Label Me Elmo

I used to love those label-makers when I was a kid.  You know the ones, the big plastic doohickeys with the wheel you spun around to find the letter you wanted.  You spun, squeezed the trigger, spun, squeezed the trigger, and on and on until you had a lovely little embossed strip of thick tape-stuff.  Peel off the backing, and voila!  A label you could stick anywhere!

Turns out, adults love labels too.  But instead of squeezing out tape strips to put on our lunch boxes, we turn to labeling ourselves and each-other.  Married.  Single.  Doctor.  Writer.  Smart.  Dumb.  How convenient it is to know which box to put people in.  The first question out of most people's mouths when they meet a stranger at a party is, "what do you do?"  The person's occupation provides a handy label, by which we think we can tell a great deal about them.  Ooo, they're a teacher so they must be dedicated and poor.  They're a physician so they must be arrogant and rich.  They're a writer so they must live in their pajamas and eat a lot of Hot Pockets.

But what if we are not defined by labels, but by our essence.  This becomes trickier for cocktail-party conversation.  "What is your essence" is a tricky question, and I would wager that most people have not done enough soul-searching to be able to answer it.  Or maybe we can never really answer it, not in words.  In deeds, perhaps, but maybe not even then.  In intention.  In our wishes and thoughts and dreams. In how we treat our partners, our friends, strangers, animals.

I've been told that people let go of labels when they are close to death.  The man who was a cattle farmer and could talk about nothing but livestock his entire life, loses interest in this topic at the end.  He moves beyond the labels and into his essence.  I haven't spent enough time with the dying to tell you whether I've observed this for myself, but it makes sense.  No-one really cares, at the end, how you made your money.  They care who you are. People stop identifying with their labels, and find out what's really inside.

Labels are powerful things.  If you let go of one, another comes right in to replace it.  I discovered this when I was getting ready to leave my career as a physician.  I knew I had to make a change, but my label said "Doctor", and what was I going to do with that?  Every time I tried to peel it off and let go of that label, a huge wave of fear swept in.  What are you going to do?  Who are you going to be? What makes you think you can change your life?  Haven't you read your label?  It took several months (years?) before I summoned up enough courage to rip off that label and actually make a change.  I tried very hard not to put a new label on while the wound from the old one was still so fresh, but that was a challenge.  An exercise in letting go, in just "being". Not easy for a type A who is used to jumping through all the hoops set up in her path. 

Making it even more challenging, I found that people like to project their labels onto us, even as we try to let go of our own.  When I announced I was leaving medicine, every single person wanted to know what I was going to do instead.  Now, I know this is natural human curiosity, but people had a really hard time with the answer, "I don't know".  My mantra became, "I'm going to take some time off to figure that out," but I could see the new labels forming even as the words were leaving my lips.  Unemployed.  Lazy.  Quitter.  Crazy.  Maybe they didn't want to think these things about me - but since I didn't give them another label to take the place of the old one, they gave me whichever one came first to mind.

Now, this isn't entirely true, or fair to the people in my life, or to me for that matter!  I had just as hard of a time refusing a new label.  So usually the second sentence, after I completed my mantra, was, "well, I am going to a conference on medical writing so we'll see...".  I just couldn't leave it at, "I don't know", and I could see the sigh of relief in my listeners too.  "At least she has a plan..."  As it turns out, my "plan" has shifted and changed and I'm now doing something I never thought I would be doing...  but that's how life goes.  I'll leave my new career a mystery for another blog post, just to avoid giving my readers a comfortable label.  Ha!

So the next time I visit my hometown, I'll have to see if my mom still has that old label-maker lying around.  Maybe I can make all-new labels.  Just so I can cut them into bits and scatter them to the wind...

Cutthroat Yoga

Do you go to Yoga classes?  If you do, you know how wonderful it makes you feel.  How blissed-out, stretched-out, and strengthened it makes you feel, no matter how crummy or fat you felt when you walked into that room.  You also, if I'm not mistaken, have probably run up against the Aggressive Yoga Ladies. 

