My Random Life | Elbrecht's Corpuscle

When I Grow Up

Posted on November 15, 2016 by Elbrecht

One of the most common questions I have received in Residency has been, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I have heard it from every level of the medical machine in which I have existed for the last two-and-a-half years.

Attending physicians have asked me.

Nurses in the ICU.

Respiratory therapists in the ED.

Janitorial staff in the hallway.

Pharmacists in the trauma bay.

Senior residents on a multitude of services.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

It has been the most infuriating question I have received in Residency; I’ve been asked it more times than I can count.

And it is not as if the question has been some derivative thereof; the wording has been exactly that.

It hasn’t been “When you have finished your medical training, is there a specific focus you would like to have?”

Or “what made you decide to choose Family Medicine?”

Grown adults have asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I have grey hairs in my beard. If that weren’t a dead giveaway that I’m an adult, I don’t know what is…

For all except one of the occurrences, I have politely responded with something about my desire to provide primary care in the Behavioral Health patient population.

In the lone outlier, I made reference to my age, as I was clearly older than the person asking me and unbelievably sleep deprived, which kept me from overriding my primordial desire to psychologically eviscerate them.

I apologized after my verbal carnage ended.

My ego has been kept in check for most of Residency, mostly due to my need to survive without making a multitude of personal and professional enemies, despite my innate desire to respond with an exasperated,

“Do you realize how condescending of a question that is?”

It’s not meant to be a condescending question. Perhaps it has simply infiltrated the ice-breaking vernacular of the medical field.

Perhaps it is appropriate, as a fair number of medical school graduates are still coming straight from an undergraduate campus without an iota of life experience with which to share their patients, much less their colleagues.

Maybe I look young? But I know I don’t. I’ve seen pictures of me before I grew up. And I certainly don’t look as young as I did when I was 24.

When I showed up to the first day of Residency, I was 34 years old.

While it’s true that every single senior resident in my Residency had a far superior grasp on medical knowledge and patient care than me, a vast majority were four to six years younger than me.

Embedded in that seemingly trivial age difference, are the fruits of my labor.

If I conservatively look back on the six years from when I moved to Boston at 24 and when I turned 30, I wouldn’t know where to start in order to describe the multitude of amazing things I experienced.

Perhaps I sound like an incredible asshole by saying that. You may not be wrong. But for the most part it is true.

I came to Residency with an open mind about being taught by men and women with far fewer life experiences from which to draw upon than me.

The converse could not be said to be true.

For each successful completion of one year of Residency, it is as if a Purple Heart has been awarded by the Surgeon General.

Without a year under your belt, the Medical Degree for which you worked so hard was like a Participation Certificate a child would receive for making an exploding volcano at the Science Fair.

Respect is based solely on your capability to perform the medical task set before you as a resident; everything else about you be damned.

It didn’t matter if every other person outside of the medical field who knows you would explain with awe in regards to what you had created for yourself; no one within medicine could care less.

Medicine is a hierarchical beast. It has been that way for the past century since the dawn of modern medicine.

I am not perfect. I have fallen into that trap a few more times than I would care to admit during Residency, but I believe for the most part I have awarded everyone of my colleagues a Purple Heart for just making it to Residency.

Surviving the four years of Medical school without becoming disenfranchised, burned out, or overwhelmed by the cesspool of obstacles inherent in medical training, is an incredible achievement unto itself.

So each time I am asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, the part of my amygdala that houses my Pride, is set aflame.

I can imagine a PET scan of my brain glow bright red as each neuron would be firing at full tilt.

A sparkling fireworks display of my life flashes before my eyes:

I grew up a long time ago.

I’ve been taking care of myself for the past 20 years.

I worked at the #5 University in the world. I attended the #6 University in the world.

I worked at the #3 Hospital in the US.

I’ve presented my own research at Columbia University.

I traveled all over the world with an amazing woman at my side.

I have lived in Boston, Chicago, Miami, and New York City.

I’ve sat on the Board of Directors of a Non-profit organization.

I spent two years living on an island in the Caribbean.

I have grown up.

I did all of these things before taking one breath as a physician.

Each of them was critical in my development. Each of them have allowed me to make connections with people all over the world.

Each of them brought me closer to my patients and colleagues than I ever could have otherwise.

And my pride, which allowed me to overcome every barrier I found in front of me while transitioning from a 24-year-old Midwesterner to a 36-year-old world traveled physician, can’t help but take offense to the assertion that I have yet to grow up.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I want to be who I already am. I’m comfortable in knowing that I have been fortunate to live a charmed life; a life that I created, despite getting knocked down a few times.

