Should I Quit?

NaBloPoMo 2021

I read somewhere that about one in five healthcare workers has left medicine since the pandemic started. This is a poem highlighting the predicament of someone who is thinking about quitting.

Who would I be if this I could not do

My sense of identity draws heavily on it too

Where would I be if not within these walls formidable

Working inside the confines of which I am comfortable

The life-sustaining machines’ hums and beeps

Those sounds would haunt me when I try to sleep

Where would I look for the rush of adrenaline

Except in handling the kind of medical emergencies I’ve seen

How else would I find despair morph into hope

How would I comfort aggrieved people, help them cope

Where would the triumph of science I celebrate

Where would I witness miracles modern medicine can create

*

Tough the path had always been

But the pandemic brought challenges unseen

Defeat more often than success

Death, too excessive to process

The hope from vaccines that loomed large

Appeared to turn into a mirage

Overburdened, exhausted, under-appreciated

Nothing at work leaving me satiated

My cup was emptied out long ago

How to channel motivation, I do not know

*

I want to quit, my breaking point is here

I am losing my raison d’être, I fear

My pesky little inner voice chimes in

Raises the arguments I gave in the beginning

Thus, back to square one I go

I’ve gushed at the highs, with the lows I’ll flow