No Fiestas

Holy Thursday– work, as usual.  Don't know how one can get things done efficiently when most everybody else is out for the next 4 days.  Pity the patient for poorly justified delays & add-on expenses.

I wonder if I'm the only one who feels that there should be no holidays for key hospital personnel.  Why charge a premium to get things done then– when people would never have themselves confined on those days unless absolutely necessary?  No Fiestas for patients.

This Job

Sometimes, one just gets so tired of this job.  Its interesting, yes!, but oh so taxing.

Choosing my subspecialty could bear a re-do, but only so I can make the same choice for the right reasons.  Attracted to neurology & nephrology as a trainee, this lazybones was born just too darned toxic.  Duty night was The Signal for ARF's & subarachnoid bleeds to surface.  While everyone else was sleeping in the duty room, I ran around with small pieces of paper in my pockets, the beeper yelping "Memory Full", chain-smoking & snacking on deeesgusting leftovers, smelling all the while like vile dialysate.  I asked myself… what's the job without emergencies, with a decent patient load, that allows for some degree of gratification?  Diagnostic radiology scored 2 of 3 but, like dermatology, its a snore.  Reconstructive surgery sounded suitably challenging, but with my toxic track record, the burn cases would keep rolling in.  So, OK, let's do oncology.  Almost totally brain work, I thought.  Such profound ignorance never goes unpunished.

Years ago, cancer was a pitifully manned area of medicine.  Too few of my peers were interested in the specialty back then, maybe because treatment options were few.  Depressing, they said.  One figured that the job wiould be primarily focused on symptom alleviation.  OK then, I thought.  Let the laws of supply & demand rule.

What can you expect from an overgrown kid who wished only for adequate & undisturbed sleep?  Yes, it was simplistic & selfish thinking.   Theorem:  Professional students are stuck in adolescence– but that's another topic.