“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
— Baruch Spinoza
It’s 10:00 p.m. I just got home from a long, but awesome day at the hospital on the psychiatry consultation liaison service. Tired. Hungry. Will keep this short and to the point. How did my day go?
Well, it started out like any ordinary day on call. Walk to the hospital. Take some photos along the way. Grab a large coffee and “two eggs on a roll” from the cart man outside the hospital. Got sign out from the overnight resident. Didn’t have any pages so did practice PRITE (Psychiatry Resident In Training Exam) questions. Ate a lunch from my favorite salad joint outside in the sunshine with another resident and my partner, Micah, who decided to come visit me.
Paged for a consult. Decisional capacity for an elderly woman who needed a procedure. She lacked capacity.
Then, it was slow again. More PRITE questions. Then a few pages from the inpatient psychiatry unit. Patient needs PRN. Meds need to be renewed.
Then, it was slow again. More PRITE questions. Then I decided that my brain was fried from questions, so opened up the book that I keep trying to finish, which I should have finished by now. Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning.” I HIGHLY recommend this book. To anyone. And everyone. It inspired me. It lit my brain on fire. Above quote was quoted in the book. The book centers around a story told by Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who was in a nazi concentration camp. The basic premise is that humans cannot avoid suffering, but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward.
Minutes before my shift was to end, got paged from the CCU. Decisional capacity for a patient to leave AMA. The patient turned out to be acutely agitated and aggressive. He tried to punch me, I ducked. A very long story short, he was medicated. He lacked decisional capacity. His docs were glad to have my help.
As I was about to leave the hospital, I received a page from the unit. “Patient received her HIV test results. Nurses cannot give the results, you must come, doc.” It turns out that she had tested negative. I took her into her room and gave her the news. She hugged me. She jumped up and down. She thanked me. We talked about her life and staying on a good path. I felt like a rockstar for doing absolutely nothing. It was amazing.
I then signed out to the incoming resident. As I walked home, I called my grandmother and talked to her for the duration of my 20-minute walk home.
Saw the beginnings of the Labor Day/West Indian Carnival Parade this weekend. Folks sipping Coronas on their stoops. Men and women getting their hair and nails done. Police responding to an inebriated and agitated man on the street. A Jehovah’s Witness trying to give me literature. A cart man selling gyros to my neighbor. The man who collects recyclable containers from my trash for money (I said hello). Checking my mail.
The long and short of it? I love my job. I love my neighborhood. I love the fact that I do not have to go into work tomorrow.
Life Lesson Learned Today: The capacity to endure endless suffering is what provides us with the capacity to enjoy endless happiness. My life and job allow me to experience both, and for that I am grateful.
Photos: 1) “Sticks” gathered beside a tree, post-hurricane, taken on my walk to work. 2) The sign outside the room where I spent most of my day.
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