Being a doctor, being a patient

Doctors have trouble being patients. And I'm no exception, even though I'm still 1 year away from being an actual doctor. 

My eye was a good wake up call. While on my OBGYN rotation, I developed a weird focal redness just on one segment of my right eye. It made me look like I had severe pink eye, but I ignored it because I didn't wanna miss any hours on the rotation for a doctor's visit. What are they gonna do? I thought. Probably just tell me to use eye drops until the redness goes away. Well, not one, not two, but three weeks into this eye redness, a kind nurse finally forced me to go see an eye doctor. Thank goodness, because apparently I had some ulceration on top of a bacterial infection on top of extremely dry, irritated eyes from chronic misuse of my contacts (oops). And $80 worth of eye medications later, I promised my eye doctor I'd take better care of my eyes, "because you need to see in order to take care of patients!" Good point, doc.

And then today, I became a patient while seeing a patient. I'd been sick the past few days with some upper respiratory virus (It's kind of inevitable after 3 sick kids in a row sneeze on you). But today I felt strangely nauseous at the office and pretty dehydrated. I brushed it off, telling myself to toughen up and go see the 18-year old girl who had just arrived. As we were chatting, I felt a sudden onset of cold sweats, nausea, lightheadedness, and felt the blood rush from my head. I've passed out before and I knew where this was headed...to the floor. Thankfully I didn't actually lose consciousness; I just had a controlled, non-traumatic fall as my lightheadedness took control over my body. We were talking about dentists when I fell. And she had to call for a nurse to help me up and onto an exam table. For the next 20 minutes, I couldn't get up or move much, because I'd get dizzy and nauseous all over again. My mouth felt parched. Finally, I thought I could stay vertical without collapsing, so I wobbled back into my patients exam room, determined to finish her exam. She ended up staying one hour longer than she needed to because of my little episode, and it was both humiliating and humbling to show a patient my "humanity" - that is, that doctors aren't perfect and doctors need doctors too. But then again, I insisted on seeing her through till the end, and told my attending that I didn't need to take a water break until after the morning session was over when, clearly, I was dehydrated and needed to give my brain some extra fluid.

It's a dangerous mentality that I feel like many doctors fall victim to. We prefer to diagnose or treat ourselves, ignoring the fact that our judgment can be clouded when it comes to our own health. We feel too proud of our position as "healers" to admit that we are in desperate need of healing ourselves. We feel ashamed when our patients catch a glimpse of our illness, because aren't we doctors and supposed to know how to make everything better?

Today, I learned the hard-but-soft way that I must pray against these prideful thoughts! And on a tangent.. How much more dangerous it is to think that we have no need for spiritual healing and that we arent desperately broken because of sin, without Christs blood that freely covers over our iniquities! 

And due to today's inclement weather, all of our afternoon patients cancelled their appointments so I am blissfully laying on my couch, allowing my brain to soak up whatever fluids it was deprived of this morning. Thank God for providing for my physical needs, even when I try to ignore them. 

On that note, stay safe!