I don’t want to grow up.

I did that years ago.

As I transition from a Third Year Resident to an Attending physician, the number of times I have been asked the aforementioned question has picked up steam.

Each time, my Id screams, my Ego broods, and my SuperEgo kindly responds: “I plan to provide primary care to the Behavioral Health population.”

And now that I have my first job after Residency lined up, contract signed, and start date on the calendar, I can respond with an actual job title.

But I still wonder if people will expect to me grow up. Unknowingly overlooking everything that brought us to the moment where they felt it appropriate to ask:

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

cast away

Posted on August 14, 2016 by Elbrecht

I awoke to pitch black darkness.

The voices were close. And interspersed with laughter.

My cerebral cortex quickly determined the voices were causing each other to laugh; and coming from two lone individuals.

They seemed friendly.

But I wanted to scream at them for awakening me from the depths of my restless slumber; yet I hadn’t quite determined if they were real.

I wasn’t even certain where I was.

As I stared into the darkness surrounding me, my eyes began to accommodate as the voices continued in their laughter.

My body felt heavy. My mind was confused.

Instinctively, I bolted straight up from my position; I realized I was lying in bed. Unaccustomed to its small size, I nearly tumbled to the ground.

In the midst of the darkness, my neurons began flashing in an electrical brilliance, trying to understand where in person, place, and time I was.

My right arm reached across my body as the fog in my mind abruptly lifted.

The restless slumber I had been inhabiting came to a crashing halt, as my thumb flicked the push-button on my phone to reveal “2:07PM”.

In that moment, my hippocampus determined I was located in the 2nd floor call room of the hospital.

A cataclysmic series of events brought me to be located in person, place, and time in the 2nd floor call room of the hospital on that July afternoon at 2:07PM.

Twelve nights had passed since I was shipwrecked on Night Float alone.

The plan, as it had been outlined to me several weeks earlier, would revolve around me undertaking a never-before-attempted solo excursion on Night Float.

My immediate fears had been squelched by promises of rearranged schedules and responsibilities, a junior resident as an occasional wingman, and deeply bound faith by my superiors that I was the only physician who could succeed in this plan.

My Ego led me to believe I could handle it.

But on Night Float, or “Black Betty” as I like to call her, all plans go quickly to hell.

Between the hours of 7PM and 7AM, a major metropolitan hospital is unlikely to have significant periods of down time. Instead, it becomes the breeding ground for Chaos Incarnate.

Which is directly where I found myself for the first 2 and ½ weeks of my third year of Residency.

Alone with Black Betty.

Nestled in her bosom.

cast away.

And longing for rescue.

By the beginning of my second week of Night Float as a PGY-3, my confidence had been rattled, but not deteriorated, like a rock face in the ocean having succumbed to centuries of waves bearing down it.

PGY-2 had been tortuous, but while working so many random weekend days and nights had crippled my life outside of the hospital, they had shaped my abilities as a physician, both in and outside of the hospital.

Ultimately, nothing could have prepared me to be cast away.

Another senior resident had been assigned to work on Night Float with me originally, but that had fallen through due to her unforeseen circumstances.

Then a thorough review of the remaining options turned up the following: unleash Magneto into the depths of Chaos Incarnate alone and see what happens.

{Note: I was assigned a junior resident as a “life vest” for a few of the nights, but he had to leave by midnight, like a mirage, to leave me alone, carrying 4 pagers, anxiously awaiting the next sunrise.}

At times over those 2 and ½ weeks, Magneto conquered the tasks set before him. But many a times, Black Betty rattled him to his core.

The toll of spiritual, emotional, professional, personal, and existential fatigue came to a head on the day I awoke at 2:07PM in the hospital call room

I found myself there not because I longed for the sweet caress of a crisply dry-cleaned set of linens, but because I had left my apartment the previous night in a fugue state.

Said fugue state resulted in me dropping my keys through the hole in the bottom of my book bag; they came to a clattered resting place in my building’s entryway.

I was none the wiser because NIN’s “Terrible Lie” was blaring through my ear buds.

Only when I rummaged through my book bag for an hour the following morning, proceeded to walk to my apartment hoping to find the keys lying on the sidewalk like a trail of bread crumbs, and had left two babbling and pleading voice messages on my landlord’s answering machine, did I begrudgingly saunter back to the hospital.

So when I awoke to the jovial laughter of two newly reunited long-lost colleagues, I hoped to find a message on my phone indicating the safe recovery of my highly-sought after keys.

Alas, at 2:07PM, there were no messages on my phone.

