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.
(Sadie Hawkins Dance in my Khaki Pants – RelientK)
Lol, so I was reading the reviews on a lunchbox. And it was a good reminder that the average person is an idiot and half of the population is dumber than that. So this lunch box has a removeable plastic bucket liner like my own lunchbox has for easy cleaning. It I advertised as “heat welded to prevent leaks” and multiple people complained that if you dump the lunchbox upside down it will leak…like no kidding, it is a bucket. Ever made a sand castle? Same idea…the sand doesn’t stay in the bucket when the bucket is upside down. The lunchbox liner does not leak, but it is required to comply with the laws of physics. No felon lunch boxes allowed lol. And there was at least one person who gave one star because it gets sticky when you put pb&j sandwiches in there so now she’s gonna have to buy bags for her sandwiches…oh my…and these are the people we share a planet with.
99% unrelated…this might be incredibly controversial…but…I’ve heard for so many years how awful lularoe leggings are. From ugly to poor fit to holey to see through and beyond, everyone seems to hate these leggings. But then someone was like hey, I have these leggings I’m gonna get rid of, would you like them? And I’m not sure I even knew they were lularoe. But I’ve come to love leggings over the past few years, so of course I said yes. And most of them are super cute. There is really only one pair that I saw the design and was like yeah, I don’t love that. But then I put that pair on, and they actually do look really good on me. And even if they didn’t, these are somehow just as warm as any other pair of un-lined leggings, but are a lot thinner than most pairs, so they fit even under skin-tight dress pants to get a little extra warmth on cold mornings. They are softer than any other brand, and despite being used (some very well loved based on the appearance of the tags) when I got them, none of them have any pilling or holes, nor are even the lighter colors see through. Honestly, even the tags do not really bother me which is huge, because I will be the first to admit I can have some sensory sensitivities at times. Basically the only thing I could love more is if they were fleece-lined like my very first ever pair of leggings which I got on sale for like $3 at target like 3 years ago that started my love of leggings. But I might not even want that since that would make them thicker. I do agree that any business strategy that relies on people buying your product then begging their friends and family to buy from them at a markup is kinda sketchy, but the product is good even if the selling plan is less good. (Also will just throw in that I don’t consider myself a very large person, but I was really stretching the limits of one size fits all, so I think it would be a valid complaint that they didn’t fit if you were a bit overweight, but proportionally they were great – it’s not like they were tight some places and too loose others.
I almost posted this like two weeks ago but it was late and so I was gonna do it in the morning. And that night was filled with nightmares of the bad people from my old job finding me and therefore very little sleep and a lot of fear prevented me from hitting publish in the morning. I hate that they still have that power over me…but I’m feeling more ready now…and now I have more thoughts…
Since we’re talking reviews…HelloFresh. I had a coupon code for a box for like $13. I got about twice as many meals out of it as they listed it as by adding a bag of rice, a loaf of bread, a couple tomatoes, and of course lots of desserts because HelloFresh only takes care of main dishes. For $13 it was kinda sorta worth it, but not something I would be likely to do again. The recipes were all pretty basic things that could be made without even using a recipe. The proportions of ingredients are just, well, weird. Like I got <1/4 of a cup of rice to make supposedly two servings of rice bowls (nowhere near enough carbs, especially when it is a primary component of the meal), and for another meal two potatoes that were basically gemstone potato sized…but for chili I got over half a pound of turkey and a can of beans for two servings (WAY more than two servings of protein). I mean, I’m glad I did have that since the meal included zero carbs, but long story short, the meals are definitely intended to have something go with them to balance them out. I think the biggest strike against HelloFresh besides the crazy price point is that until you’ve given your money to HelloFresh, you can’t see their menu to find out if there is even anything you’re going to like available. I found a website claiming to know what the choices were going to be and poured over it to confirm I’d be able to find enough things I’d actually eat (hello, I am a picky eater who absolutely will NOT eat fish for example)…then I gave HelloFresh my money and the choices were completely different and it was a struggle to find things I could at least adapt if necessary to make edible. It feels a bit like bait and switch. Finally, as someone who always feels bad wasting food and also someone who hates taking out the trash, HelloFresh has another massive strike against them. The amount of trash generated from a single serving of HelloFresh is about the same as the amount of trash I generate total in at least a week, or possibly even a month. And now I have a PILE of packets of ketchup, mustard, mayo, and possibly other condiments that are just going to be wasted. It seems so dumb to include those things, because if you are someone who uses ketchup you almost certainly have packets left over from your last McDonalds run or you have a bottle of ketchup in your refrigerator that is more convenient than the packets anyway. If you are not a ketchup-user, you aren’t going to suddenly change your mind about how disgusting ketchup is when the packet comes in your box and the packet is just going to be thrown out once it finally goes bad. But then sugar isn’t included which baffles me. People who don’t bake don’t have any reason to have a container of sugar, and now you want me to use tomato paste and sugar to make my own pasta sauce instead of just opening a container of pre-made sauce and doctoring it to my taste? Like I would think we were just planning on super home-made if it weren’t that my other pasta sauce came out of the box ready to pour onto the pasta without even so much as the addition of oregano…lol…so basically my HelloFresh review is meh. It was more money than I would prefer to spend and generated SO MUCH TRASH, but nothing tasted BAD, so if you have the disposable income and don’t mind the trash and the figuring out only a few days in advance how to round out the meals, it isn’t awful, but for me if I’m gonna spend a little more for a trashier meal, I’d rather get a more complete meal at McDonalds that doesn’t require so much prep time. (Oh, and don’t bother with their instructions…why in the world would I chop everything first when the next step is going to be to wait for something else to cook? I am perfectly capable of chopping and waiting at the same time).
One completely unrelated thought: sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to set a boundary rather than agreeing. Yesterday, I could have said yes, but I instead chose no. No, I will not modify every order with a comment that Wiggle Worm has evaluated this order…Besides how much of my time that would waste an how confusing it would be as a nurse to know what to do if an order didn’t have that comment and how much nursing time it would waste re-acknowledging the orders after I add that comment, it was kinder to say no, because saying yes would have made me feel bitter every time I had to do it into eternity. Like seriously? The order that made this pharmacist request this was, of all things, a vitamin D order (that was still within the realm of normal vitamin D supplementation). And not only that, but the day it was ordered I had decided to do a great job documenting (because anyone who knows me knows that 99% of my interventions most days are a single word) and I’d actually documented the reason the patient was eligible for vitamin D supplementation, the expected dose, and the long-term plan for the patient’s vitamin D supplementation…and if that weren’t enough, I was also the one who verified the order…obvi I’d evaluated the order if I’d verified it…not to mention, this order had been active for at least a week by this point, and I’d been covering the unit most of the days so it was expressly my job to evaluate that particular medication at least like 4 times since it’d been verified. I don’t love change, but I do recognize that every hospital has their own documentation system…but no one else is expected to document anything like that and I’m not about to let someone convince the new girl that she should be doing things that way…
Recently on InstaGram I saw a short paragraph that at first didn’t make sense. It was describing that people who are abused/experience trauma tend to blame themselves and feel shame about the situation and may even be opposed to the idea that someone else may be to blame. Turning the trauma inward feels safer. At first it seemed odd…and then I thought back to my recent abuse experiences. And I definitely blamed myself at first in each situation. When a lawyer used the term “assault” and when a friend used the word “abuse” and when a coworker expressed that I deserved a more safe workplace, each of those things were kinda shocking. Did I know on some level that what I’d gone through wasn’t right? I’m honestly not fully certain, but over time I came to recognize that it was incredibly true that it wasn’t about me. I wasn’t the problem. LOL, like the text one of my bible study friends sent last night: It’s not about the Iranian yogurt!
