Cutting into someone’s body requires a certain amount of braggadocio. Everyone wants their surgeon to be confident. There’s no room for simpering vacillation, even though you know much more than the patient how badly it can go. You have to be willing to live with risk and own whatever happens on the table, whether you directly caused it or not.
But the reality is, part-time surgeons can’t afford braggadocio. There probably aren’t many of us out there, precisely because we are in the rare position of living with a constant handicap. When you work with your hands, cognition only goes so far: there is a degree of proficiency gained by sheer hands-on experience, and in that I will always fall short. I have heard cataract surgeons say they feel it when they take a two-week break—I take breaks that last twelve months. I might be lucky to do as many cases in a month as full-timers do in a week.
And so I find myself walking in this place of conscious humility. I recognize that my surgeries radically improve my patients’ lives, that complications are still the exception, that it is probably good to maintain skills that I invested so much training in. But I routinely struggle with dread and anxiety when operating days approach, and at times those feelings seem to outweigh the pleasure of operating, or spill too much into my home life.
And of course, surgeons don’t like to talk about their fears of complications. Discussing our fallibility is really not done. Someone once said in residency, having a complication is like losing your virginity—you want to get it over with, but you don’t want to get a reputation for it.
But what I am learning is that it is possible to walk in this place and allow it to make me a better surgeon and person, rather than let it cripple or paralyze me. It’s hard to describe, even harder to do, but I am grasping it more over the years.
One aspect of walking well in this place is learning how to handle anxiety. It starts with recognizing it, particularly when it spills out in subtle ways like dreams at night or bad moods at home. I then ask myself whether it is pointing me towards any helpful action, and if not, I pray to choose to let it go. What that actually feels like is choosing to believe in God’s sovereignty. In his sovereign goodness, he uses mistakes to help me learn much more effectively than I would have otherwise—or he uses unideal outcomes to work something more important in my patient’s life—but whether I see the reason or not, the fact remains that ultimately, I can’t control everything. And that is okay because I know the God who does.
Another aspect is learning to measure my empathy. My mind would enter so much into the imagined sufferings of my patients, sufferings directly caused by me, that I would be unable to sleep. Why couldn’t I have a job where a mistake resulted in, say, an incorrectly made cup of coffee, rather than blindness? But I’ve come to realize there is an empathy that is healthy, that leads to compassion and kindness—and there is an empathy that is unhealthy, that conflates and distorts reality. The reality is, all of my patients are informed of the risks they face. The reality is, other jobs bear just as difficult responsibilities. The reality is, I don’t know what my patients’ sufferings entail—nor am I required to bear it for them without boundary. I try to reign in my imagination and pray for them instead, because God is the only one who does know and see their experiences, and he is fully able to bear them.
Sometimes God surprises me. This week, I was struggling with some subconscious anxiety. The night before my surgeries, something nearly magical happened while I was tucking in the kids. It was as if I could suddenly see how precious each of my children were, in a way that pierced through the haze of routine. Each of the kids were particularly sweet in their own way: Esme in her chubby hug and request to be kissed, Ellie in her open talkativeness, Eric in his slow smile, Elijah in his wriggly enthusiasm. I just felt simply that God was telling me, this is worth it. Whatever happens in your work because of the choices you’ve made, this is worth it. And I slept well that night.
Whenever I think about this, I think about Jacob, who encountered God and left with a limp. A limp, but a name. And I think, well, if being a humble surgeon means I have to live with a stronger sense of purpose for what I do, a consciousness of weakness that keeps me from pride or makes me more willing to listen or learn, a constant reminder of my limitations and God’s character—then maybe it’s not a bad thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment