Grief is Not Linear

When I was in my third year of medical school, my Dad asked me to feel a lump in his armpit.  Seven months later, he died of the melanoma that had metastasized from a tiny mole on his arm.

Surviving my Dad's death was one of the hardest things I've ever done.  I wrote about it here once, in the part of the blog that was lost in the great purge, and I described it as being like walking around without skin.  Everything hurt.  I made it through my last two years of medical school only thanks to some very supportive friends and terror at the thought of not matching to a residency program.

And then my Dad was gone and medical school was over, and I thought that I had left grief behind.  I didn't think of him often; I could talk to patients about death without crying; and I started to feel happy again.  (Or, as happy as a neurotic first-year Internal Medicine resident is capable of feeling.)  I was moving on, and grief wasn't coming with me.

Until it did.  When I matched to fellowship, I grieved the fact that my father would never know what specialty I had gone into.  When I started dating my first girlfriend, I grieved the fact that he would never see me dating a woman, even though he'd reached a tenuous peace with me being bisexual.  And then again, in the middle of my last and longest relationship, I grieved that my girlfriend would never get to see firsthand how much I am a clone of my father.

I have been surprised over the past eight years to realize that grief never goes away.  It lies dormant for a while, sometimes long enough that I can forget it was ever there, but it inevitably returns, each time just as painful as when it was fresh.  Every time it comes back feels like a surprise hit to the chest, knocking the breath from my body.

The same thing is happening right now with the semi-recent end of my relationship.  A few weeks ago, I found myself humming happily at work, and I distinctly remember thinking about how nice it was to be so happy.  I was even going to write a smug blog post about how good life was and how bloody happy I was, but I was enjoying my happiness too much to bother.

And then my ex-girlfriend started dating again.

And posted pictures of her new girlfriend on Facebook.

And now I feel like I'm 14 instead of 40, because I am hurting over my ex-girlfriend's social media activities.  I am supposed to be over her, and yet I find myself barely able to drag myself through the day.  I cry on my drive into work, because I have to pass the coffee shop where we waited while we got winter tires, followed by the restaurant to which we took her friends from Egypt to try schnitzel.  Grief redux.

And it is completely irrational, because there is no part of me that wants to go back to the relationship.  It's not even that I want her to not date, because I do want her to date and to be happy.  I'm not a horrible person wishing misery on her just so that I won't be miserable.  And yet, I am sad.  Horribly, inexplicably, unexpectedly sad.

And I can't even drink, because I'm still on call for eight more days.

Montreal

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Montreal, awaiting dinner with a friend (in 1 hour) and the start of a conference (tomorrow morning), and I am struggling to write one of the blog posts that has been floating around in my brain for the past few weeks.  I want to write about how it feels to be six months into my work as an attending, about my struggles to start up a research program, or about my recent two-year anniversary, but all my brain and body want to do is rest.  In the past two weeks, I've taken on three extra clinics and an extra weekend of call, and while my net worth is very happy about the additional work, the rest of me is not.  I'm exhausted.

This past weekend, my girlfriend and I had a long discussion about careers and life goals and what is important to us.  Both of us want to do work that is meaningful and that hopefully makes the world a slightly less miserable place, but we also want to have full lives outside of our work.  We want to sleep in on weekends and cook good homemade food and read books and knit*.  And maybe even do productive things like exercise and clean our messy apartment.  If we run out of fun things to do, that is.

At the moment, it feels like what I want to do is always in conflict with what I need to do (work).  I wish at times (always) that I could go back a decade and live more frugally so that I would have actual money now, instead of debt, and would feel like I could take more time to myself.  I keep hoping that hitting the zero net worth mark will bring about a major change in how I feel and how I approach work.  I'm hoping that it will make me feel okay with saying no to the extra clinic time and the extra weekends of call.  Because while I like my job, I love my life outside of it more.

*Well, I want to knit.  Specifically this, in a gorgeous grey yarn that is ridiculously expensive but will be worth it because it will undoubtedly take me at least six months to knit the scarf, thus keeping the cost per hour of knitting very, very low.

Friday Night

For the past few weeks, I have been taking on an extra half day clinic per week to address the seemingly never-ending list of people who need to be seen.  While I actually kind of enjoy the extra clinical work, I don't enjoy having more paperwork to do and less time in which to do it.  By the beginning of yesterday, my desk was piled high with charts to dictate and phone messages to return and labs to review.  I have no clinics on Thursdays, so I spent the entire day in my office slowly crossing things off my to-do list.

It still wasn't enough. 

After clinic today, I ate lunch while dictating charts, and then I left the hospital to go to the other clinic where I work once a week.  And did more paperwork there.

I'm still not done.

I'm really hoping that, with experience, I will get faster at dealing with paperwork, because it is currently taking up almost all of my non-clinical time.  Time that I should be spending developing a research program (*ha*) or preparing presentations or teaching.  Fun things.  Non paperwork things.  It also exhausts me in a way that no other aspect of my work does, because I need to focus carefully on what I'm doing despite how tedious and dull it is. 

