Workaholic

I went into medicine partly due to heartbreak

The exhaustive training of medical school and residency was a welcome albeit ineffective distraction from my sorrow and loneliness

24-hour shifts are a convenient justification for not keeping in touch with loved ones

Even though the real excuse is my social anxiety and sense of inadequacy

Living within hospital walls, I suspect that I am not the only physician who became a medical doctor to try to forget unrequited love, to escape the world of human relationships

My older colleagues work far more than they need to to make ends meet, far more than any reasonable person would work in a week

Who needs friends or feelings when you have patients and science?

Our skin grows pale under fluorescent lights

Our vision becomes shortsighted as the screens stare unblinkingly

Our hearts forget how to feel carefree

Our muscles atrophy as our brains hypertrophy

Our minds become boxed in with facts, our mental filing cabinets overflow

I am a recovering workaholic working alongside workaholics who do not appear to be in recovery

Perhaps they suspect the same of me

Heads down in the trenches, none of us can know another’s heart

We can only know our own heart, if we listen

We carefully administer medications, surgeries and therapies

We measure progress in numerical metrics of lab values, calculated scores and vital signs

We arrive early and stay late

We work day and night without a break

We always have too much on our plates

We deprive ourselves of sleep, fresh air and food

We know why we have irritable moods

Practicing medicine is an unhealthy, imbalanced lifestyle and we know it

We can only ever heal ourselves

I’m ready to show it

I am finally healing my broken heart

I found that I had to begin at the start

Childhood wounds tangle and bloom

Trauma begets trauma until we change our thoughts, words and actions

Breaking old patterns even as we hold traction

I am love itself, I am the source of what I sought

My cup overflows, it was not all for naught

Emergency Room

Emerging from the emergency room, gasping to find my breath, I weep.

I finished my last shift in that hell-hole, and I thought I would cry tears of joy, but instead I am crying tears of raw emotional release.

My patients called me an angel, but many of them were also angels to me- holding my spirit buoyantly with their sparkling eyes, a much-needed balance to my co-workers who seemed mostly dead inside.

Crushed inside the machine

Their eyes see only the screen

Their skin knows no fresh air or sunlight

As they toil day and night

In a crowded, chaotic space filled with alarms

Long ago, they replaced their charms

With rigid motions, mechanical minds

Without windows, they don’t notice the passage of time

When did they become so cold and bitter?

It must have been little by little

The fire in their hearts was starved of oxygen, their spirits wore away

I hope I keep my heartspirit intact, at the end of the day

Flashback to a line of gurneys in the ambulance bay

My attending grilling me, I didn’t know what to say

Broken bones and chronic pain

STAT CT to look for a bleed in the brain

Patients sustained on turkey sandwiches and diet ginger-ale

We wait on them, they wait for us, but we are all stuck in this jail

Trapped in a health care system which is systematically inhumane

No wonder so many of us don’t feel quite sane

My vision is blurred by tears

I’ve finished one more day in the middle of many hard years

Of sacrificing my life, enduring unfathomable strife

Just to help others survive another night

I want to get off this roller coaster, but I’m strapped in

Though I am sick to my stomach and deafened by the din

I return to my breath, breathe in new air

I have the rest of my life to move on towards

Tomorrow night, I’ll be back in the wards

With renewed gratitude, I leave this emergency beast

I walk past patients waiting to suckle the mechanical teat

Finally allowing room for my own emergency

My meltdown of tears isn’t enough to drown out the blaze

Which burnt me out long before today

I struggle to justify

Why I put myself in situations that make me cry

Codes

We stay up all night

We walk the edge of a knife

At any moment, behold the sight

In our hands, is this death or is this life?

Plunging into bodies big and small

Chest compressions, intubations, we do it all

Breathing and beating, we make the call

When to quit, and spirits fall

Another memory formed between these walls

We know the code-

Sweat, tension, palpitations

Chaotic flurry, slow-motion hurry

If only we could lend our beating hearts

To those who are dying in front of our eyes