The only rotation of third year I haven't blogged about is Surgery. I didn't intend to avoid writing about it, but today I realized I subconsciously didn't want to revisit it.

I don't want to write much about the specifics of the rotation. Kind of like my blog about Primary Care, here's some general thoughts and feelings I had during the rotation:

It is a privilege to see inside the human body, dead or alive. This is something I felt strongly about during anatomy, but by the time I reached my surgery rotation, I forgot. Luckily by the end of the rotation, just in the nick of time, I remembered. If I were to undergo an operation especially under general anesthesia, I would be so, so nervous. My heart's racing just thinking about it (I'm reminded of my wisdom tooth horror story). I would have to use all my strength to not cry in anxiety. But I didn't think much about how my patients were feeling while on my surgery rotation. I was nice and friendly to them, and that didn't hurt. But I don't know if I ever showed genuine concern for them. I had many patients with cancer, and never really thought about how hard it would be to know you have metastatic cancer. That's horrible.

I adopted the attitude of a surgeon just because I was on my surgery rotation. I had to present well, study for the shelf, show enthusiasm, constantly worry about my answers being wrong, wake up early, come home late...because I wanted to get honors. I could never show any implication that I was lazy, even if it's truly that I just don't give a fuck about becoming a surgeon. I held a grudge towards the culture of medicine while on surgery. A grudge that nearly burnt me out.

I'm actually glad for the experience. I was starting to worry that med school had been too easy on me emotionally and that I'd get my M.D. without paying my dues. Now I don't worry about that. Now I know what almost burn-out is.

Now that I'm on Internal Medicine and even during Peds, I have re-learned how to care. Wow, never thought that me of all people would have to do that.