And I feel like I’ve now said way too much and no one’s gonna wanna read this…A+ for the day if you’ve made it this far. Hashtag distance highfive 🙂 As much as I hate people sometimes, I also love people so many times, and right now as long as you aren’t reading in order to find new ways to hurt me, I love you for making it through the chaos of my thoughts this long 🙂 have a great day
Well I had a long post written out in my head…and then 8 hours later I finally sat my behind in front of a computer to type the post and completely blanked on everything I was going to say.
But then I watched a video on youtube. It was an interview with a kid who looked to be about 10 years old about a shooting. The kid was describing what happened and the reporter asked what he was thinking and he eventually said “when he shot me I thought maybe he wasn’t my real friend.” A small part of me was like ‘ya think, no kidding he isn’t your friend,’ but another part of me said hurt people hurt people. Not that it makes the other child’s behavior okay, and not that it is necessarily a reason in this case because I know nothing about them to know the dynamics of the relationship nor anything about the perpetrator to know anything at all about what happened, but they could have legitimately had an amazing relationship and the other child was triggered and did something dumb in the moment that he’ll regret the rest of his life…but the biggest part of me said I know how that feels. Not the legitimately getting hit by a bullet part, but the deep pain of betrayal when someone who should have had your back uses your trust and their unique knowledge of your vulnerability to wound you to the core. The people at the old job knew relationship and communication was something I felt insecure about, and they exploited that. They wanted to destroy my confidence. Instead, it made me briefly hurt and upset because I knew their accusations were untrue and felt the pain of betrayal, but very quickly it became comical, especially as I realized how much better off I was away from them. I was terrified of them, but they didn’t have as much actual control over me, and they couldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing my reaction to the cruelty that was normalized within the walls of that pharmacy department. Everyone knew it was wrong, but no one was going to speak up for fear of becoming the next biggest target. No one was immune unless they were openly gay and tried to suck up to one of the biggest perpetrators who was also gay, but some people definitely got it a lot worse than others…and I was one of those people. Maybe it’s like in The Healing Path that they are most determined to put out a flame that shines brighter than their own…regardless of reason, like lol yeah, totally I believe that you think my written communication skills are unprofessional and completely unacceptable, that is why you had me write emails for you and sent them as if they were your own completely unedited. You totally think I am unable to effectively round, that’s why when rounds went into lunch time you walked away and left me to finish the second half on my own…so either you don’t mind if my awful skills undermine your reputation and negatively impact patient care, or these are just baseless accusations, you think I am a great communicator and an excellent pharmacist, but you wanted a reason to tear me down…
Also, speaking of control, I saw this quote on Facebook this morning, and it really spoke to me. “when a toxic person can no longer control you, they will try to control how others see you. The misinformation will feel unfair, but stay above it, trusting that other people will eventually see the truth just like you did.” It feels hopeful, because if the goal of secretly recording cell phone video of me and the other things that happened later were just about an attempt to control how others see me then maybe I am safer than I have felt for a long time. Maybe they’ll think that was enough…but yeah, it was very clear that when they no longer could directly impact me they went to work on controlling what they could control: others’ perceptions of me. I had a similar shift in perception control in college though that person never fully lost her more direct control of me. And both times it kind of feels like relief but also feels almost worse like you’re just waiting for the next shoe to drop expecting it to be worse than it has ever been. And that can sometimes feel harder than the more direct attack, because at least those direct attacks were more predictable.
One thing I was also thinking today after listening to another youtube video is how that whole find a caring adult if you need help in public that was taught as a part of childhood safety, well sometimes even as an adult it feels like you just want to find that adult to tell you it’ll be okay. In the video this girl who was high school aged was telling the reporter interviewing her that she’d been separated from her dad in the chaos of the event and her phone was dead, but she was glad to be there, and you could just see in the reporters eyes and body language how uncomfortable she was with letting this girl walk away knowing the girl was too old to be held in place until her parent was found. She assured repeatedly that if the girl needed any help to please let her know, but ultimately had to let the girl go back into the crowd and pray things would work out for her…also made me think about the age at which we stop asking for help. At Walmart last weekend a child around maybe 3 to 4 years old came up to me and another shopper and said she couldn’t find her mom. She wanted help and was visibly calmer when the man scooped her up and told her they were going to get the employees to help find her mom…but yeah, like sometimes I wish someone could scoop me up and make me feel safe.
Another video I watched taught me that apparently I am being discriminated against.
Back to that in just a second, because I can’t wait any longer to say that omg, I learned something today. I thought my primary receiving love language was time. I think it might actually be words. Like y’all I am not supposed to be having a good week right now because we’re on what I’ve named the week that wasn’t…but today I gave myself a high five and did a little happy wiggle (like a happy dance but with bum and back never leaving the couch and feet never leaving the floor…so yeah. I’m a reviewer for JPPT. A couple years ago someone said I should sign up, so I did, and the rest is history. Well, there is this person’s manuscript that honestly was not good the first time it came to me, and I was too polite to say no, do not publish this, so instead we’ve gone through multiple rounds of edits and it isn’t awesome but it isn’t awful anymore so now I do hope the authors and journal decide to continue with the editing process until it is publication ready. Well, today I got a message from the author gushing with thanks for the significant assistance in improving their work. I know it can be hard to hear that your work wasn’t amazing and needs a lot of improvement, so if anything I expect any comments I receive in reply to be snarky, defensive, defiant, or defeated. I would be lying to say there were no comments meeting any of those criteria, but the positive message at the end showing appreciation and recognition meant the world to me.
And, among other things, yesterday I was working with a transport and NICU team to stabilize a patient. I felt like I’d been kind of useless and slow and more in the way than helpful. I love emergency response, but I felt like maybe it’d been so long since I’d been in a clinical role that I just wasn’t good at it anymore. I guess I assessed my contribution wrong. I overheard the transport RN raving to the PICU fellow about the amazing pharmacist and how these situations usually feel nearly impossible, but this pharmacist has been so helpful. And I found out today that a neonatologist I’d been using as a runner for the items I needed talked to the director of pharmacy at the hospital to let him know how impressed she was and request they have me around more often. I’m glad she didn’t feel insulted to be used as a runner rather than for her clinical skills, and I’m thankful the director of pharmacy passed that compliment along…and lol, yes, I would LOVE to be a permanent member of that team. The dynamics of that situation were really as positive as an unexpected medical situation can be. People asked appropriate questions, valued each other’s perspectives and contributions, were patient, admitted their perceived mistakes, and recognized the role they needed to play on the team. Okay, and any team that *wants* to include a pharmacist earns major points in my book, because I’ve been on teams where pharmacy is valued, but I’ve also been on teams where the unspoken perception is that a nurse and/or doctor can probably do anything a pharmacist can do so why would we want you around? Plus, a highly skilled physician who doesn’t feel too important to go get more needles and labels for example is a huge asset. It shows to me that this is a team that really cares about outcomes above reputations and power structures, and that is the kind of team that aligns with my values.
