Moving On

Moving On chronicles the life of a new psychiatry resident who, during his first night on call at the psychiatric unit of the Oklahoma VA Medical Center, was faced with a decision he felt unprepared to make. What path had he followed to reach a place in his life where he was totally in charge of another person's well-being? Born into a long line of farmers with little education, his family had expected him to graduate from high school, then live as a farmer or a blue collar worker in rural Oklahoma. His father wanted him to be a tough, aggressive male above all else. His mother wanted him to be an honest and hard working man who would find a nice girl and settle down locally so he could give her grandchildren to spoil. But after leaving the home of his divorced mother at age fourteen to live and support himself for a year while attending his freshman year of high school, he learned to shoulder responsibility and make his own way. Instead of following his mother's wishes, he chose a different life path. Despite no scholarship and no family support (financial or otherwise), he entered Oklahoma A&M College and worked his way through. His path to higher education was filled with obstacles: financial hardships, intellectual naiveté, spiritual turmoil, and college administrative bias. Despite a college official telling him he should drop out because he couldn't afford college and a psychologist cautioning that he lacked the intelligence to do college-level work, he persevered. Heavily influenced by a religious mentor but troubled by spiritual conflicts, he decided to become a medical missionary. Once in medical school, however, he became intrigued with studying the emotional and behavioral dysfunctions some people developed and resolved to devote his professional life to caring for those who suffered from them. That resolve led him to seek training as a psychiatrist and led to the night he found himself on a VA hospital psychiatry ward facing an enraged man sprawled on the floor with six aides pinning him down. Would he know what to do?