adelaidemedblog

Evening all, you may remember me from previous prolific lengthy rants such as ‘D.I.G.F.A.S.T.‘ and ‘Being grilled doesn’t have to be a part of student life‘.

Well today I present you all with an update to my pessimism and lack of enthusiasm for the field I’ve come to work in.
Previously I’ve showed my interest in all the surgical fields, all well and good. Not for me in the end, I like fresh air and sunlight. And even if I studied really hard.. I don’t think I can be enough of a prick.

The R.O.A.D. to happiness might lead you with a good quality of life, but getting on the R.O.A.D seems tough, and the path itself boring, except for A. (Radiology, Ophthalmology, Anaesthetics, Dermatology).

Anyway, funnily enough three of my loves have stuck with me throughout the years, photography, teaching, and travel, in no specific order. My love for learning is up there, but my dedication wanes. I’m currently on my ED rotation and I most definitely enjoy my days off more than my days on. I am acutely aware that this is not a new phenomenon by any means, but the intensity of my feelings is what concerns me. So early in my ‘career’.

I had a day off today, and I was so tired from the weekend shifts that I went to bed at 8:15pm. And slept for 14 hours. When waking on this beautiful work free Monday, I organised a bike ride with a colleague and enjoyed our roll down to the beach. Sat and complained about nurses and awful pages, prioritising tasks, and prioritising life. It felt good, so good that I immediately felt sad.

Sad? On such a beautiful day? A day where I catch up with a good friend, and go for a ride, and feel fit?
Yes. And above is precisely why. The contrast of how much I enjoyed my day off, to how much I dread walking into ED and seeing another abdominal pain, or 91 year old from nursing home for ?hypotension. Query hypotension?? What is there to query? Does she have it or does she not? Nursing homes are where dictators should be sent to serve out their crimes against humanity.

But my rant digresses.

I once mentioned that small short goals are what keeps me moving forward in life. However each is proving overall to disappoint somewhat. The highschool to med transition was wholly satisfying, but as time went on I found a lot not to like. At the time I didn’t approve of non graded passes, self directed learning, an unempathetic and somewhat cruel faculty.

So I thought get through these years, soak in the good times (of which there were plenty of course) and get onto clin years. Yada yada read previous blog entries to hear about all that. Fast forward to today.

Internship. It’s paytime really, I’m doing much the same stuff I did when I was on ED as a sixth year, only now it matters what the consultants say about me, and my signature counts for something. I’m not going to bore you with my complaints of the ED, I’ve talked about the pros and cons of that before. But working has further reinforced my strong strong belief that medicine is nothing more than a job. A lot of people know this superficially, they’ll say things like “of course it’s just a job, what else would it be” but people don’t really stop to think about it.

I find that a lot of my colleagues have their life quite planned out. Some have spent many hours of their precious spare time buffing up their CV’s for a potential future career in surgery, gastro, cardiology, ophthal etc. Others haven’t done so, but know what rotations they’ll be applying for over the next 2 years in order to increase their chances of getting into that training program. But when I question them about their life dreams, it all seems like this rehearsed sales pitch they’ve told every other person who’s asked them “so what do you want to specialise in?”. They all seem to have chosen based on how it looks on paper, or because of that one good registrar that told them they enjoyed it up to now. I doubt people dream to become a gastroenterologist, but then again that might just be my opinion.

So the further I go along on this path, the more concrete my desire to travel, to meet, to learn, to teach, to document and to share becomes. Every day of internship is a day closer to paying off my debts, to getting my registration, and to breaking free of the contract that binds me to a life I chose, but one I’ve chosen to veer from.

I came close a few years ago to letting it all go. To just quit med and do something else. The problem was at that time that something else wasn’t as concrete as I’d have liked it to be. I think it is now. THINK. But hey, in the end if it all falls to pieces, I’ve still got my health right? That and a license to work in the health system.