You know the ones.  The ones who will cut your throat if you dare to place your mat on "their spot".  On an average week, I go to three yoga classes, at three different branches of my gym, with two different instructors.  Every class has its regulars, and people gravitate toward their favorite spots.  I'm no exception - I admit to having "my spot" and to being bummed if someone beats me to it.  I will even try to "scootch in" with other people, so that I can get something close to my spot (for the record:  the front row so I can correct my posture in the mirror, but not on the crack between mirror panels, on the side of the room closest to the door but a couple spots over from the instructor.  Yeah, I'm not particular at all...).  In two of my three regular classes, this isn't usually a problem.  I'm usually able to get my spot, and people are willing to scoot around so that everyone can see the mirror and no-one's bumping arms when we swan dive into forward fold.  Maybe some of the people in those classes even classify me as one of the AYLs, (I will admit it - that which bugs me about others is probably something I don't like in myself) but I really do try to work with other people in a friendly manner so we can all have a spot that makes us happy.

What I am not:  one of those people who likes to barge into the room and unfurl their mat before the preceding class has had a chance to put away their equipment.  One of those people who will actually ask someone to move out of their spot.  One of those people who will refuse to "scootch" when asked.  Those are the ladies at my wednesday yoga class.  They actually had to install a guard at the door (a hapless gym employee) so that the frontrunner AYL would stop barrelling into the room the second the music ended in the class before ours.  With the herd mentality that overcomes humans in such situations, once one person enters that room, the rest immediately surge forward so as not to be left behind.  I was even shoved once, I kid you not.  After a few weeks of the guard, the frontrunner cooled her jets a bit and would let the prior class - mostly - put away their weights and mats, and our class was no longer guarded.  Still, you can feel the energy shift the second the weightlifting class ends - sometimes even before.  People start scooting closer and closer to the door, the natives becoming restless.  Once the frontrunner breaks the barrier of the door jamb, all bets are off.  The frontrunner runs to the front of the room and stakes her claim, and that of her slightly slower friend, by throwing both mats down.  My problem is not with the frontrunner as such (although she is the one that asked me to move out of her spot the first time I attended this particular class and didn't know the dealio - she must have been late that day).  No, I'm willing to breathe, let it go, and let her have the spot if it means that much to her.  My problem is with her friend.  The friend usually nabs the spot I'm after (I'm just not willing to give in to the aggression and race her for it).    I used to naively try to share space with AYL #2.  I put a smile on my face and asked if we could share the mirror panel (necessitating her to move a little to the left - she was planted in the center of the panel) so that I wouldn't be staring at the crack (it throws off your balance, in case you're wondering why the big deal).  She told me that she didn't want to be on a crack either and moved her mat about an eighth of an inch.  She was about a foot from the crack - there was plenty of room to share.  I kept smiling and thanked her for her accomodation.  She suggested I move to a spot on the other side of the room.  Oh, now it's on!  Passive-aggressive doesn't work when it comes up against plain old aggressive!

I am trying to be the nicer, bigger person here without being a total doormat.  I still try for that spot on the mirror, but I set up a little bit staggered behind AYL #2.  I'm a little close to her mat for both of our comfort, but since I'm staggered back we don't bump into each-other.  If she just scooted a little to the left, she would still be nowhere near the mirror crack and we'd both have plenty of room, but apparently to suggest this is anathema.  I've given up.  I refuse to move to the other side of the room (it's just as crowded, the spot she was suggesting was even more cramped than the one I was trying to occupy, and who knows what kinds of AYLs are over there?).  I am letting the bullies win, but only up to a point.  They will just have to deal with me sharing their mirror panels.  If I am a fly in their ointment, so be it.  It's good for them.  :)

It's good practice for me - I have a tendency to get too attached to things, including "my" yoga spot.  This class is a weekly reminder that I can let that go, that I can be in a spot slightly more cramped and slightly behind where I'd like to be, and it's okay - I still get a great yoga session.  I feel myself getting anxious about the weekly encounter with these ladies, and I practice letting go of that anxiety.  Neither AYL #1 or #2 will budge an inch on where they want to be, so that forces inflexible me to be the flexible one and adjust what I want to fit what I can get.  It's good for me, I suppose.  I could always throw an elbow or sprint ahead of those ladies, but it's not worth it.  I don't want to become one of them, and encountering them each week is a good reminder of that. 

I'm sure they don't see themselves as AYLs, just as I don't see myself as one.  I'm sure they don't think they're being at all unreasonable.  I don't know if they see the irony in racing to stake out their spot for a class that's supposed to be about calm, and about letting go of competition.  I need to stop being an AYL for long enough to realize that I can't teach them that lesson.  I can just angle for my spot and hope for the best!

