LOL, this post was half-written in probably April-ish and I don’t feel like finishing or editing it…so I’m just going to post it as is
Some days are just hard and maybe there are a lot of big things, but having so many big things makes the little things become additional big things.
For example, I was parked well within the lines of my parking spot, and some lady decides I’m too close to her car and first she just stares at me while I am playing a game of minesweeper on my phone before getting out. Then she approaches and says something like ‘I don’t think I like where you’re parked.’ And I kinda ignore her because none of your business, get in your car and leave me alone…but then she’s repeats it and keeps staring at me, so my non-confrontational self internally screams fine, boss me around however you want while externally smiling and asking where she’d prefer I be and then asking her to get away from the back of my car so I can pull out. I move to the next spot over, and she walks away without even so much as a thank you. And then instead of getting out of the car I am then still sitting there pondering how in the world that happened and why anyone would think they get to dictate to me where I park. Like come on Karen, you don’t own the parking lot. Although can you call someone who isn’t a white lady a Karen? IDK. But the fact that happened 7 hours ago and I’m still coming in hot tells you how skewed my importance meter is after all the big things I had to deal with today.
But there was a major positive today…my exercise therapy program has me assigned to a coach who is supposed to check in with me occasionally to make sure I’m doing okay with things. I talked with her this morning because I was ready to quit because I was tolerating the pain of the program because I thought the prize at the end was lower pain levels…and then a couple weeks ago I talked to a PT who said that pain reduction was not the goal and in fact I should expect the pain to increase. I was already at a point where I have been not infrequently fantasizing about getting my shoulder surgically removed and re-attaching my elbow to just above my hip, so as you can probably imagine the idea of the pain continuing to increase hard to imagine, unbearable, and something that I was pretty sure nothing would be worth. I’m not sure I would even accept higher pain levels than that even to get to keep the positives while erasing my trauma. And that is saying a lot. Should I have asked what the PT’s goal was for me if it wasn’t pain reduction, probably…and should I have told the PT that I was fairly certain I wasn’t interested in any goal that involved my pain levels to continue to rise, also, probably…but that meeting was already spiraling the drain at that point. We all know I have a history of social anxiety that at times has bordered on selective mutism, and I still have to work hard to communicate. If I come to someone with a question and I don’t already have a strong relationship with that person, you can pretty much guarantee that I’ve already tried all the things I can do to solve the problem myself. If it were self-solvable it would already be solved, so telling me it will build my resilience to figure it out myself isn’t helpful. And is a bit hypocritical when you have already stated multiple times that something that technologically only you can do because of your position as the provider you are refusing to do because you don’t know how and aren’t tech savvy aren’t interested in learning. Maybe that sounds overly harsh and critical of me, and like maybe I should have pushed back, but this person also was a lot like talking to an insurance company on the weekend. You try really hard to reach a real person, but you’re definitely going to spend a lot of time listening to menus where you click the choice you hope you want only to hear a pre-programmed paragraph they think will dissuade you from continuing to try to get a real person and then your choices are go back to the main menu or hear that same paragraph again…and you work your way through the options until if you hear another robotic paragraph instead of a connection to a real person the answer for your patient is going to be sorry, but your insurance cannot approve an override today. When you have to do that with a real person, I can imagine it would be exhausting for a non-socially anxious person, but for me that not feeling heard pushes me further away from effective communication skills and I start shutting down. Anyway, that was a very long way of getting to my actual point that my coach skipped over my initial question/comment that I didn’t know what the goal was supposed to be but I was thinking that I didn’t want to tolerate the pain for whatever that goal was, and instead started with talking about progress and that she can’t make guarantees but she really thinks in the next few weeks my pain levels will decrease, and pain reduction is what we’re currently working towards…which meant that my initial I’m quitting became let’s keep trying. And because I felt heard I was able to continue to participate in the conversation and get my questions answered. LOL, maybe we should just call our conversations distract Wiggle Worm from quitting, because I was also about to quit the one other time I talked with her back in like March I think and she started the conversation out with something less related to me being close to quitting and got me to agree to all sorts of things so that by the time we got to the I’m ready to quit I’d already committed myself to too many things to just up and quit…although I did the next day recognize I’d significantly overcommitted and took two weeks off before getting back into it. But yeah, I used my words and they resulted in getting what I needed, so that is a huge success, and I am proud.
So there might have been a lot of hard and scary stuff, but that conversation brought some light to my day.
LOL and that was the end of that half-way written draft…and here is what is on my mind today…
I don’t have a formal ADHD diagnosis…but…I pay the distracted and inattentive tax often enough that it makes me wonder if the people teasing me about having it in college were right…and maybe my friend who was sure I was her ADHD buddy was right…luckily this time it was a $12 late penalty for not making sure my water bill check got sent…as far as mistakes go, that at least is a pretty cheap one to fix, especially because they didn’t shut off my water so I could just put a check in the mail and it will be fixed as long as I can keep an eye on my account this time to make sur ethe check shows up and gets cashed…I do my best and I can’t expect more of myself than that…and after my nightmare experience in college, there is pretty darn close to zero chance I am ever going to be even miniscule-ly open to pursuing a diagnosis so I’m just gonna keep living with myself the way I am. It isn’t perfect, but humans lived with this for a long time before meds were invented for it, so it is definitely very possible to make it through life…will I always be someone who occasionally finds her keys in the freezer and forgets she’s holding her phone until she no longer knows where it is because she let go in the middle of a parking lot, maybe, but it does at least give me some good laughs once in a while…and I mean, who doesn’t need a little extra humor in their life…lol, this morning before I put on my glasses or contacts I saw a “flake of dust” against the window and I was gonna pick it up to throw it away, but it kept getting away from my fingers before I picked it all the way up…as it turns out, it was actually a fly…or more accurately, a walk. But once it got close enough to my face that I could actually see where it was I picked it up by a leg and brought it to the bathroom to smoosh and throw away…and ten I was trying to make my bed for once and discovered the blanket that looked basically new a week ago has somehow completely disintegrated in the middle into a pile of blanket crumbs…I have no idea how that happens…but I mean, I have been thinking that my linen closet was a little over-full, so there’s one less blanket…although it was my only bed blanket in the correct size…but honestly over the past few years I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t really care if it is supposed to be a bed blanket or a throw blanket if it provides the pressure input and/or warmth I want, whichever is more convenient is what I’m going to use, so I’ve used bed blankets for warmth and throw blankets for the bed…it is what it is as long as guests aren’t coming expecting it to look like a normal room…
And I just looked down and saw the exercise screen waiting for my to hit the next button on the exercise therapy session I started over an hour and a half ago, so I should probably finish that…lol, speaking of exercise therapy, I did eventually find a plan that worked for my body. It is WAY easier, but that has let my body stop the rapid decline that it was going through with the keep trying harder approach the PT’s I’d been working with had been recommending…now I have a PT who will slow me down if I’m trying to do too much and will listen when I recognize things are too hard for me and find a way to meet me where I’m at. Does it feel a little discouraging when it feels like I’m having to take multiple steps backwards to be able to get through exercises that seem like they shouldn’t be that hard, sometimes…but I’m also proud of my stubborn determination to keep trying…
Anxiety is the worst. Especially when a lot of barely believable stuff has happened in your life…because like no kidding what I am afraid is going to happen seems so out there that how could I possibly believe that it was an incredibly real and imminent option…except that very similar things have actually happened in real life so I can’t logic my way out.
When contamination OCD was my biggest issue at least I could hold my breath and wash my hands and recognize that the part of getting sick that scared me most was the social aspect and I really probably could figure it out if I absolutely had to…but when your fears are more relational or outside focused there is a lot less you can do. I’d been working hard to not let fear shrink my world…and then I found out what I was really afraid of (being found) had happened…and it took a while for me to be willing to even try to un-shrink my world again…because now it felt all the more real, plus the stakes got higher – instead of fearing for my life I feared for the comforts of life.
So sometimes when I hear the tiniest sound in the night I panic…and because humans are not ideal thinkers on minimal sleep, sometimes like today the anxiety doesn’t want to go away. Sometimes I can comfort myself that I was probably a neighbor coming back from a party or taking out the trash or something, but other times I am fully convinced something bad is going on. Because why wouldn’t the bad people find me and decide to hurt me again on a stormy April night? What if creepy mustache guy shaved off his mustache to go in cognito and has been hiding from me in plain sight? I don’t leave my home anymore without clothing I’d be mostly okay with being seen in, but sometimes I leave my blinds open a little bit and I don’t always dress for success at home…’cause I live by myself so who really cares if my bra strap is showing or I’m wearing leggings without pants? Although on the first one, I don’t know why our society cares so much about bra straps (or really even underwear) showing a little – it’s just fabric, so why does it matter if that fabric is connected to my first layer of clothing or my second? I mean, considering some bras are one layer of fabric and some are two or more layers, really what you are seeing while part of the bra might be more layers out than the totality of layers the next female is wearing…
The anxious what-if is horrible. And I am so thankful for people who might kinda look at me like I’m crazy but who will still love me. I appreciate the people who know enough of my story to know that what I’m scared about makes no sense but even though I didn’t do anything wrong I don’t have a good reason to believe that correlates with nothing bad will happen to me. The grace they give me for my anxiety is such a blessing.
Match day was very recent, so I’ve been thinking more than usual recently about my almost PGY-2 residency…or more specifically my program director in that position. And I realized I didn’t feel good about her (obviously…) but I don’t feel angry at her. I feel angry that there were not checks and balances of power to protect me from her. I still feel incredibly terrified of her and of if she might still be planning further attacks on me. But the biggest thing I feel might be fear and sadness that there might be more young pharmacists headed into her danger zone. I do believe people can change, but I also feel it is unlikely that she has changed.
And that made me realize one of the big things that almost residency took away from me. Match day for so many years was a negative experience. Even 2020 when I did match, I matched and that same day the word started rapidly changing in a way that made life more challenging. In 2021 I matched again, and it was amazing…for all of a few hours. Before the end of the day, I’d gotten an email from the program and I don’t know exactly what about it set me off, but I could just tell there was something wrong. I assumed at the time it was just anxiety over the massive change coming my way, and maybe my body still remembering all of the pain-filled match days of the past years, but I know now that my instincts were right that there was a problem. Sometimes I wish I’d heeded that red flag even if it means losing the amazing things that came about alongside the challenges. I love the self-confidence I gained. I hate the fear that the assault, lies, and false accusations incited.
This 2021 match day should have been a redeeming experience and made match day into the celebration that it seems like the rest of the world sometimes wants it to be. Instead, the events that followed over the next 9 months ensured that match day would remain a difficult day. Instead of transitioning from grieving my own experience to celebrating it and celebrating the younger pharmacists following behind me in March and April every year, I transitioned to grieving the pharmacists and students whose dream is about to be shattered into a nightmare with glass shards forever in their feet as they try to move through what was supposed to be what they wanted. I wish I could warn them. I hope the few lights in that place are continuing to be bright spots of solace in a dark place. But I know that the darkness is still there. I was watching ‘I didn’t match’ videos this weekend on youtube and my heart goes out to those young physicians and pharmacists, but I also feel some jealousy that if I hadn’t matched my life would have been so much better at least for a handful of months. I feel like I learned a lot about my own value and about life and I made some incredible friends in the process, but that 2021 match day brought me to a place where I was assaulted at work and the concern wasn’t about the impact on me and my ability to complete residency in a place where this happened, but about whether anyone else would find out. That match day brought me to a place where someone was hiding in a public park taking videos of me while I was just trying to move on with my life and make lemonade with the lemons I’d been given by enjoying the newfound free time I had…I guess I shoulda known that lemonade only works if life also gives you water and sugar…lol…it was so incredibly violating to read that this had been happening. For the past 3 months I’d been fearful of being found by that RPD or the manager from that position, and had thought that fear was unfounded yet still rehearsed as I rode what I would do if there were a legitimate sighting. It honestly wouldn’t have surprised me if one or both of them had a weapon. But it was a surprise that they were actively but stealthily looking for me…I suppose it would be slightly obvious if she had waited for me outside my apartment door…plus I am fairly certain my building had security cameras…but especially when I was less than an hour away from packing up my u-haul and supposedly running away to safety, my guard was down and it was incredibly jarring to find out I really hadn’t been safe. I still wonder if this timing was intentional, if it was known that I was about to take my next professional step and this was an intentional step to try to block me or at least slow me down. And I’m gonna stop here because I’ve already probably said too much. I feel very afraid to post this. I don’t want trauma and the bad people to control my entire life, but when they’ve had so much power for so long it is hard. It is hard to know when so many “crazy” “unfounded” fears have been reality to believe there is any chance at all that these words aren’t going to be found and somehow used against me.
