Thursday, July 16, 2009

Fuck em all.

Two things. First, I think that may be the only catfish in foot pic I'm gonna get. The others are just too blury. I did get a different cool pic today, but I am starting a new policy of waiting a month or so before posting pics, just to add an extra layer of identity protection for the patient. Secondly, if you notice the films I put up of the finger dislocation, check back at that post in a few days because I plan to write a little about it. I am just too exhausted to get into the kind of heavy handed philosophy that the discussion will require. Tonight, I think for the first time, I got a glimpse into why the burn out rate is so high among emergency physicians. The bastards just ask too much from us. You finish your shift everyday completely exhausted, feeling that you have been pushed to the absolute limit of physical, emotional, and mental ability. At first this is the best feeling on earth. You leave feeling like you did your job, the description may be shitty at times, but you did that job, and probably did the right thing for a few people as well, and you really feel good about yourself, and maybe even life in general. However, this high eventually wears off, and you realize that you are grinding yourself to exhaustion every single day, and the only reward is a little sleep before you just start all over, and there comes a point when you just can't continue to lay everything you have out on the line in a public forum day after day after day. And who cares what you do really? Most of the patients don't even really care. Tonight, at the culmination of one of these hideous, stinking shifts full of wrongs and terrible abuses from the patients and to the patients, I walked out of the department, straight through the lobby, and right out the main doors, just for the hell of it. Subconciously daring someone in the waiting area or out front to fuck with me. When I came out the doors to the private auto drop off ramp I noticed the strangest detail of an insignificant scene. A lady had pulled up and was getting her son, about 10, from the back seat. He was in no apparant distress. The thing that struck me was the smell of fries. Mcdonalds fries. I glanced to the front passenger seat and noticed an older daughter cramming her fat mouth full. I thought about that and all I could picture was them out, on the way to the hospital for an "emergency" at 2am, and they decided to just run through the mcdonalds drive through on the way. My blood boiled. I really considered dragging somebody, anybody, out of that car and strangling the fuck out of them! This scene, in one split second image, captures the whole essence of the way I felt about Emergency Medicine right then at that moment.

1 comment:

  1. But you have to remember, there is that patient that will forever be grateful that you came into their lives at that precise moment and changed the course it was on. It's just that as a doctor, you may never get to find out your long term impact on that person. Keep doing good!

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