Oh-Oh, Compassion Bypass Ahead

Throughout the recent chaos resulting from my partner's melanoma diagnosis and my own redecorating efforts, I have continued working, although not at a very busy pace--just enough work to be disruptive to what feels like the real business of sorting our belongings into trash/donate/storage piles, and taping the edges of doorways in preparation for painting the dining room red. This is one of the reasons I have always worked continuously, because I find it so much easier to motivate myself when I'm in the middle of a run of ten shifts or six nights on call. Conversely, when I work for a day, have two days off, then work another half day, then the smallest responsibility feels like a major imposition.

Worse, I find myself short on patience and compassion with my patients. I was attending a family planning outreach clinic on Saturday--a job I do infrequently and only because the outreach is desperately needed and chronically understaffed--and one of the staff members told me a patient called at her appointment time to tell us she'd be forty minutes late. Usually I make all kinds of allowances for teenagers who have to drive seventy miles to get to family planning services, but I felt incredibly annoyed at this patient and almost told the staff to reschedule her appointment. After all, I thought huffily, I'd been getting my partner to all of her appointments on time, and she's had at least four per week since the diagnosis--so what's the problem? People need to take ownership of their own health and this means overcoming all the daily inconveniences which get in the way of things like doctor's appointments.

This is the problem with being a doctor who is also the primary caregiver to a sick person: you never get a break from being nice. You spend your home time brewing tea and fetching extra blankets for your loved one, and verifying all the appointment times for the following week because she's extra-forgetful these days (wound healing really saps the energy out of a person)--and then you have to turn around and rush to clinic where you have to explain the medieval process of a Pap smear to a fifteen year-old who has never undergone a pelvic exam before. You feel obligated to be upbeat, empathic, funny and easy to approach at all times, and sooner or later something snaps inside of you, and if you don't have bulletproof self-control you might say something really hurtful to someone who doesn't deserve it.

This is not to say I've been in a bad mood lately. Quite the opposite: I've been quite annoyingly cheerful, but that's because I'm redecorating and my partner has given me carte blanche to paint the rooms almost any color I want. But this good humor is a thin facade. Small annoyances such as the teenager who showed up an hour late for her appointment bring me perilously close to my limit. It's as if I have no reserve of niceness for the inevitable moments of human frailty which dog the life of a family doctor.

So it is just as well I'm not working a lot right now, because if I were doing any more I might just find myself with a foot in my mouth, and all things considered, I'd rather eat pizza.

Comments

[Doc]

There are many days when I will just whisper "Show Time!" to myself before facing the masses. I Found myself being overly blunt with a septuagenarian the other day, and was kicking myself the rest of the day. Holidays, busy schedules, sick loved ones, finances, changes in the home-- these are all psychosocial stressors. Take time for yourself and consider doing what I did after being Doctor Grinch, take a walk.

[spynster57]

Hmmm. I'm wondering if you're taking care of everyone else but yourself? That's what you've been trained to do, but make sure the doctor is also on the receiving end of some compassion!

[rlbates]

"I might just find myself with a foot in my mouth, and all things considered, I'd rather eat pizza." -- I would too. :)

Take care.