Do you really know how your patient feels? Really?

Dr. Racquel Reid

Guest Blogger in all of her PsyGirl Glory!!

Drum roll please...
Please welcome our first guest blogger and fashionista, Dr.Racquel Reid, 2nd yr  Psychiatry resident at MSM.

     I was surroundedby adults, leaning back on my elbows on a procedure table in a cold, brighthospital room. To be honest, I don’t even remember them placing me there.  How long did I sit there before they startedthe procedure? Was my mother at my side? Did they tell me what they were goingto do? To this day, I am unsure. But what I can remember is this- my tears, mywailing, my utter distress as they pulled a long screw out of my left foot. Irecall a frustrated nurse pushing a children’s book into my hands when mysquirming got too much. I suppose my movement risked me hurting myself whilethey removed it, but I was eight and I didn’t understand. I also remember beingheld down at some point. Later they showed me the screw. Some of this memorymay be pure childhood fabrication, but I think it was bloody, and I passed outfrom terror and exhaustion soon after.

    In my mind’s eye,the rest of the hospitalization is a blur. I can remember my mother sleeping onthe little cot built into the wall in the corner of the room. I remember theBeach Barbie I played with as often as I could, as well as the fact that I wasannoyed I lost one of her high heels.  Irecall how much I hate the smell of anesthesia, especially the bubblegum kind,and involuntarily retch at the memory. I can still feel the pinch of the IV onthe back of my hand. However, I am relieved that my mind also kept pieces ofthe sweet, tender moments: mounds of teddy bears, visitors with smiles andkisses, and the PCA pump infusing sweet relief with the push of a button. 

      Oddly, I stillfeel scared from time to time. Frightened for this little girl, for myself,lying in a hospital bed. Going through so much so early.  You see, I was born with bilateral club feet.It was an isolated case, idiopathic, and luckily not part of a congenitalsyndrome. I was splinted immediately after my birth and then underwent a numberof surgical corrections to improve my ability to move my feet normally suchthat I may be able to eventually walk without difficulty. From what Iunderstand, the screw placement during that hospitalization in 1993 was part ofa routine foot reconstruction, and they didn’t want to put me back underanesthesia to take it out.

      Ironically, evennow I couldn’t tell you the name and number of my procedures, but I do have ascope. My mother kept all of the “certificates” from my hospitalizations. Theywere little paper awards that the hospital put over your bed congratulating youfor being brave during your surgeries. I look through them occasionally andfeel overwhelmed; there are about 15 of them, spanning from October of 1985(the year of my birth) to 1993. My mother told me once that the ones I saw werejust the ones she remembered to keep.

     The rest of mychildhood was serial castings, serial bracings, and doctor’s appointments wherethey always wanted to construct or reconstruct something else. My parentseventually decided to stop taking me to orthopedic surgeons and focus onphysical therapy instead to avoid my missing any more schooling. On a whimduring my first year of residency, I actually attempted to obtain my medicalrecords from Milwaukee’s Children Hospital, only to find that the cost ofgathering and shipping the documents reached almost $300.00. I was flabbergastedbecause I was told by Medical Records there that my documents would cost anaverage of $0.15 per page, meaning I had almost 2,000 pages worth of medicaldocumentation! I declined receiving them.

     I guess the goodpart of all this is in spite of scary screw-pulling, the surgeries thatpreceded them, and the panic-inducing cast removals that followed, my doctorsand nurses did their best to make the hospital less of a haunting place. Iremember being in awe by them. As early as I can remember, I wanted to be aphysician, because even with the pain and the tears, they treated me like aperson. An incredibly special person deserving of the best care that can begiven. And I wanted to carry that forward for every scared child like myself,lying in a hospital bed surrounded by beeping machines and concerned faces. Itry to remember that every day- that patients, adult or child, are frequentlyscared and overwhelmed. Often they are in pain- physically or mentally- andthey want us to remember that they are a special person and absolutelydeserving of the care we provide them.

      Nobody reallywants to hear physicians rehash the reasons we became doctors, often thereasons often sound like surreptitious self-praise. But the only reason I writethis is to remind us that we all can be patients, or were patients at sometime. We need to remember that in whatever branch of medicine we practice andhopefully perfect, we are in theory treating ourselves. If we can rememberthat, we can only be our best.

Racquel Reid, MD is a 2^nd year psychiatryresident at Morehouse School of Medicine.

 She attended Medical College ofGeorgia (Georgia Health Sciences University) School of Medicine.

 She likesreading and no longer has a fear of screws.