10 years ago, I decided I wanted a career in healthcare.  Looking back, it was probably the only career for me;  my father was chronically ill with heart disease and a lot of my time as a teenager was spent in hospitals.  In a way, it was almost comfortable.  My motivation to enter the field was to protect other people from suffering and help them to have the best quality of life.

Technology in healthcare has come a long way and we are much more capable of keeping patients alive.  Unfortunately there is often no quality of life and rather than helping I am prolonging the suffering I so much want to prevent. We are now capable of keeping patients alive, almost indefinitely, on machines until their loved ones decide enough is enough (usually much too late). Chronically critically ill.

I dread going to the land of the living dead. I plead with families to allow me to stop torturing my patient and yet, they still tell me “Do everything”.  Many times they visit less frequently, as they cannot bear to see their family member suffer.  If only they understood that whether or not they see it, the patient is still suffering.  The nurses, doctors and support staff see it.  I see it. And we all mourn.  We all suffer. I am exhausted.

We will all die someday: it is inevitable. We cannot be afraid and can only live our best life until that day. And when that day comes, we must embrace it. When we can no longer do what we love, is it really living?  I don’t think so.  I can only hope that other healthcare workers read this and remember your colleagues in palliative care.  In my opinion, they deserve capes.  They are the heroes of healthcare.

 

 

I turned 32 years old yesterday.  I think a part of me thought that by the time that I turned 32, I would have my life figured out.  I am learning, however, that nobody has their life figured out.  Every day I ask myself: what do I really want to do when I grow up?  Am I happy with my life? How can I change my life for the better?

I have reevaluated friendships in recent years and I am learning: not to accept relationships that ultimately cause me pain and not to accept excuses or to let people blow me off when they find something better to do.  While this may result in more down time, I am too old to deal with drama.  More time to explore, is what I tell myself.

Many days I find myself fantasizing about living in a cabin on a lake somewhere. Where I can wake up every morning, make a pot of coffee and write. I would go for runs every morning, maybe a swim in the afternoon.  I think back to my time in Denmark.  I would love that life.

I don’t think I am a good enough writer for that life, unfortunately. That said, perhaps I should explore ways to get myself closer to my dream.

I was always one to be afraid of change.  I sought comfort in my routine and, should anything or anyone disrupt that, I would be thrown into a world of chaos and anxiety.  But change is inevitable, and I slowly began to realize I could either fear it or dive in.

For the past three years I had a job I was incredibly comfortable with.  I was dissatisfied with the position, but it was familiar.  I finally decided it was time to branch out, and sought a more intellectually challenging position.  The transition has not been an easy one- every day on the new job is stressful.  It is full of intense scrutiny and life or death decisions (literally).  I am completely vulnerable and a large part of me wants to crawl back to the safety of my comfort zone.  But I am fighting the temptation and I am growing as a person and as a professional.

If there is one thing I am good at, it is pushing myself. It is not a graceful process- I am always wrought with anxiety, at least initially.  It is the least comfortable process in the world for me, but I push myself through it. And I am always rewarded.

In prior posts I have discussed the importance of finding passions.  But I am also starting to realize that passions are more something that are developed and not found.  How can you be passionate without first exploring?  There are so many things in this world to be discovered, but to discover it is necessary to get out of my comfort zone.

Embrace change. We were meant to change. We are meant to grow.

 

Growing up, my mother always used to say “life’s a bitch and then you die”.  I know, doesn’t that inspire positivity? The only thing my mother seemed to be passionate about was attempting to be the perfect daughter, mother and wife.  And she was miserable all of the time.  As I started to become more independent in life and pulled away from my family a bit, my mother seemed to build up the time we did share together, to the point where it was impossible for me to ever please her.  And, as a result, she became despondent, disappointed.  The pressure became too much for me and I pushed further and further away from her.

