, 2010 in Work by Sara | 4 comments

I went back to work today.

It was time. I had certainly enjoyed my six month hiatus while we traveled, moved, got ourselves settled in our new house and the girls in their new school. It was a blessing to have that time.

But it was time for me to engage that other part of my brain. Time for me to flex my diagnostic skills and see just how much they had atrophied after my time away.

It wasn’t too bad. I was a little nervous walking into my first room. But the rhythm of the work soon came back. I’ve missed it. The give and take with the patients. The figuring out what is wrong and doing my best to set it right. This place feels right. It’s a small country practice and the people feel like home to me.

There is of course the Mommy guilt that comes along with going back to work. There will things I miss at school and days when I drag sick kids into the office and make them a bed on the floor. Nothing is perfect.

But a job that lets me do something I love while allowing me to work hours that let me get the kids off to school and come home when they do is a special blessing.

And I’m glad to be back.

Retirement: Part 2

July 3, 2009 in Marriage, Time Goes By, Work by Sara | 3 comments

Well that was actually really fun. I shed a few tears, but not many. JD was lauded by all as an all around great guy. Hands where shaken, backs were slapped, and a few necks were hugged.

It was good to hear how well JD is thought of at work. I think that it is hard to understand exactly how your spouse is at work. I know that I sometimes wonder if JD would recognize me, patient as Job while listening to my patients and offering endless support as needed. I think he would wonder why that part of me goes missing at home so often.

And I couldn’t help but quietly think while they were listing all his accomplishments (and they were many), “Is this the same guy that can’t find the mayonaise on a regular basis?”

We were both grateful to have friends and family there to say goodbye to this part of our lives. It will be strange not seeing him in uniform as he comes through the door each night. To see him walk by other officers without saluting. To identify ourselves now as retired military.

(Between Michael Jackson’s death and all this talk of retirement, I’m feeling just days away from doses of Geritol and my first broken hip.)

So off we go to the next part of our life. If it brings half as much satisfaction as this last part then we’ll have absolutely nothing to complain about.

Proud of you honey.

I love you.

Retirement: Part 1

July 2, 2009 in Marriage, Time Goes By, Work by Sara | 3 comments

My husband retires from 20+ years in the military tomorrow.

I am much more nervous about it than he is. No one who knows us well will be surprised to hear that. It is the very nature of our relationship for me to be all a twitter about something while he calmly moves into the next phase of life with nary a blink. Thank goodness. If we were both like me?

Heaven help us.

It’s a big day. Tune in tomorrow for a recap.

I’m sure there will be more tears.

Surprise.

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