Don't Hate, Appreciate... Yourself

Some logbooks from residency and post residency

As part of the lengthy process of having my American medical license recognized and authorized to practice medicine in New Zealand, I had to go back and generate reports about every vaginal delivery, cesarean delivery, laparoscopic gynecologic procedure, open abdominal surgical procedure, hysterectomy, vaginal surgeries, cystoscopies (scope into the bladder), hysteroscopies (scope into the uterus)...... you get my drift, that I had performed from the first day of residency to the present.

I have entered thousands of lines of data into Excel spreadsheets and from there, my former database analyst husband (reason #53234 why he is a Godsend to me) generated reports so that the New Zealand Medical Board could see the raw data in a tidy way and have a tally of how many of each I performed.

I have spent HOURS at my computer. During this process, there were so many times when I shouted incredulously "No wonder I was always so damn tired in residency!" or, "I can't believe I worked that hard in that horrible practice setting for as long as I did!" or "I did all that while pregnant?!". I remember days in residency when I would come home so tired that all I had the energy to do was take a shower (because I always had energy for that) but then I would lay down on the bed wrapped in my towel and Randy would have to dress me.

Watching how many times I did six + procedures in one day, or multiple procedures at multiple hospitals in the same day has made me pause and really look at myself in an out of body sort of way. I know that it sounds strange, but through this process I have had the opportunity to really tangibly see all of the work that I did over the last almost 12 yrs. Over 2800 surgical procedures, and that is outside of all that I did in the office, often seeing over 30 patients a day.

Take the time to really look back on your life and honor the road you walked. It is OK to impress yourself. It is OK to put all of your past challenges into perspective and respect yourself for making it through. It is not only OK, but it is important.