And it is isolating. After drafting this I was back to not wanting to be seen outside in case someone was watching and waiting. My “spidey-senses” are alerting for Ev.Ry.Thing. And I know keeping me quiet was the goal of so much of this which means I totally am playing right into their hand…but I don’t know where to find safety. I have too much experience with bad people truly doing inconceivable things to be able to eve attempt to logic my way out of the fear.
My health coach has unknowingly provided a LOT of healing on the other hand by respecting my boundaries and giving me choices whenever possible, especially when it comes to sharing what I’ve said with other people…’cause yeah, my healthcare team should get to find out if my treatment plan needs to be changed, but it is empowering and keeps me from feeling like I’m being talked about behind my back when I am ASKED if it is okay to tell my physical therapist that my pain levels have been too high for too long with the current plan rather than just assuming I was going to say yes and asking for the intensity to be decreased. We both know I was going to say yes, but putting the ball into my court to get to GIVE that permission makes such a huge difference. It shows that my opinion matters. It shows that my words matter. It shows that I can be respected, valued, and deemed competent to make my own choices. I haven’t shared my trauma with my coach, but it really feels like she uses principles of trauma-informed care, and it makes such a huge difference to feel seen. And socially it is perfect that if I participate I am praised for sharing, but there is no regret/hard feelings expressed if I don’t respond well to attempts at communication. If I give a one-word answer or need extra time to respond there is no shame that I’m not a prolific communicator. I guess long story short, she makes it okay to be who I am while making space for me to grow. I get a chance to use my words, while being given words when I’m struggling to find my own. And I am thankful.
(Get up, get in the game – don’t know the exact name of this song or who it’s by…just that I used to play it in DDR…”reject rejection and refuse to fear, believe the truth about you. Seize the moment ‘cause it’s very clear that you have got some living to do. Impossible you say. Impossible today. Maybe when, maybe when, maybe when we’re old and gray, but impossibility is only possibility waiting for someone like you to believe. Get up. Get in the game; it’s get up, get in the game. It’s get up, get in the game. It’s time to play).”
This week in my trauma group I felt less alone. While I really don’t want anyone to suffer so I’d really rather be the only one struggling, it felt so good to hear that I wasn’t the only one who never really escapes the fear. I’m not the only one constantly scanning for exits and running what if scenarios. I’m not the only one for whom even sleep isn’t an escape because I have nightmares surrounding being found. I’m not the only one who sometimes feels like every day her attempts at normalcy just dig her deeper into the hole trauma created that I don’t feel like I’ll ever fully escape. It just feels like someday I’ll be so deep I won’t even be able to approximate normal anymore…even though theoretically over time it is supposed to get easier. I’m not the only one struggling with a piece of me wanting justice yet a larger piece of me wanting to be the bigger person and extend grace and kindness to those who only wanted to hurt me.
And so with that…a big part of why it has been so long since I’ve posted is the intensity of my fear of being found. And I don’t want it to take over my life so I decided that it is time to put something out into the world again. I can’t hide forever. Or, well, I totally can hide forever, it just really isn’t good for me to do so…
I’ve got like 5 million (slight exaggeration) (or possibly more than slight) half written posts from the past like 2 months so I deleted all but one randomly selected post which is now here for your reading pleasure…lol…
Have you ever seen a news article so incredibly illogical that you have to go back and look at it in depth trying to make it make sense? And it makes even less sense the harder you try to make sense of it?
That was me recently. I saw a news article on how the United States perpetuated the pandemic. I don’t want to get into politics today, because that isn’t the issue I am talking about today, so I’m not going to discuss overall whether the United States response did or did not perpetuate the pandemic. What I am going to discuss is the (only) reason this article gave. See, according to this article, the United States perpetuated the pandemic by (gasp) starting to vaccinate their population before some other countries governments had even started to purchase vaccines. Therefore (according to the article) the pandemic got out of control because vaccine access wasn’t equal all over the world.
From a public health standpoint, this makes no sense.
From a look at the COVID statistics standpoint, this claim appears invalid.
Basically however you look at it there isn’t a standpoint in which this claim makes any sense at all.
Ideally would every country have started vaccinating their population as soon as possible, sure, but I’m also fairly certain that the United States was not the first country to start this initiative, so I’m very unclear as to how it is our fault when I’m fairly certain England was vaccinating their population long before we were. If vaccinating one group of people before another is a problem then surely it is the biggest problem in whoever does it first, not the people in the middle. Honestly, when this article brought up vaccination I initially thought they were going to finish their thought with it is our fault because we didn’t vaccinate enough people soon enough…because that could actually be a logical conclusion…but when it was the opposite I was like are you sure you don’t have dementia right now?
Another article I thought was particularly dumb recently was for another reason…the intent of the article was clearly to inflame people rather than to actually provide any real information…the article discussed the downsides of zoning (Mr. Jones owns this land but isn’t allowed to build what he want on his own land and can get in trouble if he tries to build a high rise shopping center and apartment duo building in an area zoned for single family homes or vice versa and that is clearly problematic)…which already didn’t make a whole lot of sense, because of the principle that your freedom end where mine begins, and also just for the personal responsibility aspect – you bought the land knowing how it was zoned, and if that isn’t what you wanted to do with that land you probably shouldn’t have purchased it. Plus, a high rise in a residential area isn’t going to go well because you’re going to make a lot of families unhappy and ultimately there is a good chance people will leave and people aren’t going to want to live in your high rise that is surrounded by a broken down ghost town, and without occupied homes or apartments nearby the stores are also going to fail…and similarly I doubt many people would intentionally purchase a single family home in the middle of an apartment complex, so your property value is going to plummet. But anyway, they also briefly recognized that they wouldn’t want to live in those situations and maybe you don’t either, so clearly we shouldn’t change the zoning in our neighborhoods, but we should all push for zoning to be eliminated in “other places.” And I was like, so your solution is that we shouldn’t inconvenience ourselves but it is okay to change other people’s situations…like do you realize that these other people are actual real live people who have real live feelings who also do not wish to be inconvenienced? Just ‘cause you don’t personally know them doesn’t mean that they don’t matter…and then the article ended by pointing out that a few cities had tried taking away zoning so clearly it was a great idea…what they failed to mention is the numerous stories that came out after those changes that shared that it really destroyed those cities – what were previously vibrant communities became areas no one wanted to live and homes people previously cared for and loved quickly became run down as people who cared about their community left.
Bad things always happen to *other* people until you are other people.
You know how you know your stress levels have risen too high even if they aren’t impacting your work yet? When you are crying because in the place you want to move there is a towel ring instead of a towel rod in the bathroom and you really wanted a towel rod, not a towel ring. Like looking back on that moment I can see like seriously girl? That is what you are going to get worked up over? But also, I know it isn’t really about a towel holding apparatus. And it isn’t about the irrational OCD that associates a towel ring with more germs in addition to being less visually attractive and less functional. It is about fear of being found and other general stress bubbling up until something small became the last straw…and then I reminded myself about when I was looking for apartments in college when I didn’t get a spot in the dorm my third year. I can remember many tearful nights that I was never going to find an apartment. Everything I looked at was both at the top of my price range and either disgustingly dirty or incredibly run down and falling apart…with the exception of one place that had a long waitlist. The day I was moving out of my dorm I saw one more apartment that was only cleanably dirty but with a price above every other place AND further away than other places, but in desperation I put in a deposit there too. As it turns out I eventually got an apartment that served me well before it was time to move back to school…(and the very first week a police man gave me a parking ticket but was kind enough to write a quick note on the back explaining the complicated parking rules in the area so I’d know how to not do that again)…But yeah, I know things will work out some way in the end, and if nothing else, I will certainly learn something in the process. I’m also remembering that almost nothing is permanent…although I’m hoping the cards play out in such a way that this can be my last move. I’m not sure it will, and I am fearful it won’t be sooner than I had hoped, but I know God has a plan and maybe my move into this place will open the door for someone who needs it more than I do who otherwise couldn’t move in if someone staying longer than me had moved in, and maybe it is giving me the skills to be better at navigating finding a new place to live in the future. I mean, I’ve had a lot of practice with that already, but I feel like it is different at every stage of life…
…and I gotta post this because I said close to a week ago it was time to be brave and hit post, and I am running out of hours to make that anywhere close to true that I would post within a week…(lol, although someone told me today the definition of courage is knowing something is going to hurt and doing it anyway. And the definition of stupidity is the same. So chew on that).
I wanted to write this on Friday, but my brain said no. But now I am ready. My voice deserves to be heard. My story deserves to be shared. I might not know how to protect others from ending up where I was, but I do know that if my story can help even just one person in their journey out of a similar situation then it will be worth the effort to share it.
There are some days that change everything.
July 29, 2021.
It was a Thursday.
I was working on a continuing education presentation on pharmacotherapy and therapeutic hypothermia for hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy in neonates.
And then there was my manager telling me I needed to get my work done…like…umm…what do you think these research articles and my notes are? I was a lot more polite and professional than that, and I thought the conversation would be over…it wasn’t. Long story short, this soon became my manager inches from my face yelling at me for an hour while I was trapped in a corner of an office with no windows and no security cameras. There were threats and I was terrified.
I was not supposed to tell anyone, but I kinda did tell my program director. That started everything in motion for the rest of the past year.
While 95% of me wishes none of that had happened, that I’d heeded the red flags much earlier and chosen a different path…the other 5% wouldn’t trade in that experience. This resulted in breaking free of imposter syndrome. This taught me what I really valued in a workplace and to not take the little positives for granted. This taught me about the problems with the American justice system. This taught me why online privacy is so highly valued by some people. You can’t understand how important it can be until the just in case you were planning for nearly becomes a reality and you don’t know when it will happen for real.
Like y’all, I really thought I was over-reacting when I was planning how I would run to the nearest door, praying the occupants would answer, understand my explanation of the emergency, and let me in if The Bad People were spotted while I was away from home. I even had a brief explanation on a notecard for in case my social anxiety kicked in stronger than my adrenaline in that situation. And then I found out I *had* been found and people had taken videos of me. And I didn’t know since it had been like a month and a half since I’d ever thought I’d seen anyone (and had naively believed the claim that no it wasn’t her) to what extent their following me had been occurring…but I did know that my current address, and at least two past addresses were known by these people, so there was a really real risk to my safety.
