Dear Reader,
I don't know if you already know this or not but I once dated a guy who--before I finally worked up the nerve to end things--managed to make me cry almost every night for months on end. After I got over him, I vowed to never keep anyone in my life who made me cry more often than he made me smile. Because life, I decided, was much too short to be unhappy all the time. But for me to live up to that vow, does that mean I have to break up with medical school?
This time last year, if you had told me that med school--the thing I knew I wanted more than anything else in the world--would turn my world upside down and inside out, I would've said that you were crazy and informed you that you clearly did not know what you were talking about. I would've told you that nothing was going to stand between me and becoming a doctor. Would've assured you that I could handle anything, was willing to give up whatever it took, in order to reach my goal.
But now some nights I startle awake (sometimes multiple times in the same night even) and am overcome by a panic that necessitates that I jump out of bed and throw open the blinds to check to make certain it's still night. Because until I look outside and see that it's still dark I can't tell if it's 4:37am or if it's 4:37pm and I've slept through that day's required classes. And then there are the nights I have horrific dreams where I must watch helplessly while those closest to me die from injuries or diseases about which I have yet to learn. Or if I study anatomy before I go to bed all-too-real-looking zombies hunt me down until I am simply too exhausted to fight any more and have no choice but to give into them.
Other nights I feel so lonely that I am half convinced that, if I were to get up and take a look in the mirror, I would find a gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to reside. But then when the sun rises and I once again return to my schoolwork, I wonder if it is perhaps better for me to just be lonely so I can use all my spare time to study. And when I do occasionally take a break to do something non-academic I am overcome by guilt for doing something emotionally rewarding instead of studying or doing something else that will help ensure I am placed in the residency program of my choosing.
Lately my emotions have been so out of whack that I can go from feeling ecstatic to sobbing to being completely devoid of emotion all within the space of a day. The night before our multiple choice, knowledge-based exam I am so overcome by an impending sense of doom that I lay awake until my alarm clock calls me up and to arms. And when I get my scores back, my hands--always so steady in undergrad--shake for the hour before I work up the courage to look at my grades. And even when I saw that I passed this time around, I felt no relief but instead immediately began to worry about passing the next block of exams.
But inevitably something amazing will happen--like in anatomy lab the other day when we got to look at a human brain and hold it in our hands. It was unbelievable to think of all the things it was once capable of doing when its owner was alive despite how seemingly simple it looked lying there in my hands. Or when given an opportunity to shadow a doctor, I will suddenly be reminded of why it was that I wanted to go into medicine in the first place--to be able to help those around me and to make a difference in the lives of others.
I knew medical school wasn't going to be easy but nothing anyone said could have prepared me for how truly hellish and simultaneously wonderful it has turned out to be. I was told the other day that medical school is like a downhill slope and that, just when you think things can't get any worse, they somehow manage to do just that. But the doctor I was talking to assured me that, if I can only make it to residency--or even third year when we begin to have more clinical experiences--things will start to get better.
And so, I suppose for now I'll just have to take the good with the bad, and try my hardest to balance school with having a life and hope that the days that make me smile out number the ones that make me cry.
Until next time.
