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.