Back to being discriminated against…apparently it is discrimination for Starbucks to charge me more for hot chocolate than they’d charge someone for a cup of coffee (despite it costing them significantly more to make) because I’m allergic to caffeine so I should be able to get the drink I want for the same price as the one that will make me itchy, nauseous, head-achy, and drowsy. And it is definitely also discrimination that Applebee’s wants to charge me more for a steak than for a salad, because I prefer the steak and do not really like salad. (If you couldn’t tell, that was sarcasm, I am making fun of a ‘news’ video in which people complained that they were being discriminated against because the items they either were not allergic to or simply preferred cost more than the alternative…a restaurant owner from a different restaurant than the one in question was interviewed at the end and stated that these items cost her 1.5 times or more as much as the alternatives so it is difficult to afford, especially when the products also are more likely to go bad prior to being used up but she keeps them the same price so that people don’t have to feel guilty for choosing what they really want. The reporter’s response was that this was how all restaurants should operate…my response was, umm, no, if it costs them more, they have a right to pass those costs on to the final consumer…plus chances are that keeping everything the same price will ultimately lead to a price increase for the people who want what should have been the less expensive option, and it isn’t really fair for the salad eaters to subsidize the steak eaters).
I know I’ve been awol for a while. Life happens. Fear happens. It all happens.
I watched that video today. It is amazing to see the justice system working as it should to protect victims. The fear in the victim’s voice. The care and concern in the lawyer’s voice. The seriousness with which the judge took the situation. The flippant and evasive and excusing attitude of the abuser. It was very real, and the professionals’ actions were exactly how things should have happened. It gives me hope to see people in that kind of authority do the right thing. I’ve seen so much of the wrong thing happening that it is easy to forget the good.
Wanna know something that I previously would have never considered good? My occasional hesitance to approach people. Lol. So between early October and early December there was this place I biked past that honestly looked almost like it could be Santa’s workshop. It was smaller than a garage but located on a property where you would expect a garage to be, and it just seemed enchanted somehow. Today I saw someone in front of an actual garage. That garage looked like it could potentially be similarly magical inside…except the guy had a mustache. I know very few males with mustaches. One person I don’t actually know but know of has a mustache. And he is creepy. And a creeper. And so, of course, my brain goes hey, this dude has a mustache and does not look creepy. I should thank him for not being creepy. And then after I was home I was like, umm, girl, pretty sure if you thank someone for not being creepy then probably you are the creepy one. And then I had to agree with myself and realize that my social difficulty could actually work in my favor.
Speaking of biking, I went out today to ride my bike. I still haven’t found the ideal location, but it isn’t unusual for me whether it is my permanent path or not to have a route that takes me past the same location multiple times. And today I had to bite my tongue to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Spoiler alert, I wasn’t. You guys, this one house I biked past I am fully certain the door was a completely different color each time I went past. The first time it was a beautiful bright red. The next time it was white with some navy blue swirls. The third time it was a sky blue with a hint of green. It was very odd. And now even though the path I took to get there was less than ideal (I hate that I live on the opposite side of the freeway from all the places that seem good to bike). Technically there is one place I could bike that could avoid the one stretch of road that has made all of my new bike path attempts only kinda okayish, but it would require my first turn away from home to be a left instead of a right which seems like why does that even matter when I put it in writing, but in real life it just doesn’t feel comfortable…remember this is coming from the girl who can often feel the shape of a room and therefore has to really get used to how a new place feels before it feels comfortable.
But as dangerous as biking as felt at times because of what happened in December, today I definitely wished I was biking rather than on foot. I wasn’t sure if I was going to share this story, but apparently my fingers decided this is what we’re doing. This morning I was minding my own business and walking along the edge of a road that doesn’t have a sidewalk. This white SUV pulled into the right lane and stopped until I was almost up to that point then started moving again before stopping again this time on the shoulder where I was obvi going to be needing to walk before again driving off when I got close enough to need to start figuring out whether I was going to try to get past on a steep hill that was going to become a bridge over a road running another direction or if I was going to walk into traffic to get by. The SUV had tinted windows so I haven’t got a clue who was inside…but it seemed that the actions were targeted. And the fact that there was a white SUV in November that I thought I saw someone dangerous in made it even more scary that another white SUV was doing an intentional act in my regard. Realistically it is very possible and dare I say more likely that the actions had nothing to do with me and instead was someone lost or having some other issue that just coincidentally put them near my path, but I wished so much in that moment I had a better escape method, ‘cause feet are so slow…and I wasn’t likely to get to church on time if I turned around on that stretch of road, plus turning around would have put even more attention on me which I did not want
And then after church I needed to prove that walking was safe, so I was walking around the block and this guy comes up to me and asks me my name. I am not a liar but I also was a bit wary given the earlier experience so I gave the guy my nickname. I don’t really answer to my nickname anymore since I’ve worked with so many people whose given name is my nickname or for whom their nickname is enough of an identity that it’s the only name on their CV, so it seems a little safer than giving put my full name and it isn’t a lie given that ‘name’ is in the title and plus all of the letters are in my real name…but somehow it seems wrong even though the guy was giving me weird vibes. And I saw the guy in a white hatchback two streets away a few minutes later. And like a couple blocks later there was a white normal car that was near me when we were both stopped at an intersection who started yelling something I didn’t understand at me, so I just screamed NO at this guy leaning out his window to make it clear to anyone else around that this was not a desired encounter. What is it with white vehicles and unwanted experiences this morning?
Speaking of vehicles…maybe a month or so ago now I was in a parking lot and there were like 3 or 4 yellow cars all parked next to each other and it was so cheery it made me smile. And then as I drove I saw more yellow cars on like every street I turned on and there were like 4 yellow cars parked in the same driveway…it was so cool and weird…like yellow is not a common car color and yet it was possibly more common than the typical blue coming in first after varying shades of black and white…I took some pictures then realized that it would give away more of my location than I was comfortable with to post any of them even if I have noticed that basically everywhere I have lived has had a lot of streets with the same name…
Something I was thinking recently…the way I look for and value potential positions and what I really value pretty much do not overlap at all. Part of that is probably the information available in the typical job posting, but I think a lot of it is maybe that I really want to be the strong person who can do whatever she sets her mind to and admitting that some places are not safe, for example doesn’t align with that vision…even though I can recognize objectively that it is very true that for the needs of the patient to come first the needs of the employee need to come before that.
This is what I probably would rank as the things most important to me in a position:
Job title as surrogate for expected clinical activities (have learned that this is not effective given what a particular position does at any given institution is not standardized and more than that, may change over time).
