14 heads

Maybe the point is to be miserable.

I had a revelation today sitting in the middle of the labor section of ZSR (ugrad library) studying STDs. Maybe I am not supposed to like medical school. Maybe academic medicine is supposed to get under my skin. Maybe living in a culture that finds me at best strange at worse down right heretical is the best thing in the world.

Let’s discuss some of the things that have made me hate medical school .L et’s discuss some of the reasons people look at me like I have fourteen heads:

 “Yes insurance companies discriminate against sick people How do you think they make money?”

“Do you have any clue how much that drug actually costs? Do you realize how many children die overseas because the drug company won’t lower the cost” (in regards to some new TB drugs)

 “Actually, most disabled people are not waiting for magic cures.”

 “I’m sorry but I don’t consider myself a POOR OUTCOME.”

“Abortion is not a TREAMENT for Downs’ Syndrome.”

“I could care less about how much money I am going to make in 10 years, in fact I most likely won’t be making enough to leave off without support of donors.”

“I have a moral issue of charging someone who can’t afford or overcharging someone who can for me as a fellow human being to save his/her/their child’s life”  

“If I have the choice to give someone a condom and save their lives or preach safe sex and watch a young mother in Africa or an orphan in Romania die of AIDS. I pick the condom every time.” (yep burn me at the stake)

“Just because you can’t fix someone doesn’t mean they don’t deserve your time.”

“Just because something hasn’t been done (treat MDR TB in a slum to take a note out of Farmer’s book) doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done now.”

Or to quote a friend:

“I wrote down my purpose’s statement as a physician the other day for a class, I wrote’…to show unconditional love’, I am waiting for my professor to laugh at me.”

 

And I could go on for hours.

 

Would I ever want to change the way I think about these things?

 

I hate studying 10 hours a day and all that goes with that socially, emotionally, physically but that will end in 8 weeks from tomorrow. The question of medical school is not how much more studying can I take?  I whine perpetually about how this not going to help me care for people better if anything its teaching me to be anti-social, selfish and resentful of people who seem to have it better than I do. In the mist of all that whining, maybe I have missed the point. Because studying really isn’t the point nor is being adored by my peers or professors.

It’s the culture that really gets me down and frustrates me to the point of tears not the lifestyle, not the work. Considering the life path I have chosen living in a hostile culture is pretty much exactly what I am supposed to want.  Maybe the point is to be miserable.

If I hate the way medical school is so frustrating and I want to quit maybe the best thing in the world I can do for my mental health and for medicine is to stay exactly where I am and fight it out.  If I can’t hack American medical education, I doubt I can hack 20 years in Eastern Europe with post-soviet medicine or even life.

When people stare at someone with 14 heads, they rarely forget it. I mean how many 14 headed people have you seen?

exactly.

 

i think i just quit med school or tried anyway

I broke down in sobs.

having lunch with my mother.

in a very public local restaurant.

yeah.

You know how when you were a kid sometimes you spent a lot of time in your head going over exactly how you want to tell your parents something. Carefully craft your presentation to decrease scaring your parents and/or  increase the chance of them letting you  do exactly what you want them to do.  This was not one of those times.

This was completely and utterly not planned, not rehearsed. We were just sitting there talking about my two sisters (who are competely and utterly fine) and five minutes later I have tears streaming down my face and I am telling my Mom I want to  quit medical school.  I didn’t plan it, I didn’t wake up this morning and say i am going to quit med school today.

It should be noted that my parental units do not read my blog and although I have told them that I am less than enthused with medical school. Out right talk about quitting  was shocking. It shocked me. It shocked me that my Mother didn’t really skip a beat and suddenly is going over the options with me. It shocked me that I was crying in public, uninhibited and pretty much without shame. I didn’t really feel better afterwards. I didn’t really feel worse.

 We parted ways and I try to get back into studying. 20 mins later my mother calls me on the phone and says she talked to my Dad and he thinks my mom should stay the night.  It then occurs to me that I have most likely just freaked my parents. Here I am the stable child, the child with direction and motivation, the responsible one, here i am having a breakdown.  I explain to my Mom that I love her and am grateful she wants to stay but it would just cause me more mental anguish right now trying to play host and study for my final.