I had a lot of offers from friends to come stay with them for the night, but I also learned even more deeply why people stay in dangerous situation and don’t, as people who don’t get it like to say, ‘just’ leave. As afraid as I was of being found at home, it also felt scary to leave home. I was afraid of what would happen outside the walls of my apartment where I didn’t have my own walls for protection. Staying didn’t feel safe, but neither did leaving. When I left for an in person interview and had to stay in a hotel overnight, I have never regretted more my decision to stay in one where the doors open directly to the parking lot. I had nightmares about being found there. Like I would totally stay there again now that my anxiety has become much less significant, but I still don’t go a day without fear of being found. I still have nightmares about The Bad People…especially this weekend. It is so hard navigating life when you’re trying to keep so much a secret from new people until you know and trust them…and I mean, there are some things you just can’t 100% avoid. It was really important to me to participate in welcoming students to campus at my pharmacy school, especially because I can see on their website they have made some positive changes, but it required a city and state to sign up…but it was a free text field so I was able to say ‘_____ area’ and pick a city near where I live and figure if they really can’t deal with keeping it vague they’ll let me know…and I mean, having a pharmacist license requires something be used as an address on file even if it isn’t my real address…but yeah…I never thought I would be the person hesitant to be in the group picture at a church event because of fear of being found. It is hard when you’re a Facebook lover who worries about making too many friends in case it gives away a current location…even if that location was only ‘current’ for a weekend. It is a hard way to live life when it feels like everyone you meet in life wants to know where you live and stuff and you barely feel comfortable with your closest friends who don’t live near you knowing what state you are in…
100% unrelated, but the youtube algorithm has given me some really heartbreaking videos lately…including this one: https://youtu.be/ohMin5KEL-g
And oh my did it pull my heartstrings, but it also was filled with so much truth.
100% unrelated again, but today I was slicing a jalapeno and it was probably the spiciest jalapeno I’ve ever encountered. Just touching the inside of it my fingers started burning. After washing my hands thoroughly multiple times I got on my computer…at one point like an hour later I touched my face and my eyes and ears started burning…like I don’t know how I’m going to make it edible with that much heat, but I also don’t want to waste an entire container of peppers, tomatoes, and jalapeno over one overly spicy jalapeno…
I was a part of a buy nothing group for just barely over a month. This video the Buy Nothing Project Facebook Group helped me declutter save money / realistic minimalism journey – YouTube is the closest I’ve seen to describing what the experience is really like. It is an incredible feeling to give things away to people who you know will really value the gift. It isn’t like junkyard or a gimme gimme gimme culture, but rather a community. People can (and do) share what they need, so we can really meet those needs. For example, someone was having trouble finding a shampoo that made her hair feel clean and that she liked the smell of and I was able to give her 20-ish small bottles of shampoo to try. (yeah, I know, it is probably saying something about my ability to declutter that I had 20 travel size bottles to fill with shampoo…okay, and that I had that many kinds of shampoo to share). But the bigger mission of the group is to give where you live. I could post items to give to people who would value them in my community, like the > $100 pair of shoes I got online on a mega sale for a couple bucks that I tried on realized they were too big then felt like I couldn’t get rid of them because of the theoretical value: gifted to a neighbor who was thrilled to have a beautiful gift to celebrate her husband’s promotion. I loved getting to know both my neighbors and my neighborhood better. And I also got some great gifts including a beautiful red princess brush (just days after I’d said goodbye to my previous favorite brush), and a couple envelopes to mail some important documents when all my things were packed and I realized I’d remembered stamps but forgotten envelopes. (I’m no longer in a group because I joined one shortly before I moved and the current place I live is two blocks outside of the borders for one group and a few miles outside the boundaries of the next closest group). Depending on your group there also may be other activities. One of the additions mine had beyond the basic giving were clothing boxes. For every size from newborn to adult xxl+ there was a box and a Google list so the box could rotate among members interested in changing up their clothing. I never put my name on the list because I knew I was moving soon and didn’t want the pressure of ending up with a box while I was halfway through packing and ending up unpacking to trade out clothing items, but from what I’d heard the box for each size was substantial enough that approximately every fifth person or so was meeting up with the group moderator to go through the box and figure out which things were most worn out to stop circulating in order to make the boxes less overwhelming…and I did pick up a couple shirts that way that were just too cute to pass up even if they were definitely not objectively nice anymore. One of the additions one of my friends in a different part of the city was in was a women’s book club (not sure if there was also a men’s book club since I obvi wasn’t in that group nor was I a man). So yeah, I loved buy nothing. The founders really want people to switch from local groups to the app…and I don’t think they realize the community what they created became. While an app theoretically could allow participation without the boundary lines, it also takes away the community aspect making it into the equivalent of the free page on Craigslist except with more people asking than giving, and the asks not being specific because no one wants to open up to an anonymous sea of people online, so instead of being a close knit community it felt like an impersonal greed machine so after the first month or so attempting to enjoy it I was like this is bringing me no joy and gave up…
Speaking of other things that didn’t quite go my way…recently something happened. Objectively it was a good thing. But it really sparked the anxiety I’ve been trying to get past about being found and facing further retaliation. At first I was really confused about why I was feeling the way I was. There were things in my mind I would never in a million years have spoken out loud or otherwise shared with anyone that honestly didn’t even make sense regarding situations that were over, long practically forgotten, and most confusingly, with people who are incredibly important to me who have been overwhelmingly kind to me. For example, I saw a picture of someone smiling on Facebook and felt hurt that someone would post something happy-ish knowing what she’d done…and lol, what had she done? Well like probably a year before this she and a group of other people were going to lunch together. This group was supposed to include me. She was not at all involved in planning it. An idea was shared by the person planning it with a request for other ideas or preferences. I shared the places I’d rather go and hinted that perhaps the original suggestion wasn’t a great option for me. The other people completely ignored my suggestion as if I’d never even sent the email and were just like okay we’ll see you at (time) at (original idea suggested). The night before the event I was awake all night panicking about how I was going to make this work. There were a lot of problems. One was just that I don’t do well with new places, especially new restaurants, and especially going out with people I do not know super well. I don’t even remember what restaurant it was to know what the other issues may have been, but I remember clearly another big issue was that it was way on the opposite side of town. For the others this wasn’t such a big deal – they both worked and lived on that side of town. For me it was an issue. I lived and worked on the opposite side of town and it was incredibly unlikely even if the weather was perfect that day I’d be able to make it all the way over there in time without cutting out my morning duties. Ultimately, I emailed this person to ask if it was a problem if I didn’t go. Her response was that she was sad that I didn’t want to go…yep, that was her crime for which she was apparently no longer allowed to post smiles on Facebook. Yikes. I did feel hurt when I initially read that comment because I did really want to go and felt left out that I couldn’t be there, but honestly at the time it wasn’t a huge issue partly because I had bigger issues to deal with, but mostly because I absolutely knew this person’s heart was in the right place, and that she meant that in a supportive rather than a negative way. So that is just one example of the totally benign events that were becoming these huge dramas in my mind…and then it clicked into place. This recent event had kicked wide open the door I’d been trying to hold shut on the fear of the people who more recently much more legitimately hurt me and whom I have more legitimate reason to believe will continue to look for ways to perpetuate their attack.
Which is also a little bit confusing because I’ve read the book forgiving what you can’t forget like 5 times in the past 7-10 days and I really felt like before even reading the book I’d forgiven a lot of what had happened and reading the book was giving me really good perspective that had helped me move from forgiving to healing…like that hurt people hurt people and we might not know that someone is hurting and why, but chances are the reason they are doing hurtful things is that they have previously been hurt, and they might not even realize prospectively why they are acting like that or even how wrong what they are doing is, but retrospectively if/when they do they will need a lot of support to heal from the weight of guilt of what they did and feel powerless to change. That helped me see the scary hurtful people with a lot more compassion and opened my mind further to the possibility that these people could one day heal and change. I have learned enough in life to know that it is not wise for me to attempt to be the one bringing healing to a person who has significantly hurt me because if it doesn’t happen immediately I am just going to end up with more and deeper wounds, but I think it is helpful in my healing to recognize this person might not be as dangerous 10 years from now as he or she is today. Some people will stay hurtful, but others may very well learn to act differently. So yeah, all that to say I felt like I was making progress then suddenly I was a million miles from where I wanted to be just hanging on for dear life. Luckily figuring out what was going on took away the negative thoughts about my wonderful communities over the years, but it couldn’t take away the fear that I might still not be very safe. Prior to this event I’d started to become comfortable in known safe places like church to be separated from my phone and keys, but now I’m at least temporarily back to wanting my phone to attempt calling 911 and my keys to attempt to get away…but I say attempt because I am very much aware that with my social anxiety I’m a lot more likely to freeze in a scary situation than have any ability to run and the idea that I’d have the ability to pull out a phone, dial the numbers, and actually tell the operator anything are still closer to a fantasy than anything I could realistically do despite my exponential growth in communication skills in the past few years.
But speaking of hanging on, that same person I was annoyed at for posting something mildly positive on Facebook gave me an incredibly thoughtful gift last year (with the help of a few other people), and one of the items was an infinity calendar with quotes on every page. To be honest, a lot of the quotes just don’t make sense to me, don’t seem true, or are bordering on or even are maybe overtly in the toxic positivity realm, but there are also some incredibly good ones which is why my calendar was on the same page for a month and why I wrote ‘tie a know and hang on’ on a post it note stuck on my fridge. The quote said when you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. It seemed like amazing advice and such a good metaphor for life.
Funny story, this entire post was not at all what I set out to write…but once I wrote that second paragraph everything I’d originally been planning to write evaporated from my mind, and all this stuff came instead…
Also, there is one more thing I thought of…like lol, everyone is totally spazzing out about the supposed tampon shortage (despite in every news segment they’ve panned across the shelves to show how nothing is there and while they may not be well stocked there are definitely still tampons in every size and more boxes than anyone could ever think about buying in one trip). People are acting like or sometimes even verbally stating there is no alternative to the tampon…which is complete nonsense. Probably the closest alternative is the menstrual cup. Sure, the ones sold at target are often somewhat expensive (though significantly less than a couple months of tampons) but especially if you can wait a few days for an Amazon delivery you can get one of my favorites, the anytime cup, for about 5 dollars depending on size/color, and I’ve seen other name brands as low as 3 dollars, and if you find a no name cup you like they can be under a dollar (but I tried a couple no name cups and because they have no name to use to find comparative reviews it was too hard to figure out what I needed and far more economical to spend a little more for one I could determine more easily what I wanted). The cup is especially incredible for travel or work outside the home because no need for a pile of supplies and hoping it is enough. With normal flow you can just dump morning and night or with heavier flow like I typically have (soaking super tampons and super pads together every hour for the first few hours) you can go into the bathroom at work every 2-4 hours, dump, reinsert, and be on your way. No trying to hide tampons in your bag then hide them from your bag into the restroom. So much less awkward and therefore more freedom. I get that cups aren’t everyone’s thing. The idea of having to put your fingers inside of you to pull it out might not be for everyone, but there are still other alternatives. I use cloth pantiliners every day and as my sole protection on light days. They hold so much more than a regular liner and do a lot better job in my opinion protecting my undies from stains even if they do start reaching capacity whereas the disposable ones start to leak while they are still 95% white…and cloth pads would obvi do even better, I just don’t use them because I’m a cup user. So yeah, even if tampons were unavailable and pads were gone too, you have options. Cloth seems to be going up in price lately, but you can still get about 6 for like $10 on Amazon. Oh, and there are period undies. I know some people adore them, but while I got a few pairs from someone for free, they are not my favorite. Mostly because if I underestimate my flow I either have to wear soggy undies the rest of the day (‘cause let’s be real, I’m not the person who’s gonna notice until we’ve reached saturation that we’ve got a problem), or I have to change underwear which means completely taking off my pants as well which just feels wrong to do in the middle of the day, because I’m not a toddler who has accidents anymore, so I’ll use them to have one fewer layers if I only need backup under my cup, but as soon as I’m ready to go cup free I’m back to regular undies with my cloth liners…and as a pharmacist I definitely learned in school about other forms of menstrual protection, but I’m not going to comment on things I haven’t tried, but basically there are a million and one choices and just the one is tampons.
Side note that this post has changed titles about 20 million (slight exaggeration) times and I’m still not sure if this is right…but we’re just gonna go with it ‘cause I’ve been thinking about it all day and it is time to give up and just hit post ‘cause probably no one cares as much as me…lol…so I figured I’d just pick something that I know doesn’t really pull all the things together and run with it…love the refrain of this song though…”feels so good to be alive” because I’m realizing regardless of what I’ve been through I still have my life and that is worth something.
