*On the Front Lines*

Michelle Hoffman : OBGYN Resident Physician, Dog Parent, Writer : Columbus, OH

March 25, 27 & 30, 2020

“0035: Laid down, surprise, in a bed. This is the first time EVER I have actually laid down on a 24 hour shift. It feels weird. As the intern I am the first call to everything so it’s usually constant. 0140: Called by an RN that patient wants to talk to me about her “plan of care” etc. I go. I slept for almost an hour which is unreal.”

Michelle Hoffman has been one of my dearest friends for a very long time. We met doing the absolute craziest college summer job of door-to-door sales. A job that was catered directly to people like us - riddled with anxiety about how we would pay for a college education ourselves and wanting to just be told what to do. We did this in states we didn’t live or go to school in - for 15 hours a day/6 days a week for 11 weeks straight. This is real. It was solely commission-based. And we were crazy enough to do it twice. That’s the power of cult mentality and capitalistic dogma. There were even chants and cold showers and polo shirts galore, along with a grand prize trip to an all-inclusive Mexican resort. I won this trip twice because I was very good at following rules back then and thought it my moral duty to achieve. I block it out of my mind most of the time, but what I am very grateful for was my friendship with Michelle. We are both very different people with very different brains. I am a floaty non-linear ADD child with an earnest soul, and they are a logic-focused, science-nerd with an equally deep and earnest soul.

I can remember so vividly like it was yesterday, us getting up at 6am near the headquarters at our motel, being told to get straight out of bed, jump and yell (verbtim): “I feel happy! I feel healthy! I feel terrific!”, take a cold shower, head downstairs to the lobby and cram our faces with bananas and coffee while memorizing our sales script. Then we spent the rest of the day running around an empty parking lot in khaki bermuda shorts, 50 lb backpacks carrying the books we were selling and all, in 80 degree Nashville weather, knocking on fake doors asking “Hi! Are you the mom?” like maniacs. Like our lives depended on it. Because we were made to believe our lives, our characters, did depend on it. During our “breaks” which were meant to be stuffed with more sales script memorizing, Michelle and I would look at each other wide-eyed, slowly learning more and more about each other, finding nothing superficially in common except for our all the guilt and shame that came with an Evangelical background, but finding ourselves developing a deep friendship that would last and develop for years to come.

Michelle has always been one to want to plum the depths of existence, never settling for the first answer. It’s what makes them such a great physician. They have a poetic soul and a fierce logic-driven mind and the combination of the two creates an excellent caregiver - one who is able to make decisions appropriately and assess a situation, while seeing the human being in front of them.

So read along to see what a Resident Physician does on their days off, as well as on a 24 hour shift, and go on a couple walks with Leia, their dog, as well: