Posted on 10.12.09 by Sharon Lin, DO

It's been four months since I started my second year of residency and I started off with three tough months of inpatient work and another month of Spanish emersion abroad in between.  Working my butt off in the beginning of second year has really prevented me from having the space to breathe and reflect, but alas the time has come that I now have a moment to recollect my thoughts and write again. I am again grateful for so many things that I never had the energy to appreciate in those long 80-hour weeks, when day and night bled into one other.  Now I can see the sky, smell the rain, touch the leaves now golden and red, reflect on the changes in my belly - four months of a new life developing within!

Pregnancy! Miraculously, this new life slipped into my tumultuous routine and made it through to the light of day.  Together, we have been lucky by avoiding morning sickness and fatigue while managing to sneak in monthly prenatal appointments post-call.  It has been a challenge to set my efficient well-oiled machine-like mind aside, to look into my patients' eyes and once again connect with their souls, not just their ailments.  I miss that kind of connection; the kind of connection that comes so easily to med students and to new interns.

I am consciously starting to make that missing link a new priority, starting with my pregnancy.  This week, at four months gestation, I am giving my pregnancy a chance to be listening to. It took this long because work occupied so much of my attention and so much of my effort.  What I once enjoyed as a tremendous learning opportunity, I now called "work," and the glimmer of curiosity and empathy became overshadowed by hospital efficiency and protocol.  Pregnancy, I hear you. Patients, I will be there.  To my spirit, let the reparations come gently.

Grateful I am to my precious golden weekends that I fill with long hikes down winding coastal trails. Grateful I am to my family and friends.  Grateful I am for the changing seasons.  Grateful I am for the love my partner and I share, and for the love that came out of our love.