This is going to be a loaded post, so stay with me if you can. I've also seriously debated posting this thing at all, but I've felt this way enough times in the past eight years that it's a valid feeling and shouldn't be ignored. So here it goes.
Every close friend I have ever spoken with has said that I would be a bad doctor. If they had the choice, they wouldn't come see me. Normally, I don't care what people think, but in this case, when I'm already questioning my decisions, this doesn't help things.
I put on a tough exterior, and I pretend to be a hardass when talking about children and puppies so I can kind of see the point. A lot of the time when I describe my day, I sound mean, intolerant, and grumpy. But I do care about people, and I'm actually really awesome with people of all ages. I can relate to almost anyone from any background. I grew up going from the developed United States during the year to essentially third world Eastern Europe during my summers, so I know how to adapt and deal with all kinds of people.
I have empathy, or can at least fake it, even if I complain about the stupid decisions my EMS patients make. I feel like my friends only hear the bad part of my job and thus my judgmental side, and don't see my interactions with the people I see.
But their harsh words have been worrying me. I used to be pre-med in undergrad. Even though I was so over school then, I still put in 12+ hours a week at the ambulance company and loved every minute of it. But running 911 calls got old eventually. And that's what scared me away from medicine. EMS became a dreadful job and not something I looked forward to every day. It was still exciting, but I didn't get the kind of thrill I used to experience even 6 months earlier. So I quit the medical track and decided that I could be happy without the years of schooling and sleep-loss and stress that medicine required.
I'm not in it for the adrenaline rush. I genuinely love fixing people's problems. It fulfills me and is absolutely amazing. But I'm worried that medicine will not be worth it in the end. Maybe I can satisfy my need to make people happy by putting on a good event, for example, or something that doesn't require as much education and years of training. I don't know, and that scares me a lot.
I still get jealous of all the stories my med school friends tell me. It's not the gnarly things they describe that pique my interest, but rather their ability to do something to the human body that makes it work correctly again. But will that wear off once I realize that most things are actually routine?
I shadowed a hand surgeon a couple days ago and it was an experience. It seemed like a lot of his patients had the same thing going on in one way or another. There was lots of carpel tunnel and fractures and pins. All in all, though, it didn't seem like he was stumped all that much. There weren't any real "a-ha!" moments and it all just seemed like an office job that he had gotten good at after working there for so long. Except, he's not that old, considering he had finished his hand fellowship about a year earlier. But if it's something you're passionate about, then it's not routine. And as another young doc I've spoken with recently said, "When you're responsible for someone's life, it doesn't get boring." There you have it.
Maybe the answer is doing a normal specialty with trauma on the side, to get some unpredictable things once in a while. But if my EMS experience is any indication, even emergencies become routine. And routine is not what I want after a decade of stressing, studying, and busting my butt to become a doctor.
At this point, I honestly don't know. Should I really go into medicine?
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