serendipti's Diaryland Diary

10:12 pm - Saturday, May. 20, 2006

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

attempts at closure

So I spent the whole of last night catching up with a dear, lovely old friend, with whom I have not reconnected in a long time. I allowed myself the luxury of indiscretion---we spoke from 1240am to 5 am. It has to be pretty spectacular.....whatever that makes me stay up like that, has to be pretty worth it, especially these days when my health has been more touch than go. And so I have perfected the art of limits and maturity and boundaries, and I have said no and stayed in and gone to bed way more times in the recent past than ever before. But the sheer thrilling momentum of reconnecting with someone you adore enabled me to give myself a break.....it was wonderful. If for no other reason than how easy it was being understood. With real friends, the facts are enough, the exercise of expressing how those facts made you feel is absolutely unnecessary---how you felt is implicit and understood.
And what more does one really crave for, what else is more soul satisying, than being understood?
The prospect of being back home so soon and truly 'corporealizing' my relationships is near surreal. To be able to feel close to so many important people in my life, without necessity of the cell phone as a conduit....it sounds revolutionary. And I no longer have to watch Rohun's milestones over webcam!!! They will be in living color, in all their glory! No more mom and dad shoving a webcam up near his face and prying his not-so-compliant gums open to show me a little white nubbin of a tooth.....Rohun will likely be the happiest of them all, with this development.
I have been wrapping things up here in the chi, both the pleasant and the unpleasant. One of my dad's biggest things he hammered into us ever since we were little, was that there is nothing as important as how you leave someone. Relationships are to be valued and nurtured, and how you part with someone speaks volumes about who you are. Relationships are not expendable.....we are all connected in big ways and small, so when you part from someone, you do it in a way to show them you valued them, because rleationships are not discardible. No matter how shitty a person's behavior was to you, you do your utmost to part in a way where you can still look them in the eye and shake their hand and harbor no acitve ill will.
Life does not always afford us that opportunity, because the person on the other end likely does not share the whole 'relationships are not expendable' philosophy, because for them, they might be just that. But you try to be who you are, regardless of who is sitting across from you.
And so with this at the forefront of my mind, I have been saying goodbye to people in chicago. And in so doing, in wrapping things up with t-bone, the custodian on the 5th floor whom I have tried to badger into quitting smoking over the last four years, in saying goodbye to Anita, a classmate whom I have never called up to have dinner with, but whom i adored running into.....the ancillary players in your life who actually make up a huge part of the quality of your day to day.....in taking a moment to acknowledge these people before I leave, I feel like I am taking the time to honor the experience of my life over the last four years.
In so doing, I also have to tie up, make amends, and come to peace with the negative experiences as well.
And those who know me well know that I introduce challenges into my life, and sometimes that really takes its toll. But I had promised myself, after an experience a year and a half ago with a prof, I had told myself, that before I graduate, I will tell this man what role he played in my life, in the most restrained, respectful way I know how. And the reason I mentioned t-bone and Anita is because it is on the same level of this professor.....it is all part of taking stock and acknowledging and bringing closure to the last 4 years of my life.
And so I emailed this professor, and ended up speaking with him over the phone, and told him that my meeting with him a year and a half ago was the single worst experience I had had in medical school. And I proceeded to catalogue exactly why, in as composed a manner as possible. What lead to struggling with composure was the all too clear realization that he really had absolutely no recollection of this encounter. You guys, the man had sat me down, asked me about how my lupus was doing, then proceeded to ask me about the meds I was on (mind you, this is all within the context of a mid semester eval, so I was just as confused and disoriented as you are), and as I stared at him blankly as my mind was whirring trying to figure out what was up with this line of questioning, he then proceeded to ask me if I had psychiatric issues he should know about. In the ensuing minutes in his office, he spoke of how I was being viewed as unprofessional ---I got a 'phonecall' about you....I never get phonecalls about students....ummm, what did this person have to say about me....he didn't think substantiating his claims was necessary(he gave me no examples), he also spoke of my 'exuberance' (I had never heard the word exuberance used in the way one would use the term 'psychotic outburst'), he spoke of his 'grave doubts about my getting through medical school,' and he also spoke of how he had over heard me telling'everybody' about how I had failed the boards again (I said to him, I am open about my failures. I don't believe they are an indication of my intelligence, nor do I feel ashamed of them, as if they are something to hide.)