I’ve been quiet for a while. That last post was something I felt like I needed to post. After responding to threats with obedient silence and secrecy I felt like there were people who might need to hear my story and I felt like those words trapped inside me needed to break free. But as much as the story needed to be told, it also incited a lot of fear. I am very aware that everything I do carries with it risk. And sometimes posting again just feels too far into unsafe territory…but like always, I refuse to let fear win.
When I posted that last post I really thought I was going to wake up in the morning completely regretting it. It was weird yet empowering to get up in the morning and not see someone standing right outside my door waiting for me. I’ve still felt a little extra on edge at times, but at the same time I’ve also felt a little extra safe after realizing I did that and haven’t reaped any consequences yet. But that’s the key word. Yet. I still feel like it is just a waiting game until something happens, and it is scary. I still remember a little over a month after getting brave enough to contact ASHP getting that knock on the door as I was getting ready for the u-haul woman to arrive…so as much as it felt like it would be instant, I also know innately that it could happen at any time…and I wish I knew if someday the fear subsides and I can really feel fully safe again. I want to know if this is a part of trauma that lasts forever or if eventually I’ll reach a point at which it has been long enough that I feel comfortable that I’ve outrun the bad guys and reached the end of the marathon where safety lives. I want to know if there even is a place where I can drink from the well of safety. But I feel like getting those words out into the world was incredibly empowering and healing. I thought I was posting it for others, but I realized it was a marker for me that I was starting to feel safer. I feel like I’ve been practically willing myself to just not exist because if I don’t exist I can’t be found and I can’t be hurt. And that post made myself and what I experienced real, and I needed that. And yet I am very aware that bad things can happen to good people. Someone recently told me about being attacked by a former boyfriend with whom she’d broken up years ago when both sides mutually agreed it wasn’t going to work – so you never know when someone is going to find and hurt you even without any real inciting factor besides existing…but I need to exist. I need to find a way to keep living, because it feels like if I don’t then the bad guys win.
Wanna hear a story about a time recently I realized my experience in life had not prepared me with the appropriate knowledge for my current situation? So I came up to this intersection. I stopped at the red light. On the other side was a train tracks, which I didn’t think much about…until…the light turned green. I started across the intersection, and then as I was almost all the way across the flashing/beeping started, and I stopped because I was startled. Then I gunned it because oh cr*p red light. Then I hit the brakes because oh wait, cr*p, that means a train is coming. And then I finally figured out I better get going because I was in the middle of an intersection and definitely in danger as soon as the light headed the opposite direction turned green, plus I was probably too close to the tracks for safety anyway…the drivers manual tells you not to try to race a train and to stop when you see the lights, but it doesn’t address at all what to do if you’re in the middle of an intersection when the lights start. And I think that is a problem, because like I still don’t know what the right thing to do is, and I also feel like in the moment I would probably do the same thing again the next time…I also have a whole lot of opinions like America has so many better ways of moving both people and objects than trains, so why are we continuing to use such an antiquated technology that is responsible for so many dangerous situations? Wanna get somewhere far away faster than by car? Airplane. Otherwise cars, and bikes, and feet are significantly more convenient…and maybe busses in case you rode the airplane to a new city and just need to get from the airport to your hotel but obvi didn’t carry your car on the airplane and it is too far to comfortably walk…hashtag opinions…like I have no problem with metrolink because it’s basically a bus that can’t go a different way around the block, but I feel like trains don’t make sense anymore…they are basically the rotary phones of today. Sure, they can theoretically work, but they are neither convenient nor trendy.
I was listening to TTFA today (today being a very relative term…) and there was one thing in particular that was incredibly validating. They said sometimes you have to let go of saving someone else in order to save yourself, and it feels incredibly guilty, but it is the right thing to do…and y’all, I so needed to hear that. My heart breaks that I can’t protect everyone from the people who have hurt me, but I felt like I needed to save myself…and it felt wrong. And it feels so important that it is normal to feel guilty for that, but doesn’t make it wrong.
A month or so ago I was doing a neonatal and pediatric code training for pharmacists. By doing I mean I was leading a group of pharmacists through how to respond to these emergencies. Hashtag rewind a few years…I was preparing for interviews and a couple coworkers were telling me things they felt like were important for me to talk about…and most of the things they thought were impressive about my career were things that to me were throwaway items…and to be honest I didn’t take a lot of their advice because trying to talk about it would have felt really not genuine. At that point in life trying to use my words at all was a lot of work, so anything not genuine probably wasn’t going to work for me even if my moral compass didn’t prohibit me from saying anything that could be construed as lying in an interview…yes, I know, that probably costs me a lot of jobs because everyone else is selectively and manipulatively displaying themselves and elevating how much what they did was actually worth while I am more concerned with giving an honest picture of what I am like…but I feel it is not honest to exaggerate, and I also feel like why would I want someone’s first impression of me to be a version of me that is going to lead all other interactions to lead to disappointment because I was trying to be someone I wasn’t? Plus, every job I have had has happened for a reason. God has opened and closed doors to put me where he needed me to be at the time. Anyway, the point of this aside was that someone said that it was important for people to know that I was involved with students because it was a good way to ensure I was engaging in lifelong learning…and I felt like that made no sense…I mean, wasn’t I the one doing the teaching? Like I mean occasionally someone mentioned something that I had to look up to confirm because at the time I was primarily working in the adult world but in school had taken care nearly exclusively of pediatric patients so there were definitely things I was not as confident in as I perhaps should have been, but for the most part I was on the teaching side…Oh sweet naïve mini me…at the time I may not have had a lot of learning on my side, but during the code training I was doing recently did teach me something. One of the participants was like at my previous job I found this app that might be helpful. Is it a reliable resource? I hadn’t seen the app before so I searched it in the app store to test it out. There are two apps with very similar names, so at first I apparently downloaded the wrong one. It was called PedsGudie and is put out by Mercy Children’s Hospital. As soon as I saw Mercy Children’s I was like I am 90% sure this is going to be legit…and y’all, it was so much more legit. It was impressive. There is so much incredibly information and guides within that app. Just going to throw it out there that anyone working in pediatrics should have this app. Do I feel like I know what I need off the top of my head pretty darn well, absolutely, but y’know what, you never know when you’re going to forget key information and need a backup plan. Sure, I have created emergency dosing cards and recommended people utilize PALS dosing cards, but this is so much more accessible and frankly provides more information and more specific information. Like it has built in a conversion between estimated gestational age and estimated weight. It has so many drugs and quickly brings up the most commonly used drugs and doses when you choose what problem and body system you are working with (resuscitation – circulation; diabetes – cerebral edema; etc).
As it turns out, that was not the app she was talking about…so when I was done thanking her for informing me about this app she showed me what her app looked like. It is called Ped Guide. The logo is a bear. And the app isn’t worthless, but it pales in comparison to PedsGuide. For all of ACLS it has a picture of the diagram – no calculated doses and you’re gonna have to really zoom in to even read it. The part of the app that does calculate doses has a short list of meds it can calculate, and I’m not sure exactly what weights it accommodates, but I was unable to enter the 0.5kg test patient I wanted to trial it on, and it does not have anywhere to enter a gestational age or an age that is less than one month postnatal. It does have a decent list of “situations” but a lot are things that are not as urgent, and most when you click on them come up with an overwhelming list of medications without any guidance on when or why to use any particular drug. Probably the biggest issue is when I clicked on “infection” and then clicked on zosyn. A recommended mg/kg range is given, but not whether that is in mg piperacillin or mg zosyn. And I’ve seen it dosed both ways in real life. I’ve used it enough to know which they were dosing by based on the recommended doses given, but yikes. Also, the entirety of the information you get is mg/kg, concentration to infuse, and infuse over 30 minutes…lol, I do understand that most people have some sort of actual dosing reference on their phone, but the recommended dilution they gave was very dilute, was again not documented whether they meant mg pip or mg zosyn, and no instructions on how to get that from a vial or from a premix bag….so yeah, my response was you are welcome to use that if it makes you feel safe, but be cautious that you are using standard concentrations rather than the concentrations in the app, and verify dosing in a different source if there is any question. You can also tell it is old and hasn’t been updated because the only H2RA included is ranitidine – which isn’t a thing anymore…based on the terms and conditions the app was created when I was in college and hasn’t been updated since then, so that is a while. Versus PedsGuide I am not sure how long it has been around or when it was last updated, but considering one of the references was from 2018, it is at least more recent than college graduation and I didn’t find anything concerning there.
So yeah, I now have two new resources, one of which is super useful, the other of which I kept because I don’t believe you can ever have too many resources. Kinda like how I have the Lexicomp app I no longer have access to because it stores the last drug or two accessed in offline memory, so if I ever want to know anything about melatonin in Neonatal and Pediatric Lexi-Drugs then BOOM mission accomplished. Okay, and also because I have a mild maintenance of sameness issue…I also still have the UpToDate app I haven’t had a valid password for in two years…and in a folder on my shelf is a script about solid organ transplant that I was supposed to read to my preceptor at the end of the week the week I left PGY-2…and for some reason even though I know the chances of me ever going back to that hospital are about 0.1% and even if I went back I would not be going back as a resident because I am pretty sure I am done going backwards at this point in life. I’ve had some fantasies about applying to some of the residencies in the Scramble because there are SO MANY more of them than usual this year and some of them I know are connected to incredible RPD’s and I would love to have that kind of relationship again, but the problem is that these are not residencies in specialty areas that I actually care about at this point, so it would not make professional sense to do them…and honestly with everything I’ve gone through since the end of September, I don’t think any residency is what I need professionally anymore. I might love it, but I don’t want to take an incredible spot away from someone who does legitimately need it (and I obvi don’t want to take a less than stellar spot if my goal is primarily a relationship…and let’s be real. You can choose a job based on the people, but you probably shouldn’t do residency for the relationship. Not that life is about money, but residencies don’t tend to pay overly well compared to pharmacist pay.
The other thing that happened related to that code was training was remembering how much I really value and respect people who are willing to admit what they don’t know. The next day the student who I had been most concerned about but who had successfully answered the required questions and had verbally confirmed that she felt comfortable approached me after I’d finished some more training and admitted that she’d been worried all night because she realized she didn’t know enough to safely care for patients. I could see that was a scary realization for her and I also realized how vulnerable it must feel to admit you didn’t understand what your peers totally get, so I set aside what I’d planned for my evening and sat down with her to figure out which points were muddy. Together we learned how to get into an abboject container (important first step) and how to put it together so the drug can come out (also important and something I didn’t realize I didn’t know when I graduated pharmacy school until I was at a code alone holding the pieces and trying to figure it out the first time – I’d drawn meds from vials and predrawn syringes in my prior experience and therefore never needed to know these things so that part is something I make sure all learners have experienced at LEAST once before being out in the world). We learned how to draw up meds – and make sure there is med and not just air in your syringe…and of course the part I was supposed to focus on, the pharmacy math or use of dosing references to know how much to give, because even with adults, but especially with kids just ‘cause the vial has 10mL doesn’t mean you should give 10mL… (lol, especially if the vial is fentanyl…) It is also a really good feeling to know that I am someone people feel comfortable asking for help. I want to be approachable.
Recently I was researching burnout and resiliency for someone…I came across a recommendation for residency programs to enhance their residents’ wellbeing…it was to force residents to take pto and not do work on those pto days. I am so glad I’ve never ended up somewhere like that. First, I don’t think anyone should get to command what I do or do not do on my time off…plus, not doing the work on pto means having even more work to do when you come back which would mean even more stress. That does not sound good for mental health at all. Second, I feel like residents (or anyone) should not be pressured to take pto when they don’t need or want it. You never know when someone will get sick or otherwise legitimately need their time off, and also some places pay out time off when a person leaves the organization, so you are also financially impacting people by forcing them to take pto. I’m also someone who has only once ever taken pto for anything that wasn’t career related or to volunteer with kids, so it definitely would have pushed me out of my comfort zone to take pto for no reason.
