I eat

Back in high school, I wrote monthly editorial columns for the school paper. It was the usual fluff that you might expect from a teenager desperate to impress and to sound far more considerate than I was capable. But by god, it was a good time. The beauty of opinion pieces (I felt) lay in the bits of logic I could piece together to support my mindful blathering. Self-vindication without doing an ounce of outside reading and research was addictive as hell. 

I took to poetry quickly when introduced to writers that challenged the limits of how much meaning could be packed in as few words as possible. There is nothing else I've ever done that was equally stimulating for both the creator and the audience. I could scour my brain for the right sentence structure, or the perfect line break for days on end and cough out three measly lines, then suddenly have a flash of inspiration that flows out into a sonnet within minutes.  

Writing, regardless of prose or poetry, was a high that I chased for 4 years right up to the point I had to get my shit together and prepare for medical school. Like flipping a switch, every thought out of my head suddenly had to be guided by tangible proof, lest I am labeled a snake oil peddler. The comfort in evidence-based work would almost be just as enticing if it weren't so boring. There is always a right way to do things, but to get to that right answer means either digging through papers for someone who answered the exact same question, or to test things out by designing experiments. Luckily for a creature of habit like me, I fell quickly into a pattern of thinking that cared only about physical evidence (and if not, how I can create said evidence). 

In a world of heuristics, the sudden absence of academic pressures that demanded strenuous mental gymnastics to reason through opinions led of a vacuum in the right side of my brain. It felt like a strange itch that I couldn't scratch. Obviously, there was some initial pushback against giving up poetry. I kept trying to write, I tried to find "like minded" people who also liked to write, and tried to create an environment where my language was refined. 

Much like my protestant God, medicine was not kind to anyone serving two masters. My seniors liked comparing learning in medical school to drinking from a fire hose. Having been through it myself, I think the more accurate description would be learning a new language that I always assumed I knew. The challenge really was recognizing how little I knew and how poorly I communicated. It's all in English, but all of a sudden, my English was no good. Beyond basic vocabulary, my approach to various questions had to change. It's not "this disease presents with so-and-so symptoms", and instead it was "if someone had this list of 21 symptoms and signs, which ones would you choose to focus on in leading you towards one of thousands of possible diagnoses?" 

It was a lot to take in. The process was all consuming, and I eventually stopped writing with any depth. When I did, it was only for special occasions with family and loved ones. It has been over six years since I entered medicine as I write these words, I would still only consider myself somewhat proficient at being a doctor. There always was a nagging discomfort in ignoring a part of my brain that I once considered fundamental to my identity. In choosing to ignore this feeling, I dedicated my spare time to watching YouTube videos about trains and aircraft carriers.

To be honest, I'm not sure where I could go with medicine. I'm applying for residency, but there's a part of me that suspects I would feel relieved by an initial rejection from the program (which is what I expect to get anyway). I see residents stay back after work for hours on end to fill out dumb forms that are supposed to prove they are learning on the job. It's not just the academic rigor, it's a mountain of administrative details that would make even the anal retentive high school version of myself nauseated. 

If I get another year of just rotating around hospitals and working normally, I'm really not sure I would be ready to jump back on a more intense version of medical school. If I ignore the pay raise, I know I definitely won't ever consider it. 

I remember a time when I thought I could just go back and get an MFA after finishing my MD. I wonder if that would ever be possible.