There was a moment at the end of my workday today when I was leaning back in my chair at my desk with my legs semi-sprawled out in a very unlady-like fashion... with a chocolate donut in my left hand... and a pen tightly gripped by my right hand... where I wondered... what in the world happened today and how did I get to this place where I feel so disgusting that I'm willing to eat a chocolate donut. I don't usually eat donuts. They make me feel disgusting afterwards but sometimes... when I'm exhausted... I will eat whatever is given to me and someone just so happened to hand me a chocolate glazed donut. So I ate it.
And I do feel disgusting now.
I'm just about to finish my second month of NP work. Overall, I think I'm getting better but I still have a LONG ways to go and grow. God has really provided for me so amazingly through my job and my coworkers. I thank God all the time for gifting me with such a supportive learning environment.
This month was a super busy month. My first month of work, there were a total of 8 heart surgeries in the whole month. This month, there were 21 or so. An unusually busy month. And I took care of most of them by myself. Maybe one day I'll talk more about what exactly I do at work. Not now. Too tired. Such grace that my first month was so much slower and now I get so much practice to help me solidify what I learned. I think I am adjusting fairly well but the volume of work has been so high that I always feel like I'm behind and scrambling to catch up.
Sometimes I get tired of hearing myself talk so much about work. Everything that I've been reading in the Bible right now and every sermon and every devotional... they all point me back to doing my work with excellence, being a light in my workplace, moving from a state of fear to an attitude of boldness and confidence in my gifts... at work. I'm pretty sure I work with a lot of nonbelievers and culturally, it's been a little bit on the difficult side for me to feel like I fit in when most people just default to Chinese and talk around me like I'm not even there. Even my surgeons sometimes start talking to me in Chinese and after I stare at them blankly for a few seconds, they realize that they weren't speaking to me in a language I understand and switch to English. It might not bother some people, but it does bother me... when I value communication so highly... and when communication is so vital to my job. There have been some moments where I'm not sure if I'm just so tired or ineffectively trying to multitask and someone told me something or asked me for an order in English but with a Chinese accent and I had absolutely no idea what they were saying. I felt so stupid making the nurses repeat themselves three times before I finally understood what they were trying to tell me. It happened multiple times in one day and I just decided that I was just having a bad language day... and not that I was having some kind of stroke which affects how I perceive language.
I should cut myself some slack. It hasn't even been two months and I've already grown a lot in my role. On days like today, I hear voices in my head telling me that work is and always will be impossible. I'll never be Chinese enough. I'll never be smart enough. I'll never be quick enough. I'll always be barely scraping by... only because I work with other people who know what they're doing even when I don't. I'll always end the day walking to my car in defeat... not having finished my work... not having made the right choices...and always letting someone down. I think things will get better. I walk around with a smile on my face... making it a point to smile at everybody... but on the inside... sometimes there is no smile... it's mostly disappointment in myself. And that's the honest truth.
While we're on the topic of things not being what they seem... and also since I usually blog to demarcate some kind of milestone... one of the biggest things I accomplished this month was completing my first triathlon.
This was us at the end of it. Smiling.
This was us at the beginning. Smiling.
Let me tell you what actually went down.
If you had asked me 6 months ago if I would do a triathlon, I would have said, "HECK NO... I will never do a triathlon. Of any length. In any location. In my entire lifetime." It wasn't one of those things I've always wanted to do. It was categorized in the things I would never want to do... like sky diving and bungee jumping... and doing drugs or shaving my head. So what happened... peer pressure. That's what happened.
I don't even remember what I was thinking but it must have been some kind of moment of weakness when I decided that I could do it and I paid for it and then... that was that. If I broke up the events individually, it would have been no problem. Putting them all together... I was just going to have to leave that to chance. I did train for it. I did some bricks... which is what the cool people call doing two of the activities one right after the other... like biking and then running right afterwards. And the more I looked for friends to train with... the more people I found to run with me or bike with me... or bike/run with me... so then training didn't feel as bad.
I also can't even remember what I was thinking when I bought my first unitard (aka tri suit)... maybe it was that it covers more of my body than a swim suit... maybe because there was a black/white/pink one... I can't remember what possessed me to buy one but I couldn't wear it out in public by itself for weeks. I felt so exposed and naked... and vulnerable. But then after a few times, I stopped caring. I would just walk into the gym, put my stuff in the locker and then walk into the pool... and then walk out of the pool, dry off and walk to my car. So easy. I'd put on a suit and then bike around the neighborhood and then hop off the bike and start running... or vice versa. I'm all for multitasking. Clothes which multitask are brilliant. Too bad Lululemon doesn't make a tri suit. I wonder if I'd pay for it even if they did. Maybe. Probably.
