Stress

"This is not going well."

I looked up from my note cards at my mother and sister. Defeated. Annoyed. They looked very concerned. "Lin, it sounds very fragmented. Is there some way to make it sound more like a conversation?"

My masters "defense" was in less than 8 hours. I had all my notes annotated on flash cards to go along with my PowerPoint slides. Yet, my words were scattered, abrupt, forced. I had given countless presentations in my past career in the pharm industry. Why was this any different? I knew my work. I knew the data. I knew what was expected. More importantly, I knew how to address the issues my committee would bring up.

The night dragged on. My sis left. My mom went to sleep on the couch. My eyes stayed open...all night I worked and worked. The next morning, the big event. My stress level went through the roof. My hands shook. My heart raced. My eyes blurred as I looked at the big screen with my first slide.... "Good morning, I would like to present....

Everything went just beautifully. Better than I could have imagined. What changed the situation?

Stress.

Stress affords me the luxury of knowing exactly how to proceed. It takes the guess work out of life. You choose the best option and just do it. You are in a teeny tent faced with poisonous 6 inch long insect intent on attacking you, you kill it...quickly. You come out of the forest and realize you are standing next to a fresh grizzly bear kill, you back away...slowly. You need to accurately and gracefully defend a thesis you worked very hard on or you do not graduate, you do just that...skillfully.

I am wired to embrace those moments of clarity. Much easier for me to do than decide what's for dinner. Yet, apparently, medicine is not an exact science. There is no one right answer. Every patient is different. There could be varying prognoses to the same illness. Or one treatment with incremental degrees of efficacy. I am learning to live with this newfound uncertainty....and lots and lots of stress.