Is institution a children’s hospital vs serving a mixed population (this one I don’t think is inherently bad…but it also as you will see below is not my top priority when I’m really honest about what I need. I feel most competent caring for kids, but I have enough adult experience at this point in my career that if I need to be able to cross cover adults the population will have safe and effective care, but potentially not 100%optimized care because I’m not going to pretend that I keep as on top of the adult lit as I do peds. I care, but I’m not as passionate about it).
Opportunities to mentor/teach (this is definitely important to me, but I’ve learned I can be a little flexible in what that looks like or how often it happens in order to get the other components that are important to me.
Prestige of institution (I can safely say this is more of an ‘I should care about this’ than a firm and fast rule given the residencies I selected as my top choices each year)
Culture/institutional values/everything else (and let’s be real – in a zoom interview I’m going to rely on the culture described in the job description and hospital website rather than what is observed – which is why real life interviews are so important…and on site rather than *just* in person…one place I interviewed in person at midyear and didn’t get this sense but then I interviewed on site and was like I wouldn’t say no if a position was offered, but I feel like these people are flaunting their money and that is really turning me off…I get that an institution needs to be financially stable enough that the position will be stable, but I just got too many vibes that they were proud of their money and it didn’t sit right with me – if you’ve got extra then invest it in your patients. What is odd though is that realistically they probably didn’t spend more on me than any other institution, it was more the vibe than the actual dollars being spent)
The things that I realized that I actually look for have very little overlap with that list of what I think I want:
Physical and emotional safety in the workplace (this is non-negotiable and something I never thought I’d need to include on any list of desires until I ended up somewhere I didn’t have this).
Feeling valued and validated by those I work with (y’all, it makes all the difference in the world to be validated and valued).
A sense of belonging in the community in the workplace (I want to be included. I don’t want to be isolated. I don’t want to be just a faceless source of work getting done).
Believing in the overall patient and family outcomes my organization provides to patients (basically, I want to be proud of the outcomes where I work – which I guess also draws in believing in my team and seeing that the whole team is supported)
My day to day tasks/everything else (it was hard to admit, but I ultimately realized I have been far happier in positions doing tasks that weren’t my favorite but while surrounded by people who cared than I ever was doing what was supposed to be my dream in an environment that was not positive).
I had some other things to write about but instead I just want to post a lyric from Hey Hey by Superchick that’s been in my head today…”some people you can never please…but I won’t bow down even if the whole world thinks I’m crazy…no one can sing the song you do. Be true be legendary you. But I won’t sell out even if the whole world thinks I’m crazy…so put your hands in the air if you’re crazy like us…why kiss the feet of the people who kick you when you can be anything that you want to.”
Of all the things to be stuck in my head, not too bad…much better than when it was only the “love la la love love will change your life” line from This what they meant by Leanna Crawford…
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 🙂
Some days are just hard. I don’t remember if there was a trigger or what happened, but I do remember that the day culminated in feeling that familiar fear that the people I’d been trying to avoid this fall who I found out this winter were tracking me in order to hurt me were about to hurt me again. It was so intense that I put on my glasses and flicked the lights a couple times and checked under the covers before going to bed…it’s not how I want life to be, but we don’t always get what we want…
It’s a good thing I got decent sleep that night, because the next night I got a bunch of spam texts around 2am and then after that there was nearly continuously a loud train sound for the next hour and I decided that if I ever found out any of my friends were train operators we can’t be friends anymore. And the entire rest of the morning there was never a period more than a minute without another train sound and by the time the alarm went off I had decided that anyone who had ever been on a train wasn’t my friend anymore…which is somewhat problematic and poorly thought out given that *I* have been on a train before…but I was exhausted and crabby…lol…
Sometimes I feel lonely. I am working really hard to do whatever I can to keep my location as private as possible. That has a lot of repercussions socially. One of the big ones is that I am not adding a lot of Facebook friends who live near me. Facebook is how I connect best with people, so it is really hard being separated from that. I still have my old Facebook friends, but I also feel like I can’t post too much in case geotagging or my words makes it obvious where I am. And I can’t let anyone know when and where I’m traveling in case that information falls into the wrong hands. I do have friends on slack, but I’m not that comfortable with slack and it just isn’t the same. I hate that people have taken so much life away from me. I’m thrilled for the brief period of time recently I felt safe enough to uncover my windows for the first time in months, but I’m sad that legitimate fear has forced me into hiding…but on the positive side it has made me much more bold when I am in safe places outside my home, and that is great for my social anxiety.
I had a topic I was gonna write about next that I’m gonna have to put on hold because I feel like it could give out too much of a hint about my whereabouts…and that is another way I’ve become isolated. I can’t say too much in case my words lead to taking away any safety I have left.
Y’all, something weird is going on that I don’t understand. There are significantly more unmatched residencies in the scramble than I have ever seen before, and I’ve been following this since the 2016-2017 residency recruitment season. I’m glad at least so far my former Y2 program is still open – at least one fewer person might be mistreated like I was. Thank God. I’m happy for anyone who is in the residency market for all the incredible opportunities left…many are ones that I’ve applied for in phase 1 at some point in the past both on the pgy-1 and the pgy-2 side. And in looking through the list there are also some that while not my first choice look pretty incredible…like some of them looked awesome enough I almost considered bailing on the whole job thing and going back to the residency game. I feel like maybe I’ve healed enough it would work, but I also feel like I’ve realized that I’d be doing it for the opportunity to put on my CV that I’d done it at this point. I’ve realized that I have patient care skills and in learning to stand up for my rights have gained significantly in social skills, so the world of work is where I belong. I do wish I had that on my CV, because I’ve already seen in interviews that many places aren’t shy about admitting that there are certain positions they would never hire a pharmacist without that on their CV or that a pharmacist without that is not just unlikely but will absolutely not be given any advancement opportunities. I strongly disagree with that perspective and disagreed even prior to having a non-traditional career path. While residency can be helpful, it is not required in order to be competent, particularly for someone who has had on the job training and excelled through it…let’s be realistic, y’all. The concept of anything even kind of resembling residency didn’t even exist until the 1930s and at that point was not a clinical position. ASHP didn’t get involved until 1948, and residencies didn’t exist until like 1963. That was under 60 years ago…so many of the people who are currently training new residents were most likely trained primarily by people who had not completed pgy-1 or pgy-2 residency…and I would argue that those people were still incredibly competent pharmacists who found other ways besides residency to obtain any assistance they required for their weak points. Honestly while I was thrilled with my pgy-1 residency, I think the people I worked with would have been able to provide very similar support even if I’d been a regular coworker instead of a resident. And I gave and received similar support at the job I worked prior to residency. Learning doesn’t have to occur within a formal framework.
