Of Pretense and Persuasions

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Check out this awesome video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zenqVtZYfs


Reminds me of my childhood.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Today was my last day of neurosurgery ... and for the first time, in two weeks, I found myself in utter awe. We did a transphenoidal resection of a pituitary tumor. That is, we busted thru this guy's upper lip, went through his sphenoid sinus, drilled thru his sphenoid bone, and spooned out the oozing, necrotic, bloody mass that was compressing his optic chiasm. It was sweet. But that's not it... to make sure that the brain had enough structural support after we took out all that gunk, we stuffed a bunch of the patient's abdominal fat [which I personally resected!!! whoohoo... abdominoplasty expert that I am!] into the empty space that was previously occupied by the tumor. Yup. Gives new meaning to term "fathead." It was awesome, dude.

But, not awesome enough to make me a neurosurgeon. The residents seem absolutely miserable. They actually *encourage* me to go elsewhere. They have no lives and my social life, as lame as it is, has no room to get lamer.

Not that I'm complaining.

Speaking of which, I'm starting to realize that I've been complaining a lot; and it feels really wrong. I live an amazing life. I see and do stuff that most people in the world never get to see. I know what it takes to heal sickness, to palliate suffering, to chase away the shadow of death. But medicine is hard work. There is no rest for the weary. The shadow always reappears, our knowledge turns out fallable, and our remedies can provoke such misery that patients' prefer to call them poisons. Medical school itself is grueling. Sleep deprivation is expected. Being humiliated by attendings who ask you the most clinically irrelevant questions [ex: Punkass Trauma Surgeon: "Name the different biochemical pathways that feed into the gluconeogenic system?"] is a norm. What gets me the most, however, is the constant worry that I am not competant, that I do not know everything I need to know, that I am flying by the seat of my pants and haven't a flying rat's a$$ of a clue as to what I am doing. Call it, a simple lack of confidence.

There are times when surgeons pimp me and, while I know the right answer, I will assume that I don't and so I will answer, "I don't know." Note to self: bad thing to say to a surgeon. Then, there are times, when I know the right answer, but will assume that what I think is right is actually wrong, and then I give a wrong answer. Note to self: do not second guess yourself. Then there are times when I decide its a bad thing to second guess myself so I start blurting out the first thing that comes to mind which, invariably, results in a slew of incorrect answers and me looking like a complete bumbling idiot. Note to self: I am completely fu***d.