I stare blankly at the wall for a moment and think you know if I presented to a real doctor with this story and my current sleep, eating, social situation, etc.  They would medicate me.  Me and probaly half my class.

med school: Clinically depressed and Fabulous.

I want to get off.

I think it finally hit me that in two months from next week I will be taking the Boards. And I just sort of had a panic attack sitting in ZSR (ugrad library). There is so much stuff I don’t know the way I should like Pharm and Pop-epi and renal and embryology and even more terrifying is the stuff I don’t even know I don’t know.

And it was a beautiful day as I sat here and listened to lectures about sex hormones and panicked. All I wanted to do was get in my car and drive away into the sunshine and rejoin life. I know I haven’t really left life. But I feel like I have. I feel like I am stuck in some time loop of repeating moments of inadequacy, frustration, shallow relationships (because I never have time I should to devote to them) and the feeling of gulit for all the things I don’t have time for and the time I wasting dreaming about what I would if I wasn’t in medical school. I live viacariously via the world of internet blogging, Facebook and You Tube and have developed an unusal interest in the 2008 Election Primaries because they are continualy covered live via the internet, my window to the world.

And I am ashamed of all of this. People are dying, children are starving, my parents and the federal government and several generous scholarships are shelling out money like no tomorrow investing in my medical education. Yet I just don’t care anymore. My apathy is growing by the hour. I am tired and frankly I would just rather be any where else. Someone told me I was closer to quitting medical school a year ago. Maybe, I was, maybe I repressed it but I have to be honest, today with the sun shining and the fact I can’t even get excited about sex hormones, with the crap that is gong down in the orphanage and a recently supplemented bank account. Its just too easy.

When I went home over Christmas. I cleaned out of my bookshelves in my bedroom at home. I found some of my old journals from high school and even before. I read them for a while. Although I never said I want to be a doctor, I talked perpetually about how upset I was about the crappy care all the Kniest Kids were getting that I knew. The wheels were in motion. But I also talked about loving my classes, idolizing my teachers and loving being back home in VA, getting my first poems published, my first kiss (ha!), lots and lots of theater, writing all the church plays and dreaming. My life was not perfect and heaven knows I don’t want to go back to high school. Its the fact I was whole. I don’t feel whole any more. I feel like someone else is living my life for me.

Its not the boards. I will pass them if I try. Its the fact that somehow in all the deciding between grad school types and majors and life plans, I left behind or put on hold or cut out entirely things I really loved. Maybe its growing up. But part of me can’t help but continue to wonder if med school is the best way for me to really be the person I am meant to be. Just because I can do something doesn’t always mean its the right something to do.

I know there have been a whole series of these my life sucks I want to drop out of med school posts. But seriously I have never stopped wondering about medical school since the day I submitted my AMCAS application. sigh.

If I burn my bra can I have insurance?

Its cold and rainy and sort of miserable in NC. Thank God for socks, heat and Sparky the space heater.  Thank God for Rachel for coming to see me in the cold, wet, even icy weekend. Thanks to all the amazing guest appearances made by so many parables and groupies. It was great to among liberal arts minds and parables hearts for the weekend. It reminded me that I still have a soul under all this science drivel that is dominating my life right now.

Speaking of med school. ::::drumroll:::: I have never made HONORS in a class in medical school. On Saturday morning I received an e-mail stating my medicine for the under served paper (I wrote about Aurel and the plight of my people in E. Europe) along with three other papers had received Honors. I was thrilled for about 10 seconds. Then I read that all the honors students have to do a presentation in front of the entire class and then the class will vote on the number 1 paper for top honors (a grade that usually doesn’t even exist). I would get Honors in the one class that requires extra work if you make Honors. Also apparently the only thing I am exceptional at is writing human rights papers and taking care of poor people. Imagine that…I majored in Religion. What am I doing in medical school? (I am happy about the Honors really just somewhat terrified of going before my whole class and in the company of our class’ top student and two Ivy League grads and then me the gimpy mediocre med school wonder with a low first tier degree).