But anyway, I am also really sad for most of the people who didn’t match on both sides of the table. It isn’t so bad on the candidate side with how many opportunities are still available, but it can still be a very legitimate grief process to get that national matching service email again…and some of the programs have really incredible RPD’s who I know both excel at and love to mentor residents, and I’m so sad they might not get that opportunity this year. I wish there were like 5 of me so I could do a few of the residencies of the good RPD’s and still have a me left to work a big girl job, because my bank account needs a big girl job almost as much as I need to get back into using my knowledge but having some freedom to direct myself…and then I could reap some incredible residency benefits that I’d never otherwise choose. I think an ambulatory care residency, for example, would be incredibly useful to fill in my weak points, but I have close to zero interest in ambulatory care, so there is no reason I’d have even thought about it if it weren’t for an incredible pharmacist/RPD who is currently down a resident…but I think I may not thrive doing an entire year without what I am most passionate about, so if there were more than one of me, I could reap the benefits while still having opportunities in another state for a residency in which I could spend quite a bit of time caring for critically ill babies. That would be pretty sweet.
Some videos I’ve watched on youtube lately have made me even more in awe of southwest airlines. I’ve always known they have by far the most customer-friendly policies, but watching these videos showed me it goes so incredibly far beyond just their policies. They are so incredibly helpful and caring to people who are not always so kind and caring to them. It was so impressive to me how much the people in the video showed they weren’t just doing a job, but truly caring about people. It was so amazing…obviously I understand the reason these moments were captured were because they are not the typical airline experience, but that doesn’t mean that every employee acts like that every time, but it was still very heartwarming to see how far these people would go to make people’s day as good as it could be…sometimes while being sworn at that they were the worst people ever. (for example, by someone who felt it was unfair that she had to buy a ticket because how was she supposed to know the airline’s policy didn’t include just showing up and paying later – she doesn’t study their website!)
The other day I saw the van I thought had been watching me a month or so ago. I was an idiot and continued toward where I live anyway, and I briefly felt scared, but then I realized that like sure, it could be someone tracking me, but the other possibility is that it is someone who recently moved nearby and previously had been stopped in the road lost and looking up directions before continuing down the wrong road. I’m choosing to believe that situation…and it’s working for now anyway. Today I rode my bike for the first time since December. I didn’t intend to go far since I was going to be going a new direction and thus needed to be careful not to end up lost and exhausted since I obviously wasn’t going to even be kinda in shape since I’ve reached the point where I spend so much time curled up at home that it literally hurts to straighten my legs (on the positive side I take way fewer snack and potty breaks since getting up requires straightening my legs…although it also means instead of a snack break being a few skittles or a couple crackers it’s multiple rice Krispy bars and a whole bag of skittles and a few Hershey kisses because I wanna maximize the yield from my effort…I’m prolly gonna start getting fat if I don’t modify my eating habits…). But anyway, I actually went significantly less far than I intended. Perhaps this episode of 812andco is not going to win should have waited a couple days until I was not in the middle of my period…I was winded before I even got outside and I’d barely made it to the corner before I was coughing trying to get enough oxygen to my body, but I feel like as an adult I’ve got to at least make it all the way around the block before going back inside to prevent people from looking at me like I’m crazy on the off chance they have noticed me at all, so I did make it a little further than to the corner and back and I only thought about sleeping on the sidewalk cradling my bike, but it wasn’t a real option since I wasn’t wearing pants and I was wearing pastel colored target leggings, and target leggings are nearly impossible to get clean…so that’s another good reason not to go to far, because I was also wearing a cup and biking makes my cup leak and while I was wearing period undies, the ones I have are technically a few sizes too small, so they’ll hold some liquid temporarily, but I’m stretching them as far as they go so all the tiny seam holes are stretched out enough that they don’t hold much long, so I really should have worn a pad if I was going to bike any longer than I did.
812andco is adding complexity to my professional world as well. Someone asked me recently if I could pose a question to the ASHP community since I’m a member…and I know my lawyer said that kind of thing is fine, but because I insisted on specifically calling out PPAG communications it seems like maybe instead of preventing anyone from questioning how often I use that forum it might make people suspicious if I use any other forum…and so I felt like I couldn’t ask the question which then made me realize I pay a lot of money for a community I can’t use…and maybe I shouldn’t have wasted my money on renewing that membership, especially when the rate got jacked up because I waited so long…
edited 3/29 to say I recognize I probably should have softened this post if I wanted to post it, but after accidentally deleting the previous post I felt like I needed to hit post without the now typical delay of a couple days at least to make sure I’m not saying too much…all that to say read at your own risk and please be kind…
(Upstate bye bye bye)
Alternatively…
What kind of person do I want to be
(stand – newsboys)
I wrote a really long post I was pretty proud of yesterday…then I accidentally permanently deleted it because I’m awesome like that…
But here’s what’s on my mind today…match day…
I already wrote about some of my thoughts, but the other thing I want to write about is how different two even supposedly positive match days could be. And that is probably part of why match day has been so emotional this year when I wasn’t even supposed to be that invested in it.
In 2020, I matched and I got a call. To be honest I don’t know most of what was said on the call because I could only hear like one out of every 3 words, but what came through loud and clear was that I was wanted, I was cared about, and I was going to be supported. And you know what, it was true. I was supported, and I was wanted, and people did care about me. I had value. I was a member of the team. I wish I could have stayed there forever.
In 2021, I matched and it was a very different story. That afternoon I received an email. The gist of the email was we think you are going to fail, we do not trust you, we plan to micromanage you and hold your hand like you’re still 5 years old. I was annoyed, but I was willing to overlook it because this was what I thought I wanted, because it had the magic words in the title that I thought were going to make everyone want me…and…well…as much as I didn’t want it to be true, a lot of that was true. The micromanaging didn’t get better when I started. Not only was it clear by actions, but also by words that I was not wanted. I was not included, not valued, and it was thrown in my face as the dumbest idea ever when I expressed wanting to be part of the team despite others having the same opinion but just not being willing to speak up about it.
I guess I am learning that I should trust my instincts about people, because I am pretty good at identifying who the safe people are and who wants to hurt me. (there is a large gap between those two categories, but I will be the first to admit that I’m better at black and white so it is easier for me to have two incredibly distinct categories and a bunch of people I haven’t categorized yet than to try to really see things as a spectrum…And I definitely learned my lesson that the best job ever on paper means nothing if the people make it a nightmare. I’ve always known people were important to me, but now I know that while I can hang on for a long time even relatively happily in a position I don’t like with amazing coworkers, I will quickly be crushed in a position that on paper is incredible but has a handful of difficult people to work with. That 2020 job really was a nirvana where most of the job and most of the people were awesome.
And I learned that even matching can be bad news. Oops. But I’ve learned and grown, and that is the goal of residency, so I guess besides the paper and the money I have succeeded at residency 🙂 go me!!
Topic shift…I’ve been thinking for literally at least a month now about doing some kind of timeline post of my career…
Lol, hours of CE…(from NABP, because ain’t no one got time to figure out where all the actual CE records are, and a lot of them are probably lost if I’m being honest).
