“What do you think a passing grade should be? Let’s call this earning a C on your own report card. What does it take to earn a C?”
“Well…that would be getting it right all the time. Every time. Never making a mistake, always knowing the answer, knowing the diagnosis….. saving every patient.”
“That? For a C? What then would it take to get an A? To give yourself an A?”
“I have no idea.”
“Don’t you think that’s asking a lot of yourself?”
“Of course. It’s crazy. But that is what is expected of me. And that’s what I expect from myself.”
Now, thinking like this will put you on the couch in front of a shrink eventually. Usually sooner rather than later. And there I sat.
And so I took up any number of hobbies to help me relax. Piano, swimming, yoga motorcycles, archery, anything I could, just seeking that quiet feeling in my head that came about with the zen like concentration that true escapism demands. I counted only my mistakes. I forgot to have fun, to live.
Expectations. Set your expectations too high, and you are often disappointed. Set them too low, and you stand to underachieve and disappoint. And when your expectations don’t match exactly with others’ there may arrive conflict.
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Picture the fresh doctor, finished with the 8 or 10 or 12 years of college, heading out to save people, and pumped full of expectations. He has built a tremendous knowledge base, reworked his brain to assemble thoughts like a doctor, practiced his fingers to hold strange tools and modify flesh for good, and he expects…
Our fresh doctor expects to communicate seamlessly with his clients, asking the right questions and receiving in turn vital information. He expects to examine the patient and gain much useful information, to utilize all that wonderful technology available to the profession to yield even more important information, and then feed that into his computer of a brain and know what is wrong with every one of his patients, and how to fix it.
And then he expects the client to work with him to achieve these goals. He expects to be paid for all this effort, talent, skill, and investment. He expects to face the mirror and praise himself for a job well done.
Inevitably, his expectations may run head on into a thing called reality. The doctor will not be able to meet all of his expectations, for not every case will have an easy answer, or any answer at all. Not every answer is a fixable problem. And not every patient, nor every client, will be a willing participant. (See rest of this blog)
The doctor is now susceptible to that corollary of expectation, disappointment. Which often transforms into disappointment in himself. Long nights staring at an uncaring ceiling, frustration while filling in that stack of medical charts at the end of the day. Sense of failure and self-incrimination. That rising dump of fear in the gut when facing one more trip into an exam room filled with questions ya just caint answer.
It’s not possible to earn a C in this racket. And forget ever getting an A.
And when you sit in the chair in the dark, late on a lonely night, with nonsense on the tube and not ever enough bourbon in the glass, and you think of those times when you failed, and the tears come and the shivers that wrack your body, and you cry out for forgiveness because you cannot be perfect, and none comes. Well, then you know why the young ones question why, and then chose another way to spend their lives that doesn’t involve the pain and the frustration and the sacrifice. For why would anyone chose to do this?
Comments (3)
Hang in there… I have faith in you too.
One day at a time. Forget the grade. The feeling of helping those who need it, despite their refusing to cooperate fully, is what keeps the doctor, you, going.
**hugs** things will get better, I promise <3 I totally believe in you, Dr J =]