The swimming... that was the scariest part. I'd swim two laps freestyle and I'd be done. I'd feel like I was drowning. So then... I just decided to kick on my back. I could kick on my back for a very long time. And then I would do backstroke. And then I'd do a few laps on my back... and then one lap of backstroke and then go back to kicking on my back. And then... once I started working... I went to the gym with the pool and it was so crowded that I had to share a lane with 3-4 other people. When I do that, I can't go as slow as I want to and I can't always just do backstroke or float on my back so they somewhat peer pressured me into freestyling my laps and swimming faster than I would if I were by myself. Oh... and for a graduation present... a friend of mine decided to buy me a swim cap and goggles as my gift. I love useful gifts. I love making use of useful gifts. So it encouraged me to swim more. Anyway... all my swim training didn't matter because once I got to the end of the tri... I was so exhausted from running the fastest 5K of my life (which isn't really that fast but it's fast for me...) and also biking pretty fast (for me) for 43 minutes straight... I could not breathe well enough to freestyle anything. I did like two strokes of freestyle and couldn't breathe so I defaulted to just... floating/kicking on my back. I think I might have done half a lap of backstroke but I was just SO tired... my arms didn't want to move anymore. My legs didn't want to move anymore. I kept thinking to myself... the water is so warm... it's the perfect temperature... I could just stop moving and let myself sink to the bottom of the pool and drown and I think it would be an OK way to die... and then I'd be like... NO WAIT... I should just finish this race and then drown later. I always have these kinds of mental pep talks. In the middle of both of my board examinations... I felt like mentally just shutting down and taking a nap right there in front of that computer... but I'd catch myself and think to myself that I had to finish... I worked so hard and studied for this very moment so... don't quit now otherwise I'll hafta go through this torture all over again... so I finished. I finished boards. I finished the tri.
And then I collapsed on my friend. He helped me sit down on the bleachers... and then I started crying. Not quiet crying either. It was full on sobbing. I did hear people asking if I was OK but at that point I just didn't care. The nice volunteer gave me some Snapple or something... which I found out later had mangoes in it... so maybe I'm not so allergic to mango Snapple if I drank it and didn't break out in a rash... I probably cried for 10 minutes. And then I wanted to sleep. I closed my eyes for a little bit. But then I thought maybe it would be good to get up and start going home. So I did. We did. The guys waited for me to be ready to go.
I stopped crying long enough to take this picture.
So that is my ignoble story of my first triathlon. Even though... what you may see are smiles or medals... what might actually be going on inside of me is a very active, very real battle... just to keep on going... for a little while longer. The walk back to the car from the pool at the tri was not a victorious one. It was a slow, dazed... partially sedated journey which seemed to take forever and a day... and I feel like it's the same walk I make every single day back to my car when I get out of work.
I did better than I thought I would at the tri. I gave myself 2 hours to finish it and it took me 1 hour and 25 minutes. And even though it was a pretty miserable experience... I still want to see if I could do better at another one. Maybe one that starts with the swim and ends with the run... so I won't be tempted to drown myself again.
Before I started work, I decided that I'd give myself at least a year to adjust to this new role. People warned me that the first year would be killer. Will I remember this time of my life as killer? Or will I remember the first time I got to park in the doctor's parking lot? Will I remember getting free breakfast and lunch everyday? Will I remember having moments of amazement and wonder as my surgeons or my preceptor explain something medical to me and the light bulb goes off and I finally get it? Will I remember making mistake after mistake of calculating insulin dosages... or will I remember the days when I got it right the first time?
There have been so many days at work where I've felt so dragged out, I didn't think I was suitable for anything... but either someone called me and asked to hang out and it would cheer me up to do something "normal" and familiar... or that someone had already scheduled to hang out with me on a particular day and I knew that it was God providing someone to minister to my heart on a day when He knew I'd need it most.
There was a moment during the bike ride at the tri... when I was thinking to myself... "dude... how much longer do I have left...?" and then the lady riding next to me asked me, "how much longer do we have left?" so then I gave her my estimation and she told me it was her first tri and I told her it was MY first tri and she said I was doing really well so I told HER that SHE was doing really well... and it really helped me smile and get through the rest of the bike ride. I don't know why I talk to myself and say, "dude" but... anyway... yeah. That's what goes on in my head sometimes.
It's the little things. The little love notes that God leaves scattered throughout my day which make me smile a bit and get me through to the next hour or the next part of the day. It's how He reminds me He loves me in the midst of the crazy whirlwind which is work... and looking for and finding the love notes are ways that I can punctuate my day with brief moments of rest/sabbath before moving on to the next leg of the journey.
Moment by moment... event to transition to the next event... I WILL get through. And I'm pretty sure this first year of work is going to fly by. I can only hope that the smiles I sometimes force... the moments when I need to swallow my first response in order to get to the point of taking care of my patient versus getting upset at the way someone may treat me... will somehow all add up to a legacy that I hope that God can be proud of. I hope that I can grow to be excellent at what I do. I hope that God will grant me the wisdom and understanding to quickly master what I need to know in order to do my job effectively. And... if I find that I can't swim quickly... if I can't breathe or find a rhythm that seems right... that I would be able to flip on my back... stare at the sky and just kick my way... slowly... until I hit the finish line... and until the day is done. And then go to sleep... and repeat.
I think... everything will be OK. Eventually.
Good night all...
love,
Tiff