So as I sat there, throughly shellshocked, a year and a half ago, as this man totally skewered me, with no supporting examples or justification. I later found out that the 'phone call' he had gotten was a result of my having a conversation with an attending---I was enraged and upset that we had known my 16 year old patient's diagnosis for 4 days, and we still had not told her she had MS, although they were referring to her as 'the MS girl' up on the floor. i approached this doctor, quite upset, and threw the word 'unethical' around a lot, because, well, i thought it was. What made me the most angry was that I was on call the night we admitted her, and we did a lumbar puncture at 2 o clock in the morning, and the person who did it was an intern who had never done the damn thing, and i remember being like, uhhh....do we really need to be doing this with someone with no experience at 2 am? And yes, that did give us the diagnosis, but at no point over the next 4 days did we think we needed to 'share' that info with the patient.
So I was pissed. And I expressed it, because I thought that maybe a 16 year old whose room is 4 yards away from the nurses and doctors station, who is being openly referred to as 'the MS girl'....maybe she should find out she has MS from a source besides a resident calling her the MS girl.
So the doc I spoke with called someone up top, and must have said something about my being a loose cannon.
That, coupled with the material facts of my being open about failing the boards (after all, only a med student with psych issues would be open about failure with their peers, esp in this environment where people are all about hierarchy and judging each other and being able to brag about their scores and their 'outstanding' that they received in a rotation.....a pass is simply never good enough), and then there was my scary exuberance (I am so ashamed that I actually tried to sit there, and explain to the nitwit/asshole that when you have a chronic disease, the days you feel good, you might give off the impression that you are scarily exuberant, because, you actually are at just the fact of having energy that day), and then to top it all off, the man knew about my lupus.....and that, that is what gave him the in. What made it okay for him to ask me if I had psych issues in a mid semester eval.
I left that room, having kept it all together when I was there, and started to weep and continued to do so for the better part of a week.
A couple things about that encounter---it was the first time in my life I felt like I knew what true discrimination was. He would not have gone down that line of questioning, not been able to, if he did not have the lupus 'in.' It was a pretty big moment for me, realizing that, because it braced me for many ensuing experiences after that point, both big and small, of feeling 'discriminated' against for having an illness, and more importantly, being open about it. Don't ask don't tell is not just a part of the culture of our military.
Also, I know i have not set this story up very well, but you need to know a little bit about this man in order to get, truly, why I was targeted. He is a small, spindly little Orthodox Jew of a man, kippot in place with hair clips each day, severe in that no-eye-contact-with females sort of way. I have never been able to accept a belief system that doesn't allow someone to look me in the eye.....I don't know how not to find it offensive, because it feels like it is an affront to my own belief system, which includes having my humanity affirmed by being looked in the eye.
So often times, with this man, and others like him, I try and force eye contact by bending my head forward and down a little, trying to intercept and meet their downward gaze. Don't judge me. Just hear me out, okay?
So this man, this peds attending, like many of the male peds attending, spoke so softly that you would lose all the ATP your body made from your morning bowl of oatmeal because you are straining so much to actually hear what he had to say.
In other words, this man was my personality opposite. And then I had the audacity to open my mouth and use big words like 'unethical' and the gall to be exuberant about coming to work. All that was bad, but would not have been enough to warrant being asked about psych issues. The clincher was having a pathlogy of some sort , because isn't it so easy to hopscotch your way from one pathology to the next?
I went to my Dean and said I wanted to report this man, a write up, an official complaint. My dean, whom I am close with, he has served a fatherly, big brotherly role over the last 4 years, he looked at me and was like, look, you can't fight every fight that comes your way. You have to choose. Right now, you have to concentrate on passing your boards. Once you pass those, you can do whatever you want. But you have not even started ob/gyn or surgery yet....I said, oh, so you mean I haven't even met the real assholes yet? And he laughed and was like, yeah, basically. So he dissuaded me from writing him up. And so I said, once I pass the boards and before I graduate, I am going to tell this man what I think of him.
I did meet 'real assholes' after that experience. But I do fine with overt aggression and blatant confrontation. I like surgeon types because you know where you stand with them. Not like the attending who to my face, talked me down from being upset about the girl with MS, but then behind my back, called someone up. Give me somebody who is an ass, but I know where they stand, to someone who is shifting and smarmy and nice to your face....I'll take the asshole any day of the week.
So anyway, now it is a year and a half later. I was informed at one of the graduation activities by someone that another student had had a simlarly freaky encounter with the same doc.
And doesn't that take the cake......some poor hapless student had to go through something like that, because my loser self did not write him up, LIKE I KNEW I SHOULD, because I had too many challenges in that moment. I was pissed.
So I spoke with him Friday. And the most amazing part of the converation was his having no real recollection of the events.
It was amazing. Realizing this as the converation went on, realizing that this man had no real recall of what happened that day: you said you had grave doubts about my getting through medical school.-----what? no! that doesn't sound like me....I wouldn't say that.....
