Normalizing.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend in the military the other day about the things we do for work and how they become so mundane to us, that we lose sense of what's normal. As third year draws to a close and I look back at the experiences of the past 12 months, I realize how much I have seen and experienced that to many (or most) people would be vasovagal-inducing, nauseating, disturbing, masochistic, macabre, or just plain strange which has simply become... normal, to me. It is normal to be covered in blood or various other bodily fluids. It is normal for the workplace to smell of feces and urine. It is normal to work 15 hours a day. It is normal to stick your hand into various bodily orifices, natural or artificial. It is normal to disassemble the human body, intervene in a problem, then reassemble using silk, nylon, and stainless steel. It is normal to discuss bowel habits, suicidal thoughts, and sexual activity the first time you meet a person.

Back when I was in undergrad, I remember some of the jokes about certain medical specialties. Proctology. Who would want to deal with butts all day? Urology. Who would want to touch penises all day? Gynecology. Who would want to stare down vaginas all day? C'mon man, that's gross. Seriously, who would want to do that for a living? Especially a guy.

Well, after two weeks on OB/Gyn and numerous sterile speculum exams, the field has become... normalized. And really, once the pelvic exam stops being weird and starts being just one more physical exam you "do" to get information, you begin to see what's cool about the field. It's fast paced and busy, where things can go from reassuring to tenuous quickly. A good balance of medicine and surgery. Good outcomes for the patient in most circumstances, and a chance to significantly improve outcomes in cases where things are more dire. A sense of participating in an important moment in the patient's life.

But yes, all "that" stuff about OB/Gyn is now nothing unusual. So much so that when I do a pelvic exam now, all the anxieties I felt before about an exam that seemed so "gross" and inappropriate before just seems like another part of my job. My main concerns are more for the patient and how she may feel about a baby-faced male doctor-to-be performing an exam that is uncomfortable and in principle socially taboo. I am still very much in tune with that, and still struggle with balancing patient discomfort with my own education. But as far as it seeming gross, or unusual, those feelings are gone. I already find myself forgetting what it was like to know nothing about obstetrics. The 17 year old nulliparous patient who has no idea it is normal to defecate the bed during delivery. The couple who just welcomed their first child into the world who have a brief look of horror when the resident says she is now "using suture to reapproximate the vaginal wall." The 28 year old new mother who glances down in horror after we "remove" 300cc's of clot from her uterus post-partum. I forget how strange these things must seem.

During a c-section earlier in the week, the anesthesiology resident was comforting the patient during the procedure, talking her through the steps of the procedure. We had just finished closing the hysterotomy, and the resident says flatly "they just finished closing the uterus, you may feel some discomfort as they return the uterus to inside the body." I can imagine the patient's eyes growing wide, but all I hear over the drape is "WHAT!?!???" A large part of me cannot find fault in his faux pas, as these things seem routine to us. There is nothing strange about removing the uterus and placing it on the stomach to better sew the incision.

Just a few things that are now normal to me.

Ironically, 3 of the first 8 image results for the keyword "normal" in google images are of genitalia.