Dynamics of a resident's life

A month of Internal Medicine floors, almost a month in Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and one month of an elective may conceivably be taken as sufficient experience to write about the first year of residency, 'internship' as it is called. This term leads to confusion. For a colleague, I am an intern and will be a resident next year. For a layman I am a resident. So I consider the question "Are you a resident?" highly unfair these days.

Its amazing how medical shows seem to lay down the criteria for us to live up to. So now even if one stays up for 33 hours, all credit seems to be taken away from it because 'Izzy' and 'Neela' do that and a LOT more, easily and glamorously. Whenever I get the inclination to crib to my peers and superiors I am told to 'wait' for something potentially worse , to boot. "Oh you think PCI is hard? Wait till you rotate in the ICU." I am waiting, I am waiting!

Notwithstanding the extreme sadness caused by early rising, dark circles, nonexistence of energy, possible clinical depression or to put it plainly, lack of a life, residency does come with some perks. Trying not to laugh as a team at one of the 'fellows' ( a fellow is a person who is superspecializing), for one. Now this guy is very knowledgable, I am sure. The only problem is, he seems to think we are all living rent free on the earth that he owns. Rules or policies or courtesies don't exist for him. When he is reminded of their existence, he retorts with "I will speak to the people who say so" or words to that effect. Nice attitude buddy. You make our morning gossip worthwhile. Lets just say it isn't exactly stimulating to spend an 'on-call' day stuck with this guy 'supervising'.

That blot-on-the-face-of-the-earth aside, residency (or internship?) does have its moments. Elevator conversations provide some of the best moments of the day. The amount of coffee drunk, I am sure, is supporting an entire South American country. Its a great feeling to be treated by consultants with wide experience, as if you were every bit as good as they. Again on the other hand, I also am considered a prize idiot with good reason at times. To suddenly have a minor brainwave, only to discover that everyone had landed on it a while ago, takes me a peg down and that somehow feels like Living Life with capitals. It is also strangely interesting that doctors from different specialties behave in entirely different ways. Also, I think this is the same worldwide. It would make an interesting read, but we will leave that for another day when I have more examples.

As I write this and read it over I realize that my work has more or less taken over my life. I hardly think about anything else these days. That I think, is a sure sign that I have to take a step back to get some perspective and realize that pleasing attendings, co-workers and the powers that be is not all in life. Patient care would be so much more effective in my opinion, if I did not have to worry about pleasing a lot of people. Also, there are other things that deserve attention, namely hair, nails, books, friends, family,travel and so many more things that have had to take a backseat. I think the learning point here is to be able to completely cut off from work when one is not working. To live a little.