My father is a retired surgeon, and he recently told me that he could never fully relax until he retired. “You’re always asking yourself if you could have been a little bit better. You wonder if you could have said something differently to put the person’s mind at ease, if you could have anticipated a complication, or set a better expectation so things would go smoothly. You could never fully be off, because you care and you want to be better.”
What if this is the truth of medicine? To be a good caregiver, must we tirelessly critique and question ourselves until the day we hang up our stethoscopes for good? I’m not sure there’s any other escape from this tension.
If you are a truly dedicated professional, then every setback is a wound that you compulsively pick. We know that, once treated, the past should be left to heal… but we can’t leave it alone. The edge of the scab calls to be picked. The red flesh needs to be squeezed.
As someone who dreams of a weekend where I am limp-noodle relaxed, I hate this idea. I want to find a yoga stretch that turns this tension off or a hiking trail that makes me forget the nagging feeling in the back of my mind. But I’m realizing that the nagging feeling isn’t necessarily something to escape. I think it’s a shadow cast by things that matter.
A few weeks back, I wrote about how we almost never know when we’re doing things for the last time. We don’t recognize the last time we will tie our kid’s shoes, see our friend who will soon pass away, or look upon the house we grew up in. Someone in the comment section pointed out that this is a blessing. They said that life would be too sad if we knew every time we were watching an ending. That person is correct.
I don’t think we want to know when we’re seeing the last of something, and I also don’t think we want to lose the tension that draws us unceasingly towards being a better person and caregiver. Like any compulsion, there’s a point where self analysis becomes damaging. At the same time, if we really do want to be the best version of ourselves, the continuous tug towards self improvement is a gift (even if it’s a gift we wish we could turn off on weekends).
So in the end, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we can find moments of grace where we allow ourselves to step back from the mental replay. The bad news is that as long as we show up to care for these patients, we will likely carry some version of this tension. It is the tax we pay for doing work that matters.
So let us stop judging ourselves harshly for what we did in the past. Let’s forgive ourselves for the things we could not know, and focus our energy on deciding what we will do in the future. The tension we feel is not a failure in our characters, it’s a call to be greater tomorrow than we are today. And this, my friends, is a call we don’t want to disconnect from.
