mahiwaga

You can’t save people from themselves, in the end. You can try all you want to, you can intervene in very invasive ways, but if people don’t want to change, nothing will happen.

Not to be sexist or anything, but I have once again come to the realization that I will never understand women.

Ah well. How easy is it to understand another person anyway, irrespective of gender?

But, yeah. It’s hard to watch when someone you care about is pursuing very self-destructive behavior. Like when that 19 year old mother of two who is, in truth, very intelligent and has very attainable ambitions, but nonetheless, she continues to return to that significant other who emotionally abuses her. Or when that 15 year old boy who has what it takes to go to college and is very interested in physics continues to snort cocaine, even though he knows exactly how it is destroying him. (Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine is a very trying pediatric specialty.)

The futility of it all is mindbending, but such is life. You do what you can. Whether or not it makes a difference is not the point, I suppose.

It’s a relief to know why someone is not returning your calls and has stopped speaking to you. Like when you realize that she has decided to go back to her ex-boyfriend who was playing her and who ended up shacking-up with the other woman because he thought he was the father of her child and, in general, he demeans her verbally and basically makes her miserable. (I understand entirely.)

Case closed, discontinue IV, heplock, discharge home.

It’s nice for things to resolve in such a clear cut way. In the words of Homer Simpson, “Not my fault! Act of God!”

It’s much better than those times when she just generally avoids you and doesn’t talk to you when she can’t avoid being in the same room with you. Those kind of situations leave you in a state of disarray and uncertainty, making you wonder if you didn’t put on enough deodorant today, or if you suddenly grew horns, or a huge wart on your nose. Or if you’re heretofor unknown evil twin did something to her in your name. To sum it up, it makes you paranoid and just generally delusional.

Oh well. Live and learn. Or, more realistically, I’ll probably never learn. Someone put me out of my misery.

(r, your all-lowercase style is infectious.)

you know who they are. every residency program has them, the bane of medical students and attendings alike. the intern’s recurring nightmare. maybe even sometimes, a patient’s very own personal angel of death.

the pgy3 who pages you in the middle of the night just to tell you that work rounds start in two hours and 17 minutes, sharp, on pain of eternal rectal exam duty. the senior who makes everyone else write notes, thereby writing nothing on his own except for the addenda: “agree with ms3 note,” and then blames you when the attending calls him out for making a mistake. the intermediate who answers all of your questions with “why don’t you read about it tonight and give a 15 minute presentation tomorrow in front of the attending.” the intern who knows less than you do, and thereby decides you need to suffer because of it.

my current favorite adjective for this sort of behavior is “malignant.” yes, the evil resident is a cancer to be cut out of the parenchyma of the residency program before he/she metastasizes. (and isn’t kind of funny how you can tell how far through a surgery resident is by how bitter he/she is?)

but ware, all ye who match after 2004. i aspire one day to be the evil resident. it will be my distinct pleasure to torture medical students, just because. besides. suffering builds character.

this blog is dedicated to all medical students currently doing clinical rotations, featuring various tips and tricks to minimize the amount of yelling you will receive from everyone at the hospital and/or clinic from attendings, residents, nurses, techs, and janitors alike. the one invariable thing that rotations teach, regardless of which one, is humility, and i think it is a very valuable thing to learn. because without humility, you will never learn from your mistakes, and trust me, you will always make mistakes. (plus, some attendings can smell cockiness from a mile away, and like sharks, they will tear you to bits first if they smell it on you.)

Gah. Medical terminology has infested everything I write. (BTW, a bounceback is when you discharge someone from the hospital and within days they come back with the same problem.)

In a way, it is probably for the best that I’m on-call tomorrow. At least my rampant blogorrhea will stop.

But, suffice it to say, apparently I can never get out of a situation cleanly.

Why do I persist with making my life so unnecessarily complicated? (Don’t even try to answer that. Just laugh along with me now.)