Excited

Okay. Long time no update. I have wanted to post many times and even composed posts in my head but I never found enough time to type anything up. Most of the time it would have just been bitching about stupid stuff.

Anyway I guess I'll have to save that shit for later. I do have some amusing stories from the past year of medical adventures.

But right now i'm excited because i just figured out what to do with my life! I decided a few hours ago I wanted to do internal medicine!

I have been thinking ENT/ophtho/medicine/ER/rads for the longest time now. I dropped ENT because I just realized that the biggest driving force for me was the prestige. They are definitely the cream of the crop and the surgeons i respect the most. Fucking awesome guys. Chairman is the coolest guy ever. But I realize the only thing pushing me was the prestige. Unlike my gunner ass counterpart surgeon-to-bes... I just don't really care for the OR, as much as I tried to force myself. Sure surgeries are cool... but I'd much rather fast forward the whole damn thing. I had a liver transplant on a Sunday and while my teammates were pissed they missed it, I was pissed I didn't get out until 4pm. I can't force myself to do that just in some vain attempt to surpass the ENT-ness of my cousin who is obviously smarter than me.

Ok this is getting way too fucking long to explain each excluded specialty... but long story short, I think when I first started medical school, I remember praying that I could survive, even if I was just in the bottom 10% of my class. And then one day we had our first practice anatomy exam and that's when I looked around and realized that half of MDs were dumbshits afterall... you didn't have to be a genius... just a masochist to get into this field. Gee go figure.

Ever since then it's been an ego trip to live up to my own expectations. To do a specialty with 'prestige', something to utilize my ridiculous board score.

Then today I swear to god something happened which I can't stop thinking about. My stroke rehab patient. Who came to me mostly comatose and stanky. Paralysized and shit and unable to do much more than utter "mmrraaagh". Over and over again. I've been working with her for a week now. Seeing her every morning, checking in on her, trying to get her to communicate in some form. Then at the rehab gym today where we were making rounds she looked at me, gave me this big-ass half-smile (other half is paralyzed) and she gave me a fuckin thumbs up sign. I couldn't believe it!!! I'd been trying to get her to do that to yes/no communicate with me for a week. I'd never gotten any signal she even recognized me. And here she fucking thumbs-ups me out of the blue. I wanted to hug her.

Fuck this shit man. I want to help people. I can't believe how happy that retarded mangled thumbs-up sign made me. I've forgotten why I went into medicine. Not to prove how smart I am but because I wanted to help out people like my family when they need it.

so i want to do heme-onc. I realized that I always tell people how depressing that shit seems. But in truth I've never been in a cancer clinic where I didn't find the patients to be charming as hell. It's kind of weird. And this way I get to deal with many people who didn't fuck themselves up via smoking/alcohol/big-mac disease.

In all fairness, I should disclose that I just read that heme-onc docs make a shitload of money. Hey we can't all be saints goddammit.

Anyway I can't believe how excited I am, it's irrational. Probably when I go back to the hospital tomorrow and get a whiff of someone's crotch-stank I will change my mind. But for now I will ride it and see how it goes. We'll see!