Some have been good, some have been bad, each one takes me closer.
Well, I have not posted for two months. In some ways, lots has happened. In some ways, very little. I went to Townsville, had a great time. I saw my Mum, and even had coffee with her on my birthday. I passed Psychiatry, which was a huge relief. I think Psychiatry messed with my mind. It left a permanent mark, that’s for sure. I turned 30. That is having lasting effects as well. I have been evaluating my life a lot / too much. This song came on the radio the other day, and it felt like my life story:
My mind is a combination of isolation, stress, disillusionment and boredom. This whole thing really is a weird time in my life. I feel like I have lost a lot of who I am. There are parts in me and my life that are dying. Some parts are dying at the hands of others, some are just withering away. I am paying a huge price to be here, sometimes it feels like I am paying with the actual substance of me. Combine that with other things that are growing in me, and I find I am different. I was something when I showed up that I will never be again. I don’t feel like it is “supposed” to go this way. But that’s another question that drives me nutty. What is it supposed to be like? Why? Part of the reason that I haven’t been posting is that I don’t want this to be full of my internal turmoil. But I’d be lying to everyone and myself to say it wasn’t there. A lot of the things that were going on here are still going on.
My General Practice rotation was great. I remembered why I started medicine in the first place, and worked with a preceptor who did it really well. There are a lot of ways you can “doctor” well, but this guy did it in a way that I really respected and aspire to. It wasn’t that he was just great at diagnostics, or that he was nice, it was that he was both, and took his job seriously and worked at creating an experience for the patient that helped them with their life. He took the craft of being a GP to a higher level. I was happy to absorb from him his style and approach, and would practice his techniques in the role plays that we would do at the end of the week. I spent a ton of time with him, too. We were expected to spend 16h per week at the clinic. I did about 30, sometimes more, per week. Thankfully, he was happy to have me, too. I went to his farm and vaccinated his cows, hung out with his son and had dinner at his house with his friends twice. Next up for me in the rotation department is a rotation actually called Medicine. It will be hospital work, wards and stuff. It’s one of the big ones, the other being Surgery. I feel like it’s going to be a pretty intense learning experience, as the expectations at the end are pretty high.
Right now, I’m sick. Sore throat, viral URTI in my opinion. It’s pouring rain, which is an experience in itself, for lots of reasons. I am on holidays, but have an assignment to do with my group, which is kinda annoying because I simply hate assignments, and it’s destroying my break by making me feel like I should be here doing it, and when I am here, I am feeling like I am trapped in the house. So that pretty much brings us up to date.
My nephew Eli is pretty active these days. This morning he ran over to the closet, climbed in and pulled the door shut behind him! What a nut!
Go North downunder to get warmer… I am in Townsville now, at my sister’s and brother in law’s home. My mum is up here too one of my three new nieces is here as well. It’s a lot warmer up here, and feels like did summertime back home. My niece is beautiful and sweet, as expected and my nephew is starting to talk and walks a lot. I was so tired yesterday, with it kinda lasting over to today too. I’m glad to be on holidays, and it’s great to be with family.
Done my exams. Got so rushed that I’m worried about the quality, but hopefully the skeleton I laid out will help. I’m happy to be done and free, but wish I felt better about it. Mum’s here, which is great, but I wish I would have been able to see her tomorrow morning as we thought would be possible! Anyways, the rotations march on… GP is next.
So relieved to be done my live exams. I still have a written exam tomorrow morning, but it’s the verbal stuff that always gets me most anxious. Today went better than yesterday, but it’s always hard to tell. Like an interview when they don’t really let on how you’re doing, they just want to see what you’ve got. I had a few prompts but was able to put some good stuff out there too. Can’t wait to be done completely… I am hoping to get up to Townsville in the next week, since I have some time off. We’ll see about that tomorrow I guess. So close!
Of all the fields of medicine that I have been involved so far, mental health is, by a large margin, where I hear the phrase “more resources” most. If we had more resources, problems would go away… It seems a bit odd, because I feel like I have observed a bunch of time wasting, also more than I have in any other field. Now, it’s true, nothing happens fast in psychiatry, and I suppose that is good. We can’t have a bunch of snappy decisions guiding treatment that is going to end up taking years and then wonder later on if we did the right thing (diagnostic uncertainty, etc.). But at the same time, sometimes it feels like the mental health machine just pushes in the clutch and sits there and revs the engine. I have been party to meetings that literally cost thousands of dollars in the wages of those around me (lots of people) that really do nothing (eg. How we are going to get everyone’s signature on the fire safety sheet if everyone hasn’t done fire safety). It’s frustrating to be in the paradox of health care, where nothing happens without money, but money alone doesn’t make something happen. Trying to make something happen with money is sometimes exactly like pushing a rope. Unfortunately, I don’t have any brilliant solution. I just see part of the problem.
There is a river nearby. Some days it is picture perfect, and I feel really lucky to live so close.
This is the view from the bathroom at the hospital in a town called Gympie, which is about an hour and a half north of where I live. I come here every Tuesday and Thursday for outpatient and Clozapine clinics. It is a bit of a bush town, surrounded by hills that remind me of the Okanagan valley.
A patient gave me a bit of a tip today in an interview. He said if I ever needed a bigger brain, laughing makes your brain go bigger. It was just one of the many disordered thoughts he relayed to me. I have been involved in some pretty incredible conversations in the last six weeks. Some of the thoughts are even so disordered it’s practically impossible to remember them. Something about a string of unrelated words that is really tricky to recall. Some of them end up being funny and some of them end up being really sad, but I think the thing is that the patient is just trying to make sense of their world as much as you are.
I am finding making sense of it all really taxing. Maybe I should put less stock in the things they say. Maybe I just need to see more so that I am more used to it. I think either way, I’ll end up doing both.
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