See?  I'm smiling!  Not aggressive at all.

Fear

I'm back!  I haven't posted for a couple weeks - partly because of the holiday weekend coinciding with my wedding anniversary, and partly (okay, mostly) because I hit a wall of fear.  Kinda like this:

photo:  Wickpedia.  The Scream by Edvard Munch

I think it's a common human experience... We overcome fear in order to take steps toward happiness, then all of a sudden, fear rears its head again.  "I thought I was over you," we say.  "Nope," fear replies, "I'm always here, waiting for you". 

There are many types of fear, but the one I've been dealing with, in many areas of my life, is fear of success.  It sounds bizarre, but fear of success is a very real, albeit oddly self-defeating, entity.  I thought I had dealt with the fear when I made the decision to leave my career and embark in a new direction.  Naturally, there are day-to-day fears (financial being the number-one when one leaves a physician's salary but still has a physician's mortgage).  Those are normal, healthy fears.  It keeps us safe to be afraid of disease, ax-murderers, and telemarketers.  But fear of success?  How is that helpful?

Our minds, those whirling, busy maelstroms of thought, really resist change.  Even if the status-quo is painful and hurtful, at least it is a known quantity, and our minds will always choose the known over the scary unknown.  Unless we set the intention that we are going to try something new.  Even then, the mind balks.  "What do you mean, something new?" it cries.  "We don't want new!"  If you've ever wondered why people don't leave abusive relationships, why people lose (or gain) weight only to relapse to their former selves once they're achieved their goals, this fear of change has everything to do with it.  We'd always rather fight the battle we know, than take on a new one and have to change the way we see ourselves.  Even if we see ourselves as helpless, fat, ugly, weak, or any of the other perjoratives we hurl inward, at least these are known battles to us.  If we shift our worldview, our perception of ourselves in that world must shift and the mind recoils.  You'd think the mind would want to feel better - isn't it "better" to think of oneself as beautiful rather than ugly?  But if "beautiful" requires the mind to reset its go-to patterns, it will resist mightily.  It will think of (and shout at you) every possible reason that the new view cannot be true.  It can take a herculean effort to reset those automatic thoughts. 

This is fear of success, in a nutshell.  I've mentioned that I'm writing a book, and using this blog to explore some ideas and concepts for that book.  You'd think I'd want the book to be successful, and for this blog to become a worldwide phenomenon, right?  Apparently not!  Success opens one up to criticism, which is always scary.  And so, as I thought about what to write next, I got overwhelmed with the magnitude of the project and just shut down.  Ideas dried up.  I found other things to do with my time (not difficult when one is a master procrastinator!) 

How does one overcome this fear?  With faith.  It can be faith in a higher power or the support of the universe.  It can be faith that one's self-preservation instinct will not let one make a deadly mistake. It can be faith that you can take whatever criticism (or praise) that comes your way and keep your self-esteem intact.  Faith that people (or even just one person) will like what you have to say, will get something out of it.  Faith that there is a happier version of you, just waiting for you to take that leap, make that change.

It's not called a Leap of Faith for nothing.  You just have to jump, without knowing where the safety net is, or if one even exists.  The fear will always be there, waiting for you.  The fear will always take you back if the leap of faith doesn't work out... but what if it does?  What if?

Psychic Travels

So it turns out I'm not the first person to want to leave medicine!  Or even to write about it!  Wayyyyyyyyy back in 1988 (yes, that's sarcasm, although when I do the math, it's been 24 years and that makes me feel old), Michael Crichton (yes, him again) wrote a book called Travels. In it, he describes his extensive travels around the globe, mostly to lesser-trodden locales.  He details the self-insight and life lessons each journey teaches him, but he begins the book with a description of his four years in medical school. 

This book was recommended to me by my wonderful career-change coach, and at first I wasn't sure why.  Sure, I love to travel and MC has traveled to some amazing places.  He also describes his journeys on the spiritual plane - from psychic readings to astral projection to meditating in the desert, talking to a cactus for two weeks!  Initially, I wasn't really sure why he chose to begin his book with his med school days, since it doesn't really match up with the rest of the book, but he eventually spells it out - if he hadn't changed careers, if he had stayed in medicine, he might not have been forced into the sort of change that lays the track for all kinds of other life-changing experiences. 

