Hi, fam
Reading this at the start of the usual self-absorbed and clearly self-serving message on our medical college class group, I knew one thing for sure: we were an estranged family at best. I’m not your fam, and neither are you mine. I remember when I was freezing to death with my thick jeans soaked in cold saltwater in the pit of winters, when I’d fallen in a ditch on a shore on my way back from an equally traumatising experience jumping into the middle of the ocean with a ripped life jacket. It’s an even longer story. There was no fam then. It wasn’t even survival mode (not for most of us, at least), but we tend to ourselves in extremes of weather and also in propelling our own research proposal forward by asking others to please fill it out and also send us a screenshot once we are done, thank you very much. But those days are past me, and I assume it’s only healthy to move on.
Then again, moving on was onward to the internship. It was different. It was less arrogant and more pretentious. It was less conniving and more hostile. It was less haughty and more petty. Everyone wasn’t snobbish because they were rich; people were snobbish for no reason and so had to prove it even more. But some, and only some, of that is past me. And I think apart from these hopeless ruminations, I have moved on.
I entered family medicine, a new rotation, ‘bout two weeks ago. And I haven’t written since. Not because this blog is an outlet for some frustration and general disappointment from the system, but because I had other things and my thoughts had to be chanelleged to my dreams, which have become quite wild.
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I have not met nicer people. I have not learnt more in so much time. I have not felt less miserable since my internship started. I am not exhausted when I get home, except from habit. I come back at a reasonable time most days, which makes the odd long-run clinic tolerable and acceptable. People say thank you. They thank me for coming in and doing my job. It’s dangerously nice and like the realist I think I am (and would like to be), I am worried about how my tolerance to absurd demands and utter rudeness will be lost. My hard-experienced tolerance.
And it is a coincidence that today, I saw a resident be reduced to tears in the middle of her presentation. She was showcasing her work on a research idea. It was a protocol and she was asked if she’d like feedback per slide or at the end. We didn’t make it past slide 5. One faculty member gave her very destructive criticism, and the intern rotating with me and I kept looking at each other. We texted each other. We squirmed in our chairs. We longed to get out. A lump came in the presenter’s throat. And when the presentation was nearing its end, the usual remarks of how ‘this was for her learning’, and that she should ‘take this in a positive way’ came. They even hugged her. Because she had shed some tears. The core of her research idea, and her brain neurons, were questioned. Was she even genuine? Authentic? Was she original? She spoke maybe 3 minutes in all that one hour.
When I slipped away, I grabbed my fellow intern and we went straight to the cafe. I needed a cut of tea. I needed to ventilate. I am anxious by proxy and this was hurtful. There is criticism that can be cruel, but it should not be rude. I still feel uncomfortable, and I hope she is not doing too much worse.
It’s the tolerance. I’ve seen the most agonising presentations in orthopaedics, where the resident was made to believe they shouldn’t even have graduated secondary school. I’ve seen someone be asked if he were replaceable by a curt ophthalmologist when he got an answer wrong. I have felt like saying fine, and laying down my lab coat and phone and just walking out of the ward, away, never to be found again. But just a pinch of kindness and I’ve got a taste for the flavour.
