Book tour, we have lift off! What's Up Down There? Questions You'd Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend hits shelves TOMORROW, Sept 28! Lissa wrote this post today en route to our very first stop on the book tour - Chicago, which as it turns out, has particular meaning to Lissa... Read on to find out!

Returning to the Scene of the Trauma

As I write this, I am on a plane, flying to Chicago where I start my book tour. The irony of this fact is not lost on me. You see, I lived in Chicago for four years while I did my OB/GYN residency at Northwestern. But I haven’t been back in more than a decade. Why? Well, it’s not that I don’t love Chicago. And it’s not that I don’t have good friends there. But my four years of residency were the hardest four years of my life. I honestly think I have post traumatic stress disorder because of my residency. It’s been more than ten years since I finished, and the nightmares only stopped last year.

Why the trauma?

Well, when you’re a resident, you’re supposed to give up caring about yourself in exchange for caring about patients. You might have been up for 36 hours straight, but if the patient under your care has a complication and needs to go back to surgery, you’re expected to scrub in, even if it’s hours past the time when the next resident was supposed to relieve you.

And when your grandmother dies and you want to go to the funeral, forget it. My teacher said, in all seriousness, as if he deserved a medal, “I didn’t even go to my own father’s funeral.”

And when you’ve been in the operating room working on a cancer patient for eight hours straight, and you ask to scrub out for a five minute break so you can pee and change your tampon, you’ll get laughed at. Someone will say, “Cancer doesn’t take a potty break” and you’ll cross your legs and hope the blood doesn’t soak through your scrubs.

Then, when you’re puking your guts out and pooing liquid from food poisoning and you ask if you can go home so you can worship at the altar of the porcelain gods in the privacy of your own bathroom, they’ll pump you full of anti-nausea medications, fit you with a Depends, and send you back to work in the operating room. And then, when you pass out in the operating room, they’ll put you on a gurney, run a liter of IV fluids into your veins, and send you back to work.

Buck up, Rankin.

Then when you’re in Labor and Delivery on the night when you had to deliver four dead babies, all interspersed with a dozen other live, healthy babies, and you start crying, your teacher says “Buck up, Rankin.” And when you finally deliver the last of the four dead babies and you crumple into a heap on the floor of the locker room, sobbing, your teacher tells you you’ll never amount to anything. How will you ever be able to be in charge of Labor & Delivery if you can’t learn how not to feel? And you build your armor and start to close off your heart.

Then when you’re doing surgery and you get one stitch wrong, your teacher gets pissed and throws a scalpel at you. It narrowly misses cutting your hand and exposing you to someone else’s potentially infectious blood, but nobody apologizes and you’re expected to keep your mouth shut because this is your job. You are a resident, and YOU just don’t matter.

Swear to God. All true stories, and yes, they all happened to me. This kind of abuse messes with your head. Which is why when I went back to the hospital where I did my training six months after I finished my residency, I walked into the lobby and threw up. It wasn’t just the hospital. Even walking on the lakeshore, which I loved, reminded me of how I once walked home from Michigan Avenue to Lincoln Park along the lakeshore at 1:00am because I had just finished a long painful day and the bus wasn’t coming. Every fabulous restaurant was something I ate as take-out while someone tried to convince me that I didn’t matter. Even Wrigley Field reminded me of how the residents used to get paid to be the crowd-doctor on call.

I haven’t been back since.

And where is my first speaking engagement of the book tour? Yup. You guessed it. Northwestern in Chicago. I’ll be speaking there tomorrow. As you can imagine, I’m a bit hesitant about all this. Part of me locks up completely when I even think about the fact that this plane is about to land at O’Hare in a mere two hours. How will I feel? How will they respond when I’m standing up there on that stage? What will happen?

I don’t know.

These wounds revolving around Chicago and Northwestern are still fresh. Just a few months ago, one of my teachers at Northwestern tried to sue my publishing company because she doesn’t like the fact that I titled my book "What’s Up Down There" (long story). I was so hurt that she would come after me instead of being proud of my accomplishments that it just reinforced the message that I don’t matter. That I am a bug others can squash. That I should just bend over and take whatever they throw at me.

But I’m trying to shift my thinking. I am no longer the same person I was back then. I now know that those doctors don’t have the power to hurt me, no matter what they do. And I don’t want to carry this trauma with me any longer. So I’m trying to think of this book tour -- this leg in particular --  as a healing journey. (I will be ending my book tour in Tampa, where I suffered an equally traumatic medical school experience. The tour is kind of book ended by the sites of my biggest life traumas.)

What if, instead of letting the stories of my past dictate how I feel or what I do, I choose to release those stories that no longer serve me and are no longer true? What if, instead of holding on to resentments for past injustices, I can forgive the doctors who hurt me? What if, instead of thinking of Chicago as a graveyard of past pain, I can reclaim this great city as the place of my rebirth?

So this is what I aim to do.

In a short while, I will step off this plane onto Chicago soil for the first time in more than ten years. I will drive the Kennedy in bumper to bumper rush hour traffic as I weave my way to my best friend Katsy’s house, where I once nestled in her nurturing arms after long nights of call at the hospital. Tomorrow morning, I will return to the scene of the trauma and step foot into the hospital where I spent four long years. Then I will go to my beloved lakeshore and perform a little release ceremony to let it all go. I have changed. Things have changed. I don’t need all that baggage any longer.

This time, I plan to be ALL ME, ALL THE TIME, regardless of what anyone says or does. I will embrace my inner diva as I stand in front of an auditorium of people and I will open my heart to everyone in that audience, even if it includes the ones who hurt me. I will spread the empowering message of What’s Up Down There? to anyone who chooses to listen, I will launch this book at the S Factor launch party, I will go to Harpo Studios, where I will be on Oprah radio to share my message, and I will rewrite the story of Lissa Rankin in Chicago.

Chapter One. Lissa Takes Chicago By Storm The Vagina.

The Beginning,

Lissa

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What's Up Down There? Questions You'd Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend is available Sept 28 -- you can help us reach our goal of 5,000 books sold in the first week by pre-ordering your copy now. Want to receive a special newsletter with the inside scoop on Lissa's journey in writing the book, the Fall Book Tour, and lots of other goodies? Join TEAM PINK and serve on the frontlines of the What's Up Down There movement, and be sure to visit the What's Up Down There? blog to sample questions like those answered in the book!