The Surgery Rotation

My most memorable experience in shame in medical school was during my surgery rotation in third-year, which is known to be the most brutal rotation of third year with not so nice residents, especially where I was going long, long hours, waking up at 3am in the morning. But that was also when I experienced my first family emergency.

It was the first weekend of my surgery rotation when my parents decided to fly across the country to meet my boyfriend's parents for the first time. It was a Saturday in the middle of the summer, and we were walking around all day long, showing my parents where I was living, and around the city. And that night we were supposed to go to my boyfriend's parents' house for dinner.

We were all getting ready to start our dinner when my mom quietly excused herself to the bathroom. Five minutes go by and she is not at the dinner table, so I awkwardly laugh and say, "I'll check on my mom." I walk to the bathroom. The bathroom door is cracked open. When I go in, I see my mom collapsed on the ground, covered in cold sweat, with vomit all over her. We immediately called the ambulance. The EMS comes and her blood pressure is very, very low — the systolics to the seventies. She's unconscious, moaning. I've never seen her like this. She ultimately gets a diagnosis of ischemic colitis, perhaps because of the severe dehydration in a neurally, hypotensive lady.

 I am in between trying to be a good daughter to my immigrant parents, translating everything that the doctors are saying to my parents, who speak okay English, but not enough to be able to understand what's going on. And being a good medical student who's present and not late, not missing days from her rotation, especially in surgery. I end up staying at the hospital on Monday and Tuesday, called the coordinator and one of the residents on my team that there is a family emergency and I cannot go.

I hope everything is okay. The coordinator says everything will be okay. Fortunately, my mom did not need surgery, and I talked to the surgeon late at night on Monday who cleared her. When I come back, I hope that everyone's aware of what was going on, but after the morning round, the chief of my team sets me aside and starts yelling at me for missing days off of rotation. He scolds me for missing days of the rotation just to spend time with family. He says that just because your family flew out from the other side of the country doesn't mean you can miss days off of rotation. It's pretty clear that he did not know what was going on last weekend. I don't think the resident that I told had told him.

I feel this overwhelming sense of shame for spending my time with my family and not prioritizing my education. All throughout college, and all throughout medical school, thus far, I had prioritized my education over everything else, I felt. I was missing out on holidays, my friend's birthdays, all my family time so that I can study more. And this was the first time that I thought it was right to prioritize my family over my education.

I honestly thought I could not concentrate on whatever I was doing on the rotation if I didn't know whether my mom was going to go to surgery the next day. I thought I did the right thing, but at that moment, in the days afterwards, I really doubted that. I had to tiptoe around all of my residents that I was working with. I had to prove to them how good of a student I was. I felt misunderstood. I felt judged. It was a very painful part of my third year rotation that really trickled over the rest of the year.

I wonder, when that chief resident actually found out what happened on that weekend, whether he felt any bit of guilt for setting me aside and yelling at me without giving me a chance to defend myself or explain the situation, because he never, he never apologized. I feel like in certain medical specialties, especially in surgery, they are not encouraged to prioritize anything over their medical education, or their patient care, and the way that that chief resident treated me was how he was probably treated as well. I think something needs to change.