I had a patient recently who I sat with for a while since we were sending him over to the ER. Spending time like that with a patient never normally happens. I sometimes wonder about patients when I’m talking to them since I really only get to see the one side of them (obviously medical). For example, if you sat down with them at a meal, what little quirks would you notice about them? What sorts of things do they laugh about? What do they get annoyed about? I’m not sure how much of this would ever be medically relevant – and I’m sure you could make a great argument that it’s really important, but in the long run it’s most important to conform to the standard of care because in the ideal world that’s the medicine that’s proven to work and help people’s lives. Knowing that they laugh at knock knock jokes, hate waiting in line, and hold their fork funny isn’t going to change how you manage their disease most of the time.

Sometimes I feel frustrated, because I feel like I didn’t just go into medicine to treat one disease after another but this is where you run into the conflict of the dehumanization in medicine. I think it’s very important that you become desensitized, there’s far too much pain and suffering in this world to put on the plate. At the same time, I want to know that I treated a person, not just a condition or disease. Then mix in the reality of medicine where there are so many demands on your time. I sometimes just leave the day just feeling so dissatisfied with all the hard work I’ve done and the lack of caring I was able to communicate because I had to go do this or that. It’s a balance and one that I’m just really starting to see and understand.

About 5 years ago I started a blog. It all began as a going away present when I was moving to boston to go to grad school. I knew at that point I wanted to go to med school and that was my goal in life. Not surprisingly, my life has changed in so many different ways from when I left for grad school – much more than I imagined. And I also don’t have the start of the blog because well stuff happened and I needed to just start fresh. It might be out there in cyberspace somewhere tho!
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So my dad isn’t feeling too great, has all these vague sorts of complaints that I’m sure no one will be able to find the answer to – just because I’m in medicine doesn’t give me the answers to any of these things where people have vague complaints. Could be nothing, could be something serious… but it seems like so far it’s just been nothing and my dad is just getting very angry and frustrated. It’s not easy when medicine has no answers for you – and I try to kind of warn my dad this all this testing might not get him any more answers than he has now but he’s just so angry and frustrated that he doesn’t want to hear it. My mom has a very hard time with this kind of thing since she grew up where her mother was very ill. So in all likelihood I think it’s just going to be no answers, but I know my family wants me to be there and help them find something – but I think all I’m going to be is the person telling them that sorry, medicine has no answer for you. When I’ve had patients like this I always try to warn them that we may have no answers but no one likes to hear these things, and it’s just so unsatisfying.