Brain Rest

A high school football player gets hit a little too hard during Friday night’s game. An adult gets into a fender bender and their head slams against the headrest from the impact. After ruling out serious injury and diagnosing a concussion, what’s the treatment for these folks? Brain rest. That’s not the actual medical term, cognitive rest is more appropriate, but that’s what most folks call it, me included. It’s time from your brain to heal from the trauma it’s taken. Athletes get pulled from their practice and games, students sit out from homework and tests, adults take time off of work. No loud noises, no bright lights, no “thinking too hard.” Just rest.

Sometimes even if you have no trauma to your head, you brain needs to rest. Especially as pre-med student. You’re juggling hard classes, volunteering, shadowing, doing research, participating in extracurricular activities, and maybe working too. When was the last time you took a little time off to rest? Not studying physics, not doing MCAT practice questions, not working on your personal statement, not doing anything that requires you to “think too hard”…? Now, don’t get me wrong, I 100% believe you need to keep the end goal in sight and work towards it, but part of making it to that end goal is having your sanity and peace of mind. You’ll wear yourself out if you don’t take a break every now and then. If you can’t think of the last time you did, here’s reminder to do so. ASAP. You can thank me later.

Learning to take a break and step away from it all is a good habit to learn early. It’s one that I, admittedly, did not learn well as a pre-med student or even as a medical student. Even during times that I would “take a break” on holidays or weekends, what I had to do next or as soon as that break was over was always on a mind. To the point that I might as well have not even said I was taking a break because I just obsessed over what I needed to do and made myself feel guilty for not doing it right then.

I’ve carried this into practice as an attending and realize that it’s the quickest way to completely burn out on medicine. So I decided, a few weeks ago, to take a break. A real one. I booked a flight to sunny paradise and a hotel room and off I went. Now I didn’t completely give up on my patients–I did check my EHR every day to make sure there were no urgent tasks from my nurses or labs/images that I needed to act on. But that was the extent of my work or thinking about work-related responsibilities.

I did really good the first couple days. As the cool kids say, I WAS OUTSIDE! I hiked to see a pretty cool waterfall, got an unnecessary tan lying on the beach, did sunrise yoga every morning, made jewelry, got a massage and facial, took meditation classes every day, took surfing lessons (in the sand though, I wasn’t that free). I woke up when I felt like it, took a nap when I wanted to, ate when and what I wanted to and just took.a.break. It was glorious. I didn’t even know who I was! I felt lighter, carefree! Just walking around toes in the sand, drink in my hand without a care in the world.

And then, a couple days into the trip, it happened. The “old me” crept in and decided there was no time for breaks. Right in the middle of the best brunch burger I’ve ever eaten, I pulled out a notepad and started jotting down all the things I needed to do–that day, the next day, and as soon as I got back. Even worse, I pulled out my phone and checked work emails and even though I have an away message on saying that I wouldn’t respond to any emails until 5 more days from then, I started responding. I couldn’t even finish my burger because I got so worked up about how much I had to do! What was I thinking taking a break for so long? I needed to answer “important” emails, look over charts, review medical school applications, analyze my research data, make edits to a book chapter, review a mentee’s personal statement, pull together a high school scholarship list, and on and on…

So I walked out of the restaurant a little defeated–mad at myself for taking such a long break (especially one that cost so much money!) and determined to get back to my hotel room and get to work.

You don’t know me that well, but I hate rain. Like I need to live pre-Noah’s Ark days when no one knew what rain was. I know it’s essential for photosynthesis, the circle of life, blah blah blah, but I draw the line at water that I can plan my hair around…like a shower, pool, ocean, etc. There’s something about knowing your hair is going to get wet that makes it semi-okay. So when I walked out of the restaurant to catch my Uber back to the hotel, with all of this on my mind, it was pouring rain. Pouring. I didn’t have an umbrella (because who takes an umbrella on a beach vacation?).

And then it really happened. I waved down the Uber driver and he made a U-turn in the road and I took off in the rain for the back door. I don’t know what kind of little compact SUV he had but the doors were shaped weird. You know how doors are supposed to be a straight 180 degrees, straight up and down…this car wasn’t. It had a like 45 degree wing-shape happening on the top part.  So when I flung it open to jump in the backseat, the edge of the door caught me right on the forehead above my left eye. Knocked my glasses off and knocked me out! The next thing I remember is waking up on the ground, pouring rain, the Uber driving yelling, “Oh my God, Oh my God,” the server from the restaurant (who’d come outside) saying, “She only had one mimosa,” and the person in the car behind us (we’d stopped traffic) trying to stand me up and telling the Uber driver to take me to the ER down the road. If I wasn’t already on the ground, I would have died from embarrassment!! I found my senses, and my glasses, and tried to tell them all that I was okay. I literally had to beg the Uber driver not to dump me at the hospital. The knot the size of a ping pong ball on my head made it a hard argument. He insisted that I needed to see a doctor so I finally told him, “I am a doctor. I’m pretty sure I have a concussion but it’s nothing worse than that. I just need to get back and rest.” I just needed to rest. My brain needed to rest. No thinking ahead to everything I have to go back home to, no emails, no applications, no research, just rest. That’s what I came to do. And I’d enjoyed it so much while it lasted. So, to get me back to there, I think God did what He had to do.

Remember that church song, If He Has to Reach Way Down, Jesus Will Pick You Up? Well apparently, he’ll knock you on your ass too. Don’t make Him do it! Take a break! Seriously, give yourself a few hours, a day, a weekend, whatever you can spare and don’t think about it all. Take a full break. And do it soon. Everything you have to do will still be there when your break is over, I promise. But you’ll go back refreshed and better for it.

That’s all. That’s the message. It’s been almost 18 hours since the incident so it’s my professional opinion that I’ll live. Nothing hurt but my pride and the knot on my head! But I bet you I’ll enjoy the rest of this time off and stop thinking about work so much. Lesson learned.

Now back to my brain rest…when are you scheduling yours??