The Reintegration Zone

The panic hit suddenly. I scanned my phone anxiously as all the bars disappeared. No signal! I looked around the auditorium. We were deep in the bowels of my daughter’s school preparing for the start of her production. The worrisome questions bounced through my mind. What if there is an emergency? What if the ER calls? I could feel my anxiety rising and then I quickly tamped it down. You see, it doesn’t matter. One week into my half retirement, I am no longer responsible for such things. I’m no longer in charge of individual patient care, and after 6pm and on weekends my phone can effectively turn off. My situation has changed dramatically but my insides have not yet caught. I am entering the reintegration zone.

Diving back into life and trying to learn how to be just like everyone else. I realize it may be hard in the beginning, but suspect that in a few months everything will feel quite natural.

Here is what I am letting go of.

Fear of Unreachability

Being tethered to a mobile phone sounds like no big deal on first blush. Yet you would be amazed at how much this has changed my life. Running my own private practice without partners and taking care of the sickest patients, to be unreachable was unacceptable.

How did this change my life? There are so many ways. Basic family activities often became more complicated. Ever try to enjoy yourself swimming with a phone on you? Not so easy if you are being constantly texted and called. Even on the weekend, summer trips to the pool often meant sitting on the side with mobile in hand.

How about movies? I couldn’t see a simple movie without carefully obtaining a seat on the edge of the theater in proximity of an exit. It was rare that I could watch a full show without missing several minutes as I leapt up to answer a phone call.

Plays. Sporting events. Concerts. All the same problem. The anxiety became so routine that I often forgot how abnormal it was not to just sit back and enjoy entertainment.

Now that I have entered the reintegration zone, I constantly fight to avoid these irrational thoughts.

Sleep Deprivation

I have rarely slept more than six undisturbed hours over the last decade. No matter how quiet the office or nursing home, I somehow always got a call in the middle of the night. And when I tried to take a nap during the day to catch up, I would get texted or paged just on the cusp of falling asleep.

It is now as I enter the reintegration zone that I realize the devastating emotional effect of such sleep deprivation. I often found myself grumpy, irritable, or plain old tired. A week into uninterrupted nightly sleep and a few weekends of sleeping in, and I feel like a different person.

I am much more optimistic, much more ready to smile or manage a set back without getting annoyed. I can feel myself becoming the person I used to be decades ago before I started medical training.

And I kind of like it.

Negativity

The thing about treating the sickest of the sick is that there was always some emergency or another. There was always a patient dying, a family disgruntled, or a diagnosis unable to be treated. This stress, while sometimes part of any job, was a constant companion.

I often found myself feeling negatively or harboring anxiety and not knowing why. In the few moments that I was thoughtful enough to realize what was going on, I would trace the feelings to some complicated patient issue or another.

I was constantly having these negative thoughts and hopeless feelings. I wasn’t able to compartmentalize as well as I had thought.

A big part of entering the reintegration zone is to let go of all these difficult and complicated situations. I can now go back to being like any other human being. Not everyday needs to be filled with life and death decisions. I might even go a week or two without someone yelling at me. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Final Thoughts

Most working stiffs, and physicians in particular, are barraged daily with fear, negativity, and sleep deprivation. We live in a world of immediate accessibility which magnifies already stressful lives. As I settle into half retirement, I am also entering the reintegration zone. I am reintegrating into a more normal, less stressful, and more nurturing way of life.

So far it feels pretty good. I’ll let you know how it’s going in a few months.