Day 4: Morning Rush
A series of essays from Round and Round We Go, an anthology of thoughts and reflections during patient rounds.
It’s 4:30 a.m., a truly ungodly hour. My alarm goes off and I despise my past self for setting it so early. I don’t like waking up early, but I know I’m painfully prone to snoozing the alarm every 5-15 minutes. And snooze it I do, promptly turning off the alarm, only to hear its incessant ringing again at 4:40 a.m., 4:45 a.m., 4:50 a.m.…
It’s 5:30 a.m. when I get up, not because I’m fully awake, but because I know it takes at least an hour to prepare. Even if the hospital is a 10-minute walk away, I take a full hour to prepare. I like leisurely mornings. I like having time to stare at the ceiling before I get up, choose a mood-based shower playlist, and allow the shower water to wash over me as I wallow in my thoughts (moments of clarity tend to transpire in the shower, after all). I enjoy going through my skincare routine, writing an entry in my journal, and sipping my first cup of coffee. No matter what I do, though, mornings are seldom leisurely. Even if I can take my time to prepare, my mind quickly clutters itself with to-do’s and to-decide’s. I open my wardrobe and I choose what to wear. I look through my phone and find messages I have to deal with: a new patient got admitted overnight, someone’s blood sugar spiked, or some paperwork needs to get signed. So much to do, and it’s not even 7:00 a.m.
It’s 6:30 a.m. by the time I’ve consumed my coffee. Today is Tuesday, which means we have a medical conference at 8:00 a.m. sharp, which means I should finish seeing all my 18 patients before then. I do the mental calisthenics in my head to figure out how much time I should allot per patient. I feel a tinge of guilt when I do this; when I divide my time like the five loaves of bread and two fish that Jesus gave out. But what can I do? I’m no miracle worker, and time is a resource I cannot multiply.
Overthinking about how to save time costs me an extra five minutes. I grab my tote bag, lock the door (Ten minutes later, I’ll think to myself: did I lock the door? I did, right?), and hop in the elevator, still empty as most people don’t get up this early. Usually, I allow my thoughts to wander as I walk to work. My mind is in constant conversation with itself as I look straight ahead. Sometimes, I notice something new on my daily walk—a construction on one of the older buildings, a tarpaulin congratulating Doctor X for Achievement Y, or a display of plants around the gate. I wonder if these things are truly new, or if they’re only new to me. Attention activates novelty, after all.
I make my way to the facial recognition machine, a new hospital software where instead of Bundy clocks and signed attendance sheets, we signify our attendance by showing our faces to a screen, like taking streamlined selfies every day. I bring out my patient list from my phone to figure out where I need to go next. It’s time for rounds.
Strictly speaking, I’m not a morning person; I can’t do 5:00 am jogs and have no strong desire to see the sunrise. I’m probably best classified as a “morning person by necessity” —I can get up when I want to but I won’t do that voluntarily. From grade school to high school, I had this reputation for being one of the earliest people to arrive, not because I wanted to, but because I lived more than 20 kilometers away from school. Given the travel distance plus the inevitable Metro Manila morning traffic, I usually had to be up two hours before any call time. By the time medical school and clinical duties came along, we’d already moved closer to school, but years of trying to beat the rush hour created this deeply ingrained fear of being late. It’s a feat I can no longer replicate the endurance it took to wake up that early and endure the morning commute, but I’m still deathly afraid of being late.
That’s not to say I’ve never been late—of course, I have! And I always feel awful about it. I hate wasting time and I especially hate wasting other people’s time. Time is precious precisely because of its limits. Quite poetically, the most valuable resource in the world cannot be created, and on the contrary, is constantly being consumed. Try as we might, time is never truly saved; we are all at the mercy of the 24 hours we’re all given.
The rush of a workday morning acutely reminds me of how time is constantly lost and never created. We’re left only with the micro-panic that comes with rushing through time. I worry about being late because I’m endlessly afraid of losing time, not just for the workday to come, but for everything else I still want to do.
Unfortunately, I don't finish rounds before the 8:00 a.m. cut-off. I proceed to the conference room feeling bad about walking too slowly or not waking up as early as I wanted. But I stop myself, eventually; I’m trying to be kinder to myself about time. Losing time is frustrating, but it compels us to keep moving and think forward, not backward. It encourages me to consider when I can see the eight more patients I have yet to visit. Maybe after this conference. Or in the middle of lunch. I can probably move around the rest of my schedule for the day. I can be intentional and still gain control, no matter the mishaps from before. The day isn’t over just because I miscalculated my morning. I need not waste more time by hating myself for doing so.
Mornings can and will go haywire. No matter how determinedly I prepare for the day, a million parts of my schedule could go wrong. I will probably still set ten alarms, struggle to wake up and stress over my phone notifications, but maybe that’s okay. I can still look forward to the peace of the hour before the chaos—that first cup of coffee, the clarity of a morning shower, and the creative pursuit of each outfit, among others. I’m not a morning person, but even I must admit that there is still much to appreciate at the break of dawn.