It was so instructive because it made me think of another situation where I have realized that people refuse to accept anything but their own constructs of themselves, in spite of any and all overwhelmng evidence to the contrary. If your mantra is "i am a good person"....and that is all you ever tell yourself, and that is the only picture of yourself that you paint to the world...you as the paragon of good in the world, overcoming evil one day at a time.....if that is your construct of yourself, nothing nobody can ever say can wrench you from your reality. And so you live in your little coccoon of illusion, because breaking that coccoon (sp?) requires the ability to look at your actions crititcally, and that necessitates humility.
This man could not accept what he had said VERBATIM (this is one of my strengths...when the adrenaline is high, I REMEMBER EVEYRTHING), because it did not 'sound like him.' No, it just didn't sound like the him of his mental construct. He was like, whatever I said was only out of concern for you....I said, yeah, see, even concern should not justify being asked a question that is unprofessiional, unethical, and possibly illegal, especailly in the context of a mid semester eval. And he apologized all throughout the convo, for having 'hurt my feelings." (would this have been said if I were a man......i think not) And I said, you know, doc, this is not about my feelings, this is about no student ever having to be asked questions like this by you....and at the end of the conversation I was like, you know what the worst part was? I didn't lose my cool, I did not get emotional, I did not cuss you out....check, check, check, I am proud of my character, of who I am wrt to that. the worst part was that I actaully answered your question about whether I have psych issues.....i actually said no, I don't, and was ready to furnish any and all proof that you might need, because I was so intimidated by the situation, instead of just saying, that is not appropriate for you to ask me, and frankly, none of your business. And I said to him, I look back at that moment and I think to myself, for shame, you actually answered that question because you were afraid.
I cried after I spoke with him. Mainly because he didn't even remember. I might have well been a fly he swatted over a year ago, and what concern of his was the back of the hand to the body of the fly contact that made the fly ricochet off the hallway and slide down the wall, broken wing or antenna? He couldn't even recall who I was......he might have, if we had done this in person, but the story barely stirred up the dust of a vague unpleasant recollection he had.
And he has done it to someone since. And I am sure he has no insight into any of this, because he is a good person, and my version of him does not sound like him, and so it must not be him.
My brother had something pretty wise to say when I told him what happened. He was like, you know, that is the privilege of those who discriminate....they don't ever have to look back and see the consequences of their actions, because their actions are nothing more than how they live their lives everyday. Walking over people is how they walk, so nothing seems abnormal or out of tune about it. And if nobdy ever takes the pains to actually take the energy to try and shove into their face the damage they do, they continue on with blissful ignorance.
I was so unsatisfied by my convo with this man. Especially in the context of being told something similar like this happened to someone else recently, and then speaking to him and getting confirmation that he has absolutely no insight into how completely beserko he is. So bhai said I should write down my experience, send it to some of the deans, so at the very least that letter will go into a file somewhere. I think I will do that next week, along with confronting the two faced whore who ratted me out in the first place. She going down. With this little man, everyone knows him to be strange, socially awkward, and possibly having psych issues of his own. But the two faced whore, everyone loves. I will not be gentle with her.
I went and worked out after that conversation. Acutally, I went to joe the commie's, vented, spewed, heard his take ( he was very flattering about what he calls my righteousness), and then went and worked out my anger about the fact that HE DIDN"T EVEN REMEMBER.
Amazing.
the fictions we create about ourselves are so painstakingly protected. we will avoid anybody who presents an alternate version of who we are.....we only want to be around people who will hold up a reflection ourselves that we like.....and even when confronted with another version of who we are, we will say, well gosh, that doesn't sound like me....maybe that person has psych issues.
Telling this attending how I viewed him was important for me because the exercise of using restraint when all you want to do is metaphorically, or not so metaphorically, claw someone's face off.....using restraint and actually conversing with someone when you would rather raise your voice and bitch them out.....this all builds character. I am in the business of building character, it seems. I calmly explained to him the litany of wrongs that happened during my session with him, and even if he doesn't believe any of it, the fact that a student, a year and a half after meeting with you, right before she graduates, takes the time to call you up and say, you should not have behaved like this, and nobdy should be treated this way.....well, no matter how deep your fiction, your fantasy of yourself is, there has to be a voice inside of you that says, hmmmm.....maybe there is something to this.
I have not been able to undo the wrongs done against me. The closest I come to doing this is to tell someone the truth, the way I see it. Because not accepting being silenced or discarded is as emphatic a statement as any. Because even if I am the fly you swatted and gave not a second thought to, I am a persistent fly and I just buzzed in your ear to remind you that I am still here. Reminds me of the title of june's last book, some of us did not die.
although when I am thinking about it, it almost feels like it is missing a muthafucka at the end.
some of us did not die, muthafucka.
( yeah, that means you.)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next