the nick you will be a month-long endeavor.
why do i call it the nick you? that’s the first thing to address. it’s because
of your time. i look back on this day and see how the time was slowly drained away. they nick your time and therefore your life.
i’m not complaining, by the way. just telling it like it is. can we make an agreement right now that i will not complain this month? yes, it sucks,., but (checks motivational text from mentor) get over it and get INTO it.
if we’re talking about the day, here’s what i would say about the day: i had a great time. everyone was soooo nice to me. i did not have one single negative encounter.
the thing i had to remember today is that my presence is part of the fucking world;
last year i was a ghost. there’s no wonder i had a miserable go of it. what would happen if i were a human and did human stuff? .....
idk, bro. there are just some social norms in that place that feel hard to crack, and i start to panic when i think of them.
my friend said to me on the phone that i should do whatever i need to do to get through this. i don’t know if she meant anything specific by it, but i’ll take her advice. i think she was mostly trying to say
there was a time when that felt like a viable option, but it doesn’t anymore.
snap out of it. i felt that tendency to spiral into the ‘ohhhhh, life sucks’ zone, but i realize i can calm down. i got this. all it’s gonna take is showing up. the rest will figure itself out. my responsibility is to get myself ready to show up every single day. that part is hard.
maybe i need to do more to show the residents that what they’re doing is genuinely insane. talk to them more. try to make them feel better.
"hey, B▒▒▒. are you okay, queen? what’s going on? you know you can talk to me, right?"
and, when Y▒▒▒ comes back after his day off: "omg yayyyy we missed you, Y▒▒▒."
i feel like i could become close with these people. i kinda love them already? even the attending, dr K▒▒▒. i miss you, girl.....
how could i complain in the first place? the tendency is just so right-there, so readily available, that sometimes, if you’re not careful, it chooses itself.
i think the thing about work that keeps people going is how relational it forces you to be, and how much of a cheerleader you have to be for your coworkers.
the residents are getting paid a barely livable wage working a job that's taking years off their lives. just gotta get to the point where you can talk about how you’re all oppressed by the same system and how it doesn’t have to be this way.
the system being what it is,
at least the doctors are even getting paid. what about the people the hospital turns away,,,,,,, hurt by the same system, but exposed to more immediately life-altering consequences? if that baby with ▒▒▒▒▒▒ were born on the street, not admitted to the hospital, she would’ve just died. right? idk man. i know hospitals accept everyone for emergency situations and that’s the law, but the problem is all the prevention and insider secrets and drugs that don’t get shared with everyone.
all i can do is be a team player and show love and gratitude to these people. i can express how i feel to the residents, i can open up to them, and i can....
1 = 88 i’m putting cart before horse here. it’s day one. but don’t they say it’s good to have goals? especially if the goals as are rooted in loving-kindness? the golden opportunity. sick babies, struggling residents. everyone suffering. right in front of you. what are you going to do?
this is how you will spend the majority of your waking days now. let’s see what you’ve got. in the evenings, you can go on the roof and watch the sun set. the days will get shorter in the meantime, but this is a sacrifice you are making. you are sacrificing time in the sun (how much of it were you using, anyway?) for time with boundless potential.
but then also, ▒▒▒ hospital being what it is.... what it takes to get even there as a patient................ it does feel warped..... i do often think of fanon and the reasons why he had to step away from practicing psychiatry.
so he quit.
i guess it’s just that like...... i guess it’s just that..... like......... uh....... i guess....... ummmmm......
i think of the free clinic where i worked during my first year of school. i don’t think we were actually “helping people.” whatever help you’re doing to an individual patient is offset by your participation in the farce.
though i suppose you could say it’s hypocritical to say medicine is rotted to the core and still go for an MD........... you can’t be mad at others for participating in the farce when you're participating, too.
i think the point is
i can only participate in so many farces, bro, before i have to get back to the real.
but there is reality to be experienced in the nick you.
i can try to understand the residents. i can start asking questions. "how did you end up here?" for example. i wish there were a way to do that, to have a casual conversation. even if we had ten minutes, thirty minutes, a lunch break together, some plain old off-time, then we could get to know each other, and we’d get more invested in each other, and it would make the whole thing feel much more like the superorganism that it needs to be.
super-organize it already is a superorganism, but it’s a superorganism crafted by the fucking master hand. a superorganism not allowed to experience itself except in a hyper-focused, hyper-clinical context. it’s not the same kind of superorganism as it would be if we were just together of our own accord.
what is it that i’m even trying to say right now? isn’t it supposed to be about the patients? well, no. that’s one thing i’ve actually learned about medicine:
it’s just really not. if i were to ask a resident, "what do you do this for? why do you keep coming in? why are you a doctor?", they might say, "for the patients, of course." the good ones would. but even the good ones, if you were to track their thought process throughout the day, likely aren't thinking much about improving a patient’s life. their thought processes are, at least in my experience, more like "how can i not be so overworked right now? what task do i need to do that hasn’t been done? does the attending think highly of me? is she going to evaluate me well? am i doing enough?"
medicine is not about the patients. it’s about listening to the attending attentively, but you don’t really know what she’s talking about. it’s about waiting to get sent home. it’s about being soooo hungry for some reason even though you ate lunch.
shit, man. i don’t know if this is even true. i just think it is. i just think it has to be. again, all of these people would tell you that they, of course, are doing it for the patients, of course. if medicine weren’t about the patients, what would it be about?
maybe it used to be about the patients, but it’s not anymore. just like big pharma is not about the patients. let’s get real: none of it is about the patients. that’s the problem with going on rounds and putting in orders and all the other micro-tasks of the day: your energy gets used up, and when things finally slow down, when you finally have a moment to care about the patient——the actual patient, their humanity, their families——you’re too relieved at the opportunity to sit down that you don’t have anything left to give.
maybe this is when i need to get addicted to caffeine. if i would’ve just gotten addicted to caffeine when everyone else did, i might be on a completely different career path right now. i would probably be applying to residency, thinking that i loved the grind, but i really just loved being high on caffeine.
anyway, as a general rule, i’m not going to complain. if you ever feel like complaining, either drop out or drop it.
idk man idk man idk man idk man idkdkakdkdk man i think it can be about not needing to manage other people’s expectaitons of me while also surprising them by taking initiative in unconventional ways.
keep going whatever you do, just keep it up. you’re only one day into it.
it’s time to start iterating. i think that’s the beautiful thing about this month: it’s a creative process. you can do things slightly differently each day. you can iterate.
i’m just going to work hard and reap the rewards that everyone says there are for working hard. i’ll do my best. i can promise my best. i can’t promise magic. but i’ll try for the magic, of course, obviously.
when you’re in medical school, integration becomes your full-time job. if it doesn’t, you will get depressed and kill yourself, or else you will have to drink the kool-aid and be soothed by the worldly promises of doctorly success.
obviously.
say it