I’m the first to admit that I have a Type A personality. As I get older (and hopefully wiser), I strive to get a lesser grade, maybe a Type A- or B+ personality. This is in stark contrast to most of my academic life where I was always an achiever.

I think this week, I definitely pushed myself up to a Type A+ personality. Moving offices, coordinating things for a new employee, making huge purchases, all of this has spelled STRESS. This has been a balancing act between taking care of patients. This week I had HAD IT.

I’m not proud of some of the things that happened: I blew a gasket. There were a number of expletives hurled at a pharmacist and a statement made of “I HAVE HAD IT, I AM DONE” directed toward an otherwise great patient who was involved in the pharmacy situation. Funny thing is, both ended up apologizing to me, and even though I am no longer angry at either of them, I still feel that I have had enough. And for some reason, even though I yelled at both of them, I have not apologized for it.

These are the pains of a growing medical practice. Nobody ever tells you about the day-to-day raw emotions. When I have spoken with other doctor-entrepreneurs, I get blanket statements like “Year 5, you’ll be fine”. But what happens on Day 268 of Year 4? I don’t even know what day of Year 3 I am in so I just randomly picked that time point. How does an expanding practice make you FEEL? I would like to know the answer to that question from an expert.

I came back to work today, feeling exhausted. The trigger points in my neck have acted up and the one in the middle of my left trapezius is just acting like an angry gnome.  In the morning I  waited to hear from my parents regarding some health issues, and didn’t want them to call when I was underground traveling. I made it late to work to a fully booked day. I ran into some red tape regarding some insurance bureaucracy that could have been avoided had the person returned my three messages, but of course, she hadn’t. I just didn’t have the energy to blow another gasket. This is probably a good thing.

Learning point taking the fork to a B+ personality: Let it go. I can’t control everything. Mistakes will happen. I will once in a while blow a gasket because I really want my patients to get the best medical care and I’m such a perfectionist. Get a hot stone massage on Saturday for 2 hours. Breathe.