2014 – 20 hrs – immunization training…I came home after that and my life fell apart…first I got a new phone and in my exhaustion I was not grateful at all – I was angry about the change. If anything I wanted to pretty new red flip phone. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with a smart phone…and as of last week that phone is gone. I cried. Even though it wasn’t my dad who gave it to me, I’m sure he was incredibly involved, so it feels like another piece gone. And my dad has always set up my new phones and I got a new phone and had to do everything myself. And I really miss my dad, but I needed a new phone, and I didn’t realize until it was too late how hard it was going to be to leave behind my old phone…and then I got an email from someone who was supposed to be helping me but instead chose to systematically tear me down…(clarification, that happened in 2014, not 2022)
2015 – 1hr – lol, on my hospital IPPE they had me do a CE that was about how just because some people are worried about Ebola doesn’t mean we can stop ensuring kids get their flu vaccines. The hospital’s thought was teach these two students that CE is just a normal part of a pharmacist’s day.
2016 – 11.5hr – my first midyear…where I got literally no sleep…but I did go to 5 million networking sessions and apparently 11.5 hours of CE…
2017 – 184.5hr – apparently that lesson in what a pharmacist does stuck…for my first few months of being a pharmacist that summer every time I got bored I did a CE…as you can see, I got bored rather frequently before I found a new way to occupy my time…
2018 – 44.5 hrs – you’re going to think I’m crazy, but I think this was exclusively midyear and a handful of pharmacy grand rounds…I figure with how much midyear costs I’m going to fit as many sessions in as possible, and when you are not a student and therefore do not have to waste time on meeting the school requirements in order to get your $100 professional travel reimbursement, you can fit in both a lot of networking sessions, all the showcases, talking to real people (not that showcase and networking session people aren’t real), and of course quite a bit of CE.
2019 – 90.75hrs – almost all of this was in April. I have no idea why I was doing so much CE in April. It wasn’t like the timing would have worked for my thought process to even be well if they ask me what I’ve learned I’ll be ready, because most if not all were after the match deadline, and I know realistically I wasn’t going to land in a scramble spot even though I always applied for way too many of them…
2020 – 116.75hr – part of this was midyear, but most of it was that a ton of CE was assigned at my place of employment, and I knew if I matched I’d be gone before it was due, but I mean, what else was I going to do while in the airport waiting for flights? And then after I matched I was so close to done I might as well finish…
2021 – 31.08 – 90% of this was actual useful things I *chose* to do…what a novel concept – learning for fun and value instead of just to say I did it…because yes I do have a CE on my record on child abuse in Pennsylvania from a time in my life I was nowhere near Pennsylvania…
2022 – 41.75hrs so far…because now CE has become almost like a game. You scour the internet for the things you want until you find a free one, then you do it and see if the credit is actually free or just the course…
And another timeline…my wellbeing timeline…
A – I started this project shortly after my dad died, and the holidays in particular were hard
B – I was super thrilled to start residency
C – this was the last week of my ED rotation…shortly after my prediction came very close to true that I could not live with what was going on there long term…one of the preceptors was amazing, but the other was very gaslighting.
D – back to the NICU!!!!!
E – shortly after match day when it was becoming more and more clear that I was going into something probably not good…I was able to put it out of mind at times and absolutely love and soak in my last months at my current job.
But then…
F…the new job started and it was worse than I imagined.
G – I had just spent some time with new friends and was close to done with a rotation where I didn’t feel valued enough to make jobs I disliked feel worth it and about to start PICU which I thought was when everything was going to improve (because I was told that was what would happen).
H – three days before my birthday, 1 week after not being employed…I was not doing well and if it hadn’t been for what I learned through C, and the care of some incredible friends, I don’t know how I’d have made it through…but then I started realizing how much better life was not in that job…my wellbeing significantly improved…because of the timing of when I took the quiz you don’t see the drop there would have been on December 13 when they decided to find one more way to retaliate, and it was terrifying…
so yeah, instead of the awesome post I originally wrote you get this one that who even knows why these topics are on my mind…
Am I ready is a hard question. It has been about 5 and a half months since I walked through a door Monday morning to a team excited to see me. Yes, my coresidents and coworkers were happy to see me for a few months of that gap, but y’all a manager who didn’t want you and isn’t afraid to tell you that is not a good place to walk into. So from that perspective I am ready to start 5 and a half months ago. It’s like the Crowder song ‘in the house.’ “Somebody who loves you is waiting at the door; it’s home sweet home here.” That is what is most important to me in a job. Having a supportive team around me that is happy to see me and wants me to be present.
It is hard to be not wanted, but it is also hard in a different way to be very wanted. I wish I had a bunch of body doubles so I could try out all the jobs and decide which one was really the best…preferably a bunch of body doubles that do not require housing, because I can’t afford to house multiple people. Just housing myself is more than enough. I am so thankful that I am wanted though…and it is incredible how I can meet someone for only a 30 minute conversation and have that person emailing me a month later that someone she knows is hiring for a position that she thinks I’d like and she passed on my information and the manager for that position would really like to chat with me and most likely would offer the position…and what makes that even better is that this person clearly wasn’t just pawning off this stranger who was in the market for a new job onto the first opening she came across, but had truly considered whether that position would be a good fit for me…I would have accepted if I didn’t already have enough other places interested in me that it was time to stop adding more potential positions to the mix…pharmacy really is a small world, and that just goes to show you how definitely not all, but a lot of us really care about each other. My happy place is caring for neonates and teaching, so your perfect fit might not be right next to mine if your niche is different, but even if we can’t be coworkers, I still want to help the people I come across find something good for them…and I found last year that because my path had some off-road adventures, I’ve got a lot of good perspective to share with students as they begin thinking about what is important to them in their career. Someday I would love to harness that in one of the motivational talks at midyear, because hearing from someone whose path wasn’t exactly as planned and as expected is something that would have really benefitted me as a student and a new practitioner…unfortunately, my fear of speaking in large groups makes that dream something that might not be a good reality for me…plus if midyear doesn’t stay virtual there is the whole is the awesome opportunities to mentor students worth the stress of traveling to midyear thing…non-in-person midyear is awful because you don’t get those mentoring opportunities, but it is also awesome because you can do the conference without leaving home. If we could figure out how to merge those two worlds, like bringing the conference to a city near me, for example, I would be absolutely thrilled to attend!! I think ASHP should work on better mobility for their conference so that everyone gets a turn having it in their part of the country.
