Friday 11 July 2014

Healing the scars from registrar training

Greetings all, 
The title bears no need for explanation. We all know what I am talking about. Those horrific nights on call we thought would never end, the continual feelings of being out of our depth. The feeling of total inadequacy and a longing to go home.
Now I am a consultant psychiatrist and have run away again from reality to work on the last revisions on my first ever book, How Shrinks Think. Not bad given I have wanted to be a writer since I was 12 and I am now 46. Still, I have built up more to write about and feel more confident about what I want to say. 
My warts and all account of psychiatry from my perspective began taking shape about a year ago. The first draft was finished in about a month. 1000 words a day for 30 days. Then I stopped, struck with fear because I presumed I would be criticised by my peers for saying what I wanted to say about how psychiatry is according to me the most exciting speciality of medicine, but also the one that is most controversial and misunderstood. So it sat with my editor, Roy, until about 2 months ago. 
Now, I feel I have confidence, so have continued in earnest to achieve my deadline for my book launch of 15th November 2014.
As part of all of this, and to stop myself being distracted by my pantry that needs cleaning, weeds that need removing from the garden, the need to concoct the most difficult recipe from Australian Women's weekly all-time favourites cookbook when home alone, pay attention to the cat, do my nails, organise my home office and watch crap on Foxtel, I have started getting into these 'writer in residence’ weekends where I simply run away to a beautiful hotel, languish by the fire and look all mysterious with my laptop. I love it when the check in staff ask me if I am on a holiday, and I can quickly retort, oh no, I am a WRITER and here to work. I'm sure they laugh as I drag my luggage, my snacks and my books up to my hotel room. 
So here I am, at writers retreat number 2.
I have checked into the newest Art series hotel, The Schaller, in Bendigo. Not just in Bendigo but on the grounds of the Bendigo hospital. Not only on the grounds of the Bendigo hospital but where the nurses accommodation used to be. Not only where the nurse’s accommodation used to be  but where I stayed for 6 months (3 as a medical student and 3 as a psychiatry registrar). Ok. Big breath. This has to be for a reason. The walls ain’t talking because they are all new, but hey if they could, they’d remember me as a scared medical student, homesick, much older than my peers so didn't fit in, then returning as a psychiatry registrar for 3 months. I remember my great mate Carlos, another psych registrar who walked in after our first day on rotation here in psych to say, “lets' celebrate, it's only 11 weeks 6 days and 5 hours to go, we’re practically half way there!!”. And that was what it was like. 
Some nights I was called back to the ward so often I gave up getting changed and went to the ward in my pyjamas. Nobody seemed to notice. Many nights I couldn’t leave the emergency department as I tried to help staff calm down violent patients. Most nights there was no room for admission to the psych ward so I admitted them to the 'Rad ward' which was the radiology department that closed at 5pm. The patients laid in temporary beds. We are talking about 2005 not 1925. Many days I had no sleep and was expected to drive to Echuca to start clinic at 9am the next day. Not conducive to good learning, not conducive to me or my patients. But the way it was. These walls would know I went to the lake here in Bendigo one day, called my best friend, told her I was quitting and drove home. I did go back on Monday but gee it was on a knife edge.
So here I am, in this most salubrious hotel, uber chic, and the total opposite of what I was given while up here as a doctor. No lino on the floors, no rats, no shared bathrooms with cold water. In fact truth be told I begged to stay here in the nurse’s accommodation as psychiatry registrars were placed in old houses on the outskirts of Bendigo and we were too frightened to travel back and forth overnight in our cars to the ward. We begged to live within the derelict nurses accommodation because there was security on site and we could walk to the ward. 
I am stronger than ever to write my book because despite how totally awful it can be at times to be a doctor in training, we do get through and life gets better. Recently, a psychiatrist contacted me out of the blue. She was a registrar I coached during her training and she rang to tell me she gained her fellowship with the RANZCP. She was so grateful. The one thing she remembered me saying and that kept her going probably on nights when she was pyjama clad, sleep deprived and slave to her pager was I told her just get thought your training and it will get better. They were her words to me, yes, Helen, just like you said it did get better....
And as I finish my book in this place of 360 degrees growth and experience, 10 years later, I also know like I never believed back then, it does get better.