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 becuase
of your time. i look back on this day and see how the time was slowly drained away……. it nicks your time and therefore your life.
i’m not complaining, by the way. i’m just telling it like it is. can we make an agreement right now that i will not complain about this shit? like yes, it sucks,., but (checks motivational text from weird uncle) get over it and get INTO it.
so 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. all of them were neutral or positive.
the thing i had to remember today is that one’s presence is part of the fucking world;
last year i was being a ghost the whole time. 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 fuckin 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. and that part is fucking 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. like hellooooo B--- are you okay queen what’s going on you know you can talk to me right…….. and Y---- god bless him when he comes back after his day off i’ll be like 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 just takes 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. get to the point where you can talk about how we’re all oppressed by the same system and how it doesn’t have to be this way. the residents are getting paid a barely livable wage working a job that's taking years of(f) their lives.
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. they live less ‘heatlhy’ lives than any of us in the nick you, including the sick babies. like if that baby with v—--- 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….
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. like hello, you have the golden opportunity. sick babies, struggling residents. everyone suffering windowlessly. they're right in front of you. and what are you going to do? this is how you will spend the majority of your waking days now. this is it bitch. let’s see what you’ve got. and in the evenings you can go on the roof and watch the sun set. and 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 (but windowless) potential.
but then also like [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 how he had to step away from practicing psychiatry on the bombers and the bombed.
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 first year of school. i don’t think we were actually “helping people.” whatever help you’re doing to an invidividual patient (the help in question: telling them to go to walmart to pick up lisinopril) is offset by your participation in the farce, which allows it to continue.
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 are, too.
i think the point is
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, or better yet just 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.
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’d say ‘oh, for the patients, of course.’ at least 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 actually 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? does this med student need to be doing more? do the other residents hate me?’
the mind of a resident is probably a hellish place, which is—first of all—why i want to get into it and understand it, and—second of all—why i want to like…………… put this point accross that medicine is not about the patients. becuase it’s just not, my friend. it’s just not. 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 them, but it’s not anymore. just like big pharma is not about the patients. let’s get fucking real. none of it is about the patients. that’s the problem with going on rounds and all the micro-tasks of the day: all your energy gets used up, and when you finally have a moment to care about the patient, the actual patient, their humanity, their families, you’re so tired that 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 (or in my own time ❤️), 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.
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 itme 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 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 promsie 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.