Something I saw online recently that was incredibly meaningful to me. It was very validating.
“I just want to honor all it cost you to know what you know”
Sometimes I don’t want to be brave. Sometimes I’d rather to have continued to struggle with imposter syndrome than to go through all that I went through this year. Yes, I did learn a lot about what sacrifices I am not willing to make and about identifying safe people, and about the sorry state of the American justice system, and about the social services systems, but that learning wasn’t free. The price tag on that learning was emotional. It was financial. It was an incredibly high price. And most days I wouldn’t change it because of all I learned, but that doesn’t discount the price I paid. That learning wasn’t on the clearance rack. Sometimes I have significant buyers remorse. What happened to me was absolutely not okay. There were multiple people and systems who failed to act correctly towards me. I survived, but what didn’t kill me didn’t make me stronger. That is a myth. It did make me more determined than ever to prove my value, but also made me terrified of doing anything too amazing, because the trouble with being too awesome is the threat to my safety of publicity. I’ve never wanted to be in the limelight, but now it is not only unwanted but also unsafe for me to be in the limelight. The last thing I want is for my name to be plastered all over the pharmacy community. And yet I have also felt like a measure of success is people recognizing your name as a frequent contributor to the community…it is a very challenging place to be in. I don’t want to be defeated and live in fear, but I also am sometimes weary of painting on a brave face every day.
I am very aware that this post will be incredibly dangerous to post and could potentially put me at risk, but I’ve been thinking about it and I feel like this is a story that needs to be told, and I’m currently feeling brave. I have survived hard things and I have conquered big challenges. If I have to do more hard things I know that God has a plan in it. As hard as things have been, God has been with me through each step of the way even when it seemed like I was incredibly alone.
Like I’ve discussed previously, I think I needed the things that happened this fall to recognize that I didn’t need residency to prove that I was valuable. I needed the events that happened to learn that I didn’t need a “normal” career path to earn the position I wanted…and if I hadn’t learned those lessons and been able to speak to that confidence I wouldn’t be where I am now. (And recently I attended an ASHP webinar on imposter syndrome and learned one of the pharmacists in my small group was in a role I’d been told was not possible without two years of residency – and she hadn’t completed even one year of residency). That was incredibly validating to see also that there are other people who didn’t take anything close to the typical path yet have an incredibly successful and fulfilling career unhindered by not fitting into the mould.
But anyway, back to the story time I have been debating about sharing for a long time…
On the first day at my job last summer we’d each selected a work space in the room they kept the residents in to keep them away from the rest of the staff (yes, they did make it clear that was the intention). The room was shaped like a very narrow L and the monitors and chairs were arranged in a J around the perimeter of the room with just barely enough room to walk through the room. I’d very intentionally selected the desk on the end next to the door to give me clear access visually and physically to the outside world. But we’d been told that we needed to be flexible in our arrangements and especially the PGY-2’s needed to be thoughtful of the needs of the PGY-1 residents, so when a PGY-1 asked to switch with me I moved to the desk at the other end of the J, putting me in the back corner…and putting someone next to the door who preferred that the window be completely covered at all times.
If I’d been at the desk that I originally had been set up at, I would likely have had enough access to the outside world they wanted to separate us from that I’d have accepted what they wanted to be my place in life and stayed there at all times. Instead I yearned for connection and so desperately needed to be somewhere I could have relationship that I reached out to my RPD who said there was no reason I had to stay in my office and was welcome to work wherever outside of my office would work better for me. So I found a corner of the hospital that was never used, was not in a patient care area nor inhabited by visitors, had a couch and chairs, and was close enough to the pharmacy to allow me to finally start to get to know people as they walked past, and to at least see the culture of the pharmacy even if I wasn’t totally involved in it.
If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll know that quiet place to work one day became the reason my residency fell apart.
Brief intermission from that story. There are a lot of reasons I should have left this residency before that point. On day one we each got a note from last year’s residents. I don’t know whether all notes were the same, but I do know that mine essentially said hold on, this will be an awful year but you’ll get through it (which I suppose I am getting through it, just not as a resident). It was already clear that residents were employed as cheap labor not due to anyone desiring to give back or mentor newer pharmacists. It had been made clear that my RPD believed that a PGY-2 was to enable the pharmacist to work in administration rather than clinically – and she couldn’t understand why I would have any interest in PGY-2 when my career goal was as a clinical position rather than administration. And even forgetting the rank list and application comments making it clear I was unwanted, it was very clear that my RPD was hoping I’d choose of my own volition to leave. Y’all, one of the first things she said to me in my planning meeting on July 21 was to ask me if I was sure I should be in residency because she thought I probably shouldn’t be there because I’d mentioned in one of the things I’d had to fill out that my dad had died just under two years prior. I give people the benefit of the doubt so I chose to believe she meant well but just didn’t quite understand grief. I should have seen it for the red flag that it was. But I’d already ignored rows upon rows of red flags because I really believed that because this residency was labelled pediatric critical care and that it was coming immediately after my pediatric PGY-1 that it was what was going to make me feel like people would see me as worthy of having the position I’d wanted since forever.
Basically this had been the entire path from match day in March to that day in July and yet I was still naively, obliviously, convincing myself that I was misinterpreting the signs and being too sensitive, that these weren’t *actually* problems, that there wasn’t *really* anything wrong…but there were absolutely some things wrong. I was working incredibly hard to make everyone happy and made significant contributions to the department and yet I was not shown any appreciation and while a few people may have commented that I was doing impressive work and significantly exceeding expectations, most people made it clear they felt I wasn’t doing enough and that I couldn’t really be trusted to perform. I tried to focus on the people who were in awe of my work, but especially for the weeks I didn’t have any patient care responsibilities at all that lack of value while I was being given so much work that I pretty much exclusively worked, went to bed, got up, and worked again was starting to lead towards burnout. And even if I had felt valued, there is only so long you can answer texts every 30 minutes all night. Eventually if you are burning the candle not just from both ends but also from the middle, it will burn out.
Anyway, let’s return from intermission, especially ‘cause I was getting rant-y and no one needs my crabby recounting of the things that should never have happened…
It was Thursday, July 29, and I was sitting in that place that I’d found working on my CE presentation, making some really good progress. If anything, I was ahead on my projects…but up comes my manager. He is angry and tells me I need to be getting my work done. I wonder what he thinks this whole looking at research articles and taking notes is, but simply non-argumentatively state that I am actually working on my CE presentation. He asked why I wasn’t at my desk and I answered that I’d prefer to be around my coworkers. I wanted (hoped) the conversation was over and tried to go back to my work. He stood over me and told me it was unacceptable for people to see me and my choices were either to go staff in the pharmacy or go to the breakroom. I had a lot of work to get done so I went to the breakroom to defuse the situation.
A breakroom is obviously not an environment conducive to work, particularly when it is still lunch-ish time so it is full of people taking a break and not only is it an atmosphere of conversing, but there isn’t really space to set out the materials required to get work done, so as soon as I was fairly certain he was gone I went to my desk to try to get my work done. I was still on edge from being yelled at and humiliated in the hallway, and I was a little overwhelmed from all the conversations in the breakroom (because, hi, I’m Wiggle Worm, the most introverted extravert you’ll ever meet) so I needed a moment to chill alone, but I’d vented to a coworker who was really concerned about me and taken a moment to calm down and was just about to get back to my CE presentation when in comes my manager. I am instantly afraid. He asks the other residents to leave. He moves to the back of the office where my workspace is and moves a file cabinet so I am trapped in that back corner between him and my desk. He then proceeds to yell at me for an hour about how I am ungrateful, unprofessional, and he wishes he’d never hired me. In a brief pause I try to assert myself and ask for the conversation to be put on hold and am told that sometimes we have to do things we don’t like and he keeps going. It is terrifying and there is no way for me to escape. This is a man with very visible muscles and a history of violence and he is red with unexplained anger and I am in one of the few places in the hospital with no cameras and there is no visibility into the room from the hallway. At one point I hear a key in the door and think I am about to be rescued. He hears it too, and as the door opens he stops talking and tells the resident to leave because I needed to talk with him privately. I was too afraid to contradict him and ask the resident to stay. The resident backed out of the office and I was alone with him again. I couldn’t tell you now everything that was said, but I do remember the clear threat that he better not hear that anyone has heard about this. I’m so thankful he realized he had somewhere to be so that he finally left. I didn’t know what to do, so I emailed my RPD to let her know that the office situation we’d been planning to discuss further the next day was now more than just a desire to be more included, then I went to the bathroom because I felt like that was the only safe place I could go.
Eventually I realized that I couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever, and though I really wasn’t sure what I was doing or where I was going next I needed to leave the bathroom. I left, and there was my RPD. She acted like she cared. I felt relieved. She showed me how to get outside, gave me permission to do my next meeting outside where I’d feel safer, and walked with me get my laptop. Learning how to get outside was a life saver in getting through the next month. In the hospital I didn’t know how to get around and was refused a campus map, but outside the hospital I knew I could run multiple directions and still know where I was, and I couldn’t be trapped outside. There weren’t outlets outside, so it wasn’t an all day location even in good weather, but it was a good temporary spot.
The next day we had the meeting we had previously scheduled…but my RPD tried to run the meeting like she didn’t remember what had happened the previous day. I was okay with that at the beginning of the meeting thinking we’d resolve the situation after talking through what we’d originally planned, but then she tried to end the meeting and I was like, umm, this would be fine if it weren’t for what happened yesterday, but I can’t go back to that office and my charger is there and I don’t know what to do or where to go and my laptop is out of battery…and she had already explained that letting me officially work somewhere else wasn’t an option because there weren’t enough spots for all 7 residents and it might seem like favoritism to move only me or only a few residents, so she suggested I start the ADAA process. I was a little resistant because I do not see myself as an American with Disabilities requiring accommodations, but she insisted and convinced me that I deserved to have a safe place to work and this was the way to do it because then it would no longer be a decision of who most needs to be included.
I worked really hard on that process, and it gave me a lot of insight into what people go through who have disabilities that must be accommodated in every position they take. It has also given me knowledge that has helped me help other people who know that things aren’t currently working and don’t know how to find something that will work…
Unfortunately for me, the ADAA people sent me a letter giving me less than a week to have a counselor sign a form stating that the accommodations I was requesting would reasonably resolve my problems. By this point I had already contacted my EAP figuring it was possibly worth giving counseling another try but hoping to do it outside of the workplace, so I’d contacted a few counselors. Unfortunately, none of them responded to me, and I therefore could not turn in the paperwork and my request was closed until I could get that paperwork signed and re-open the request.
I had agreed to a reconciliation meeting with my manager scheduled and mediated with my RPD, and I’d been hoping for it to be scheduled sooner rather than later, but it wasn’t scheduled until late August…well, technically my RPD had asked to schedule it on August 19, but we all know that isn’t a good day for me so I requested if it couldn’t be sooner that it be after that date. The ADAA request closed right around the same time as the meeting so I thought I could wait until that meeting to see if we could come to a different solution before continuing to search for a counselor, because while I still wished I had a home base to store my things during the day, I had gotten used to finding and reserving classrooms throughout the day and the friends I’d made in July started sometimes coming to see me in those classrooms, so it at least kinda worked to provide some community, so it wasn’t the emergency it originally was even if this meeting didn’t work. But anyway, somewhere around like August 25 we met. My manager did not admit he’d done anything wrong, and acted like he was the victim, but did agree to not have any future conversations alone with me, and agreed to implement a new rule that the window into the resident office must not be fully covered if the office is occupied. That made me feel safe enough to go back to the office.