That housing question is also an interesting are you ready…Recently I found another place that looks like my dream new apartment…this time based on what it looks like balanced with the price, not *just* based on the title of the building. This time instead of the problem being that the complex is incredibly rundown, the problem is that the next expected availability isn’t until mid-to-late 2023. I don’t necessarily need to move anywhere immediately, but I do need to move before 2023…plus this newest dream new apartment is actually located in a state I would like to live in, which is a significant improvement over the other dream apartment I found…lol…but I mean, I kind of am ready…I have a few Airbnb wish lists…and there are always hotels…and if it were less cold than it is today I am not opposed to sleeping in my car if I found a safe and legal place to do so and also knew of a place to shower…so I guess like a campground with good security…I mean, last Monday I was in my car a good 18 hours or so and having to be in position to drive that long feels like forever, but laying down to sleep would be much better…just not if my toes and fingers were going to freeze without the heat on…
Part of getting ready last night I decided was pealing the dead skin off my feet from when they blistered on December 2…so most of the layers of skin and dried blood from the bottoms of my feet are gone…except eventually I was smart enough to realize that some of the skin was not ready to come off, and also that I wasn’t quite sure why getting ready to possibly stay in an Airbnb required my blisters to be picked off…
Also, on a totally different note, if you want to be ready for anything, making sure your favorite clothes make it into the wash is important…my laundry has been done twice in the past two-ish weeks which should be more than enough except both times a few preferred clothing items failed to make it to the wash…also, I don’t know why I bother owning more than one pair each of leggings, jeans, scrub bottoms, and dress pants…I tend to wash and wear and wash and wear the same ones over and over…(I do actually know why though – fear of not having enough when I need something)…and I thought I needed lots of tops, but after like 3.5 months of wearing the same handful of t-shirts every day, and living the past month with only two interview dresses, one interview tank top, one non-interview tank top, one sweater, and two jackets for dress and church clothes makes me feel like even when I go back to work I could be totally fine with significantly fewer clothes…I don’t actually need to own enough clothes to go two months without doing any laundry…hashtag I wouldn’t be surprised if I could go 3-4 months without doing laundry except that I would probably run out of bras and possibly socks too soon…
Wanna know someone else who wasn’t ready? The lady who gave birth to a 29-weeker in an airplane bathroom back in like May without knowing she was pregnant until suddenly there was a baby…I was curious today how they kept the baby alive to get to the hospital and I couldn’t find all the details I was hoping for even after spending way too many hours “researching” it by reading every story I could get my hands on, but a lot of it was really creative ideas – microwaved waterbottles for heat, a sock for a hat, modifying an oxygen mask…so yeah…that would have been an eventful flight and that baby is so lucky to be alive! The human body is incredible.
I have been debating whether to post this because it gets a lot more real about the past few months than anything I’ve shared previously, and I am not really sure whether that is a good thing to do…I don’t want to edit out the real-ness, because I feel like that is important to my story and I either want my real story or no story at all, but I also feel like as a professional I am supposed to present the positives of life without showing too much of what else is beyond the surface. I know that is probably the stigma that a lot of pharmacists internally face that I learned about in a CE a few months ago that really is not productive and leads to a lot of issues in our profession…but I also feel like I don’t like being the one breaking the ice and leading the way for that type of change…but I have decided to post this, (with this brief disclaimer) because one thing that I have learned is really important to me is not just standing by and watching things go wrong. It is the premise of one of the songs I’ve loved for over a decade…
Heroes are made when you make a choice. You could be a hero, heroes do what’s right. You could be a hero, you might save a life. You could be a hero, you could join the fight for what’s right…but this ain’t even about that, all of us just sat back and watched it happen think it’s not my responsibility to solve a problem that isn’t about me, but this is our problem. This is just one of the daily scenarios to which we choose to close our eyes instead of doing the right thing. So let’s make a choice to be the voice for those who won’t speak up for themselves how many lives would be changed, places rearranged. So don’t keep walking by ‘cause you want to exist but never be seen, so let’s wake up and change the world. Our time is now.
heroes – superchic[k]
Does intervening to ensure things go right occasionally put more attention and sometimes negative attention on me that I do not enjoy – yes, but I think for patient safety everything I have brought to light has been incredibly important, and while this post may not be directly impacting patient safety, I think breaking the pharmacist stigma is important because a healthy pharmacist can better care for their patients, and health is not just the absence of hypertension and hyperglycemia. Health is holistic. Breaking down stigma and letting people see that they are not alone and that no one else’s life is perfect either is important to me. Together we can.
I think what finally pushed me to decide this was the right choice was a movie I watched yesterday. It isn’t important what movie I was watching (and honestly I also don’t know what it was called)…but the message of the movie was that doing the right thing and standing up for appropriate treatment of others is always right even when it is hard and has negative consequences. You might regret the pain that making good choices causes, but you will not truly regret making right choices. That is a lot of what this post is about. This isn’t a toxic positivity doing the right thing will always turn out with daisies and roses concept, but a realization that as much as doing the right thing might lead to intensely painful circumstances, it is still absolutely the right thing to do. Like The Afters say in the song the eyes of a believer, ‘never let anyone put out your fire.’
Also one late addition to this post…lol…if you are a fidgeter and also are not sure whether the Christmas eve service is going to involve candles, maybe don’t wear dark colored pants…nope, I didn’t spill melted wax on myself…that would be too easy…no, I looked down towards the end of the service and realized I had lines and swirls and stars and hearts and other markings all over my pants that I’d absentmindedly doodled with the bottom of the candle…oops…
So with that, here is the post that was almost never posted…
Like I am 99.99% sure I have mentioned previously, I mostly wrote my Christmas letter for this year back in mid-October…and then in mid to late November I completely deleted the file because there were things written into the letter that just didn’t feel genuine anymore…
…and now I regret that because I know the beginning of the letter was excellent and a lot of the letter is still very relevant. This is not going to be that flowery Christmas letter, but is going to discuss some of the things that would have been there (just potentially in a less positive light, because while there were definitely some incredible things in the year, there was also a lot of pain mixed into that picture.
I don’t remember exactly how I headlined it, but I know that the original idea came from the title of the song What you can’t forget by Leanna Crawford. Some other lyric about memories or a modified version of a Christmas carol to indicate something regarding memories probably would have been at the top of the page (because the title of the song might have been the inspiration, but it always feels like cheating to use a song title as my own title…). The premise was that 2021 was unforgettable and went month by month talking about things I would (theoretically anyway) never forget about the year.
Things included early in the year for example were getting to be the primary preceptor for a student to not only be able to build a relationship, but to be able to design the experience however I wanted to meet the student’s interests and goals, which was incredible. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely also love being preceptor for a day, or even precepting the same students for a month, but not having anyone else defining what they want the students to learn or how they want the experience to be structured is incredible. I was like this is what I was made for. I always had felt like I enjoyed education and was told how good I was at it, but then a lot of the “education” tasks I ended up with were so not my thing it made me really doubt whether education was really something I liked or in which I had any talent…and this showed me that education doesn’t have to look for me like it does for anyone else, and that I really was a good teacher – I just don’t thrive in the classroom setting. Which is a little funny since the classroom used to be the only place anyone really heard me speak…but also makes sense because it is a very different dynamic being the center of attention in a classroom than being a student in a classroom…
And the February memory was seeing the results of my growth in self-advocacy…which is a skill that my PGY-1 worked incredibly hard to push me into, and my PGY-2 wished I hadn’t learned…as it turns out, even if they state to the contrary, some people do not actually want to know if there are modifiable factors that are currently hindering your progress.
The biggest thing I was writing about in this letter though really centered around imposter syndrome…more specifically, breaking free of imposter syndrome.
There are a lot of reasons I was doing PGY-2. And I am not going to say they weren’t valid. I think a lot of the reasons I was listing when asked were not just things I believed or things I’d been fed as reasons, but really were the truth about why I was doing it…but…in reflection I realized they were not really the entire reason or even the main reason I was doing it.
