Worry Enough for Tomorrow

If you’ve known me or have been reading my posts here on this blog for any length of time, it will probably come as no surprise to you that I can be quite an anxious person. I think I probably got it from my mother. I can still sometimes hear her voice in the back of my mind, “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.” While that’s not a bad lesson to learn, it does mean that my mind is constantly analyzing the worst-case scenarios. If I wake up in the middle of the night to a strange noise, my first thought is, “You’re going to die,” instead of like, “the cats are probably digging in the trashcan again.”

Due to this anxious mind of mine, I often have a background of worried thoughts buzzing through my brain. All of my to-do lists, very important appointments, assignments due this week, assignments due in a few weeks that I need to work on now so as to not get behind, blog posts that need written, gym sessions that need planned, upcoming clinicals, classes, exams, my work schedule, if I’ll make enough money to pay my bills this month, dishes that need to be done, laundry detergent that needs replaced, text messages and emails needing responses. It goes on and on. I can write each of these things in my planner, yet still they incessantly run through my mind. My heartbeat accentuates the panic, “you can’t forget, you’ll be in huge trouble if you forget even one tiny detail!”

Yesterday at my clinical, I had an amazing, life changing experience. I got to observe a hernia repair surgery. I watched the surgeon use many tools and contraptions to slowly, methodically, cut open the patient’s abdomen in a way that prevented blood loss as much as possible. It took fifteen to twenty minutes just for the surgeon to get to the area of the body in which he intended to do his work. Then, when he reached the hernia, he put the intestines back where they belong and began closing the patient’s surgical incision. Everyone participating was calm, cool, and collected. It might just be the image of operating rooms that the media has put out there, but I was expecting a lot more intensity. For the team performing and assisting the surgery, this was just another day. I kept expecting the worst. For the heart monitor to begin beating erratically. For blood to come spurting out of the patient. For any sign of something going wrong, but everything went smoothly. The surgeon’s hands remained steady. The whole surgery took less than 45 minutes, but I walked out of there a different person.

There was a medical student there to observe, too. We chatted a bit before the surgery began. We discovered we each have only 1.5 years left of school. Afterwards, I will go on to work as a nurse, and he will move on to his residency.

“That’s a long time, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t like to think about that right now,” he said with a chuckle, but I could tell he was very serious.

“We can only take it a day at a time,” I said.

We shared a laugh, and then we shared the observation space. We poked our heads around the surgeon, moving whenever he did, to get the best possible view. The student was in front of me, but he always made sure there was space for me to see what he could. The moment was small, but it stuck with me. It’s another reminder that there are so many things we could be worrying about right now, but if we really did think about it all on a daily basis, it would be so disheartening to remember that we still have a whole year of school, and who knows how many years before we feel “proficient” within our fields. Yet, that isn’t mine to worry about right now. It isn’t the medical student’s burden to worry about residency while he still has countless surgeries to observe.

It was a simple moment, but it was a beautiful one, one of human connection. Just two people putting in the work now to hopefully make a larger difference tomorrow. As a student in that operating room, I made no difference. I offered no wisdom, no experience, no expert knowledge. I simply stood there, an observer. As students, we didn’t change any lives other than our own. But that moment could someday make all the difference. The medical student will be a doctor, I will be a nurse. We will go on to save lives, to change lives. Still, that is not yet our burden.

If we constantly think about how many miles are left in the entire race, as opposed to focusing on the step directly ahead of us, we will collapse well before we reach the finish line. Yesterday, our only burden was to find the best place to catch a glimpse of a patient’s hernia. Tomorrow, we’ll have a different burden. Cross that bridge when we get to it, kind of thing. There is worry enough for tomorrow, we need not cram it all into today.

Sometimes we just need to take a deep breath and focus only on the step in front of us. I encourage you all to do so today.