Retrospectively I also recognize that I was told to tell no one and I told my RPD. I think to me that didn’t count just like the year before when my RPD felt like it wouldn’t count to tell someone some of my information for advice on whether there was something she should do to help me. And just like once I let my PGY-1 RPD know how that had made me feel and she recognized that it hadn’t gone ideally, I soon recognized in this situation that it would have been better to not tell my PGY-2 RPD what my PGY-2 manager had done. I found out that she was really offended that I had told her which didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time, but later made a lot of sense when I found out she and my manager were very close…but it also gave me a better understanding of why someone might say they won’t tell anyone then turn around and tell someone, because these actions both felt like the next right thing in the moment…in PGY-1 telling me it would be my choice whether anyone else knew gave me autonomy and was a step in showing that my life matters, and contacting someone else really was a good faith effort that she legitimately didn’t realize I would mind…and I know I am very sensitive to private conversations becoming public because of my history in college that she would have had no way of knowing about. And in PGY-2, I saw really no other choice but to agree when there was a very clear threat attached to contradicting that demand to ensure no one found out…but I also knew that while I had longed for community prior to that point, my desire had changed and all I wanted was safety that I didn’t know how to find, and I’d told my friends I was giving it at least a 6-week trial period and had only made it like 4 weeks in, so leaving didn’t seem like the right option.
Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done differently if I had it to do again…obviously knowing what I know now I wouldn’t have applied to this program, but I didn’t have any way to know that back then. On paper it was a good program…but I wasn’t applying to work for a paper hospital. Even on day one when I saw just how bad things were, I am so open-minded and willing to give additional chances and dedicated to fulfilling my commitments beyond just basic expectations that I don’t think I would have been ready to walk away even if I had been offered my dream job. Hindsight is 2020, but knowing who I am, it isn’t realistic to think I would have considered walking away at that point.
But problems both small and large continued to stack up. Per the syllabus I could have two NICU rotations…per preceptor availability I could only have one…so much for being a critical care resident (as it turns out, one of the NICU preceptors was leaving – she was an incredible pharmacist and an incredibly kind person, so I am glad she got out). And once my schedule was set, I was excited to start in the PICU…and then like a week before the rotation was to start it mysteriously changed to management. I excelled in management, and while my personal philosophy of effective management styles did not align with my preceptor’s philosophy, my preceptor was clearly thrilled with me. I know that communication skills are not my strength, so it really filled my tank when towards the end of the rotation my preceptor told me that going into the rotation he’d been dreading having me on rotation because based on my application/interview he thought I wouldn’t be able to contribute, but he was surprised to see that while it may take me a little longer to speak than some people when put on the spot that when given a minute I could communicate very effectively, and because I was stopping to listen and to think I was able to provide excellent insight when I did speak. A week or so later we had a meeting where he had me type my final evaluation because he was sure I could put it into words much better than he could. As we started working through the evaluation he told me that he isn’t supposed to mark anyone with 4’s or 5’s on a first rotation, so when he told me on the first question that he was impressed with my skills I marked a 3…and he told me I definitely deserved better than that. The majority of my evaluation was 5 out of 5 (5 is achieved for residency, 4 is consider achieved for residency, 3 is satisfactory progress, 2 is may need to repeat the objective and rotation, 1 is must repeat the objective). I protested because I didn’t want to get him in trouble for giving me too high of a score, because I knew by this point how my RPD responded when things didn’t go her way, but he insisted that this is what I deserved. I hadn’t really felt valued on this rotation, but this evaluation made me realize that this person valued my work even if he hadn’t really shown that it was valued.
While management may not have been the rotation I was hoping to start with, it ended up being probably a good thing for me. As any reader from September onward is well aware, I began looking for a new job. I only included a very small sampling of my projects on my CV, because no one wants to read a list of the 50 things you did. Even with just like a top 5-ish projects that seemed un-confidential enough to put on a CV, I had more than one interviewer tell me how impressive it was that I had completed that many projects while on that rotation (and of course I am too modest to admit that was just like maybe 5-10% of my work). Although I may not have felt valued doing the projects, these comments, again, made me realize just how significant an impact I was able to make even if I’d only been there a short time. It also made me realize that perhaps if I’d spoken up that I’d been given too many projects that the projects would have slowed down – it wasn’t that all these things had to be done and had to be done by me, but more that I was there and accepted everything gracefully and got things done by the deadline which apparently was atypical, so more projects just kept landing in my lap. I don’t know if that made a difference in getting or not getting interviews, but I do know those conversations are good fuel for the fire of my confidence on the days I’m starting to waver in my belief in my own competence.
Anyway, my next rotation was PICU. I feel like this post is already too long even after deleting things that felt too vulnerable to share, so I’m going to try to stick to just the facts really necessary to tell this story. Learning from PGY-1 I expressed early on that when I feel like I am being watched it has a huge impact on my ability to communicate until I am feeling really comfortable with my team. My preceptor didn’t want to discuss rounding until I could take notes on the entire unit in an hour. I don’t see value in speeding through taking notes on patients because I feel I can better care for my patients if I take my time and know exactly what I meant by all my comments rather than being like yay I’m done but for this intervention I wrote fluid mgmt and I have no idea without re-evaluating the patient what part of fluid management I wanted to change, watch, or ask about…but if that was what was needed to discuss rounding that was what I was going to do.
Here’s the problem. I did that and my preceptor’s response was that she did see that clinically there were no concerns about my ability to care for my patients and she could see both that I had okay communication skills and that they were rapidly improving, but that she was going to stand right next to me until I was assertive on rounds. I tried to explain that I was unlikely to reach that point if she was standing there, but she seemed to be uninterested in discussing and I wasn’t sure how to politely continue to explain my point without seeming argumentative, so I just left it at vaguely suggesting we’d discuss again later. If there was a possibility my patients wouldn’t be cared for I would totally understand, but I was speaking with my team and I was discussing the relevant points of my patients’ care.
I realized that night though that with her constantly by my side, I was going to be actively moving away from my goals of residency rather than towards them because between the lack of ability to be my team’s point person because of course any question was initially going to be directed at the person with whom they were familiar and because it was pushing my anxiety on rounds higher and higher which ultimately decreases my ability to communicate. I seriously considered quitting, because I knew while progress may be slower without the cheer squad/accountability partner of a preceptor, that I also didn’t have those things in this rotation and wasn’t sure what I’d have for future rotations. The next day though I was rounding with a former resident because my preceptor was off. By rounding with, what actually happened was that at first she was with me, but she could quickly see that I was much more competent than my RPD had led her to believe and she backed off, so I was rounding mostly alone, and I thrived. Suddenly rounding was something enjoyable again. I emailed my preceptor to ask whether we could consider that success rather than having her stay at my side to see it herself, and if not if we could discuss other alternatives. I was hesitant to send the email because I didn’t want to get this former resident in trouble for not staying by my side…I should have been hesitant because I learned later she used my very intentionally sensitive, thoughtful, and inquisitive words to try to show that I was insubordinate…
The day she came back she was later to rounds than usual, and I was able to interact with my team independently before she arrived and because of our formation it was a few patients in before she could even really try to break into the group, and by that point she had seen enough to see that I could very competently show assertiveness and handle my team without her and stayed backed off. I was very thankful for that, and that afternoon she confirmed that I’d finally be rounding completely on my own the next day. Finally things were looking up.
…but not for long. After rounds one Tuesday I got a meeting invite. I thought it was for the joy in the workplace meeting I’d been dreading because I knew while they were going to ask us to be honest about areas for improvement that any area recognized can and would be used against us, but I also didn’t want to lie and say everything was excellent. Long story short, the meeting started by saying they thought I would agree with the recommendations in this meeting. I knew in that moment this wasn’t about joy in the workplace, but now I thought they were going to recommend that I find a counselor because my RPD knew that my grief group had stopped meeting unexpectedly at the end of June. I didn’t feel by this point that I wanted a counselor, but I also was thinking like if this is what is going to keep the peace then fine, let’s do this…it wasn’t a recommendation for me to see a counselor. It was telling me that I was no longer employed. I’m not ready to talk a lot about that online at this time, but it was definitely a shock – all my evaluations had been much more positive to this point than I’d even thought about myself, and I’d had no written or verbal warning that anything was wrong after that one-time comment in August that my RPD hadn’t felt it appropriate for me to tell her about what happened with my manager…and that conversation had ended with a promise to let me know immediately if there were ever anything else whether verbal or written that didn’t sit right with her so we could figure out how to communicate better between each other, and I had heard absolutely nothing further about anything not feeling right to her, and had been praised about my communication.
I did not agree at first that this was at all good for me. I felt like they had just erased my chance at success in life. I also felt like my PGY-1 had poured so much effort into teaching me that I had value and I was a good pharmacist and it wasn’t fair to them because this basically drained all that out of me. And I found out my coresidents had been planning a birthday party for me and so I had wrecked their plans. I felt alone and hopeless and helpless. The day before my birthday I even applied to come back. I knew it hadn’t been a good place to work, but I thought not having to really ever see my former manager in the role I applied for I could continue to work with the patients who needed me, continue to be part of my community, have better work life balance because I could choose how many hours I wanted to work, and could even probably complete the projects I’d been in the middle of when I left. I’d been told that another manager at the hospital really wanted the value I’d add to the team and the position was mine if I wanted it.
Soon though, I realized I didn’t want it. First, someone leaked to me that they overheard my manager with my RPD making threats regarding me and while this person didn’t hear everything that this person heard enough to know I needed to be really careful – I was already concerned about potentially at some point seeing them in a hallway (they never really entered the pharmacy and my potential new role would be almost exclusively in the pharmacy) if I came back, but this solidified to me just how unsafe I was if I ever encountered them again. Second, I realized that it wasn’t going to be great for me to be in an environment that allowed people to be treated like that because while others were not as bad as my manager, there were other bad actors, and a culture as a whole of fear of what might happen next, so within a few weeks I had pretty much completely moved on and was excited about the potential opportunities to come. I was applying and interviewing and realizing how thankful I was that God found a way to get me out of a situation I wouldn’t have known how to remove myself from on my own.
And that is how not getting the desk by the window really saved my life. I can’t say with certainty, but I think there is a good chance that things wouldn’t have come to a head the way they did if I’d been in that position. As a result everyone around me would have continued to watch me fade away as I continued to be taken advantage of, unvalued, and unrespected, and while I think I would have survived the year, I would have ended up in such a low place that I don’t think I’d have been ready to start my dream job, and I’d have been trained in learned helplessness for so long that I may not have thrived even if I did somehow end up in a good job following residency. I really feel like while that desk may or may not have saved my physical life, it absolutely saved my mental, emotional, and professional life. Being treated that way, and going into work terrified each day is not a sustainable way to live life, and I wish I had seen that sooner and recognized that leaving was going to be better for my career than staying…but I am nothing if not stubborn when I put my mind to things. That determination served me really well in finding an incredible PGY-1 residency, but it would have better served me to let go of my PGY-2 pediatric critical care dream, wake up from that nightmare, and get out so much sooner. But here’s the thing…in October 2020 by a few hours into day 2 of my ED rotation I really believed I may not live to the end of that rotation if things didn’t change. I reached out and was willing to do almost anything to figure out an alternative and the answer was I’m sorry it isn’t going well, but no, we don’t make changes once the rotation has started…and to be honest, I did come close to not making it to the end of that rotation, but I did make it…and I think that experience was one more thing playing into why I was willing to stay in my PGY-2 so long. I felt empowered that I could do hard things and I could survive, and that if I could find the positives along the way that I could fulfill my commitment, serve my patients and coworkers, bring value to the department…and, ok, also have that piece of paper that proved that I deserved to be taken seriously…and looking back, that was the wrong answer. I should have known myself well enough to know that, sure, yes, I may have remained alive, but after a year of that I wasn’t going to be a functional person.
