Grateful

For a Church that is home no matter where I am, and a faith that gives me consolation and strength every day. For God’s constant presence in my life.

For a family that is all together in Colorado and actually gets along most of the time. For their constant support and love.

For a wonderful man that makes me a better person and helps me grow in holiness. For the opportunity to pursue my vocation, be challenged, and learn how to love better.

For growth and fulfillment in my job, for mostly healthy kids, and for financial stability.

For all my needs being met—a warm house, enough food on the table, my health, recreation—and much more.

For so many abundant blessings in my life.

I am grateful.

Calling names and being called

It has been said, pardon my language, that the worst thing you can call a man is a coward, and the worst thing you can call a woman is a whore. While you may be able to come up with a greater insult for a specific individual, it seems to be mostly true. It has no doubt been the start of many bar fights and cat fights. But why?

What is it about being called a coward that makes men raise their fists, even when they don’t respect the opinion of the offending party? What is it about being called a whore that makes women bristle, even when they know someone is just being catty? Why is that so much worse than being called stupid or fat or ugly or mean?

I may be reading too much into it, but I suspect it’s because those things go against the very nature of what it means to be a man or a woman. And it cuts to the very heart of our fallen nature. Hear me out.

If we’re to believe countless saints (and I’m inclined to), man (as a species, not a gender) is most fully alive when we become the people God has created us to be. If we remember back to the story of Genesis, we can get some idea of what that looks like.

When God created Adam, He “took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” (Gen 2:15). The word for “keep” here is the Hebrew shamar, the same word used when describing the covenant between God and Abraham and how priests would defend the temple. It means to guard over and protect. Then when God gives Adam the animals, and more importantly Eve, these come under his purview to shamar as well. So the responsibility and desire to protect and defend is ingrained in man (gender this time) from the beginning of creation.

What about women? Woman was created from Adam’s very side to be his “helpmate”, a word that I’m sure riles feminists everywhere. But the Hebrew word for helper here is ezer, a word mostly used to describe God in the Old Testament, as one who comes to the aid of, rather than as a subordinate, one who demonstrates power and strength, and therefore has the ability to help. “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). From the very beginning, woman was made to give her strength and self to one man, as a visible sign of the creative and self-giving love of God, in whose image she was made.

Now it’s starting to make more sense why we get so worked up by the words coward and whore. They are contrary to our very nature. Not only that, but they remind us of original sin, of us turning our back on God, and I think on some level, even for nonreligious people, that feels wrong.

When the serpent came to Eve, he played on her insecurity that she couldn’t sit back and receive God’s love, but had to grasp it for herself. She had to give up on Adam’s providing for her and do things for herself, in a sense giving herself away to the most seductive bidder.

And where was Adam? Sure as heck not shamaring his wife, not protecting the garden like he was supposed to be doing. He let evil in, and it cost him paradise.

So now, in this culture where masculinity and femininity are under attack and seem to shift with the daily newsfeeds, no one really even knows what it means to be a man or a woman. Yet deep down, we must still have some idea, or those insults wouldn't hurt so much. We know, intuitively, at our core, that men are to protect and defend. Women, children, the truth, goodness, beauty, all of it. And when they don't, when they act cowardly, they are not being the men God calls them to be. They know it, and they hate being called out on it.

We also know, at our core, that women were created to receive love, to bring their special gifts to the service of their loved ones, to trust God to provide, and--if married--to trust our husbands as well. When we start grasping at love or desires ourselves, when we abandon our commitments for the sake of things that are "a delight to the eyes"(Gen 3:6), we lose our dignity as women. We are no longer able to be a "helpmate" to anyone; we lose our strength and power. And when someone accuses us of that, even in a superficial way, we feel it.

So more than not calling people unnecessary names, I hope you take away from this a renewed sense that it is possible to recover our greatness. It is possible to become the men and women God created us to be, and in doing that, we will be fully alive and bring glory to Him. We just have to go back to the beginning.

How to deal with the doctor in your life

Everybody has bad days at work, I won't argue with that. But in medicine, it's a little bit different. We can’t come home and vent our frustrations with just anybody. As part of the training I did this week as a peer supporter, we were discussing coping mechanisms, like talking things over with friends and family. Specifically non-doctor friends and family. The facilitator asked, "What does it look like when you go to a family member, or a friend, someone outside medicine, and they are able to help you cope?"

