June Update
The Winter Solstice is upon us tomorrow, I am looking forward to longer days of light. On Saturday morning we wake in the small hours to a storm fit to launch an ark. Cosy and warm while the house creaks and groans around us, we let ourselves be lulled back to sleep. When we wake again it is to the sound of continuous soft dripping, as though a shower or a tap has not quite been switched off. It has been raining heavily all week. In the morning the streets are blanketed in soft grey, we drive home through rapidly darkening evenings; it seems we have been living almost inside a raincloud. On the way to work K and I remember the reservoirs we’ve visited over the past few months. When the rain lashes down on the roof at work, I think of them again, I hope they’re getting their fill.
A few weeks ago the road leading into work was alive with colour. Those trees have dropped all but the very last of their leaves, the tips of their branches just dipped in yellow, fruiting balls dripping from great empty boughs like Christmas decorations. The birds huddle together, they have nowhere left to hide. But now the magnolia is in bloom at the hospital door. Great big blossoms of pink the size of your face. Thrusting its beauty upon you: see, there is joy, there is light, there is hope.
It is at this time of the year that I feel most homesick.
It is at this time of the year that I feel most homesick. When friends and family send me photos of gloriously long summer days. Gardens full of flowers, home grown tomatoes in little plastic pots. When the blogs are full of summer reading lists, the YouTube channels full of summer adventures. I think of lazy weekend breakfasts of pink berry yoghurt and muesli and seeds, of summer riverside picnics bathed in music, of lying in clover and watching the clouds pass, the birds soar, the sky change colour. I’m homesick for easy company, laughter, friends. For the messy chaos of my family, duvet-nests and movie nights, great dinners and long walks, confused and broken heart to hearts. I’m homesick for the gentle warmth of tarmac under bare feet, my mama’s many flavours of homemade ice-cream, the memory of distant undergraduate evenings – things perhaps that even in the moment were never quite tangible.
It is at this time of year that I gravitate toward artifice, as though needing something exaggerated and over-the-top to replenish whatever it is that has been depleted. The shopping malls at Newmarket and Sylvia Park, with flashing fluorescent lighting, brightly painted picnic tables and food courts, window displays overflowing with colour, loud music escaping from, competing with next-door stores, the smell of chilli, ginger and soy, of cinnamon churros dipping in chocolate, and the comforting bustle of the crowd: children squealing and darting around you, bribes of conversation floating up in the air, continuous fluid movement: I feel embraced, safe, uplifted.
A few years ago this change in mood, this craving for an intensity, an almost vulgar over-saturation of the senses, would have left me unsettled. For mostly I am more happy alone, away from the crowd, unable to handle such stimulation. But now I recognise it simply as something that comes in hand with the dark damp days of Winter, something that ebbs and flows, that is as much me as the person who craves the solitude of the hills and open skies. There is comfort in the knowledge of this, a lot of comfort. I have been reflecting a lot recently on how much happier I am now than a decade ago. On how much easier life feels as you grow to understand yourself better. I have never felt more at ease with myself than I do these days: such an unexpected twist, a never-ending joy.
Over the past few months I have been working in Infectious Diseases…
Over the past few months I have been working in Infectious Diseases, a specialty that supports primary teams in their investigation and treatment of all manner of infections. For the first three months I work on the surgical wards and with the intensive care unit patients: people with infections that have colonised metalware deep in their joints or their spine, people with abscesses in their liver, people with burns so severe their bodies can no longer maintain a barrier against the outside, people who simply fell sick so fast that no one knows what’s going on. Everything is new to me: I learn the language of operation notes, the rudiments of multi-stage joint replacements, how high a dose of antibiotic can be put into cement, how Pseudomonas prophylaxis is needed for people receiving leech therapy. Then I switch over to the medical and maternity services, I become the person holding the phone to give advice to GPs, and the presentations and questions are so different that it is like starting over in a new job once again. There are end-stage renal replacement patients with infected fistulas, patients whose lungs are colonised with all sorts of bacteria, patients with tubo-ovarian abscesses too deep to sample, patients with infections destroying the valves of their heart, people with infections in the fluid which surrounds their brain. There are mothers who lost their babies to infections in the womb, people whose nerves are so badly inflamed that they are at first thought to have had a stroke, people who have hypervirulent infections that spread fast throughout their body. Then there are the patients who present with fevers of unknown cause, many of which remain unknown, despite everything.
