Language of Love

 I've been playing around with the idea of getting back into blogging for many reasons.

Therapy, sharing, decompressing, emptying my brain a little to make some room for other things.


So let's look back, my last blog entry was under Scribe for Life (https://doctorscribe.blogspot.com/2015/11/im-sorry.html).   This blog took me through medical school , residency and first months as an attending with the last blog entry centered in large part around the passing of my maternal grandfather. My paternal grandfather would pass almost 4 years later.


So why now , and why this title?

The why now, well I'm approaching my 9th year as an attending, closing in on a decade which is wild to say. Since that last blog entry in 2015, I was married in 2018, moved in 2020, had my first born in 2020, COVID happened, changed jobs/left my home institution of 11 years (residency + attending) and then we had our twins in 2021 who are about to turn 2  in a matter of weeks. So the where I'm in life is certainly different but is the who different. Let's circle back with that later.

The title.

A passion of mine and a growing core/center to my work is physician communication, which is part of patient experience. I truly believe that my future is in this work, what is to be seen is in what fashion.

When I started this work, I was a lead for our hospitalist group at my prior hospital. That meant I delivered didactics and training to my fellow hospitalists, which included my wife. My wife is an amazing wife, mother, daughter, doctor and has a warmth coupled with clinical acumen that not many have but she abhors bureaucracy and loves to target her sarcasm to yours truly.  Language of Love was her play on the training program I was implementing.  When we would chat about my work.. picture it in your head, she would ask "how's language of LOVE coming?" , insert rolled eyes. 


Now I don't want the readers (whoever you are) to form a certain opinion. My wife in many ways is very similar at the bedside, equally compassionate, warm, empathetic. Prior to our wedding in 2018, we mutually cared for a patient who we got to know over a matter or weeks to months. He had ultimately incurable cancer and passed. Prior to that, coming in very sick to the hospital, as his condition worsened and my wife was his admitting doctor, she called me as I was returning from a conference. We had a few proofs for our wedding invites and I brought one in for this patient.  With profound weakness, surrounded by his family, he managed to open it and share in that moment with me. He knew he would not be able to physically attend but this was the relationship the three of us had.  My wife and I went to his funeral and met many of his family members (thus far it's been the only funeral of a patient i've attended) , and sure enough the chinese/guyanese duo was easily identified by his family but we were welcomed with open hearts and warm smiles. This was something special, something to capture with words alone.  

So tldr, my wife is a compassionate , warm doctor but it's not necessarily her passion to teach others, guide others to refine/grow that skillset, that's more my gig.


*I'll end there for now, it's approaching 1am east coast time but putting words to paper so to speak is a relief. In the next entry, I'll try to capture my own growth when it comes to discussing bad news , communicating.


Till next time.


Rob  


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