We all looked down at our papers, back up at her, thought about it. Finally, one of the anesthesiologists spoke up. "It's never happened. I always get blank stares, or horrified looks at what we deal with every day."

We all nodded. No one disagreed.

I’m sure it’s similar with fields like the military, first responders, law enforcement—where they see things the rest of us can only imagine. While any non-medical person could sympathize with a parent or patient yelling at me, an incompetent co-worker, too many demands on my time, or any number of other hassles of the day to day, they can’t understand what it’s like when a kid you sent home to get better comes back horrifically sick and has permanent damage. They can’t understand what it’s like when you have to tell a parent their child has cancer. They can’t understand when making a mistake really is life or death.

I’m fortunate to have two sisters in medicine and a host of friends from residency, as well as supportive co-workers that I can go to when I have a rough day. But the truth is that most of my family and friends aren’t that helpful in getting past those adverse events. It sounds harsh, I know, but it’s true. It’s not their fault, and I know they love us and want to support us.

With that in mind I’d like to offer a few tips for you non-medical people who know and love us doctors (God bless you).

Please don’t be offended. We still love you, and we appreciate that you’re not in medicine because that can often be a much needed distraction (when we want that, you’re the perfect person!). Just because we don’t come to you first about work stuff doesn’t mean we don’t value your support.

Don’t try to understand the medicine. It can be even more stressful to have to explain the jargon and physiology when we’ve had a bad event. The details of it are not as important as the fact that it makes us feel awful, so if we do talk about it (and we may not), don’t interrupt when you don’t know what a word means, or miss a piece of the story. Don’t try to figure out what it was that went wrong and offer suggestions. Just listen and offer a simple, “That sucks, I’m sorry.”

Don’t compare. This one seems unfair, I know, like my problems are bigger than yours. In general, I want to hear about your good days and your bad days. And when I have a story about a crazy parent, go ahead and one-up me with your crazy client story. When I have a co-worker driving me crazy, please tell me you do too, so it doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world. But when I have a truly bad outcome, it’s just not helpful to hear about how much grading you have to do, or how you had to work through lunch. I still want to be supportive of you, but it’s not the same, and I need you to understand that.

Pray for us. We’re not perfect. We don’t handle stress perfectly. God’s grace is always appreciated.

Sharing stories

I mentioned in my last post the notion of Second Victim for health care providers who have experienced an adverse event. Every physician has been there. Whether as a result of something we did, or as part of the disease course, sometimes patients have bad outcomes. Those patients stick with us, their memories intruding at inopportune times, making us wish for a do-over, making us think maybe we don’t have what it takes.


There’s a certain pressure to be perfect, coupled with stakes of life and death, that make the Second Victim Syndrome almost ubiquitous among doctors. Yet we often hide our insecurities after such an event, not wanting to admit our human frailty, not wanting to be judged. Isolation can become the norm.


The training session that I went to this week for our new Peer to Peer Support Network aims to break through this isolation in the hopes of preventing some of the PTSD-like symptoms that doctors suffer after an adverse event. The program allows doctors the chance to emotionally debrief with a colleague who knows exactly how they are feeling. Sounds kind of touchy-feely, right? But it works.


As part of the training session, we each shared a story of an adverse event in a small group, and the other doctors just listened. It was incredibly therapeutic to open up and to have three faces of complete understanding looking back at me, nodding, knowing. They knew exactly what it felt like to get news of a poor outcome and have to wonder what you could have done differently, if you could have changed the course. They knew all too well that intrusive voice saying, “You’re not good enough. A better doctor would have done this right. You’re going to mess up again.” They know the panic of seeing that patient’s mom again, wondering how she remembers you. And they don’t even have to say anything, because I know they know.


As we shared our stories throughout the morning, you could see shoulders become less tense, faces become less masked, and affects become brighter. There is amazing potential for this program, and it’s exciting. It’s exciting because I think we’re accepted Second Victim Syndrome and burnout as inevitable for too long. We assume that doctors are capable of bearing these burdens silently and still being flawless. We expect the high rates of depression and suicide as a hazard of the job. But it doesn’t have to be that way.


This Peer to Peer Support Network, and others like it around the country, is changing the norms. Isolation and shame can give way to understanding and healing, just by talking about it. And that can make us better doctors, more able to learn from our mistakes, bounce back from setbacks, and not carry our work home with us.