My career objective has remained steady since early elementary school with the small exception of the fact that as an elementary school-er I was absolutely certain which hospital I was going to work at (reality check, having a specific hospital as a goal is not a good goal…and also at this point in my career that particular hospital I am not sure is even somewhere I would take a position if it were offered to me…it isn’t on my never list, but it also isn’t on my list of top choices). I mean, also there was a significant period of time during which I wasn’t really sure I actually had the phone skills to be a nicu pharmacist, because from what I’d seen the NICU required more phone skills than the PICU or the ED, but the NICU was always somewhere I felt really drawn to…and in reality after more experience, I think the NICU probably doesn’t actually have more phone requirements than PICU, and in terms of difficult conversations, the ED is probably the worst though perhaps not the most frequent…
But what hasn’t remained steady is my intended path…unfortunately, at the point I reached graduation, that intended path included residency…and I did not match in phase I. And I did not match in phase II. And I was not offered a position after applying in the scramble.
I went from seeing myself as I had been described as “going to be an incredible pediatric pharmacist just like me only better” and having a “bright future” or “headed towards great things” to feeling like I wasn’t good enough. The words that stood out were the ones spoken in my first year schedule-planning meeting that I was never going to make it into third year. (Spoiler alert: I made it…). The words that stood out were the ones spoken in my third year by a counselor that reminded me I was never going to be wanted. I wasn’t going to make it as a pharmacist. (Spoiler alert: I found an excellent hospital that decidedly did want me, and even selected me over applicants who were not new graduates).
But ending up in a job many people would love to have even after completion of residency wasn’t enough to overcome the feeling that had set in that I wasn’t enough, and probably the fact that it was supposedly a great position fueled the imposter syndrome – why should someone who isn’t good enough for residency have this position where they wanted a residency trained pharmacist?
So eventually I did a residency. And I felt a lot of imposter syndrome. I wasn’t a brand new pharmacist. Why was I doing this? To me, why wouldn’t I be doing this?
And people had said that when you’re not a new graduate you aren’t as good at being in learning mode, so I felt like probably I wasn’t good enough at being a resident either…(and to be fair, I think at the beginning of the year there may have been some people questioning whether I was going to be able to make the transition, but a lot of it was the challenge of being in a brand new location in the country and a new hospital system while also having a lot of stressors outside of the job itself to contend with…and really I think that period of doubt was really short-lived for everyone except me).
And you know what might come after PGY-1? That’s right, PGY-2. So clearly to get past the imposter syndrome I needed PGY-2. It felt like that was going to be the first “normal” part of my career path and then I would be confident and know that I was an awesome pharmacist and I would have a great job and never look back and doubt myself again…
As it turns out, that is not exactly how things went. In the interview process the PGY-2 I matched with seemed good…but within a month of matching there were red flags that I was trying to ignore as I finished up my PGY-1 and got ready to move somewhere new. And I kept those blinders on for a long time. I thought I could get the good aspects of the program and just try to avoid the problematic bits…but eventually it became clear that the fit was not good and I couldn’t fix it and it was time to move on…
But to be honest, I don’t think PGY-2, even if I had been in a program that supported my learning, would have really done what I wanted it to do. Would I have excelled in taking care of patients, yes – I’ve done that everywhere I’ve gone. Would I have grown in my communication and advocacy skills in a program invested in my learning, yes. But would even the perfect program have taken away the imposter syndrome? Well…I want to say yes, but I kind of suspect the answer is no.
At first I didn’t see that. I felt like all the progress I had achieved and the support people had poured into me was lost. I felt like without that last missing puzzle piece I was never going to be good enough and now I wasn’t sure how to find that last piece. It didn’t feel fair to the people who had supported me in gaining the skills I had gained to that point…but then my perspective shifted. I began to believe the people telling me this didn’t have to be a negatively defining moment in my career. I believed the people who told me I was an incredible pharmacist. I believed my PGY-2 RPD who told me that she had no concerns about my clinical skills and knew I had the knowledge needed to care for my patients safely and effectively. Long story short, I believed that I had value. I believed that I was good enough. I think it took people caring and pointing to my years of success as a pharmacist who was beating the odds and excelling at a time when I felt like my path was irreparably broken for me to finally see that the people who had been cheering me on all along were right. I was a good pharmacist. And I didn’t need those extra letters on a paper to prove it to myself. From what I have seen there are definitely people who need that extra guided time to successfully be a pharmacist, but that wasn’t why I was there, and in retrospect, that hadn’t ever been what I *really* needed. I am so incredibly thankful that I was able to end up in a situation where I could meet my goal even if meeting the goal didn’t happen the way I planned for it to happen.
And I feel like step two in solidifying this lesson and not letting it just go by the wayside the next time things got hard was when I went to a residency open house. The RPD was describing from her perspective the difference between a PGY-1 and a PGY-2. She said that a PGY-1 was about learning how to be a pharmacist, and a PGY-2 was about learning to practice confidently, and shaping communication styles. And I realized I came into PGY-1 knowing how to be a pharmacist. I did use my year to grow in my confidence, recognize my competence, and enhance my communication skills. So while on paper I might not technically have a PGY-2, I did have the PGY-2 experience.
So yeah…all that to say, the most important part of my Christmas letter was about beating imposter syndrome…and while I can’t say that I have never again let the doubt creep in, the doubt doesn’t get to be the leading player anymore.
Completely unrelated to my Christmas letter, but recently in particular people have said they are proud of my dedication to finding the right job for me…and I mean, I appreciate the compliment, but it also has left me just a little bit confused…like was there another option I missed where I just don’t have a job and just live off of hopes and prayers for the rest of my life? Or where a new job was going to just fall into my lap? Like I don’t really see what alternative I had besides doing exactly what I was doing…
Another thing I’ve learned about myself is that I actually really like cooking. I thought I just liked eating, but it turns out the creative side of my brain really likes figuring out how to put things together to make something new…like today I used potato, squash, onion, black beans, taco and chili seasoning, and part of a block of cheddar cheese to make some food. The intent in my head was for it to be like a nacho style dish with the potato functioning like chips. Instead, it ended up being a dip for actual chips, but it was so much fun to just create something, and it turned out delicious…I’m not really a use a recipe kind of person which is fine until I want to recreate something and can’t because who knows what was in there…like the carrot cake I made last month. It was amazing but I wasn’t kidding when I told people I had no idea what was in there beyond carrots and flour…I did kind of use multiple recipes as a basis for the types of ingredients I should include and cooking instructions, but I didn’t actually follow a recipe or even really measure things…it was basically a that looks like the right consistency so let’s see what happens kind of thing…will I go back to eating almost the same things every day once I am back in a more typical schedule and not obtaining as much of my food from buy nothing/craigslist/other alternative sources, maybe, but I’m hoping maybe some of the joy in cooking will last, because I know variety is probably good for me nutritionally 🙂
And it is time for this post to be over because I am hungry and because I have things to do…except I don’t know if one of those things is posting this because I am having second thoughts about how honest and real this was…so just watch this sit in the drafts folder for years until it gets deleted…
A journey through trauma & triumph 