Reflections on a new beginning

You'll forgive me if the next week or so I spend a lot of time waxing philosophical.

Know what I'm doing right now? I'm sitting in a Barnes and Noble in Durham, in the Cafe, drinking a Cinnamon Dolce White Mocha and blogging. I was planning on coming in and working on my many delinquent discharge summaries, but, alas, I'm on vacation. Sort of (I mean, I'm going in to work at quarter past early tomorrow for a meeting with the OB/G dept about my crazy pregnant patient, and then I have my review later in the morning, and then I'm probably going to stay for intern support group so I can kibbutz. And Saturday I'm spending at a conference here in town - which is really, really ironic, for reasons that will become apparent soon - and I'm probably taking call on Sunday. But, you know, vacation).

Know what I was doing right now (well, it may have been about an hour from now) three years ago?

I was getting in SO MUCH TROUBLE. Why? Because I was going to a conference on the 9th and 10th.

Also, I had just delivered my very last baby. But we'll talk about that some other time.

So there was this conference I wanted to go to in '05. In February, I pulled the flier out of my mailbox and went to toss it in the recycle bin like all the other solicitations I got, but for some reason it caught my eye. It was a conference for residents to improve their laparoscopic skills. Of which mine we very limited, because I was the bad intern and no one would ever let me play with the toys except for Ben, who liked having me operate with him alone (i.e., no upper level resident) on his laparoscopic or hysteroscopic cases. And it was in Chicago, so, bonus, no lodging costs. Plus I would be on my Anesthesia rotation, who made it abundantly clear (as in, they said it outright) that they didn't care if we came in at all for the whole month, this was clearly for our learning. Lots of the upper levels told me they went in one or two days a week while on Anesthesia (since you still had OB/G call and clinic responsibilities). Cool. So I emailed our program coordinator and said, can I go to this conference two whole months from now? And she said, this is how much you have left in your educational account, tell me if you want to use it on registration fees. And then I got my department chair to write them a letter saying that yes, I was a resident in our department, thus making me eligible for the resident rate and membership in the organization. I was excited. It looked really interesting. And maybe it would help me to improve my skills enough that someone would actually let me operate once in a while. I was trying to be better, despite the fact that I knew I was never going to be good enough.

So, the Wednesday before this conference, I send my duty hours in, and say, oh, by the way, don't forget that I'm going to this thing this weekend. At which point my program director was like, "What? What conference? Interns aren't allowed to go to conferences." I said, remember how I emailed y'all about this in February? And then by today, which was Thursday, she had concluded that I was totally abusing the system by taking Friday and Monday off to travel. I said, but Anesthesia's okay with me being gone, and Dr. A - the anesthetist in charge of me - and I have already worked out a plan to make up the hours I'm going to miss.

She said, "I see no reason to involve the Anesthesia department in this."

Um...other than the fact that I was responsible to them that month?

And it wasn't like I was going to the coast for a four day weekend, or skiing, or to Martha's Vineyard, like so many of my cohorts had done on that rotation. I was going to a conference. To learn surgical techniques they wouldn't teach me. Oh, my gosh, though, I was in so much trouble.

I was "allowed" to go to the conference, because I'd already made plane reservations but we were going to have to "talk about this when I got back."

I should've said it right then. I should've said it months before. I should've pulled out the "oh, fuck you." I should've told them I wasn't coming back from Chicago. I should've told her that if she were doing her damn job, instead of abusing and scapegoating me for everything that went wrong, instead of throwing me to the wolves when she wanted to avoid confrontation, if she would've acknowledged my strengths and been constructive instead of abusive, I wouldn't have been so miserable, confused, and demoralized that I was clinging to the last jagged shards of my sanity. I should've told her precisely what was wrong with this picture. I should've told her exactly how much more and how much better I was than she was portraying me to be.

But I didn't. Because at that point, I was so broken down I didn't know any better.

I did, however, go to the conference.

And the conference changed my life. In fact, I think it's not at all an exaggeration to say that it saved my life. You'll hear about that in a couple of days, I'm sure.

I doubt Saturday's conference is going to as life altering. But let me just say that not only am I going with the department's blessing, they're paying my $200 registration fee. I mean, it probably helps that we're hosting the conference, but, still.

I'm so grateful for my life right now. I'm so grateful for where I am, so grateful for what it, and I, are becoming. So grateful for what the last four years have taught me. So grateful that I'm even alive, and have a career ahead of me to speak of. So I guess there's really only one thing left to say, today.

Fuck you, Karen George.