I'm Totally Saving Lives! Or, You Know, Not

The other day at work (ugh I hate calling it that because that implies I’m getting paid and/or working in an office with a fax machine and a water cooler and shit but in reality neither of those things is true but it’s just as hard as a real job so it’s LIKE work. Oh wait I’m doing that thing where I go off on a tangent inside the parentheses again) someone commented to me, ‘Rachel, you seem less Rachel-like lately.’

It’s true. This profession stifles my personality. (Or maybe I stifle it myself in response to this profession, but either way, Rachel is not Rachel anymore.) Usually I’m pretty silly and weird. It’s not that doctors can’t be silly, but I’m not disciplined enough to be silly AND still be appropriate. Sigh.

I mean, don’t get me wrong; most doctors AREN’T Prudy McPrudersons sitting nicely and politely and being completely professional every waking hour of the day. Some doctors are horribly inappropriate. But not in the sense that they make poop jokes. Like, my attending routinely ignores patients on rounds and starts talking about patients in third person to the team, while the patient is sitting there. One of my residents called a patient ‘crazy’ behind her back (but, the patient in question actually was crazy, so that was more understandable).

The ignoring rubs me the wrong way, though. Maybe because I’ve been ignored like that a lot, and it makes me super insecure.

I promise, there WILL come a day when I will post about something other than how much I hate this work. I don’t even know whether I hate medicine or whether I hate not knowing what the hell is going on. Maybe it’s both.

I don’t think I hate it. I just hate the way it makes me feel. Stupid and lazy. I know I’m not stupid and I know I’m not lazy, but it’s really easy to lose perspective when you’re surrounded by crazy gunners.

I’m so lost I don’t even know what questions to ask.

My co-student on the team is one of those people who asks questions when they already know the answer, just to make you look bad. I can’t tell you how many times this person has asked me some random question, then, when I’ve given my response, says, ‘No, I know THAT, but… blah blah blah.’

(She also is one of those peoples who misuses ‘touché’ (haha I never had to type that out and I just realized how much it looks like ‘douche.’ Or ‘douché’? Doo-SHAY? LOLS). She asked me, ‘What does PCOS stand for?’ and I said ‘Polycystic ovarian syndrome’ and she said, ‘Oh, touché.’)

(??? How is that touché?)

Sleep deprivation tends to make me very crabby.

And, well, sleepy.

At orientation, the clinical course director said, ‘Don’t worry, students aren’t really allowed to work more than 80 hours a week.’

Well, thanks. Good to know there’s a cap.

My cellulitis patient yesterday (um, raise your hand if you’re a third-year medical student and you didn’t know there was a difference between cellulite and cellulitis until like a year ago… just me? Okay.) told me, ‘I hate doctors.’

I wanted to say, ‘Dude, I do too. Preach it! Up top.’ Then I’d offer him my gloved hand for a high five.

I did say, ‘Actually, sir, I do too.’ Which I don’t think was the right answer, even though it was my edited version to him. That probably annoyed him even more, like, Great, here’s some flighty dumbass who’s going to try and be my ‘friend’ and be the one who changes my hard-set opinion of doctors, thus solving all of my problems.

I haven’t listened to music in awhile.

Still, the one thing that somewhat convinces me that I can do this as a career (at least for a few years) is that the one part of my day I actually like is talking to patients and hearing their stories. It’s all the other shit I can’t stand.

Maybe I should be a social worker. Or a… professional listener? Not a psychologist—those people are just weird.

At least I know I definitely DON’T want to do any kind of internal medicine. I don’t like all the thinking and speculation and subjectivity involved. Most of it is just guessing. Educated guessing, yes, but a duck is a duck is a duck (or whatever that phrase is, maybe I just made it up, or made a mixed metaphor with that other one about ducks and how if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. I don’t know. Now I’ve said the word ‘duck’ too many times and I don’t even know what it means anymore).

It’s just too unsatisfying for me. Half the time the doctors can’t even agree on a diagnosis. Which is kinda important in arriving at a treatment plan.

Just look at some of the fancy names that doctors give to certain conditions, if you wanna know how much they (we?) DON’T actually know. Anything with ‘idiopathic’ in it means ‘I don’t know’. (It DOES share a root with ‘idiot’...) Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis? Your lungs are fucked, but we don’t know why the hell they are. Idiopathic thrombocytic purpura? You’re bleeding, but we don’t know why the hell you are. And some have the uncertainty right in the name, but are masked by an acronym. MGUS? Monoclonal gammopathy of unknown significance. Your plasma cells are fucked, maybe, but we don’t know why the hell they are or if it’s even bad.

(Then again, there are some redeeming ones, like BOOP, or bronchiolitis obliterans with organizing pneumonia, which just makes me happy. I’d be all, Sir, you have… BOOP! And I’d poke him on the nose when giving him his diagnosis.)

The things that interest me are procedures, even if it’s just removing sutures or something.

I wanna DO shit, not fucking speculate about things. If I wanted to do that, I’d have become a… speculator. I mean a philosopher.

I don’t know things anymore, apparently.

I’m not very analytical. Probably ‘cause I was raised by Asian parents who were all about getting good grades, and good grades are all about memorizing shit, not actually understanding things about the world.

I’m just thinking out loud here.

What happens when a brown chicken and a brown cow have sex?

Brown-chicken-brown-cow!
(Say it like porno music, like bow-chicka-bow-wow)

Remember when tattoos used to be cool and badass? Now any ‘tard with an ID saying they’re over eighteen can get one. Even full sleeves aren’t that impressive anymore.

Anyway, to the 2.5 people still reading this far down, thanks. You get a cookie. Sometimes I just need to vent.