A Difficult Time In My Life

11/19: A Difficult Time In My Life – Part #19 of the November Blog Challenge gets its own post because I don’t want to lump it with the other topics. (It’s gonna be a long one, so consider yourself warned!) I debated not posting this, because I like to keep things positive, but that’s not how life always goes.

There are probably around three events in my life that really did a number on me in terms of kicking me out of my equilibrium. I consider myself to be a fairly optimistic person. I like to focus on the good, to find the silver linings, and to try not to stress out about things that I can’t change.

I wasn’t always this way though.

I used to live in the past. I used to wonder about all the “what if’s,” and I’m not saying that I don’t do that at all anymore, but I’ve learned to move past things, to let things go. Back then, if I’d had the remote from Click (one of my favorite movies), I would’ve chosen to rewind all the time. These days, I just want to be able to stop time so I can accomplish all the things I want to do (and be good at everything :).

Obviously, I’ve had more than three negative experiences in my life, but those three are the ones that played the biggest part in shaping my decisions and thought processes into the way I am today. Whenever possible, I like to think of misfortunes as learning experiences. While I would have loved for none of these to ever have happened, I do also wonder sometimes…if they hadn’t, would I be where I am right now, and would that be something I wanted? I don’t always have a definitive answer for that.

When I’m really upset about something, I tend to retreat. I’ve never liked talking about my feelings.

Instead, I usually turn to writing, because it’s an outlet where I can pour all my thoughts and worries without bothering or worrying anyone else.

I mentioned very briefly (last paragraph of freshman year) what served as the trigger that switched me over to pursuing medicine. Back in the day, I wrote an entry several weeks after the fact that apparently made all my friends cry when they read it, so I shall spare you of that. You can know that something’s going to happen and try to prepare for it as long as you wanted to, but when it finally does, how do you end up reacting? How do you cope?

Before my freshman year of college, I’d never truly experienced true loss, in any sense of the word. I lost my grandma a couple weeks before my 19th birthday. She was the only grandparent I’d ever been close to, as my grandpas passed away before, or shortly after I was born, and my other grandma lived in Hong Kong. She was the reason my Cantonese could still be considered fluent, the reason I got into PHAC as a patient advocate and volunteer, and an integral part of why I went into medicine, despite every science exam score I’d ever received suggesting that this might not be the best of ideas for me.

I remember when she started forgetting things, small things that you wouldn’t really notice at first, but soon it included the people around her, which hurt beyond measure, although I tried hard not to take it personally when she asked me who I was. Other times, she’d remember everything vividly. When I was taking care of her at the hospital, she told me, “有你在這兒就最好” (“Having you here is the best.”), and offered to share her meals with me because she was worried I’d get hungry. My grandma was a super-active lady; we used to walk together everywhere. Even though she never really learned to speak English, she could navigate public transportation systems like nobody’s business, and would go to Oakland every morning to meet up with her friends to exercise. She ate pretty healthily, and I grew up on her home-cooked meals because my parents don’t really cook. We lost her several months after she turned 90.

The phone call I received on Thursday is still very clearly etched into my mind. I was in Sonoma with my friends from our dance group for a performance, and thought my mom’s voice sounded strange when she told me she was with my grandma, and that I should tell her that I was doing well in school, that I was praying for her and that the angels would take care of her. I’ve never been a good liar, so I remember asking her if I should be really be saying that I was doing well, when such was not the case. I remember how my mom called the following day asking me to come home, and I managed somehow to catch a ride with a friend I’d made the day before. How we were talking in the car and I felt like something had happened. How, when I got home, the house felt emptier, my mom was dressed all in black. She didn’t say, “Let’s go visit her in the hospital after you’re done eating.”

Because it was already too late.

My grandma knew the visiting hours at Washington Hospital well, because as visitors, we’d always get kicked out at 8 p.m. Even after we eventually moved her into a different place, she’d still ask my mom every time, “Is it 8 o’ clock? Do you have to go home already?”

She passed away at 8:05 p.m.

The day after I found out, I went to the attic to dig up pictures, looking for something, anything I could find. I found one of us sitting at the piano when I was five years old, both of us smiling happily, and another where she was carrying me when I was two years old and I was pointing at something in a store. Another where she was patting my head “the year I turned 42.” (I was blowing out my birthday candles off of a pie with a “42” on it, because we didn’t have a “6” candle, and 4+2 was 6.) She used to give us piggyback rides down the stairs in the morning so we could all have breakfast together.

When I got back to school, I immersed myself in work for weeks/months, refusing to believe that she was really gone. I didn’t go home, and didn’t even tell anyone until several weeks later. I kept dreaming that she was still alive.

I loved (+ still love) volunteering at PHAC (yes, enough that I’d sell my blood and self as a research subject to pay for the gas money to drive there and back), and I really believe a part of it is because they also really helped me with the healing process (here’s to using altruism as a mature defense mechanism). At least I was helping someone. It went hand in hand with my tendency to bury myself into work whenever I was sad (although if we look at the big picture, I am always burying myself in endless amounts of work, regardless of whether or not I’m sad).

Now that I’m finally back to working with real people/actual patients again, my favorite part, of course, is getting to work directly with my preceptor’s patients–talking to them and figuring out how I can best help them. They all seem to like me a lot, and it makes my day and/or entire week when they tell me I’m going to be a great doctor, or hug me and wish me the best in everything that I do, or tell me that they really hope that I’ll stick around here, because I have phenomenal bedside manner and this area is in great need of amazing family doctors. These words keep me going, because I am most often waffling between feelings of mediocrity and/or mass incompetence. (This seems to be the general trend for most third years, but I guess I just really wanted, and still want to be better.)

I still miss her, and I find myself still praying for her sometimes, but I like to think she’s proud of me, of where I ended up heading, despite potholes and pitfalls along the bumpy road.

So here’s to that upward trend, to getting to where I want to be with my life. The path I chose is making that journey extra long, but this was the catalyst. If there is anything at all that I can do to make some sort of a positive difference, to touch others’ lives, and to make it so less people have to experience this loss, I am all for it, and I know it’ll be worth it.