MC started out as an English major, but found the English department at Harvard to be less than pleasant.  He switched to anthropology, and took some premed courses, "just in case".  He found the pre-med world to be quite different from the rest of Harvard, where people were less caught up in grades, and more eager for the learning experience in general.  In pre-med courses, he stepped "into a different world - nasty and competitive".  People would sabotage their classmates without a second thought - we called those people "gunners" by the time I went to med school.  No thought or consideration for anything but their own success.

He makes a couple comments that I found laugh-out-loud funny.  The first, regarding the gunners who gave out wrong answers to classmates who asked for help in his chemistry class and who sabotaged his lab experiments so he would start fires: "I was uncomfortable with the hostile and paranoid attitude this course demanded for success.  I thought that a humane profession like medicine ought to encourage other values in its candidates.  But nobody was asking my opinion."  How could I have found this LOL-funny?  Because it's true...  A quarter of a century later, medicine is still encouraging hostile, inhumane behaviour.  Not overtly, of course, and I do believe that things have improved.  My medical school had very few gunners, and overall was a pretty supportive place.  We were encouraged to explore our humanity, and we even had a humanities requirement in the curriculum (my favorite course - Red Flag #382 for my clinical career).  But I believe that the training, particularly by the time one gets to residency, beats most, if not all, of the humanity out of one. MC describes, "This... seemed more like hazing, like a professional initiation, than education."  I had to hunker down to get through it, and that hunkering down necessitated a complete absence of work on my inner self and created a version of myself that I really didn't like.

He continues, "I got through it as best I could.  I imagined medicine to be a caring profession, and a scientific one as well.  It was so fast-moving that its practitioners could not afford to be dogmatic; they would be flexible and open-minded."  Ha, ha.  Very funny, MC.  I am priveleged to know a lot of physicians who are wonderful people, caring as well as scientifically smart.  But I also know a lot of the other kind...  I will say that I believe that med schools today are trying to create more of the former, but unfortunately the profession does attract a fair number of the latter.  MC elaborates, "I learned that the best doctors found a middle position where they were neither overwhelmed by their feelings nor estranged from them.  That was the most difficult position of all, and the precise balance - neither too detached nor too caring - was something few learned...
 "It was certainly interesting work, and there was no doubt that you were doing something worthwhile with your life, helping sick people." This is true.  Medicine was, and is, an incredibly worthwhile profession, and it can be a very rewarding one as well. 

He goes on to tell some anecdotes about his pre-clinical and clinical training.  He explores the development of the gallows humor that anyone who deals with illness and death on a daily basis develops to some extent.  He describes the apalling behaviour of residents and attendings with whom he interacts, and his struggles with some patients.  He develops a theory of illness that requires that people take ownership of and responsibility for their mental and physical health.  He quits medicine.

MC tried four different times to quit medical school.  At the time, he was required to meet with a psychiatrist before he could quit.  The psychiatrist talked him into continuing every time, basically telling him he hadn't gotten yet to the part he wouldn't hate.  The psychiatrist did this each of the first three years of med school, then finally gave up the ghost, saying "I thought you would quit in the end".  MC finished out his four years, then quit medicine before ever becoming licensed or practicing.  Here's where my experience differed.  I actually enjoyed the classroom aspect of medical school, and I enjoyed many of my clinical rotations.  I still had (a little) time to devote to outside pursuits (reading, dancing).  The rotations I didn't enjoy were the ones that impinged the most on my outside life, or that were extremely stressful.  Red Flag #936. 

Now, MC had a backup.  He was already making money as an author during medical school.  He quit to become a writer, and he was already somewhat established by the time he gave up medicine.  He also had a tool with which to meet the naysayers when he publicized his decision to quit medicine.  "In quitting, I was following my instincts; I was doing what I really wanted to do.  But most people saw only that I was giving up a lot of prestige...They admired my determination, but they thought I was pretty unrealistic."  Hmmmm, sounds familiar.  MC, though, had written a little thing called The Andromeda Strain which was about to become a movie.  Once it was known he was a successful writer, people got off his back.  "All the doctors and residents who had shunned me became suddenly interested in me."

I have no Andromeda Strain in my back pocket.  I've got this blog, I'm working on a website, and I'm doing some medical editing and writing on a freelance basis.  My future best-seller of a book (think positive!) is still a mass of unorganized, unedited words on my computer.  But I do have one thing in common with Dr. Crichton:  I am following my instincts and walking away from an unhappy life, forward into the great unknown.  Cheers!