Nor were there any messages at 6:30PM when the melodic alarm emanating from my iPhone jostled me awake again. My mind was still cloudy. My body was still aching.

But Black Betty wanted another go.

So I meandered from the call room into the locker room, proceeded to strip down from my wrinkled scrubs and hit the showers.

The searing ice cold water streaming from the shower head caused my body to shiver, reminding me of my morning showers in Dominica, but I managed to cleanse the fine film of solitude from each and every square inch of my being.

I dried off, turned my socks and boxer-briefs inside out, and slowly pulled on a new set of pressed green scrubs.

As I passed the half-length mirror in the locker room, I quickly assessed my physical form and found my two-week-old beard to be quite fitting a man so unfamiliar with his surroundings.

I wondered if I would ever be found…

{lost and found}

Exercising the Demons

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Elbrecht

Scott and I walked into his apartment a bit lighter in the pockets and mildly sleep-deprived. The drive back to Los Angeles hadn’t been more than 4 hours, mostly through the barren desert highway, but it had given us plenty of time to reminisce on the previous 24 hours.

His roommate greeted our return with, “Hey, where did you guys stay in Las Vegas?”

Scott replied, “Oh, just some low-class Motel 6 off the strip.”

She pointed quizzically at the newscast on the TV screen. “You mean that Motel 6?”

We replied simultaneously, “Yeah, why? What’s going on?”

“A few hours ago they caught the sniper there who had been killing people in Ohio.”

I looked at Scott. He looked at me with the same look of disbelief.

We had unknowingly had an uncomfortably close brush with infamy.

The “270 Sniper” had been caught at our hotel in Las Vegas a mere 60 minutes after we departed.

We had spent the previous 24 hours gambling, drinking, and wandering the streets of Sin City. He had been hiding in our Motel 6, law enforcement hot on his trail.

So when Scott and I recently planned a return trip to Las Vegas twelve years later, we decided to class it up a bit, avoid the Riff Raff, and stay on the strip.

There was no telling whom we would encounter this time around, but we actively sought to avoid any serial killers at The Motel 6.

Scott and I have known each other since 8th grade. His and my parents shared the odd predilection for sending their children to a brand new school housed in a warehouse in the industrial sector of Wichita, KS.

Yes, we went to school in a warehouse. Not like something out of a Philip K. Dick novel, where we would by psychologically programmed to become superhuman automatons.

But more like a once-vibrant warehouse in the process of being transformed into a new age educational experience where grades were in flux and Love was bountiful.

Actually, Love was very bountiful there, as the up-start school was housed in a Love Box Company warehouse, likely something Walter Love, the company’s founder, would have beamed with pride about.

While there, Scott and I both were indoctrinated in Logic, Composition, Biology, and Roller Hockey {in reverse order of importance}.

Despite the humble beginnings of our friendship, in a warehouse school in a dusty midwest metropolis, the lessons we learned were paramount to our unlikely professional ascensions. [Except for the Roller Hockey. I don’t really use that for anything.]

Our friendship started over twenty years ago in a warehouse.

Then we managed to avoid a psychopathic serial killer 10 years later.

Now, only a few weeks ago, we found ourselves re-united in Sin City again.

In the midst of Residency, it has been hard for me to “catch my breath” at times. The completion of every shift, every day in the office, and every licensure task, brings on more things to do, more days in the office, more shifts to be worked.

It seems inescapable.

But that’s why it’s called Residency. In order to be trained properly and efficiently, you are seemingly living at the Hospital, in the office, or a desk trying to complete a seemingly endless list of tasks.

Which is why Scott’s suggestion of a reunion in Las Vegas was utterly brilliant. We both needed a breather from our action packed lives.

Over ten years after our brush with infamy, Scott and I are living lives we simply couldn’t have imagined back then. Scott is a successful Healthcare Systems analyst, having completed his PhD at Florida State after marrying a hometown girl, and now resides in our nation’s capitol with a daughter and another one on the way.

I’m me.

We have kept in close touch since our last destination vacation to Sin City, but if the last 10 years taught us anything, it was to upgrade from The Motel 6.

When I made my egress from the plane in Las Vegas on Sunday morning, Scott was there waiting; the mastermind to our 48 hour get-away already had the wheels in motion.

We made our way to the Uber pick-up and our driver quickly made a quick connection, identifying that his grown children live in the same city as me. The small talk was brief, as it only took 5 minutes to reach our destination.

Our destination, the MGM Grand, was a familiar location to Scott, as he had visited Sin City numerous times in the years since our last sojourn together; most typically he arrived with his wife, who would be the Chris Moneymaker to his Phil Hellmuth in a pairing of Poker legends.