Slowly, I am learning I cannot depend on anyone for my own happiness, just as my mother couldn’t depend on any of us for her happiness.  I think this is a very hard lesson for anyone who wasn’t encourage to develop hobbies and a sense of self early on.  I have always been eager to please, capable of conforming to whatever was expected of me in an effort to find someone who would “fulfill me”.  Spoiler alert: I never have felt fulfilled by these relationships, nor have I felt any happier.

I am on a mission to find myself. Find what my passions are. Find what makes me whole.  And guess what? It certainly doesn’t involve another human.  Stay tuned and join me on my journey.

 

One of the best pieces of advice I have received is you can control what you consume.  More recently, I have noticed that I have been hooked to my social media, constantly oscillating between scrolling through Facebook and Instagram.  A rabbit hole of unfiltered information. I have even started obtaining most of my news from social media.  Anyone who has been following the NEWS knows this is quite unwise.  More and more I have felt overstimulated and mentally exhausted from the activities I’m not doing.  More and more I have felt like I am missing out on life.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.  There is a whole world of information out there that I can filter any way I choose.  Growing up, I used to spend my time reading.  I was a voracious reader and loved both nonfiction and fiction.  Sometimes I would read as much as one or two books a week, as Netflix was not a novelty to which I was privy.  And you know what, I loved it.  I wasn’t worried about what the rest of the world was doing, because I was immersed in my novel. I was learning and growing.

When I wasn’t reading, I was exploring, often with my friends.  I would seek out new adventures, new places to hike and new experiences. If I watched a movie, I would often watch something new (come on, we all know we watch the same shows over and over again on Netflix).  I was passionate and curious about the world and was ready to experience it first hand.

Then, one day, I stopped consuming by choice. I was force fed.  I don’t know what brought about this change, but I would like to blame the pressures of college or graduate school , or perhaps the newfound loneliness when I suddenly didn’t have all of my best friends down the hall.  Regardless, I was not nourishing my body and somewhere along the line, I stopped growing.

I often worry that the future generations will be less smart, less creative, less informed.  Will they go out and explore, or will they continue to sit behind a screen?  Will they try new things, try to grow?  I hope so. I challenge myself to a social media diet, and I encourage you to join me.  Get outside. Try new activities.  Read books. Learn the thing you have always wanted to learn.  And then tell me about it. I can’t wait to hear your experiences.

There is a certain level of suspense in the air before any big snow storm.  The day is quiet- even the wildlife knows something is about to happen.  The sky is overcast and there’s just a small nip in the air.  Growing up in New England, I knew that if the temperature was too cold then it would not snow.  “It’s too cold to snow”, we would say to one another casually.

As I sit in my kitchen, peering out the window, I know it is going to snow.  Okay, sure, I have a weather forecast that states the same, however the forecasts are rarely right (sometimes I wonder how it is acceptable for a weatherman to be so bad at his profession, but I digress).  I feel less pressure to solve the world’s problems, because I know the world will slow down and yield to the storm.

I love running in this weather.  Running in the quiet.  Running with my thoughts.  The run before the snow is contemplative.  The run after a good snow is always magical. Every run has its own feeling.  Every run brings up a slew of memories, good and bad.

I started running (seriously) in 2014.  Before then I dabbled in running, but never really achieved any fitness due to inconsistency.  I ran my first half marathon in October of 2014, the Baltimore Half Marathon.  I remember the incredible feeling of crossing that finish line.  What an accomplishment.  After that I went on to run a handful of half marathons and two full marathons (Philadelphia in 2015 and the Marine Corps Marathon in 2016).  My last race was the Essex Half Marathon in 2017 in Vermont.  After that I got burnt out. Injured and iron deficient, I just did not want the pressure of running any longer.  I have continued to dabble in running but just not seriously.  I cannot remember the last time I ran double digit mileage.

Listening to your body is key for anything: your body tells you a lot. So I have taken a new approach to running lately- run when you want to, sometimes when you don’t want to, but never run in pain or extreme fatigue.  Today I am going to run for the first time in about a week.  Though I am a little apprehensive, I know I will feel better once I start running.  Just keep running.

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton