Wednesday . April 10 . 2002 . 11:49pm |
lady-parts doctor Hey. Second night alone in Slumtown. It's not that bad anymore. I've gotten used to the quiet, even though I had to sleep with the light on in the living room last night. I feel a little sheepish for being such a wiener last night, and I hope no one thinks I was seriously comparing myself to a prisoner of war, but you know, weird stuff starts coming out of my mouth when I have no one else to talk to but myself. So now I'm having a new career conflict. You remember earlier, I was having a little tug of war between Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. In subsequent weeks, the issue has settled down somewhat, with Peds edging out Medicine by a nose. But suddenly, there's a new challenger on the horizon. You see, over the past few days, I've gotten it into my head that I might want to do a residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Ob-Gyn. Are you kidding me? I never, ever, thought I would be interested in Ob-Gyn. I thought I would hate the clerkship before I started it in August. I didn't really enjoy the rotation all that much while I was going through it, partially because I was at a really private hospital and was never allowed to do anything. I only got to deliver one baby in five weeks. Plus, there's that whole reputation that Ob-Gyns have in the medical community. No matter how grounded in truth these reputations actually are, each medical specialty has something of a stereotypical personality. The Ortho guys (and it is still, overwhelmingly guys) are the meathead jocks. The Pediatricians are the nicey-nice "crayonheads" with Elmo stuffed animals clipped to their stethoscopes. The ER docs are cowboys. The Neurosurgeons are dicks. And the Ob-Gyns are overworked, under-rested bitches. (Hey, I didn't make up these stereotypes. I've just, unfortunately, internalized them.) So why am I considering Ob-Gyn all of a sudden? I like the idea of being a primary care physician for a wide range of patients. That's what I liked about Medicine. That's what I still like about medicine. But the thing that I've been missing in Medicine and Peds is procedures. See, I'm starting to realize that I like doing procedures. I enjoy working with my hands. I think I'm OK at it. I get some aesthetic satisfaction from that kind of thing. And while I don't want to spend my whole life doing procedures (read: I will never do General Surgery) I also don't want to enter a field where I won't get a chance to do any procedures. When I think about fields that have that mix of medicine and surgery, I can only think of a few: Ob-Gyn, Ophtho, ENT, Uro, and maybe Derm. And frankly, the last four either don't interest me that much, or are so competitive that if I could even get in, I'd be looking at a residency position at a small hospital deep in the tundra of North Dakota somewhere. And then there's the matter of lifestyle. I know everyone says that after your residency, you can work to create your own schedule to be more or less demanding, based on what kind of practice you want, but the general consensus is that the life of an Ob-Gyn blows. Sure, you could try to build a practice in just Gyn, and not take OB patients--but I feel like that's every young Ob-Gyn's dream, and that the reality is that everyone starting out in practice has to take on some OB just to make some money and stay alive. And when babies are born at 3am, guess who's right there at the foot of the bed? Furthermore, I'm not even sure yet whether or not I like surgery. I haven't been in an OR since September, it's hard to remember exactly what I enjoyed or hated about that whole experience. I have 10 weeks of General Surgery and Surgical subspecialties coming up before the end of my third year. And I guess that based on how much I enjoy those rotations, I'll decide whether to rule Ob-Gyn in or out. But man, this feeling of having to decide so soon. It's stressful. One article on a medical careers website read, "choosing a medical specialty can be the biggest decision of a young doctor's life." Yeah, no shit. xo Michelle |
Bikini Briefs |
I just got a call from Jamal today. He was on the train en route from New York to New Haven--apparently, he just heard last week that he was accepted to Yale Law. That makes it 5 for 5, meaning that he got into every Law school to which he applied. (Yale, Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and Columbia.) What can I say? He's a star. Congratulations, Jamal! |