It is a busy job. The referrals and phone calls never stop. But there is surprisingly little time to be on the wards, actually seeing patients. There are weekly clinics, weekly meetings to go over all of the patients on long courses of treatment who are being followed up in the community, weekly radiology conferences to discuss challenging cases. There are meetings every other day with the microbiologists from the lab: they collect all the abnormal samples they have received, ensure we are made aware of them in case the primary team does not fully appreciate their significance – my role is to follow up with the team and let them know. The teaching is coordinated regionally across all the Infectious Diseases departments in Auckland: there is a journal club every Monday morning, a CME session every Wednesday afternoon. We are rostered to present at each, several times over. Pitching your presentation is tough: although there are a few other registrars doing this specialty rotation for the first time, the overwhelming majority of doctors listening are specialists with many years of experience.
There is a stretch of about six weeks where things get really busy. Where I’m leaving at least an hour late, often double, every day. In addition to the “daytime” duties, my roster includes a long shift every week and one in three weekends, admitting patients from the acute medical take. I find myself barely able to function on these long shifts, so exhausted by having already wracked up an extra day of work in (unpaid) overtime. I start to feel myself getting burnt out and I know I will have to find a way to prevent this from going on. A lot of the learning points in this job have been in fact non-medical. There is the obvious gaping hole of clinical knowledge to fill, of course. But in a way, that is the easiest thing. The challenge is managing the greater load of administrative work, learning how to work closely alongside consultants, learning how to communicate with the teams who requested your consultation, and how to approach those who didn’t. The department is supportive, fully aware of the work load. I meet with my supervisors every few months, they ensure that our teaching needs are met. It’s a good job, I have learnt a lot. And there is a lot that I am still processing.
Life otherwise? What is there to say! After that low period at work, where I was too burnt out to do anything other than get home and sleep, I make attempts to reach out to my friends again, to organise long overdue catch-up calls. To re-connect. I speak to my friend Ana and falter when she asks what I’ve been getting up to outside of work. I tell her that life just is, at the moment, that I haven’t had much time to think about it, it feels as though it is just happening around me. Because my time during the week is so precious, about an hour before work, maybe two hours afterwards, I make careful lists of what I want to accomplish, what steps I need to take. In the morning, when the day is still mine, I make time for the things that are most me: yoga and writing. Several evenings a week I listen to podcasts while I cook, I make extra portions and fill our freezer with homemade meals. At night, I light candles in the shower and read before sleep.
Where does the rest of the time go? The weekends get swallowed up in necessary chores: vacuuming Asterix’s black fluff from the floor, doing loads of laundry, visiting the supermarket to re-stock the fridge. If the weather is good then we take Asterix for a walk and try keep the garden in check. In the gaps, in those invaluable other pockets of time, I work gradually on improving my day-to-day: I buy a screen monitor for my desk, a new pair of black trousers. I finally make time to visit my GP and dentist. I work on job applications, I slowly gather the evidence I need to put towards a visa application, I start the (massive) project of organising all of the documents and photos on my laptop. I start work on myself: deep difficult work, examining thought patterns and beliefs that are so ingrained I struggle to see them. And occasionally, there is time for something else. An afternoon spent writing a long letter to a friend. A glorious early morning run, to the scent of autumn leaves and freshly mown lawns, to the jubilant soundtrack of weekend rugby. How to sum this up in a phone call? All of me is engaged in the minute and mundane busyness of living. These are things I suppose that make a life. And then there is this, my writing, my passion, my ambition.
These are the things I suppose that make a life.
I’ve gone on for too long and I’m running late to publish – for reasons I might share another day. But I’ll finish up with my favourite things this month – something I always love reading in the blogs I follow.
K’s birthday! And the massive frozen banoffee cheesecake I made him that took us weeks to finish! This Yoga with Adriene video (just 20 minutes of gentle but really well targeted stretching). My current book before bedtime: The Robber Bride (Margaret Atwood). Starting a new book review series on my blog! Finally putting up new curtains and artwork that has been sitting around for over a year waiting for us to get the right hooks! Irises. A glut of lemons from our tree. Athena Mellor’s YouTube Channel. A fat letter in the post. Homemade lunches. Long phone calls with friends. French onion soup, homemade mac and cheese. Writing regularly again, at last.
Sending love for now, looking forward to hearing your own updates.
-Zx
Ps. Just in case you were wondering? Still collecting New Zealand’s best personalised number plates. Send me in yours.
Mad to Live 
That was the perfect between nights yoga!
Yeah, not too long but really stretching out all the right places!