Sick of Being Sick

I've had an annoying, nagging cough for the last couple of weeks.  I never got really sick, but I'm sure taking my time getting better...  Before leaving medicine, I would have ignored it and plowed ahead with my busy life.  Now, I wonder what my body is trying to tell me...  Sometimes a cough is just a cough, but let's back up here to a little object lesson in psychosomatics...

I felt like I was sick all the time in residency.  I had been ill here and there in medical school – the worst was on my Pediatrics rotation.  All those little kids sucking on your stethoscope and coughing in your face will give you the flu like nobody’s business, I don’t care how many flu shots you get.  But in residency it got truly ridiculous.  Serotonin levels were down and cortisol was through the roof!  I was always getting the cold-of-the-moment, and when I wasn’t sick, I was feeling ill.  I often had stomach upset and general malaise.  Occasionally, more concrete abdominal pain.  Too bad I couldn’t see that it was probably psychic, not physical.  My body knew I was on the wrong path, even if my consciousness hadn't yet gotten the message.  But I didn’t pay attention, and continued on to graduation.  No surprise, it continued after I finished residency and began practicing out in the real world.  Yes, of course, when you see sick people for a living, you’re bound to get sick once in a while.  All the hand-washing in the world can’t save you from that cold or flu virus when it’s all over the hospital or your office.   But it’s not just that.  Working crazy hours compromises the immune system and raises cortisol levels.  The body is so stressed, it can’t muster the energy to fight off anything else, so you get sick.  But it's not just that, either. 

When you’ve stuffed down all of the emotions and inner voices that are crying out at you to make a change (you must suppress these in order to do what you do), they're going to come out physically. That's what psychosomatic means, although any good physician knows that only happens to other people, right?  I saw patients all the time who would come into the OB triage unit with vague complaints of dizziness or non-specific abdominal pain.  Often, there was something going on at home – either domestic violence or just being ignored on a Friday night.  They wanted a little attention, and a physical complaint was a "valid" way to get it.  I could recognize it in my patients, but couldn’t see my own “I don’t feel well” status as Red Flag #256.  Zero Insight Girl, that was me!

By the last year I was practicing, I was breaking out in angry, painful red welts under my arms each time I had a call shift.  I thought it must be the surgical scrubs, so I would take hospital scrubs home to launder them in my own detergent.  I saw my dermatologist who tested for allergies - all negative.  It took seven courses of antibiotics and a few rounds of topical steroids to calm  my skin before my wedding day.  I also took six weeks off work before the wedding, both allowing my skin to heal and because I felt I needed that time off to be a sane person on my wedding day (Red Flag #257, there you go!  If you need that much time off to feel and look like a normal person, something is wrong with your working situation).  Maybe it truly was a bacterial infection, but I think it had not a little to do with stress and something in me screaming out to be heard – if you won’t listen to me, I’ll give you physical symptoms so you have to pay attention! 

The thing is, that only works if you are tuned into it.  Otherwise it just leads to more denial, and an outward focus on the physical symptoms.  They at least detract your attention from the inner turmoil, and give you something upon which to blame your misery.  They will only heal, however, if you learn to dig out the real issues and deal with them.  Since this is both difficult and scary, most people choose never to go there.  I was not exactly raised to embrace my emotions, so allowing myself to feel them was terrifying, and it took a few years - this is certainly not something that happened overnight.  Once I started paying attention, however, there was no going back.  Luckily, by the time the outbreaks started, I already knew I was on my way out of medicine.  That didn't stop my body from trying to reinforce the message.  "What do you mean, you're giving six months notice?  Are you crazy?  You need to get out now!" 

And since I quit?  Clear skin and clear skies...  except for that stupid cough.

Coming Out

Today, I proudly present my first guest blogger, Rob Baginski MD.  I spotted this post on a website dedicated to physicians contemplating career change, and it really resonated with me.  I had struggled (and still do) with how and when to tell the people in my life that I am no longer a practicing doctor.  I hadn't thought about the comparisons to "coming out" until I read it here, and it's spot-on!  How will my parents react?  What will my friends think of me?  Read on, my friends, for Rob's words of wisdom, and feel free to pour a glass of wine whilst you peruse....
 