But this time, he managed to wrangle a male side-kick, in a Zach Galifianakis in “The Hangover” mold, rather than a Johnny Chan.

At the MGM, Scott managed to finagle an earlier-than-typically-allowed check-in time by not-so-secretively leaving a $50 tip for the concierge. As we calmly and cooly proceeded towards our rooms, I had the feeling our 48 hours of escape in Las Vegas would easily eclipse the 24 hours of chaos we spent there over a decade earlier.

When I landed back in Columbus on Tuesday evening it was nearly midnight. I was exhausted; and sun-burned. And slightly enamored with a woman I met on a plane.

In addition, I was neither psychologically or physiologically prepared to be a physician again in less than 8 hours.

But in Vegas, when the stakes are high, you can either fold or go all-in. I decided to go all-in this time.

We may not have had an indirect brush with infamy like back in 2004, but our 48 hours in Sin City made us hungry for more; just as with the genesis of our friendship, there would likely be more tales to tell.

Must Love Dogs

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Elbrecht

—–

And have an insatiable desire to travel the world.

And have an impregnable faith in God.

All while being close with your family.

…well. How about that. Returning to the midwest could have been the worst choice for my personal life.

—–

Having survived intern year as a Family Medicine Resident, I found my tortuous work schedule having severely handicapped my ability to find a love interest here in Columbus.

Not that I was surprised by this turn-of-events, but I had held out hope I would miraculously run across The love-of-my-life in a Nightcall induced haze while guzzling a Monster at 7AM.

—-

Having delved into the world of on-line dating when I lived in nYc and found one of the loves of my life, I decided to give on-line dating another whirl.

—–

Why-woman-love-man-5

—–

What I have found here in Columbus is a consistent echo that is starkly different than what I discovered in the City that never sleeps.

Must Love Dogs. I do love them; they are man’s best friend. But in the 21st century, they are even more so a woman’s best friend. As I have written before, I love dogs, even grew up with several of them, but for the most part am extremely allergic.

They are woman’s best friend to the point there are now more dogs than children in the US. It seems they are no longer just the stepping stone for newly weds before they have children, but they are actually replacing children.

{Less Kids, More Dogs}

I would guesstimate approximately 1/3 of the women I am “matched” with have a dog.

Ok, that leaves 66%, which is an astronomically high number given the bevy of good-natured, beautiful women here in Ohio; quite the sizeable chunk of women who could be a good “match.”

—–

I want to travel the world. Yeah, me too. But I already did in my 20’s. It was awesome. And I did it with a beautiful woman at my side. Double-awesome.

So I won’t say I’m averse to making some more jaunts around the globe, as I have inumerable places I want to visit before all is said and done (ie: Rio, Sydney, Bangladesh), but I’m not looking for a travel companion.

Or a “partner in crime.” I can hardly control my cantankerousness when I am “matched” with a world-traveler looking for a partner in crime.

—–

There goes another 10% of my on-line dating pool.

{Note: the overlap of women who indicate that I Must Love Dogs and Want to travel the world with a partner in crime approaches 45%.}

Man of God. Hmmm, not so much.

—–

Dante’s Inferno

—–

Enough said.

In the midwest, terribly close to the Bible-belt, being an agnostic/atheist doesnt seem to jive with most people’s thought process.

The “matched” dating pool for me starts painfully tightening. A conservative estimate would eliminate another 25%. Staggeringly, I am down 80% of the women a reputable online dating service has used complex algorithms (I hope) to find me a woman I’d be interested in dating.

On-line Dating

—–

Close with your family. Depends on what you consider close.

As in, spend the holidays with them? Come from an intact nuclear family?

Or concerned I am going to be saddled with an empty-nested mother in the not too distant future?

All topics within the same theme that I actively avoid when going on dates. But inevitably is brought up in the first 10 minutes because reputable women need to know if your parentage suffers from behavioral or economic disturbances.

—–

A final conservative estimate of those four criterion snuffs out an apocalyptic 95% of the single, desirous of having a family, non-smoking, willing to attempt on-line dating, and hopefully mentally intact women within 150 miles of my current location.

—–

Don’t be mistaken though. It’s not as if I have given up hope, given up looking, or straight up given up. I’m on the right side of 40, have a Y chromosome, and recognize patience as one of my best virtues.

But having survived almost half of Residency, it would be nice to find an amazing woman whose life goals and expectations Match mine.

I’ll just have to wait and see what happens…

—–

Must Love Dogs

—–