Reflections from Peru

Grace Oliver, MD

Breath

When was your last deep—I mean it—

Deep

Breath?

The kind where you feel the parquet of muscles between your ribs slide to let your lungs bloom inside your chest?

Where you swear you can feel the new air unfurl all the way down into your alveoli?

Where your inhale is the buildup of a roller coaster pausing to rest at the top of the most terrifying hill?

Was it on that mountain when you didn’t think you could reach the peak?

Was it this morning, when your alarm went off at just the right spot in your sleep cycle that you woke feeling like a Disney princess?

Or

Was it the other night, when breathing was all you could muster?

When it was the only thing you could do to still the mayhem in your heart?

Quiet

This self-imposed exile is to recover from the unending lectures of obscure things that don’t help anyone, but the PhD at the pulpit of Our Lady of Biochemistry researched it for 10 years so we’re gonna listen, by God. It’s to recover from the frenzied conversations as the class leaves an exam and compares answers, but I don’t chime in because I have suddenly realized I’m both tachycardic and stupid. I have to get away from the sensory overload of the perpetual din of patient monitor alarms, the 24/7 anxiety-provoking group texts, the tinnitus I have from studying with headphones in all the time.

As I hike on an empty trail thousands of miles from home and dozens from any person or IV pole, I am finally able to reacquaint myself with quiet. The rustling of growing hay, the soft crunch of walking on just-dry red clay, and the wind in my ears are as salve.

For an afternoon, the keening of a woman abruptly widowed is laid at the feet of mountains. The vitriolic comments of burnt-out attendings lose their power to paralyze me with fear as I ruminate instead over how to describe the sound of the expanse I find myself in. I trade my cell phone ringtone for the placid moos of cows, staked to the ground so they can’t escape as I can.

I guard quiet moments like these to scrub myself of the tension and anxiety held in the memories and soundscapes of my day-to-day. I save the memory as part of my duty to the work I do, I have to release the emotional weight of what I’ve witnessed when I can. But by releasing these ghosts into the world like Odysseus’ bag of winds, I am propelled home with the peace I found there—renewed, still, ready to listen again.

Grace Oliver is a physician who dabbles in education, writing, and political advocacy. She is in her first year of residency training in family medicine at the Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, KS. She also manages the Twitter account for @MedHumChat. You can follow her on Twitter @MGraceOliver, and see her full portfolio at http://www.mgraceolivermd.com.