Just shit
I think I may have hit rock bottom Sunday.
Of course, medical education is brutal, exploitative, masochistic - but I've always said, despite the negatives, it's totally worth it!
Then, this weekend rolled around, at the end of which, for the first time, I seriously thought: I quit. It was an absolute ass storm. A repeated assault, lubeless. And just when I thought it was over, just when I was fluffing my pillow, they called me back in. I cried in the car, and threatened my husband that I'm quitting. Then I begged him to let me quit. Then, realizing that really, I can't quit, I just cried.
I mean, what's left to do but cry when you FEEL gray hair growing and your face getting gaunter and gaunter?
I'm too fucking old for this, I'm too grown up to be someone's bitch. To be brutalized and have my time stolen in order to take care of people who don't want to be taken care of. Who are looking to sue me. Who think they're doing me a favor by being my patient. Who see me as a percocet dispenser.
I ended up sleeping in the hospital, an experience I thought I'd never have to deal with again: the cot with the collapsed mattress, the dusty carpet, the placenta-like smell of hospital laundry, and, of course, the constant fear of being paged.
This is around the time of year when residents and fellows get suicidal. It's the middle of the tunnel without light at either end. You're just crawling along, blindly using someone else's tracks. They traversed the tunnel, you'll do it too.
What else is there to do? Just think of the alternative...
Of course, medical education is brutal, exploitative, masochistic - but I've always said, despite the negatives, it's totally worth it!
Then, this weekend rolled around, at the end of which, for the first time, I seriously thought: I quit. It was an absolute ass storm. A repeated assault, lubeless. And just when I thought it was over, just when I was fluffing my pillow, they called me back in. I cried in the car, and threatened my husband that I'm quitting. Then I begged him to let me quit. Then, realizing that really, I can't quit, I just cried.
I mean, what's left to do but cry when you FEEL gray hair growing and your face getting gaunter and gaunter?
I'm too fucking old for this, I'm too grown up to be someone's bitch. To be brutalized and have my time stolen in order to take care of people who don't want to be taken care of. Who are looking to sue me. Who think they're doing me a favor by being my patient. Who see me as a percocet dispenser.
I ended up sleeping in the hospital, an experience I thought I'd never have to deal with again: the cot with the collapsed mattress, the dusty carpet, the placenta-like smell of hospital laundry, and, of course, the constant fear of being paged.
This is around the time of year when residents and fellows get suicidal. It's the middle of the tunnel without light at either end. You're just crawling along, blindly using someone else's tracks. They traversed the tunnel, you'll do it too.
What else is there to do? Just think of the alternative...
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