Stilettos

Only a woman would wear a pair of stilettos that will inevitably leave her feet two painful blistered wrecks, simply because they are pretty and feminine and make her legs look svelte. (For that reason and of course for the wonderful foot massage her man will give her in the evening!) I worked with an Obs and Gynae reg who insisted that wearing high heels on her overnight calls was more comfortable than the very unflattering flat crocs the rest of us shuffled around in. 

Women are good at ignoring pain or just setting it aside, if there is a worthwhile reason for doing so. It may be the lovely way that your new heels compliment your outfit. Or a more selfless reason: encouraging your kids to spread their wings and leave the nest so they may grow and develop while you cry your heart out because your babies are gone.

I've always been under the impression that if one indulges in emotional pain you give it more power. I thought the best way to deal with hurt and disappointment is to try not to recognise its existance. Pain and sadness is part of life but there's no point wallowing in it. Instead of allowing sadness to affect my person, I would concentrate on getting on with life. My masterplan was not to ever get hurt by simply not allowing myself to FEEL the hurt. I thought that a person who breaks down in a flood of tears over something non-earth-shattering was just being self-destructive by indulging in the bad emotions.

Then I heard about a study conducted by a group of psychologist that unequivocally proved suppressing negative emotions is dramatically more damaging to the body, in a physical sense, than feeling the hurt and crying is. Participants in the study were hooked up to a number of monitors, measuring pulse rate, blood pressure etc. Couples were asked to discuss topics that both parties felt strongly about. These topics evoked strongly negative emotions in both. One of the parties would be asked to suppress all feelings about the topic and remain calm. The other party was instructed to react in accordance with their feelings on the topic. Then they would alternate roles.

The heart rate monitor beeped like crazy and the BP went through the roof every time a participant was suppressing his negative emotions. The cardiovascular derangements lasted longer in the outwardly controlled person that in his "emotional" counterpart who experienced only a brief surge in stress markers with a quick return to normal levels as his emotions were allowed a release.

It appears that the human body is equipped to deal with negative feelings by expressing them. Getting "worked-up", sad or angry over something and really FEELING and expressing the emotions is the healthiest, most natural way of dealing with stress. I was quite shocked, to be honest, to learn that my survival strategy was causing me more long-term hurt than protection from pain, as I'd thought.

So, since I learned of this remarkable study that disproved one of my core principles, I am no longer avoiding my stilettos. I now wear them with the full knowledge that my feet may be blistered by lunch time. If my feet should hurt I'll admit to it and I might even cry about it. Does this strategy seem a little pointless to you? The point is that I'd get to enjoy my legs looking lovely and svelte which wouldn't have been the case if I'd hidden my feet in the protective recesses of my old crocs.

Words

A few of my favourite things... So much meaning lies in a single word. As you read these lovely words allow them to carry you away to a treasured memory or a sweet dream.

Felicity ~ pleasantness                                                  

Ebullience ~ bubbling enthusiasm

Gambol ~ to skip or leap about joyfully

Mellifluous ~ sweet sounding     

Ethereal ~ invisible but detectable          

Halcyon ~ happy, sunny, care-free

Dalliance ~ a brief love affair       

Inglenook ~ a cozy nook by the heath    

Buoyant ~ hopeful               

Luxuriant ~ opulent, lush     

Petrichor ~ the smell of earth after the rain

Serendipity ~ finding something nice while looking for something else

(Picture down-loaded from the blog fanciful-fanciful.blogspot.com)

Perennial rookie

I was still a student when a school friend of mine banked her first adult salary as an actuarial assistant. When I finally graduated and reached the dubiously honourable rank of intern, she was already an actuarial consultant, in charge of large contracts.
In medicine you're never certain of whether you've actually made it. When I was adressed as "doctor" on my first call as intern and I had to make potentially life and death decisions as is expected of a real doctor, I assumed the nurse had addressed someone standing behind me. The community and one's family think you've really achieved something great if you're a doctor. There is still much respect for the profession.
Amongst other doctors though, an uncompromising ranking system is strictly observed.
As a meagre little intern, you might just feel a bit chuffed with yourself for making a good diagnosis or performing a procedure well. Your students might gather around you, eager to see the signs you've picked up in your wisdom. Be assured though when you present the case to the registrar, it will transpire that you missed the most important sign and the patient is sick from something completely different than what you had just been describing to the students. A good thing the sister knows best than to trust your diagnoses: she waited for the reg to see the patient before administering the meds. Your prescription would have been completely inappropriate.
But soon the house of cards come down again. The registrar who appeared so knowledgeable and accomplished the night before, is brought to his knees by the consultant on the next morning's ward round. As it turns out, the reg himself had failed to address a vital aspect of the patient's management. What's more, and a seemingly and infinitely graver mistake is that the reg cannot quote the specific study which proves that the patient should have been managed differently from the way the reg elected to manage him. This entire exchange between the registrar and consultant occurs on the grand ward round, in front of the patient (!), the students, interns and other registrars. The reg feels so stupid and wonders whether he shouldn't just go straight back to med school, or possibly quit medicine all together because he obviously knows nothing at all. Now he has to return to the patient and keep treating him. The patient, having heard the entire exchange, believes his doctor is useless and doesn't trust him anymore.
Don't make the mistake of thinking you've finally made it once you yourself are the consultant. Your colleagues are bound to raise their eye brows at some ofthe diagnoses you make, and some of your treatment plans. As you become more specialised in your field your focus narrows and as a consequence you become less adept at treating diseases you don't deal with daily. You might not be able to answer a general medical question posed to you at a dinner party. Your friends don't understand the subtle nuances of your speciality. They just think its great that you're a doctor and as such must know everything.
While my non-medical friends are settled in their careers, safe in the knowledge that they know what they're doing and can, with relative certainty, expect the same results from similar situations on a daily basis, I keep riding the rollercoaster of knowledge. Each day brings the chance of feeling completely out of my depth, too junior and unsure. The only certainty is that one doesn't outgrow that feeling.