Instead, I got what I wanted from residency and more from leaving. People reached out and told me how incredible of a pharmacist I was. I was wanted at the hospital by a team who barely knew me, but in the tiny amount they knew were sure I would be a valuable part of their team. People didn’t see me as a failure – they saw me as brave and competent and resilient, and I realized that I was worthy of the position of my dreams. My primary goal in residency was to feel competent and confident, and by leaving I gained those things. God knew what I needed to achieve my goals. It was incredible to see how my confidence grew in ways I didn’t feel like would be possible through a situation designed to dissolve the little baby confidence sprouts that had been cultivated throughout PGY-1…but now I firmly believe that I am a valuable part of a NICU team who deserves to have her voice heard. I have learned to stand up for myself and to advocate for what is best for my team. I still believe in second chances and in compromises…but now I know that when I am people-pleasing it is okay to count myself among the people. My voice doesn’t have to be left out.
…and there is one more piece of the puzzle that I’m going to be a little more vague about because it feels even more risky to share…plus, yikes, this is getting way too long like the 10-page posts I started this blog with…
So shortly after leaving PGY-2 (like maybe 1 or 2 days later) I talked to one of my friends. We only could talk for the couple minutes while she was driving her kids to sports practice, and I don’t remember most of the words we said, but I remember her encouraging me to ride my bike…and I remember thinking, but I can’t, I very much look like I’m unhappy and so I don’t want strangers staring at me wondering what is wrong if I leave my apartment like that…but this was a time when my stubbornness and desire to do what I’m told is the right thing served me really well. The next morning I strapped on my bike helmet and was like okay, so you don’t have to leave now, but you are wearing this bike helmet until you are ready to leave…and eventually I went. Over the course of the next week and a half I had a pretty regular path figured out that I was biking near daily. (I would have said within a few days, but the first attempt at finding a path was really incredible until, umm, oops, it was a little later than I thought when I left and by the time I got back I was riding in pitch blackness in an area with no lighting and trying to mostly just feel my way through the woods on foot because my tiny promo flashlight was doing basically nothing to help me find my way, so to keep that from happening again I needed to try a different way).
It was really the perfect path – long enough to not feel like an elementary school kid going around the same block over and over, but relying mostly on looping some of the same blocks so that without getting lost the distance could be modified based on how much time and energy I had at the moment…and there was a waterfall which anyone who *really* knows me knows that water is my happy place…and it isn’t much of a secret that being around kids is my absolute favorite thing in the world, so it was perfect that there were a couple playgrounds…and there was a road that had a name that made me smile because it reminded me of a memory of my PGY-1 RPD. There was one scare when I thought I saw my PGY-2 RPD waving at me and I was afraid, but she claimed it wasn’t her – and I don’t know why I believed her, but I did…
Until it was definitely not the perfect path. I learned that shortly after putting my complaint in with ASHP, in retaliation, two people had started formally tracking me. They had been taking videos of me on various roads as I biked. I felt scared and violated. I’m going to admit something that feels really embarrassing – I started leaving my apartment in leggings without a dress or shorts covering my bottom because I figured I never saw anyone I knew on my bike rides anyway, and knowing someone has pictures and videos of my like that really ups the ante on how violated I felt, because it wasn’t just images of me, but using my body against my will. And I know this sounds super rape-culture-y, but I’m also dealing with shame as I feel like it is partly my fault for not wearing something that would cover my bottom – you couldn’t have taken booty pics if I’d at least covered my bum bum with more than just a pair of leggings.
The bigger issue is the fear that I will be found. I completely stopped biking for months because it felt so scary to be that exposed. I still am mindful every day about how to keep my location private and how I will escape and get help if I ever see the perpetrators again…and I worry that I won’t be able to find safety. And this concern for my safety makes a huge impact on my life. For example, I recently took a road trip. I would have LOVED to announce to everyone I knew that I was coming so that I could maximize how many people I could see, but instead I only told one person and I only halfway told her in texting and halfway told her on facebook so that if either one was somehow being tracked that individually it wouldn’t be very possible to know where or even whether I was going anywhere, and it was done super last minute in hopes that even if my location was somehow leaked that it wouldn’t be enough time to find me there before I was gone again. I do have to admit that surprising people was a little bit fun and that in some ways it was nice to go into it with no expectations so that any positive thing was above and beyond my plans rather than having to hope I’d be able to live up to even half my over the top ideas I’m sure I’d have had if I had been able to make the announcement…but oh my, unless you’ve been there you can’t really understand the terror when I got an email maybe a week or so later that said something like your location history, how was your trip to (insert primary location here) and even included a marker of “unknown location” in Louisiana…when all I did was stop at a gas station. Every day the fear is present at some level that I will be found…and how could this possibly be good?
Well, I think it really is making me realize how strong I am, and it is forcing me to be a problem solver, but to also be brave. And the whole situation taught me a lot about our court system…it gave me a lot of empathy and understanding…if I hadn’t gone through something like this that barely seems believable if I weren’t living it, I would have a hard time not doubting there was something I wasn’t being told when someone who’s story I don’t want to tell for her included a night in jail when she went to the police to report a crime against herself…it’s just that our justice system in this country is super messed up and I can’t speak to other demographics, but at least in my experience, young women get the short end of the stick. I know multiple young white women like myself who have seen things that definitely di not include justice through our justice system…and while I tend to see the good in people, until you’ve been there, it is hard to believe that the US government that seems so perfect when you learn about it in school is not nearly as incredible in real life. I do absolutely think that there are police officers, judges, and lawyers who are really trying to do the right thing, but a few bad apples can spoil the bunch. And, I mean, this also pushed me from social media to real life communication, because I really need to talk about what happened, but it doesn’t feel safe to talk about it much online.
And now that I have typed this I think I am going to post it without re-reading it for edits or anything, because I’ve kinda written it in my head over and over and over for the past month or so, and if I don’t just post it I think I might lose the inertia and the fear might keep me from posting this, and I don’t know who need to know they aren’t alone, or who needs to know that even in what seems like a dark situation God is orchestrating it for good, or whatever else, and I don’t want to get in the way of people having access to stories that might help them…so there are probably typos galore and I’ll probably have like twenty-five more things I meant to say that I didn’t, but I want to capitalize on the brave I have now because some days the fear is a lot more oppressing than others, so on good days I try to do the things that are harder on the bad days, and I don’t want to decide to delete this post and lose the hours I’ve poured into typing it just to get brave and regret that decision…the end and good night 🙂
I wanted to use a lyric from surrender by barlowgirl for this post ‘cause I’m currently loving it…but the only one that seemed to fit was way too long…so I had to go to plan b…but just listen to the beauty of the song surrender for me, k?
On March 16, for the first time in more than half a decade, it was pharmacy match day and I was not enrolled in the match.
Actually, that is not totally true. There was one phase 1 and two phase 2’s in which I did not participate during that time…but I couldn’t say it was the first year I didn’t have a PhorCAS profile, because I did have one of those. I created it back when I wasn’t totally sure what I actually wanted my path to look like. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have created a profile. While I understand that what happened to me last spring/summer/fall is not the typical residency experience. I understand most hospitals are not like that. I understand what happened wasn’t okay…but my body I think would have had trouble understanding that divide. I think it would have been a very challenging and anxiety-provoking experience even to join the world’s most supportive and caring residency program. I probably would have adjusted over time if I did end up in that situation, but the vast majority of my learning would be safety learning rather than clinical or communication skills. And I doubt that I would have conquered the fear enough to form the close relationships with my team that would make me feel successful and accepted, because with the trauma I’ve experienced surrounding residency it would be hard *not* to hold everyone at arm’s length afraid both that I’ll get attached then be torn away and that anything anyone knows about me will be twisted into a way to hurt me. That isn’t something it would be fair to put someone through who really cared about my personal and professional growth. While a job definitely will have some of the same issues, I think given that I haven’t had those types of experiences in a job that it will be easier to overcome the anxiety.
It feels really stupid to think there is a possibility someone who shows they care might turn around and wound you, but someone in my trauma group gave me a really good analogy to explain it. If one day you are walking out of a Walmart in New Mexico and are mauled by a lion, you are definitely going to be scared of walking out of Walmart in New Mexico again even though it seems really weird and illogical to any outside observer. You might also generalize that a bit and be afraid of walking out of Walmart in Minnesota even though the climate is completely different and you’ve never seen a lion in that environment. It doesn’t make sense, but at the same time it makes a lot of sense.
Anyway, I wasn’t sure what my ideal plan was then – pgy-2 then big girl job? Big girl job? Big girl job then pgy-2 then another big girl job? Career change? – but I’m glad I created the profile (not just because it’s there if I change my mind about my path next year). Because I had the profile, programs could find me and attempt to recruit me. It feels so good to be wanted. The interaction with caring RPD’s who reached out to ascertain my interest level in their program and who were supportive of my decision when I let them know I was not looking for a residency anymore was incredibly helpful in beginning to heal the wary parts of my soul. They helped to show me that there are good people out there that I haven’t met yet…(a somewhat related side note, I recently saw on a ppag conversation an RPD stating that she reaches out post-match even to those who didn’t match to let them know she cares about their professional journey and would still like to support them. Reading that was another huge drop in the bucket to remind me that good people are out there. Also, she acknowledged that the majority of candidates do not keep up with her after that email. Reading that was, again, really eye-opening how much people care – those weren’t just words to her, but a true invitation to connect and receive support). I hope that I, too, have that kind of positive impact on the people I encounter.
Umm…that isn’t at all what I thought I was sitting down (okaying, laying down) to write…what I was going to say is that it was really confusing to figure out how I felt about everything. Match day has been an incredibly emotional rollercoaster of a day for so many years, and this year supposedly I wasn’t invested…except I still feel really invested in it…and I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it. On one hand, I feel sad for all the people who didn’t match, because I’ve been there and I know how much it hurts. On the other hand, I hurt for the people who just matched into their worst nightmare. I am excited for all of the incredible programs still available to people participating in phase 2…and I am also excited that so far at least one person has been spared the nightmare I walked into last spring. So to recap I’m both sad for the people who didn’t match and some of the people who did. I’m excited both that good programs remained unmatched and that horrendous programs remained unmatched. It is a very confusing set of seemingly conflicting emotions that I’m untangling.
Also, speaking of learners, a few days ago I was listening to a CE about leadership. One of the concepts was that an effective leader promotes the wellbeing of their team by showing appreciation for the ways each member contributes, including students. And she said this “It makes learners feel like they are members of the team, because they are. They are people.” I felt like that straightforward acknowledgement that students are real people with real emotions was really valuable. I’ve seen people treat students and residents like free or cheap labor, or like a nuisance to be dealt with, and that doesn’t feel good. It feels so much better to be valued.
Okay, 100% unrelated, but like about a week ago or whenever it was I finally got an oil change, I was driving on a bridge and traffic was pretty stop and go. And it felt like the bridge was shaking. Y’all who are a few years older than me expect bridges to stay put, but I wasn’t a licensed driver when the 35 bridge came crashing into the water and was splashed all over the news. My reaction to hearing it on the radio: oh, I guess bridges probably do that sometimes. In my lived experience, you can’t trust bridges to stay in place. So on that bridge I was considering getting out of my car and running, but everyone else was just treating it like a typical afternoon.
Okay, one more totally unrelated thought…I think I blogged about it back when it happened, but in November I felt angry one day because I received an email that I felt like was intentionally directing me down a dangerous dead end. Over the past few weeks, I am not sure whether I wanted the idea in that email to be true so badly that I was willing to do anything to make it happen, or if I really and truly believed there was a possibility it may have been a helpful remark rather than a push the wrong direction, but in any case, I tried going down that path. It is harder knowing that path was the dead end I thought it was. It feels like the light at the end of the tunnel was turned off for maintenance. At this point do I actually need the things I was asking for? I mean, not really. There are a few things with some nominal value, but for the most part I’ve recreated anything that I actually needed that I didn’t have…at least the things I remember having…that is the other issue…I also don’t remember anymore what I had in the first place. I just don’t like that other people get to benefit off of my work but I don’t get to benefit off of my work.
