....and I'm Not Done Yet

Over the last 18 months, my classmates and I have joked a lot about making t-shirts we should wear to broadcast the latest higher-educational atrocity being thrust upon us.  We, a bunch of innocent (riiiiiight) graduate students who just wanted to learn things so we could help change the world for the better (forget better....for the best), were endlessly exhausted, and almost endlessly frustrated by - dare I say these words because I thought I'd left them behind when I left corporate bumblingdom - by "process", and "busywork", and "whatthehelldoIneedtodothatfor?".

That last one takes up both the front and back of a shirt, by the way.  So actually, do a lot of the others we came up with. 

To vent about my graduate programs's seemingly disproportionate emphasis on evidence-based practice we created "Ipaid$60KforthiseducationandallIgotwasthislousyrandomcontrolledtrial", and, "Sample Size Matters", and, "EFFicacy my a*%", and, "AnalyzeTHIS". 

Aside from the first few months of cadaver lab, we were disappointed by what felt like few opportunities to lay our hands on patients (okay, cadavers are not patients) as early on as we wanted to, because we were drowning in theoretical framework exercises, which led to "whatthehelldoIneedtodothatfor?Ishouldjustbetreatingpatients!", and....uh, well that one was pretty much it.  I can't begin to count the number of times we uttered that.  So, touche.

But I'd be doing an injustice if that's all I wrote about right now. 

Because we all finished our coursework in mid-December.  Actually, I'd say we all ACED our graduate careers that week.  And importantly, we did it with our collective pure intents, intact. 

I'm still processing this last year and a half - yeh kids I'm old, it takes me longer! - but I've begun to realize that the educational requirements that felt empty and life-sucking and "distracting from what really matters" and, time-consuming to the point I felt like "I've taken eternal vows of silence and chastity" (THAT t-shirt, I'll never wear), are going to help make me, and all of us, kick-ass therapists.

Yup!  Don't argue with me young Jedis.  With the kind of perspective that can only come from time spent reconnecting with my family over Combat Monopoly (8-to-15-year-old boys are vicious), I can see that everything I cursed before, was part of a large and elegant plan to spit out....kick-ass therapists.  Because NOW, my classmates and I...

• Know medicine.  Medical procedures.  Medical documentation.  Medical terminology.  Medical diagnoses and treatments.  ALL of them.  Presentations of symptoms that reveal medical conditions....ALL, of them.  Clinical medicine.  Clinical psychiatry.  Killed us in different ways.  We aced them.  How great is that?
• Know bones and muscles and tendons and ligaments and bones and tendons and bones and muscles and muscles and ligaments and muscles and.....
• Know neurology.  We've held brains in our hands!  And spinal cords!  We know what each centimeter is, and does!  We know what happens if those amazing structures are assaulted (I'm not talking about brain cells killed due to Hofbrauhaus, my children).  How great is that?!
• Know kinesiology and movement and biomechanics (x 3).  And GUS.  Don't Go Too Far Down Freakout Road.  Don't Disrespect the Deltoid.  Radio Silence.  Tweaky Thing.  And....(painfully long silence)..........Whatever.  'Nuff said.  How great is Gus?!
• Know kids.  We have a toolbox to help them.  Ken was high-maintenance but I'm glad he taught us.  And we won't have to see him again.  How great is that?! 
• Know how to manage a freakishly slippery 6-foot Ken doll.  As if that'll ever happen in real life.  Sweet Jesus.  See previous post!!
• Know how to @#*^&ing write a damn $*%$ing reimbursable treatment plan and goals. How great is........uh, okay.
• Know how to treat patients.  Thank about it a minute.  We really actually do.  Do we know everything?  HELL no, but we know enough and, because we care and we want to, we'll never stop learning.  How fabulously great is that!!!

This was simultaneously, hell and heaven.

A lot of this hit home for me over the last few days, when word came that a friend's wife - who is my age - was in the ICU, with a brain aneurysm.  The hearts and stomachs of those of us who know them sunk, and then turned inside out.  These are vibrant, beautiful people.  They've been wonderful to me and to many others over the years.  So prayers, and calls of support began.  And then the spanking new therapist in me realized that this is the patient, and the family, that I'll be working with during my hospital rotation this spring.  Any of my classmates or I could be working with them.  People unexpectedly in a critical situation through no fault (and certainly no desire) of their own, clearly scared but gracious and holding a strong front, probably wondering...what now, what next, what about two months from now. 

This is one of the reasons my grad-mates and I will have spent two years grinding through 80-hour weeks, and groan-y t-shirt slogans.

None of the people we'll be treating will want to be there.  In treatment.  Because they were busy doing what they were doing before something unexpected happened.  Either suddenly, or in a slow-mo covertly sequential kind of way, or in utero.  Or however bodies and minds become injured. 

Luckily we'll want to be there, my classmates and I.  Because we might be able to help them get back to what they were doing before something unexpected happened.  Or to steer them onto a new track.  Which one depends on a lot of things. 

But we know that we want to help.  That's why we willingly paid a boatload, for those insane t-shirts.  And my latest?  It says "Imaybeold(er)butI'mnotdoneyet". 

Hope I never am.