The Unthinkable Happened…
We had been married for two and a half years. During this time, I had focused most of my time and effort on my practice. My husband works at a demanding workplace and his hours were long as well. It was not easy starting my own practice. I had offers to work as an associate, but I’m as stubborn as a mule and I had to do it for myself. Slowly, the landmarks in my practice were achieved. I got a few new patients, designed a website, and figured out the cipher of insurance. Finally, I started to meet my overhead expenses, and hired a CA. There was lots of cash left over each week and I had the greatest patients in the world. Every day, I would race to the office to begin the fun! I was sitting on top of the world.
We started talking about having a baby. I knew that the pressures of a baby and a practice would be massive, and so I developed a plan for maternity leave. Thank God, we got pregnant very quickly and we started all the arrangements from making and painting the nursery pink, to registering for strollers, and car seats. We even picked out a name... “Riley”.
And then the unthinkable happened…my belly didn’t feel right, and we found out baby stopped moving and died. Everything in my world collapsed in an instant, our marriage, our lives, and my practice were in shambles.
As DCs we are not isolated from living in a world full of pain and suffering. Every one of us will be placed in circumstances we didn’t ask to be put in. Many DCs reading this may have even faced similar circumstances.
When your world stops like this, well-meaning (but totally clueless) people give advice that actually makes things worse. They say things like, “bad things happen to good people”, or “God has a plan for your baby”. This one OB/GYN even has the mantra, “wait a few months and then try again”.
When our world stops, it affects us in predictable and unpredictable ways. There is a natural grieving process that happens.
Some DCs use this loss as inspiration and become an even more caring, kind and compassionate doctor. Unfortunately, that is not the case for all. And for those people, they embark on a downward spiral.
It’s not always immediate, but it affects us in very camouflaged and invisible ways. It can create havoc in your life months or years after the event. We have a fire raging inside of us and have a serious lack of trust in the world that we keep hidden and it never leaves us. From spouses, to kids, to our patients, we become more irritated with the people in our lives.
This downward spiral doesn’t just from a miscarriage. It can be from divorce, a breakup, being let down, betrayed, losing a parent, etc. Even though the cause of the upset changes, the effects are the same…we start playing small, slow, and have a decreased confidence. We act as inconspicuous as possible and we start to blend in, and go along with the crowd and avoid confrontation at all costs.
One mistake many of us make is staying in isolation, putting on a brave face and pretending that everything is alright and thinking time will make things brand new again.
Events like these are silently dragging you down, not just in practice, but in life as well.
If you’ve had an event that turned your world upside down, don’t try to “manage” it alone.
If you are ready to reach out for help, I’ll be in your corner and together, we will not only get you back to where you were before, but also reach even greater heights.
