The Pediatric Resident

It's interesting. I have retrograde gratefulness for where I trained these days, and lots of the thankfulness is for: niceness. It isn't to say that people here are not nice. They are. The thing is, I wasn't so unusual at Loma Linda. There were so many soft and kind people, that I came across bold and even ballsy. I was the friend of my med school buddies who wanted to do procdures and cut things open and be an "ER resident." Here, I am known for being nice. Which, for me, is such a wry smiling blessing. God bless God for changing my heart, for one. For molding my spirit into softer shapes than I might not have formed if left alone. Those words of John Ortberg's ring so true for me, for us all: "Left to ourselves, what do we become?"
I might have become a raven, a circling hawk on the wind. And instead, GOd brought me a love, a life, a home that nourish me and turn me into softy-head. The attending doc I worked with today, and also last week, gives me a hard time for being nice, calls me a pediatric resident when he thinks I am being overly nice. And the thing is, in this secular greeny-green liberal city, I hope to goodness I keep some goodness skin on. I pray that God shapes me into doves and softness and graciousness. I forget so often to ask for extra grace for my patients, for something deep and real to pour out into them.
I can move so fast now in the department, which is a doggone miracle. Something about time is slowing down, and I am starting to see patterns, to order tests faster, and manage "my side" of the department faster. You see, we split the ER down in halves, and the third year resident takes the other half. And we see something like 6-9 patients at a time, and somehow that seems bearable now, when six months ago it was terrifying, like riding a rollercoaster with a lot of nausea. I didn't enjoy the nausea. Now I enjoy the joy. Of popping in and out of patient rooms, of working with nurses that know me, that I know. I'm telling you, there is nothing like the feeling yesterday, in a trauma bay, running the room like yesterday, intubating an older women with spine injury. Turning to nurses, turning to my attending, and feeling like I knew what came next.
This is the relief, this is the reward. Halfway through residency and this is the gift. I pray God fills my heart up all the time so I pour out more than medicine, so I bring more than niceness to work. Thank you all the deep and strong and good people who have been part of my life to make me ready for this.