Monthly Archives: July 2018

In Arlington Cemetery

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This summer we held a memorial for my grandfather in Arlington Cemetery. His name will be on one of the niches in the columbarium. He was in the Navy and served in the Korean War. The service was short and concise. I think its precision and simplicity was well suited to my grandfather who was a high school and college math professor and liked things to be just right but not conspicuous. The chaplain was empathetic and caring and the soldiers who performed the flag ceremony were on point. As we said our formal goodbyes a trumpet’s song floated in the air above us.

My grandmother used to comment how they enjoyed when I visited because I’d sit all day and laugh as my grandfather told stories. He was a particularly gifted storyteller with the dry wit that ignites my science-loving and logic-focused brain. He told stories of the Navy (usually when he and his comrades were causing trouble), his struggles as a student (he went for a doctorate in math but didn’t finish his thesis because of a disagreement with faculty), or his adventures as a teacher (he had many years of teaching from which to draw).

In EMT lingo, my grandfather had an “extensive cardiac history.” When I called my grandmother after hearing of my grandfather’s passing she told me, “The EMTs who responded to my call were wonderful. You do good work.” She said that even though they couldn’t get him back. His heart had stopped and he had no cat-lives left. When my grandfather died, I’d been volunteering as an EMT for several months.

I’m still an EMT and I also work in an emergency department. An interesting thing about providing emergency medical care is that your mission is to lessen pain and ward off death, but you end up seeing a lot of both. You end up being there when medicine meets it limits and the time of death is pronounced. I sometimes wonder what the EMTs at my grandfather’s death thought. I wonder how they ran their emergency call. What did they do to make my grandmother feel like they’d done the right thing? I hope the families of my patients have the same impression when we determine it’s time to stop CPR.

I used to visit Arlington National Cemetery periodically when I lived in DC. I like cemeteries because I enjoy walking the tombs and imagining the histories of the people they memorialize. Now when I visit Arlington, I won’t have to invent my grandfather’s story because I know it. I’m a product of it. I think of him often, partly because I wish he’d send me some of his math-genius as I continue my medical studies. Mostly, I think of him because he is one of the few people I know who successfully and completely built a life he loved. His only unfinished business is the family he left, especially his wife, but we’ll join him again one day if afterlife exists. Until then, we’ll keep making stories worth telling just as he always encouraged us to do.

Photo Credit: Mary Lou (family friend)

Night Shift

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A few months ago, I started working the night shift in an emergency department (ED). Those who have known me awhile were surprised that I decided to work owl hours. When no other forces are at play, I happily get up at 5 a.m., even 4:30. Until I took the ED job, I got up early to study or run before going to work. In college, I worked the opening shift at Starbucks. In high school, I got up to work out or study before my sibling hooligans stirred. I love the stillness of dawn before most people rise. Growing up, I saw deer, foxes, and herons in the gray hours of misty summer mornings. I like the dampness of dew on the grass before it’s evaporated by the sun. I enjoy watching the sun creep over the horizon as I listen to the bird songs crescendo.

I wasn’t particularly surprised I started working the night shift. I’d suspected it’d come to that a few years ago, when I was still in Paraguay. I remember thinking about my return to the US, and my terrible tendency to lay my paper planner out in front of me and plot how to fill the blank spaces. I remember thinking, “Going into healthcare is very dangerous for someone like you. It’s a 24-hour business. Make sure you block out time to sleep or you just might not get enough rest.”

The night shift was the most practical choice when I started my ED job. The wage is higher and it leaves the day for studying or errands. Flipping my sleeping schedule was no light matter, however, especially because I started going to bed an hour before I used to get up. It’s also been a challenge finding a new eating schedule that works for me–I now eat meals at completely different times than before I worked nights.

There’s a strange stillness in the ED when the early hours of the morning approach – 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m.. Even when a very sick person arrives who requires many hands to care for them, the ED is strangely quiet in the morning. Many patients are sleeping or too sleepy to chat with their family members anymore. The patients staying with us until a bed opens in a facility that can help them heal their mental health challenges are usually sleeping or partaking in quiet activities. Sometimes a drunk patient arrives and disrupts the silence, but often they too fall quiet as the morning creeps onward.

Now instead of waking to stillness, I head to bed in its midst. As I drive home from the hospital, the birds are just starting to sing, but the sun’s rays aren’t yet seeping into the sky. The roads are empty save for a few souls coming home from a party or, perhaps, going to work. I arrive at a silent house, those there are sleeping. Not even the dog, when he’s visiting from my parent’s home, greets me when I open the door.

When I first started working nights, I was always tired. But, now that I’m used to it, I’m no more tired than I would be after any long day at work. There’s something about the night shift that keeps you coming back. Perhaps it’s because I like quiet, or perhaps it’s because I like the self-efficiency that’s required when you’re providing quality health care without all the resources of regular business hours that excites me. More likely, it’s that the people who work the dark hours are different than those who work when the majority of society is awake. Many of us won’t work nights forever, but we have some reason to do so now. It’s the fact that we have a reason to be nocturnal, I think, that creates a sense of comradery that’s different from any dayshift vibe I’ve known.

Prayers

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Trying to get into medical school is a bit of a slog at times. I’ve been lucky to have people support me during each leap through the hoops of fire. Recently, I’ve had a few folks tell me they’re praying for me, and then qualify their statement by saying they know not everyone believes in God. I was surprised that they felt the need to acknowledge I may not believe in their God.

In Paraguay, my adopted mothers prayed for me almost every time I left their house for mine (so almost daily). I am and was always thankful because of the sentiment. I believe it’s tremendously generous and kind when a person cares enough to think of me, to support me, and then to ask for help on my behalf—whether they communicate with their God or simply wish me luck.

In America, I think we publicize the extremes. I see politics radically divided. Political opinions are often based on extreme visions of how things should be or a rebellion against others’ interpretations of right and wrong. These hardline stances don’t allow for more than one opinion to thrive. To me, holding an unweaving “I’m right and they’re wrong” stance is limiting because it creates rigid definitions of aspects of life that neither the State nor another individual can interpret for me or you.

I attended church often in Paraguay because the church was the center of everything in my Paraguay community. I did not and still do not believe in the God of that church. But, I could feel how strongly my Paraguayan friends and family believed in their God. To them, their God was not only the source of life and reason for living but also the definition of love. Going to church allowed me to better understand how they saw the world. The Paraguayans who welcomed me into their lives knew our views of God were different, and they still embraced me as a dear friend. They included me in their secular and religious activities, answered my millions of questions that began with “Why?”, and they accepted it when I sat out from certain rituals because they were “too much for me.” What these shared experiences taught me was that we do not need to have the same definition of life and love to build friendships. We just need to be comfortable knowing that even though we see eye-to-eye on some things and share some history, we also hold very different views of certain aspects of life.

My hope is that someday the US won’t just be tolerant, but that each of us will be comfortable standing side-by-side with folks who are different from us, be strong enough to ask questions to learn more about how those different people see the world, and be proud enough of our belief system to follow it without expecting others to pledge allegiance to our view.

When I think of those who prayed for me before I took the MCAT, I’m thankful. Perhaps their prayers didn’t mean to me what they meant to them, but I think we share the knowledge that what I was doing was hard and whatever assistance they gave would be part of my success.