Sometimes you get lost in medicine. Lost in slides and sections, in cells and pathways, in diseases and pieces of parts of people until you almost forget what real life is. What your own life is. Patients you sort of expect to die. Knowing that it is coming doesn't always make it easier but you accept it as part of the job. When you lose people in your personal life however, it often hits you like a freight train, whether you expect it or not. As I sat down for group work this morning, I noticed an email in my inbox with an obituary update. When I opened it, I became cognizant of the date; today's date. I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and I realized that I'd forgotten the two year anniversary of the death of one of the most important and influential people in my life--my cousin. One of the only family members I was close with aside from my parents -- a precious commodity for an only child. He took his own life after a long battle with depression and an obstacle course of struggles that had been placed before him. Life just wasn't fair to him.
In medicine, sometimes you spend so much time compartmentalizing things and being stoic for your patients and peers that you forget to be vulnerable within yourself. You forget how to be vulnerable period. Ironically, my cousin played a huge role in helping me learn to be vulnerable and helped me get to where I am today. He taught me how to ask for help, and more importantly, how to open the Pandora's box within yourself that you are afraid to see, and how only with that kind of introspection can you learn and grow.
No matter how busy you are with papers and patients, always remember to take the time to tell the people closest to you that you love them and appreciate everything that they do for you. Spend time with them because you never know when they will be taken away. And no matter how much you try to hide from loss by burying yourself in your work, like puddles to a hole in your boot, the pain will always find you.
In medicine, sometimes you spend so much time compartmentalizing things and being stoic for your patients and peers that you forget to be vulnerable within yourself. You forget how to be vulnerable period. Ironically, my cousin played a huge role in helping me learn to be vulnerable and helped me get to where I am today. He taught me how to ask for help, and more importantly, how to open the Pandora's box within yourself that you are afraid to see, and how only with that kind of introspection can you learn and grow.
No matter how busy you are with papers and patients, always remember to take the time to tell the people closest to you that you love them and appreciate everything that they do for you. Spend time with them because you never know when they will be taken away. And no matter how much you try to hide from loss by burying yourself in your work, like puddles to a hole in your boot, the pain will always find you.