Telling Mom

So, I want to change careers. More specifically, I would like to change my career from that of a clinical, emergency department physician to that of… well, something non-clinical. I suppose the exact “what” has yet to be determined. I must say, the process is a daunting one, fraught with worries about what it is that I wish to do, what it is that I am qualified to do, how I can afford to leave clinical medicine, how to break into a new field, and many, many others. Nevertheless, a conversation with my mother the other day added yet one more concern, one more stressor to the list.

Now, as many of you who have or have had mothers in the past know, there is almost nothing in this universe that cannot be made more stressful by a conversation with her. There is something inherently anxiety-producing in getting helpful advice from the woman who bore and raised you. In this case, we were talking quite nicely about day-to-day things when I casually mentioned that I was speaking later that afternoon to my career counselor. There was a pause, and she asked, “Why, honey, are you speaking to a career counselor?”

I sighed, as we had discussed my desire to leave clinical medicine several times in the past.

“She is helping me figure out how to leave the ER, Mom. You know I’ve been wanting to get out of the ER for a while now.”

“Oh, sweetheart. You know you love the ER. You’re just confused right now. Give it time, and you will realize you want to stay there after all.”

And then she let drop the phrase that stunned me.

“You just haven’t found the right ER yet.”

It was then that I realized that I had to come out.

No, I am not talking about coming out as gay. I’m talking about telling the people around me, my family and friends, about my life choice to leave clinical medicine. I didn’t realize how my choice would affect them and how they see me. Like telling people about sexual orientation, revealing a dissatisfaction with “being a doctor” can be shocking to people who see you in a certain way. They now have to see you as a person who is unhappy at work, who has other dreams or aspirations other than medicine, and who is not fulfilled in a career that American society has somehow glorified and idolized. Therefore, I need to come out… again.

My mother’s words struck a chord that pulled me back 15 years ago. How many gay men and women have told their parents that they were homosexual only to be told, “You just haven’t found the right girl/boy yet.”

Well, it has been 10 years, and I still haven’t found the right ER. And, Mom, it isn’t that I haven’t tried. Believe me. I have dated around. I have tried small community ERs and large, city ones. I have flirted with urgent care centers. I have tried long-term relationships where I have stayed with one ER for years, and I have experimented with short-term, per diem trysts. None of them have satisfied me. As much as I want it to work out, whenever I am in the ER, I can’t help but fantasize about something else. Something more satisfying. I have to admit that I have desires that the ER cannot satisfy. I need something different, something more.

Now, I’m sure my mother doesn’t want to hear this. Coming out can be difficult not only for the person but also for his or her loved ones. For some reason, becoming a doctor has taken on a certain mystique, sort of like becoming a priest. Once you are a doctor, you are always a doctor, at least in many people’s eyes. Asking those around me, in particular my parents, to alter that perception of me is not easy. I understand that it will take time for my mother to adjust to this new reality. I also understand that this transition may be aided by her two close friends, Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio.

Coming out for a parent also affects how she interacts with people outside of our relationship. One of the time honored perqs of having a physician for a child is bragging about this to your friends who preferably have children who have failed out of beauty school or who have become roadies for the local Grateful Dead cover band. For my mother to confess to her book club that I have decided to leave medicine must be akin to telling them that I am leaving my beautiful, blonde, real-estate agent wife and 3 adorable children for a drag queen named Miss Kitty Litter. I can hear the conversation now:

“Mimi, how is that doctor son of yours doing?”

There is an awkward pause.

“Well,” Mom hesitantly begins. “He has decided to leave medicine.”

There is a shocked silence. But now that the confession has been uttered the dam has broken, and she tells all.

“He says he doesn’t feel happy as a doctor. He wants to quit and become… Oh, I don’t know, a… a…”

“A what?”

“A marine biologist!”

There are gasps of horror all around. Chardonnay is spilled on dog eared copies of “The Bridges of Madison County.” Finally, someone takes my mother’s hand and whispers..

“Don’t worry, Mimi. Don’t worry. I’m sure it is only a phase.”

And with that the coming out comparison is complete.

So, with my career transition in its beginning phases, I have come to understand that this decision doesn’t just affect me. It is something that touches my family, my friends, and my spouse. It is something that, while necessary, is a life-changing event for not only me, but for those who care about me. Nevertheless, I will forge on. I know that, no matter how difficult it may be, this change is for the good and that I, and those around me, will be the better for it. It is, therefore, with confidence and no small amount of pride that I proclaim:

“I’m here! I want to change my career! Get used to it!”