Thankfully, it's Friday, and for the next two days I can forget about the 45 dictations* that are sitting in my inbox waiting to be signed off on.  Tomorrow the girlfriend and I are heading to an independent cinema in our pjs to watch Saturday morning cartoons and eat sugary cereal.  Then on Sunday, I'm doing social activity #2** for the week and taking my nieces to a play about Harriet Tubman.  After I go for a run in keeping with my goal to work out three times a week.  And there will be sleep.  Lots and lots of glorious sleep.

I need this weekend.

*Literally.  Shit.

**Social activity #1 was dinner with my mom and my brother for part of a week-long promotion in which restaurants serve three-course meals at a discount.  The conversation was good, but the food was really underwhelming (including inadequately cleaned shrimp *shudder*).

How to Survive a Canadian Winter

I'm suffering from a horrible case of winter blahs at the moment.  Until a few weeks ago, we were having a very mild winter (0 to -10 C on most days), and it seemed completely bearable.  Then the weather dropped into the -20 to -40 C range, and everything started to feel unpleasant.  Our apartment never quite warms up, despite the heaters running continuously.  My skin freezes in an instant if I go outside without it fully covered.  And nothing feels quite worth going outside, no matter how fun or smothered in cheese it might be.

My instinct at this time of year is to cocoon myself in bed with cats, hot chocolate, and a pile of library books.  I have zero desire to work or to do any of the things necessary for maintaining my existence.  Laundry?  Groceries?  Dishes?  All of these things seem like too much effort when the outside world is frigid and the daylight disappears before I leave the hospital.  Every year I long to bypass these months, even though I recognize the finite nature of life and theoretically want to enjoy every precious moment of it.  For me, there is nothing precious about -40 C before the windchill*. 

This year is about being present though, which includes being present during the loathsome months between Christmas and the Spring melt.  So I'm trying to come up with ways of not being miserable until March.  Some of the things I've come up with?

Long johns**:  My girlfriend made me buy a pair of long johns last year, and they may be the only thing that keeps us from killing each other when the weather is cold.  (She is a crazy person who thinks that people should go outside despite the cold.  She is very wrong.)  Winter is slightly more bearable when I have long johns and an undershirt and a down jacket and a toque to keep the warmth inside.

The Conservatory:  Our local zoo has a plant conservatory, which is a rather unimpressive greenhouse filled with the type of tropical plants that you can buy at Walmart.  But!  It is ridiculously hot inside, and it has a glass ceiling, so visiting it in the Winter can feel just the tiniest bit like being outside in a warm place.

Winter foods:  Soups, stews, and casseroles smothered with cheese.  Warm and hearty things from my kitchen are all that keep me going on some days.

Hot tub:  I'm spoiled and live in a building with an indoor hot tub.  I really must spend more time warming my frozen bones in it.

Skating:  I haven't yet mustered up the strength to do this, but it seems like it would be good for me to get outside and participate in something Wintery.  Maybe I would hate Winter less if I actually enjoyed something about it.  Cross-country skiing is also a thought, and it would take advantage of the flatness of the region in which I live.

Sigh.  I don't think this list is helping.  I want to go to street festivals and run along the river and sit on a patio drinking overpriced cocktails.  Nothing about winter seems pleasant right now.  Maybe I should just blow my budget and go to Mexico.

If you have the misfortune of living somewhere that is frigidly cold right now, how do you manage to be happy despite the weather?  Or do you give up on being happy and just treat Winter like a horribly bad call shift and wait for it to pass?

*If you live someplace warm and don't know what a windchill is, I kind of hate you.

**Are there people who aren't familiar with long johns?  And toques?  I hate all of you.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I find the Christmas season stressful.  I'm a person who prefers being undercommited to being overcommited*, so I get easily overwhelmed by the addition of holiday parties and gift buying and dainty making to my schedule.  (But not the dainty eating.  I'm always game for dainty eating.)  Last year was particularly challenging for me, as it was my first Christmas with my girlfriend, and we tried to fit in all of the gatherings and traditions that are important to both of us.  It was too much, and it left both of us (mostly me) exhausted by the end.

This year, I thought I would cut back on my stress level by being on top of my game from the beginning.  I would make all the dainties and buy all the gifts and stock the liquor cabinet early so that once the celebrating began, I would be ready to just enjoy myself.  And I was doing okay, up until the point two weeks ago when I said "Why yes, I'd be happy to revamp the entire curriculum before January"**.

Wait...what?  Who agreed to revamp an entire curriculum in six weeks?  At Christmastime?  It couldn't possibly have been me, because I am a rational human being who recognizes her limitations and doesn't take on utterly ridiculous and near impossible tasks.

Aren't I?

Apparently I'm not.  Because I did take on that task at precisely the time when I most want to be scaling back and enjoying my life outside of work.  And if I could find a way to go back in time and open my mouth and take those words back into it and swallow them whole so that they could never, ever escape my lips, I absolutely would.  Because when I look ahead to the next 19 days, it isn't Christmas spirit that I see. 

*What does it say about our society that overcommited is a legitimate word, while undercommited apparently isn't?

**Back in July, I also said "Why yes, I'd be happy to be on call the entire week after Christmas", not realizing that my girlfriend would have the time off of work.  Bah humbug.