Life of a medical student

Fun and games

Life as a medical student part 6: October 2018

Current activity: Listening to the most amazing instrumental music of my life...

Pro: I'm in ear-orgasmic heaven!

Con: No con. I'm seriously in heaven right now.

Music track: "Free Souls Part 1" by Nickodemus & Osiris feat Mino Cinelu (Check it out on SoundCloud)

Humble apologies for the late post. Would it be excusable to say that studies got hectic (not that they are ever not hectic but yeah).

So to all my fellow medical students I must ask this question...What the hell were you thinking when you decided to study medicine? I finished my final Internal Medicine rotation a month ago and can I tell you – no way in hell am I becoming a Physician. Not that I don't like the work. The study content is fascinating. Truly. But the lifestyle? HELL-NAH! For two months I have been working in the public hospitals day in and day out. Six am till five pm. Sometimes eleven pm when I am on call. On call shifts AND post-call morning rounds on the weekends. This is excluding my extra night and early three am morning work shifts at the pathology lab (which I can't actually complain about as that is optional. I chose to overwork from my own free will. Stupid I know. I actually think I'm a workaholic. Like I should introduce myself to people "Hello I'm Sahara and I'm a workaholic. Have never been sober so I don't know what that feels like"). Back to the point I was making is that we as medical students don't truly know what we signed up for until final year rotation and by then you are like "what the fuck was eighteen year old me thinking that this would be a good idea? Like oh! Let me study medicine; it will be sooo much fun!" (Imagine that line in a girly baby voice for dramatic effect).

The crazy hours, standing, working and constant patient interaction is one thing. But a whole other level is the unhealthy aspect of that lifestyle. Do you have any idea how many Physicians I see that are overweight and divorced. They have no time to eat they are so busy with patients. When they do eat it is takeout food and then they are called hypocrites because they preach healthy lifestyles to their patients. It's a catch 22. The reason I mention divorce as well is because they are literally full time in the hospitals and even on their weeks of leave off they go to conferences. Let me tell you right now. Like right now – I absolutely REFUSE to become an obese overworked no-life individual. No freaking way. The fear is real. For the whole of internal medicine rotation I was adamant to only use the stairs (and oh my G_d there were a lot of stairs). Each floor has two flights of stairs in-between and in this rotation we jumped between floor four and floor nine. Not so bad right? Expect first you have to see your patients in the morning. Then you have to run around and find the doctors to see where they are starting ward rounds because they change their mind every day and your fellow colleagues are just as clueless as you about their whereabouts. Then I only go to the toilets on floor seven as they are the cleanest and always empty. I run up and down like crazy because of course it also happens that you forget your pen or book at casualty when you are supposed to be at level nine ward 9.3. Then I tried my best to still gym at night – a win-win as I feel good from exercising and don't kill anyone from my edgy frustrations. Alas becoming a murderer is not on my to-do-list. What got me through all those stairs was the single thought that "my ass is going to look AMAZING after this".

It is not my intention to shed the medical field in a bad light. Everyone is entitled to bitch once in a while and I am merely commenting on that fact that it is intense. It made me realise that this is the lifestyle I signed up for the rest of my life and that I will really have to make a conscious effort to maintain a social life and healthy habits. I want to help others but I don't believe I should compromise my own wellbeing for that. Okay okay enough with the hissy fit. Now to the good stuff...