Cultural Competency

I felt like I needed to write a little something about abortion since it came up quite often in my OB/GYN month. Unfortunately, the majority of abortion issues that I saw where young girls (16-24) who had elective abortions just for the sake of not wanting a baby. 99% of my patients were on welfare, very uneducated, and trapped in a culture that was not only foreign, but disturbing on many levels. For them abortion was just the next thing you do when you have an unplanned pregnancy because you don't know how to use contraception. What also blew my mind was that these girls were just accustomed to having their bodies being subject to OB/GYN procedures...which are really...kind of terrible. Getting your cervix biopsied at age 20 because of abnormal Pap smears....getting neoplastic changes zapped off your genitals at age 17 in the operating room...these were just testaments that this was a different population than the group I grew up with. We were stressed about our AP exams, getting into college. We would have crushes, some of us had boyfriends. Did we think it was normal to get pregnant in high school? No. Were our mothers excited if we were 18 and pregnant? No. And no mom should be. And no kids should be having kids. I felt bad for these girls because they had a distorted idea that their lives were normal and that this is how all people are.

And then I realized gradually no wonder the lower-class doesn't really trust the medical system. Whether we admit it or not, doctors come from a different class than our patients on welfare. Several times a day, my classmates and I would just be bewildered by some of our patients. They made terrible life choices and it was obvious that they would continue to. We saw multi-generations in a clinic room who all made the same choices, that would trap them in a low quality of life. Blahhhhh...I don't know.

Deprived

Lecture got out early and now I have an hour before I report to work. My eyes already hurt, feeling dry. I am exhausted. I'm on night float on Labor & Delivery this week which means I get up around 2 to make it for afternoon lectures and then work until 6:15 in the morning, typically running around, assisting in C-sections and showing up at the rare normal spontaneous vaginal delivery. I was really sick all weekend with a high fever and sore throat and am still getting over this URI. It doesn't help that my body hates me right now for trying to change its circadian rhythm.

When I want to text someone, I can't because its 3 am. When I get out of work, I go straight to bed knowing I only have a few hours to sleep before lecture. I eat for the purpose of not fainting in the OR. I feel alone these days and I remember our Dean telling us in the first week of med school to get married before we graduate because residency is long and tiring and it sucks to come home to nobody. I know what he means now. Nobody is expecting me home at any time. Yesterday the chief resident was looking for a home to buy for his wife and kid out in California for his new job. Four-bedroom home with a fire pit in the backyard, an hour away from Lake Tahoe "for weekend retreats". And I wondered if that would be me in 4 years when I'm finishing up my residency. Would I be married? Would I have a kid?

I miss having someone to talk about being a med student with. I am sad that the Devil is using my sleep deprivation and fatigue to make me miss what I used to have. To return to asking God why. To telling God that I'm not happy and I want to be happy. That I deserve to be happy. But now, I am sad and alone, broken and sick physically and emotionally. I am tired, God.