Recipe for Hate

Do you ever find that you've become the worst version of yourself. You're confronted with a situation and suddenly you're transformed into Mr. Nasty. I've been taking a lot of cheap shots at primary care these last few weeks, but yesterday I took a step back and looked at what I've become and frankly, I'm disappointed at myself. I've become that guy who hates his patients and finds the things they say incredibly annoying. I've become the doctor that I would not want my parents to go and see. I don't know if it's just me reacting to the touchy feelyness of primary care just as I reacted to the coldness of ob/gyn subspecialties by becoming extra nice and buddy buddy with my patients.

On days like this I really question what it was that drove me to medicine. I'm competent enough to understand the science of medicine, but the art is lacking. Maybe it's the heart, rather than the art that is lacking. Growing up, you're so sure of who you are. Your ideas are novel and you are an individual. Then at some time, I got mixed up with a bunch of people just like me and it was after a while that I realized that we are nothing like the regular people we run into on the streets. A lot of us can't interact normally with people, we don't understand people, yet we proclaim to have this great need to go out and save humanity. We don't actually like people, perhaps we just enjoy the novelty of it. Albeit, underlying these desires is at some level, a desire to fit in and be human for once in our lives.

But folks, seriously, who are we kidding. I have lost myself so completely that I don't know what to do with a day off. Three days weekends can easily get wasted into nothing, playing video games or watching movies; anything to pass the time. Luckily for me, rabbit was around to slap me around and tell me not to go into peds after joking about kids having seizures. When did that become funny? Was it ever?

I wrote this down on a notepad because I knew that the thought would disappear once I started my routine. Third year has been a disappearing act for me. I become whoever the attending wants me to be. Be more assertive and fix my posture. Yes sir! Go and try to connect with the patient in room 1...here are some tips on how to connect with a human being. Reflect what they are saying, reflect posture, intonations...shouldn't I know this already? Somehow I missed it, while growing up. Learning sadness from John Steinbeck and my morals from afternoon TV sitcoms. A classmate told me last week that all I've gotta do is be myself. Look yourself in the mirror every day and say to yourself, "just be bender." Simple.

Before this rotation, I used to wake up at 4 or earlier and take a long hot shower. I'd go look in the foggy mirror and try to make myself into something presentable. Nowadays, I have the time and luxury to wait for the fog to clear and get a better look at myself. I've gotta be honest with you, I don't like what I see. Sometimes, I don't see anything at all.

Lately I've found myself wanting to go into surgery to make obscene amounts of money. I don't even know what I'd do with it. My family has gotten by on $30k all of our lives and I've always had everything I've needed. I'm not sure what it is that I'm missing, what it is that I want.

Maybe I don't hate primary care. Maybe I just I hate myself and I’ve been taking it out on my patients. I've got nothin'.

-bender