Misty watercolored memories

For those of you who missed it, Otter made a very accurate comparison in the comments about my last post: Internship must be like childbirth, you forget how bad the pain really was.

Totally.

And the two years of limbo and sleeping in on weekdays and working in a yarn store didn't help. Plus, I think there's just some outright traumatic repression factored in - it was sort of hard to tell what badness was general intern crap and what was actually the result of the Reign of Terror that was my OB program. And I'll be the first one to admit, freely, that this time around is so much better. It's nice not being the whipping child. I don't miss being constantly berated and demoralized. SO MUCH BETTER.

Which, does not, however, make it good.

You do forget the peculiarities. The dull ache in your upper back from the thirty pounds of stuff you have crammed in the pockets of your white coat. The mania induced by not sleeping every fourth night (which has struck me a lot this month, when we routinely sleep deprive patients to make them have seizures. Um, does anyone else see a problem, here?). The constant, vague sense that you're doing something wrong. The sheer mass and speed with which shit rolls downhill (and you're the valley, baby). And the bone-deep, leaden fatigue that never quite goes away, even when you technically are getting "sleep".

There came a point in medical school, early in my third year or so, where I had to become a doctor because my loans were so huge that I couldn't afford not to. Which was fine, because I actually wanted to be a doctor, but it still was sort of intimidating, in that holy-crap-I-guess-I-can't-change-my-mind-now sort of way. That's sort of where I'm at again. I've had a couple of moments this year where I'm like, really? Do I really want to be a psychiatrist? Am I sure? And then some part of my brain comes in and squelches that and says, fuck that, kid. You picked it, you're stuck with it, because I am so not doing this intern year thing ever again.

And again, it helps that I really do think I want to be a psychiatrist. But after this year? Never doing q4 in-house call, ever, ever again. Never going to be a scut monkey for a service I don't even belong to (ahem, family practice) again.

So ready for this to be done, and I'm not even crowning yet. Can I at least get an epidural?

So, okay, maybe it's not quite as bad as all that. I mean, it does have its moments. Like, I got to do a nerve block on a headache patient today, which was pretty cool. And the psych stuff can be very frustrating, but it's certainly never boring. Plus, I do like my cohorts. And I'm meeting interesting people, especially now that I'm off-service and in a big hospital where we can call in consultants. And it's only one year.

At least I've stopped swearing every single time my pager goes off.