I've been home for about three weeks now and I've had lots going on in my personal life - academic wise it's been on the back burner.
After two weeks at home I had the unfortunate experience of losing my grandmother. She experienced a quite sudden death so it came as a shock to my whole family. As for me it also came with a bit of frustration because as I looked back at her care over the past few months I saw so many systems errors that could have been prevented that would have allowed my grandmother to be much more comfortable as she was passing and would have given my family much more closure as her time was coming up.
The week my grandmother ended up in the hospital, for what would be her last time, I had begun an online course to help with step prep. With everything that unfolded it wouldn't be an understatement to say that my mind was all over the place. All of my plans for studying and attacking step had flown out the window.
I was almost in a state of shock.
I just remember a wave of panic overwhelming my whole body and the thought, "Jen you cannot screw this up".
I thankfully have some amazing, beautiful friends (you know who you are) who sent loving messages daily to make me feel like I wasn't going through this alone and I would get through it.
But there was still that panic. "You have eight weeks to study for comp... you can't mess this up".
Not only was I dealing with the loss of my grandmother and the frustrations that had attached to it, but I knew I had to keep moving forward. I instantly thought back to third year university, September 2013, first week of classes when my grandfather passed away and three weeks later my dad having surgery. I thought about how I dealt with those family stresses then... and how that ended up hurting me in the long run.
I tried to act tough and pretend it never really happened. Never letting myself actually process what happened. Sure that was great at the time... but I barely got through orgo chem 1 leading me to fail orgo 2.
NOW THAT WAS ROUGH. Big huge blow to the ego. How the heck was I going to apply to medical school now that I failed orgo 2.
Flashforward 3.5 years and obviously I got through it and made it to the medical school side. Now I'm facing my "medical school application" of medical school... step one. And I do not want to make the same mistakes I made the first time I had deaths in the family. I owed it to myself to learn from my previous mistakes.
And I want you all to learn from my previous mistakes too... Life happens while you're studying. You need to learn to deal with both.
So if you have a traumatic event happen to you or someone close to you and you feel like you need to take a step back for a little to recharge and reboot then do it. Take some time and process. Trust me when I say I've tried ignoring it and it doesn't work.
I'm currently trying to take my own advice and it's hard to not get frustrated with myself when I can't stay focused.
Believe me when I say if you're dealing with something similar you aren't dealing with it alone.
- Jen
Our family before the viewing
RIP my new angel
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