honestly

So, I realized that lately I haven't been blogging that much, but everything I've written is super cheerful and hopeful. I think maybe my blogging hasn't been so honest. I tend to do that when I'm struggling - act super cheery and only talk about the positive stuff, and just leave out the stuff I don't really like. To be honest, there's a lot of stuff I don't like:

1) Doing laundry. I know, everybody hates this one, but I am never home. My roommate can attest to it - sometimes we go days without seeing each other because I leave at 8am and tend to get back around 11pm. And the occasional evening I take off, I don't want my vegetative state in front of the television to be interrupted by trips to the laundry machines with the huge amounts of laundry I accumulate. Most weekends I feel guilty if I don't spend the entire afternoon (at minimum) at school studying.

2) My basic science classes. Let's face it - I've never liked biochemistry or histology - but I have always enjoyed physiology, and I even hate that class at my school. The class is taught so poorly that I often can't bear to go to lecture. I feel like I have to teach myself everything and it's really, really hard to motivate myself to do so. Uninteresting, poorly taught material + an enormous amount of said material + friends that are fun to hang out with = Chelsea has trouble concentrating. Which basically makes me feel constantly guilty and like failure is looming over my head unless I get my act together.

3) The fact that everyone is constantly telling me I will forget everything I just bemoaned having to learn in #2. Oh wait, maybe I should just add this to the "why Chelsea is both unmotivated and guilty" equation.

4) The stuff I actually care to learn, stuff I will use in my future life, like physical exam skills, I barely spend any time on. Because the "Practice of Medicine" class is the least intense, I feel like allowing myself the luxury of reading the material for that class means I'm taking away precious studying time from my harder classes. Which is sad, but true.

5) I want so badly to know how to balance everything in my life, but I just can't seem to find a way yet. Hopefully eventually I will, but I know the next few years of my life involve a constantly changing schedule that I don't know whether I'll ever be able to strike the right balance.

So that's what med school is really like for me right now. There are definitely enough times when I do something and get really excited about becoming a doctor. Those moments are what get me through and let me know that medical school will be worth it. I think this year is just more of a struggle because it's not where my strengths lie, but many of my classmates are geniuses at this basic science stuff. Well, that's enough complaining for now. Hopefully it wasn't to painful to read (well you could have stopped reading, no one's making you...)

home visit

Last week, we were required to do a "home visit." We were assigned in groups of three to visit someone who has a chronic illness or cancer. I admit, I was a little anxious about it. We drove out of the city to a nursing home in a small town. We had to go into a woman's home and ask her questions not only about her illnesses, but how she perceives doctors and how she feels about our health care system. 

I am so glad I was required to do this, because otherwise I might not have been able to overcome my anxiety and speak with a lovely 87-year-old woman who was so positive and inspiring. Even with weakness in her legs, she still walks one mile every day. She worked as a minister for a long time, and now she paints and writes and makes sure to help other people. 

Her view of doctors is something I often forget to think about. She spoke about how growing up, doctors would just stop by the house if you fell and thought you hurt yourself. Doctors were her friends. Now, she said, doctors say "I'll meet you at the emergency room." If she calls her doctor the day after an appointment with a question she forgot to ask, the doctor doesn't have time to talk to her. She told us we need to "train our patients" so that they know how to help us help them. 

In some ways, I wanted to say that doctors aren't any better than other people. Doctors are flawed too. But sometimes I think much more is expected of us than other people. I don't really like the idolization that sometimes surrounds doctors. But at the same time, it reminds me of the enormous responsibility I will carry some day. Hopefully, with the advice of this woman and many other people who know much more than I do, I will be able to live up to that responsibility. 

search for a specialty

"I'm a medical student."

"Oh that's so cool! Do you know what specialty you want to do?"

The automatic question. Maybe I could legitimately be annoyed if it wasn't a question I am passively debating myself. Not that I feel any pressure to decide, but it's something I contemplate every time I am exposed to a new medical setting. This week, I shadowed a pediatrician as part of a primary care preceptorship. I'll meet with him two more times this year. The basic point is to expose us to primary care (the majority of medical practice) and to give us an opportunity to practice basic history and physical exam skills. 

I think I am never going to be able to decide my specialty, because I wind up enjoying each specialty I shadow. I thought I would hate general pediatrics, because I like happy kids, but I really don't like crying, sick kids. I was pleasantly surprised by how interesting and challenging I found pediatrics to be. When you take an adult family and social history, you ask almost the same questions for everyone. You do a similar exam on most people. But kids are changing so rapidly - a 15-month-old's physical is different than a 2-year-old's and then different than a 5-year-old's. You have to know developmental milestones for all ages. You have to know how to give parenting advice. You have to be able to diagnose a patient who can't or won't speak to you about their problems. In many ways, pediatric medicine can be more challenging than adult medicine. On the other hand, kids are just pretty awesome. If I become an adult doctor, I'll never get to "listen" to a stuffed giraffe's heart. 

I didn't think I would like it, but I did. I think that may continue to be a problem as I have more experiences with different specialties. This is going to be a harder decision than I thought. Oh well, at least I know that I would enjoy doing many different things, which is the best place to be, really.