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15th April 2008

more than the blues

I’m starting to wonder if I’m clinically depressed. Funny, me as a doctor, not knowing whether I should diagnose myself.

I went to a dinner tonight for women in med school and sat on a panel, listening to the other residents give advice such as: “it’s easy to exercise in residency, you just have to make it a priority,” “dating and socializing in residency is essential, you just have to make it a priority,” and “you can easily be married, have kids, spend quality time with family, you just have to make it a priority.” I think I was the only one who was rolling eyes, I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Then it was advice on interviewing and selecting programs. Most of the panel suggested that trying to interview for two different specialties was “not wise” and it made you appear indecisive. I chimed in about how I had applied for three different specialties (medicine, neurology and med/neuro) and how it didn’t hurt me. Then there was the advice of what to ask the programs. One woman stated that she asked the residents if they were happy “and if there was a pause, she thought again about the program.” At this point, another resident looked over at me and started snickering because I had been ranting about my awful day of painfully long rounding wards, my whole slew of whiny, crazy patients, the difficulties of being a scut intern again and how much I hated dictating, etc. etc. So I piped up again, and stated that all residents have bad days and if they state with a Pollyanna smile of how overjoyed they were, they were lying (okay, I didn’t say it that strongly).

I’m having a rough time right now. I’m a little bit sleep deprived because I’m not sleeping well. I’m frustrated at work, because the majority of our patient lists have nothing wrong with them, besides what’s going on in their heads and are thwarting my every effort to get them home or to rehab or to wherever. My attending collects patients, so we can dawdle at every bedside. I’ve been arguing blatantly with my attending so we can make some progress. We round FOREVER. I’m going to be with this same attending for the next 10 days (kill me, please). The ER staff is driving me nuts with their inability to perform even a simple neuro exam. I’m tired of admitting patients every single day. There has been some nice moments, like today when I spent over a half an hour, explaining a procedure to a patient and her husband, really getting the chance to explain the risks and benefits and answer all of their questions. I like that. I just wish that I could convince somebody to rediagnose her and figure out what’s really going on, because I hate that I’m not doing anything to make her get better.

I’m lonely. I do have my friends from church, but I only get to see the once a week… if I’m lucky enough to make it to church. I haven’t talked to my best friend from med school–the guy I saw every day for nearly two years, the guy I talked to every week for our last two years of med school and my intern year–for more than 10 minutes for 4 months. I haven’t seen him in 4 months. I have no idea what’s going on with him. And let’s not even mention the last time I talked to Liz or Sam. The visit to see Susan and her beautiful family seems so long ago now. I think that this disconnect is what’s bothering me the most; I need to pick up the phone and just call… but I haven’t been able to. In this funk, all of my insecurities have been wrecking havoc to my brain…. they haven’t call me, obviously, they don’t care as much as you thought they did.

I was going to mope more, but I need sleep. The next post is going to be happy. I swear. Even if I have to go digging for pictures of baby polar bears again, it’ll be happy.

I’m disabling comments. I don’t want anybody to feel obliged to try to cheer me up; this is what they call catharsis. I think.

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