LIFE COACH PEARL: NOW DO YOU SEE WHY YOU CAN’T QUIT?
I remembered the three-day experience with Mrs. Smith that ended in spiritual revelation. Like David facing Goliath, but I was tired of fighting and questioned my purpose. I questioned God. I wanted to quit. Defeat taunted me like the witches of Macbeth.
Day one. By 4:30 Wednesday afternoon, the day had passed as sludge usurping my energy and my vision of self and purpose. It passed plodding from exam room to exam room with the mechanical, forced precision of a 1960s television robot. My crumpled green unisex scrub suit and worn athletic shoes, once white, now stained with the spirits and maladies of the least of these – tall and black, thin and brown, disenfranchised and muddy white. Mrs. Jones, my LPN, who knew me too well, stood in the doorway to my office in her bright multicolored uniform. Despite the droopiness in my eyes, she told me that a patient had just walked in and asked to be seen. Dragging the hallway with self-pity in tow, I remembered I've still gotta make my hospital rounds. At the desk was a thin-framed, neatly dressed fortyish woman. Standing nervously, she found the words to ask if I would see her. She reported that she had no money right now and wasn't working. Everyone else she had approached had turned her away. Exasperated, I pouted. No one else would see her, especially the two “white” girl doctors the corporation had brought to replace me. It stunk. I asked her if she would come back tomorrow morning. Over her shoulder, the tired, dark-skinned man in a gray work uniform fresh off his 12-hour shift at the Nissan plant nodded yes.
Day two. Mrs. Jones' hurried steps toward me early the next morning announced more than her words. She told me she was unable to read Mrs. Smith's blood sugar. It read off the scale on the glucometer, the grey machine that had required her a dreaded finger prick. The doctor consumed me and immediately obliterated my doubt. I dashed to her side to ask if she had transportation to take her directly across the street to the emergency department at Madison Hospital. She must do so immediately. She left, and the hours of my routine day again played out until 4:30 PM. Incorrigible concern compelled me to the ER, where the ruddy, cherub-faced provider of the day, grinding to the end of his shift, sat and only recognized me side-eye. I asked the charge nurse if Mrs. Smith had come through. She wore a gold pin perched high on her left shoulder, declaring her 10 years of service, which gleamed as much as her acknowledgment of me. In professional, short answers, she addressed my title as doctor and told me yes. I asked her what Mrs. Smith’s blood sugar reading was. She informed me it had read 454 milligrams per deciliter. Pensively, I asked where she was now. Her answer thundered, ICU. I shuttered. I thanked her and turned from the room.
Night must turn, and the third day followed with revelation. An early morning visit to the ICU resulted in Mrs. Smith's once-sallow, now shining face and gleaming smile. I shared with her that I had been struggling in my spirit to quit my medical practice. Amazed and still in shock by day's end, I applied jasmine fragrant lotion to my tired, dry hands. The old phrase, Be careful what you ask for flooded my thoughts. Like the digits on a calculator, I added it up: a poor woman, sent to me by the master of my beliefs, kept safe, indeed alive overnight, returned to me for care. I stood in front of my desk where, days before, I all but cursed my gift. The words then bounded inside the room and in my spirit so loudly that I looked around to see if anyone else was there. They questioned, Now you see why you can't quit? My heart pounded. My knees grew weak. An unexpected smirk spread across my lips. I lowered myself to the chair with soft surrender, like putting a baby down to rest; the words fell from my lips: yes, Sir.
(THE NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED DUE TO PRIVACY CONCERS.)