Why I also Love Medicine
Monday, October 31st, 2005I got this from an online community - yes, I’m a geek. I choose surfing over human interaction, thank you very much. But I digress. I tried posting this in the bulletin but Friendster told me this piece contains materials not suitable for bulletin posts.
I think the blogger wrote this entry in response to another blogger who wrote about how she didn’t think med school was worth it. She looked back at the last four and a half years of her life and realized that medicine did nothing but made her unhappy. I’m posting it here because, well, I may be a sell-out, but milk-and-honey-dreams aside, I really do feel this way.
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I constantly complain about medical school and medicine and especially doctors and nurses. I refuse to socialize with the residents and most of my classmates because when I’m exhausted out of my mind after 12 hour days for 6 days a week (or more) i don’t want to talk about anything remotely related to a human body or physiology or anatomy or pathology. Most of the time when a doctor is trying to sell me their specialty i want to say "Im glad that you like what youre doing, but i think its boring and frustrating" but I hold my tongue… nonstop my mouth is running on and on to my nonmed school friends about how much this sucks and how tired I am and how much I wish I could travel or read a book for fun or go to the movies (but im on call!) or take a day off or just quit and become an artist… but then I realize - Im constantly talking about what i do. Sure, I have very little else going on in my life… but when I talk to everyone outside our world, they talk about their families and hobbies and whatnot, but their jobs are just a small part of their life that more times than not they don’t even mention.
Everyone’s careers take up a huge portion of their life (yes, medicine moreso than most others…) so shouldn’t we be happy that we want to talk about it so much? That it excites us or annoys us so much that it’s always the topic of conversation? That we’re passionate? We get to meet all different kinds of people. We get to see things no one else gets to see (unless they look it up on the internet). We get to learn people’s stories. We get to bring babies into the world and help people of all ages to leave it. We are there during the happiest and saddest parts of strangers’ lives. We get to save lives. We get to tell people the greatest news (you’re going to be a father!) and the saddest news (you have cancer…). And we get to understand. We get to be in some kind of secret society that gives us knowledge of things that seem to have meant to be beyond our understanding.
We get to do any kind of other job there is - we’re mechanics on human machines, we’re magicians with magical potions and pills, we’re artists who can change the canvas of someone’s face… we’re friends to people we’ll never see again. We’re listeners to people who just need an ear. We’re healers to people who hurt in many different ways. It sucks to wake up at 3am and not get home until midnight. it sucks when we don’t speak to our friends or family for days. It sucks that our kids grow up while we’re at work. it sucks that we have huge loans and huge insurance costs. It sucks that our patients die. It sucks that during school and residency we’re treated like shit by some people. but it’s great that we’re privileged enough to do what we do. it’s great that every day that sucks for me hopefully means a day that someone else gets to live.
