This past week, I have felt loss in a way I have only felt once before.
Six years ago, an 11-year-old boy in our community passed away suddenly while playing basketball. He collapsed, and that was it. He had a heart problem that no one had known about. He was the first person for me to see hooked up to a machine to be kept alive. He was one of my sunday school students, one of my mom's students, a community member, everyone's child just like I feel all these kids are.
It was the first time I was hit with the reality of what it means to choose medicine. I am choosing to save lives, but I am also choosing to be at someone's bedside when I cannot do that. I am choosing to break a parent's heart in a way they had not been broken before. I am choosing to be a face they will remember as representing the worst day of their life.
I felt broken for a few weeks after that instance and lost motivation for what I was pursuing. Luckily, that was in high school, and at some point I found strength in this loss and used it as motivation to persevere. There would always be the bad days, but the good days had to outnumber the bad ones. That was why people still chose medicine while knowing the sorrows and tragedies they would most likely witness.
It has been six years and two months since I felt that kind of loss. Until one week ago.
I cannot dive into the details out of respect for the family, but one week ago the 20-year-old son of my former pediatric provider took his own life.
I have always wanted to be her. She is the reason I fell for medicine in the first place as a young child asking her about the heart model in her exam room. I wanted to know how the body worked, and most importantly, I wanted to be as smart, kind, and compassionate as she has always been. Before applying to medical school, I shadowed her and felt her sense of pride in me. I always felt like her medical prodigy, her patient, her student. She is my mentor, my medical mother. Had she known what he had been struggling with, she would have been able to help him, and I'm sure she would have worked harder for him than anyone else.
To see her suffer with a loss that as a provider she has tried to protect other parents from is incomprehensible. And again I am faced with this overwhelming fear of what it means to go into medicine, what it means to be responsible for youth, for those who place their lives in your hands. Their parents will look at me to protect them from a loss that cannot be put into words.
Could I ever handle receiving a phone call that my patient had taken their own life? How could I handle sudden troubling news about any patient, or even my own child?
And yet I have to. I have to learn how to. And that is where I am paralyzed, terrified, overwhelmed, afraid. The more my emotions overwhelm me, the more worried I become that my sensitivity and hyper-awareness and tendency to personalize every emotional experience I see someone go through will come in my way along this journey.
I have found myself thinking about the young girls in my youth group, how I may start by working with them and maybe I will feel more secure in my ability to be a mentor/counselor for a patient. This past week, at our discussion, I held the girls hands and formed a circle with them. We expressed our appreciation for one another. I felt my hands shaking at how much love and fear I had for them at the same time while watching them tell each other why they appreciated one another.
What I really wished I could do was hug each of them close, tell them how much I loved them, how we were all truly sisters. I hoped they knew they could speak to me about anything, whenever, that they always had someone cheering them on (besides their families of course).
For now, I will wait until this feeling of fear moves away. At some point, I know I will find the strength. I have to. For them. For each patient, for each friend, for each parent. Maybe right now I feel as though my emotions will come in my way of practicing, but I know with each painful day, I will only grow stronger. For now, I will forgive myself if I don't have that strength yet.
As my provider said to me at her son's funeral, "We have to help these kids. We have work to do."
I will do this for her, for parents like her, for the youth like her son, for youth like my own sisters, I will keep working. I will find the strength, it might not be today, but I will. I am determined, by Allah's power, to be their person. This experience will only making me stronger, but it's okay if that's not how I feel today.
Six years ago, an 11-year-old boy in our community passed away suddenly while playing basketball. He collapsed, and that was it. He had a heart problem that no one had known about. He was the first person for me to see hooked up to a machine to be kept alive. He was one of my sunday school students, one of my mom's students, a community member, everyone's child just like I feel all these kids are.
It was the first time I was hit with the reality of what it means to choose medicine. I am choosing to save lives, but I am also choosing to be at someone's bedside when I cannot do that. I am choosing to break a parent's heart in a way they had not been broken before. I am choosing to be a face they will remember as representing the worst day of their life.
I felt broken for a few weeks after that instance and lost motivation for what I was pursuing. Luckily, that was in high school, and at some point I found strength in this loss and used it as motivation to persevere. There would always be the bad days, but the good days had to outnumber the bad ones. That was why people still chose medicine while knowing the sorrows and tragedies they would most likely witness.
It has been six years and two months since I felt that kind of loss. Until one week ago.
I cannot dive into the details out of respect for the family, but one week ago the 20-year-old son of my former pediatric provider took his own life.
I have always wanted to be her. She is the reason I fell for medicine in the first place as a young child asking her about the heart model in her exam room. I wanted to know how the body worked, and most importantly, I wanted to be as smart, kind, and compassionate as she has always been. Before applying to medical school, I shadowed her and felt her sense of pride in me. I always felt like her medical prodigy, her patient, her student. She is my mentor, my medical mother. Had she known what he had been struggling with, she would have been able to help him, and I'm sure she would have worked harder for him than anyone else.
To see her suffer with a loss that as a provider she has tried to protect other parents from is incomprehensible. And again I am faced with this overwhelming fear of what it means to go into medicine, what it means to be responsible for youth, for those who place their lives in your hands. Their parents will look at me to protect them from a loss that cannot be put into words.
Could I ever handle receiving a phone call that my patient had taken their own life? How could I handle sudden troubling news about any patient, or even my own child?
And yet I have to. I have to learn how to. And that is where I am paralyzed, terrified, overwhelmed, afraid. The more my emotions overwhelm me, the more worried I become that my sensitivity and hyper-awareness and tendency to personalize every emotional experience I see someone go through will come in my way along this journey.
I have found myself thinking about the young girls in my youth group, how I may start by working with them and maybe I will feel more secure in my ability to be a mentor/counselor for a patient. This past week, at our discussion, I held the girls hands and formed a circle with them. We expressed our appreciation for one another. I felt my hands shaking at how much love and fear I had for them at the same time while watching them tell each other why they appreciated one another.
What I really wished I could do was hug each of them close, tell them how much I loved them, how we were all truly sisters. I hoped they knew they could speak to me about anything, whenever, that they always had someone cheering them on (besides their families of course).
For now, I will wait until this feeling of fear moves away. At some point, I know I will find the strength. I have to. For them. For each patient, for each friend, for each parent. Maybe right now I feel as though my emotions will come in my way of practicing, but I know with each painful day, I will only grow stronger. For now, I will forgive myself if I don't have that strength yet.
As my provider said to me at her son's funeral, "We have to help these kids. We have work to do."
I will do this for her, for parents like her, for the youth like her son, for youth like my own sisters, I will keep working. I will find the strength, it might not be today, but I will. I am determined, by Allah's power, to be their person. This experience will only making me stronger, but it's okay if that's not how I feel today.
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