Also, I lied, make that two more unrelated thoughts…I just finished watching a news video on youtube about cherry blossom events in DC, and if you were wondering the same thing I was – if I go to the cherry blossom events in DC can I pick and eat cherries, the answer is no, the trees do not actually produce cherries…so that is a bummer. I couldn’t really care less about the trees, but I would love to be able to just walk down the sidewalk picking cherries. Although the news lady said traffic was bad, so maybe I’m not interested anyway, because biking in traffic is not super safe because people forget when they are waiting for all the cars on the road that there are also people not in cars going places :)…for that matter, I had that problem today and almost ended up in an accident. But I did see a sign in the background that said sugar sculptures and I was like that sounds like my kind of event! The way to my heart is absolutely through my stomach. A cookie can cover a multitude of wrongs.
I learned at some point somewhere that why questions should generally be avoided when possible, because they are often misinterpreted with a negative connotation…so I picked this lyric for this post of random questions that I potentially shouldn’t be asking…
Why am I still finding things that can only be explained as the mouse got it when the mouse has been gone for three months? So yeah. One day recently I got dressed in the morning in one of my favorite black dress shirts. All seemed fine…until…I was eating a snack, thought I might have dropped something, and realized what I saw on my shirt was a hole…and upon closer inspection there were a lot of small holes. And then I panicked (mild exaggeration) because mice have lots of germs. In response though, I did learn that although my worst fear, norovirus, can live literally for a year or more, and there were those germs I learned about in micro that could continue to multiply literally inside a bottle of bleach (is nothing sacred anymore?) that hantavirus can only live for 2-3 days outside of a host, and that decreases to one day if UV is present. I also learned about the geographic distribution of the common subtypes of hantavirus and which animals are carriers…I was unable to figure out, unfortunately, how much norovirus is on the typical sidewalk or apartment hallway and how easily that would transfer to the mouse, or whether mice could carry norovirus internally. So I washed my hands too many times and said goodbye to my shirt and considered whether my entire wardrobe needs to be bleached now. And this is why I have never bought bleach. I cannot trust myself to use bleach responsibly.
Is it normal for people in cars to stop to talk to strangers who are walking? Today (aka the day I wrote this, not the day I decided I felt safe enough to post this) for the first time since that day in December, I walked to church. With the exception of that brief walk maybe a month ago when I could see my car the entire way, the furthest I’ve walked or done anything outside was from a parking lot to a building. I was feeling brave…until…a car stopped just ahead of where I was. I felt afraid. What if it was creepy mustache guy or another unsafe person? I looked around me and was like either I stop right here on the side of the road and wait for this guy to move on, but in the meantime people are probably going to start looking at me because it isn’t normal for a person to just be standing on the side of the road, or Option B was to give the car as wide a berth as possible and keep going…and so I did that, but I felt trapped. To my left was a busy road, and to my right was some grass then the freeway – nowhere to run. Luckily it was not creepy mustache guy. Or at least I don’t think it was because he didn’t have a mustache, and there are a grand total of 3 things I know about creepy mustache guy. 1. He has a mustache. 2. He is creepy. 3. He knows someone I know. I do have two guesses what his name is, but I don’t do names on here, and also, I don’t know with certainty whether either of those names is actually his…so yeah. Maybe I will continue to be an exclusively inside person a little longer. It is rather unfortunate that hair is modifiable. Why can’t we live in a cartoon world where hair and clothes are identical every day? That would be supes helpful. Yes, I did just bring back the word supes…
Also, why do a few of my clothes still smell like smoke from when my oven decided to set off the fire alarm instead of make my brownies? All my clothes were in my apartment, but only a handful of them picked up the smell, and of those, only a couple have still held onto that smell. It smells homey to me now though…it’s from the before I knew I was legitimately being tracked. Not that the before time was an easy time, but I could at least attempt at that point to convince myself that maybe I was safer than it seemed…and then that all came crashing down.
Why was there a sign that said westbound only on a one way road? I looked at the map later and I’m pretty sure the road does go west only. And based on how faded the lines on the road were, it’s been a one way for a super long time. So like are they worried I’m gonna change my mind in the middle of the road, do a 3-point turn and go against the one-way signs????? Lol. Who even knows.
What does half past sober mean? It’s in the lyrics of a song I like and it sounds pretty, but I haven’t got a clue what it means to be half past sober.
Why was our legal system designed as it was? Okay, I know all the 9th grade law and citizenship 12th grade government stuff about checks and balances, but I know so many people for whom the Justice system has failed to provide justice. Honestly, I don’t actually believe that hurting people back is truly justice – someone else hurting doesn’t make my pain less valid, but the person who was hurt should not be the one with added burdens. If there is an ongoing risk to someone’s safety the justice system needs to do something. I am thankful that so far the only significant interpersonal hurt I’ve experienced has not been physical, but I have friends for whom the pain inflicted was physical and while I understand that emotional wounds are often not seen as requiring the same urgency as their physical counterparts, my friends have similarly not been protected appropriately. I get a lot of medical news to my inbox that I usually delete without reading because communication gets overwhelming sometimes, but today I clicked on an email and the article mentioned that often the people most directly impacted by adverse action are the ones without the time, energy, money, or other resources to successfully file legal complaints. I was like mic drop. That is so true. It’s frustrating that people with money and power can get away with horrid actions because they know we don’t have the ability to adequately defend ourselves and that they can manipulate the system to stay free to continue and keep us from safety. When I was learning about this stuff I was so proud to live in a country with such an incredibly well-designed legal system. We had some issues like the lady who sued McDonald’s and won because as it turns out if you order a hot coffee it is served hot, but on the whole our system seemed great…then I became an adult and saw it in real life. And now I am a lot less impressed.
What is the proper way to dispose of food that is too runny to put in a trash bag without risk of leaks, but too chunky to dispose of in the sink? Flush it down the toilet? I made this meal yesterday and it used two boxes of noodles, 4 cups or so of milk, 1.5 pounds of onion, a few other ingredients, and then two flavor packets. The picture on the package looked good. I used a lot of energy (both my own and the kind that comes from the oven) preparing it…then I tasted it and went yuck, this tastes like sour cream which is one of the foods I can’t deal with. I was proud of myself for forcing three spoonfuls into my mouth, but after that I had to admit that while it was incredibly wasteful there was no way I was going to be able to eat any more of that, especially knowing after the first bite of the first portion that it was going to be yucky…and just like that I need a new plan for lunches and dinners this week…(FYI, googled this before I did it and do NOT flush food down the toilet. High risk of clogs…which then made me wonder why vomit doesn’t routinely clog the toilet since it also often contains undigested food…but I think that probably falls into the category of things it would be most wise for me to not Google).
Why did that news story in high school say hearing a train coming means you should get somewhere safe because a tornado is nearby? You know what also sounds like a train, is a lot more common than a tornado, but is not dangerous like a tornado? You guessed it…a train! Most of the time I do just assume it was a train, but once in a while when I’m already stressed about other things (like norovirus…) I think about that it must be a tornado…and a tornado would be super scary not just because of the destruction of things, but because it would stir up norovirus and also if I had to go to a shelter there’d be lots of people potentially bringing noro with them and if I didn’t have my own freshly cleaned pillow and sheets those could also have germs on them.
Why isn’t the concept of grieving in small doses taught more commonly? I’ve read that it is common for kids to grieve in small doses, but as an adult, I definitely behave similarly. I’ll be ‘strong’ for a while then it’s like *bam* there is the grief. Today everything was great, and then suddenly I was crying because of the things I endured in the past year. Probably part of it is that over the past month a couple people have given me new words to describe what happened. Those new words gave me a lot more clarity about what was going on and really validated my feelings and to be honest made me start to really believe for the first time that I am strong, because once those words were out in the open and I had a chance to process what they meant I was able to recognize more clearly that to live through what I did and continue to try to make the best of it takes courage. I am so proud of younger me. Younger me went through a lot, especially considering it was coming at a time that would have been hard without any added stressors (two years without daddy, two moves in the same month – one of them halfway across the country, a job change)…
Also, not phrased as a question, but this video hit too close to home and made me cry. https://youtu.be/zF_Sg6fQTQI
There is the not matching thing, but the bigger thing was September. OMG. The I let everyone down thing coming first, way before the possibility of I failed. I felt like all the work that had been put in to teach me to reach out when things aren’t going right was wasted because I definitely wasn’t doing that again if this was the result (after further reflection I was able to recognize that this is not what was supposed to happen and while I did slide backwards a little bit that I am still lightyears ahead of where I was two years ago). I learned that my coresidents had been planning a birthday party for me, and I was devastated that their effort had been wasted. TBH, my birthday was going to be hard when it came anyway, but learning that was crushing. I definitely wouldn’t have not wanted to know though. I think it was important that I find out, because I had been told that I was negatively impacting my coresidents and there had been complaints about me, so as much as it hurt, it was also incredibly healing to know that my coresidents wanted to intentionally make my birthday special and that it wasn’t true that they had any issues with me.
Also, I used to be really hesitant even when given the word by others to allow the use of grief to describe any loss but death. After experiencing the death of my dad, I realized that grief from any source feels basically the same. There are certainly varying degrees of grief felt by different situations, but non-death loss can be just as painful and evoke the same feelings as death loss. And I don’t remember where I was going with that statement.
Why did it take me so long to discover maternity pants?! I mean, I was barely out of high school when I fell in love with the whatsupelle maternity pants videos about how incredible maternity pants even when not pregnant…and now I *just* got my first pairs recently. So awesome! First of all, no buttons to deal with. Second, they only have to be pulled on and off – super fast and convenient. Third, when you have gone from a walk most places to a drive most places person AND are a stress eater, it is nice to have pants that can accommodate both your I have stress starved for a while body as well as your I have stress eaten significant amounts of food body without being too loose or too tight at any point in that continuum. I would say now that I’ve tried them I’ll never buy anything else, but I’m such a deal hunter that realistically if I need (or want) pants and they are an awesome deal but not maternity I’d prob still buy them…hashtag lifechanging for sure
why do some CE courses have such incredible mic drop moments? Today’s moment: “When you set down a dull saw, if you come back and pick it up, it will still be dull.” I wish I’d decided to go to that midyear session in person, but alas I remember every midyear I’ve gone to I’ve tried to cram in sessions back to back to back from early AM to late PM and am typically nearly literally running to my next session to fit as much in as possible, so really there is a very definite limit how much I can actually attend and it is far less than everything. But anyway, the point being made was that taking days off (or telling people to take days off since it was geared toward management) is not a solution to burnout or other problems in the workplace. The burnout or the other problem will likely still be present as soon as the employee returns to work. Unless you put in the effort to change the course of the ship, leaving won’t change anything. So true…a day off might take you out of the nightmare for the day (if you’re even able to disengage well enough to leave the workplace behind) but it will still be there when you return. It also made me think about how I’ve always said a snack covers a multitude of wrongs…like yeah, it kinda does if those wrongs were well-intentioned misunderstandings, but you can’t intentionally hurt someone then expect a snack to fix it…it doesn’t work like that…I guess it is kind of like I found out in middle school. When I had chocolate, people were really nice, but as soon as I gave it all away they went back to normal behavior and I was back to being teased for not knowing the in slang or the in way to carry my things, except now I didn’t have candy…but when I had things to share with my actual friends it was an appreciated piece of friendship…
I had one more thing I was going to write about, but then I started watching a video and by the time it was over I couldn’t remember what I was gonna write about anymore…so I guess it is time to say the end and get ready for bed even though I’ve gotten very close to nothing done all day unless you count the numerous games of quordle I won…
A journey through trauma & triumph 