The low point of the weekend  was the pharmacy. It was time to refill my Celebrex. So I called Walgreens the night before. And then Rachel and I headed over there on our way to the parables dinner. We rolled up to the window gave the dude my name, insurance card and debit card. The pharmacist messes with the com for like 10 mins and then finally comes back to window to inform me that my insurance company refuses to cover Celebrex until I try Aleve or Ibuprofen (naturally over the counter and thus they pay nothing).  It will be a 156 dollars to refill my prescription. I nearly cry.  I took Ibuprofen as a kid but once I hit puberty it made my time of the month miserable and uncontrollable. Plus Celebrex pain relief is about 12 times better. The pharmacist was nice about it and told me that if my PCP called on Tuesday and told them I had already tried the other meds. My insurance company would be obligated to pay for the Celebrex, their second line drug. He was willing to sell me 4 pills worth to get me through Tuesday.  $16.99 later.  I am paying 6400 dollars a year.  No make that 6400+16.99.

I fumed. If that had been insulin, a Beta-Blocker or Anti-convulsant medication, people could die if they can’t get what they need.  insane. when did my life become a Micheal Moore documentary scene?

but it was a great weekend. it really was     love to all.

I want the shiny one

I got an e-mail today. A prayer request from a friend of friend who is adopting a baby from Ukraine. The parents lost their biological twins several years ago. How heartbreaking.

The e-mail said, “Yesterday was the worse day of our lives. We met with Ukrainian officials and they showed us child after child with disabilities. They became steadily more condescending as we said NO to each one. We are very discouraged.”

Warning the following is condescending, judgmental and probably not Christian…

Worse day of their lives (worse than losing your children)… In case you missed it, the kids you rejected because they aren’t perfect have a life far worse than yours. That’s why they look so horrible and imperfect. Did you notice child beggars on the streets of Kiev or the elderly beggars with their canes? Do you know how cold it is right now, those people live on the streets?!?! Open your eyes people. I get that Eastern Europe is a little shocking but lets not lose our heads here. Your statement makes me nearly side with Ukrainian officials…stupid, navie Americans.

Now my nutty bias….I get that its a challenge to be a parent to a disabled child. I get that I have been raised and brainwashed with the ideal that mercy and compassion for one’s fellow man over one’s own scruples and needs is given. I get that I am disabled and biased toward my people to the core and I get that I am blessed to grow up with a point of view free of able-ism. But come on people, just confess. You have been raised thinking my people aren’t worth as much as yours and I am calling you out on it. In all your talk about being good Christians or even good Americans or being so wonderful adopting a international baby, confess your imperfection. Confess your bias. That’s all I am asking. I have confessed mine. Don’t blame the Ukrainians for making you feel uncomfortable, don’t ask me to pray that God puts you back in your comfort zone or bring you a perfect baby. Heaven help you but there is no such thing as a perfect child, if you have that expectations you will never be happy.

I try to understand it. But it breaks my heart that people can look at kids with disabilities and not even consider them for adoption. I’ve seen it time and time again in Eastern Europe. If I was an orphan I would have never been adopted even in the states. There is no mercy or compassion for my people just a lot of pointed fingers. In the West we point fingers at the East for not taking care of disabled people but when we go there we don’t take care of them either. And we don’t have a lack of resources, only a lack of compassion and an excess of able-ism.

Confession:

I’m sorry I know this a prayer request. I know that in accusing these people who I don’t even know of lacking mercy that I am lacking mercy for their situation. I also know I am being a bit irrational and melodramatic and taking out an old wound on a couple who I’ve never met. SO let me ask forgiveness. I know that these people must have suffered terribly losing twins. And I am so glad they want to adopt from Ukraine and are there doing it. And I know that there are average children stuck in an orphanage and they need a family just as much as the disabled ones. I just wish you could see them equally worthy of your attention. I’m sorry if I come on a bit strong, I just no longer relate to the Americans in this situation. I only see the endless suffering and abuse of the children. I know how judgmental I sound. Forgive me. I will honor your request with a prayer…

God, Forgive me of my quickness to judge and my pride and thank you for the endless blessings.

strengthen this couple and give them wisdom. Help them to trust you as they make this beautiful, loving decision.

But…

God please, don’t let them shut out the suffering all around them. Open their eyes, soften their hearts and let them be kind, loving and compassionate to all of God’s children (from the kids to the officials).

Somewhere deep under the judgment and the arrogance I believe I am turning over a money changing table or two with justified righteous anger. Help me God to know the difference.

In Jesus’ Name,

Amen

I promise to talk about America and my life at some point in my blog soon…