BIO: Rob Baginski is an emergency medicine physician in Massachusetts who is in the beginning stages of transitioning to a non-clinical career. He lives in Rhode Island with his husband and a spoiled dog who doesn’t care what he does with his life as long as there is enough time for belly rubs and an ample supply of Milkbones.

Relief

As an obstetrician, I helped bring life into this world.  What cooler job is there than that?  But honestly, I was not really the one bringing life into this world.  The life was there, I was just guiding it out.  It’s an interesting thing, being a deliverer of babies.  Most of the time I’m really not needed.  I’m there to help coach the mother, make sure her delivery is progressing and that both mother and baby are safe.  Most of the time, mothers do what they do and nature takes its course, bringing another baby into this world, just like the last seven billion babies.  A good attendant, whether obstetrician, family practitioner or midwife, can help guide the delivery to minimize injury to the mother, but the baby would arrive safe and sound no matter what we do or don’t do.  Not all the time, however.  There’s a reason mothers and babies used to die in childbirth in such huge numbers compared to today.  Things can go wrong, and when they do, they often go wrong very quickly.  

As I was evaluating my relationship with my career, I had to ask myself:  did I want to be in a job where I was often not needed, but when I was, it was an emergency?  That is a very stressful way to live.  When you tell people you deliver babies for a living, every single one of them says, “oh, what a joyful job you have”.  And they’re correct – most of the time.  I’ve not once had someone say to me, “ gosh, that must be so stressful – every mom is expecting a perfect birth experience and a perfect baby, yet nothing in this world is perfect – you have a lot to live up to!”.  This would be a more accurate description.  And so would, “wow, you have to make complex decisions quickly, and sometimes tell people things they don’t want to hear – what a responsibility!”.  I’ve never heard that.    It is a joyful job, until it’s not.  And I was finally realizing that I was not cut out for the hard parts.

People also think, when you say you're an ob/gyn, that all you do is deliver babies.  They don't think about the annual exams, the hysterectomies, the laparoscopic surgeries, the trips to the ER in the middle of the night for suspected ectopic pregnancies or for miscarriages in progress.  They don't think about the fact that I have to tell women they have cancer.  They don't think about the fact that I have to tell women they have an STD (and, therefore, that their partner has been less than faithful and/or forthcoming).

So what, just cut and run when things get difficult?  No, that’s not what I’m trying to say.  Every job has hard parts.  When I was sixteen years old and waitressing, I had a volatile Neopolitan boss who would scream at me in front of customers.  That was hard.  But the good parts (earning money for my class trip to France) outweighed the bad.  Life has hard parts, but you make it through them to enjoy the good parts.  But when you’re in a situation where you are dreading the hard parts of every day, when you just want to curl up in a ball under the comforter and never come out, when your job is making you clinically depressed, that’s a pretty good sign you’re not cut out for that job.  I’ve worked with fantastic doctors and nurses who ARE cut out for their jobs.  That’s not to say they don’t feel the difficulties, but for them, the rewards outweigh anything else.  That was just not the case for me, and the sooner I admitted it, the sooner I could move on to something that would make me happy.
Yes, I did some pretty cool things in my former career.  I even saved some lives, and I don't say that with any sense of bragging or arrogance - it could have been any trained ob/gyn or surgeon who saved those lives - I just happened to be the one on call when the patient came in.  But do I miss it?  Nope.  Someone else can save the lives, I don't need the glory.  I needed to save my own life. I needed relief.  And I am relieved that I made it out before I spent the next 30 years in misery.  How do I spell relief? Q-U-I-T-T-I-N-G.  Not as catchy as the Rolaids jingle, but it'll do.

When I think about my former career, from the vantage point now of six months out, I feel an overwhelming sense of relief.  Relief that I'm no longer working those hours, under those pressures.  Relief that I don't have to know everything anymore.  Relief that I have my life back.  Relief that I made the right decision.

There were amazing moments in my job and I will miss them.  (The fact that I don't miss them yet probably means I'm still healing from the PTSD...)  Delivering babies  - there’s nothing more beautiful than that.  But I give it up willingly to bring MY life into this world.