Psychiatry is Over!

Well here we are the end of June.

It seems like Summer is half over and yet we haven't really even had it yet. It's been chilly here, windy, and rainy. We did have a week of extreme hotness at the beginning of the month, but that seems long gone.

As far as classes are concerned I'm trudging through. We just finished psychiatry and while it was fun, I can't say it's really my cup of tea. It's hard to have any real grasp on a specialty though when you don't see too many patients. It's mostly understandable though because most people don't like talking about their most personal thoughts with five or six other people in the room. I still don't quite understand why they insist on splitting us up into such big groups. Our class should be in more than just two large groups so that we can have less people in a department at any given time.

 We did get to meet one manic patient however who after telling us how lovely we all were and kissing one of my fellow classmates proceeded to tell us to "fuck off" and to "go die" all within a 15 minute time period. We also met several guys who thought they were Jesus. I couldn't help but to wonder what would happen if you put them in the same room together???

As far as choosing a specialty though. I don't know if I could deal with that sort of thing every day, cheers to those who can.

http://www.zlotowskie.pl/przyszlosc-w-psychiatryku,9641.html

One of my teachers asked us the other day if we'd like to go into psychiatry. I said no and then tried to explain,  that in my opinion with normal medical problems you can generally treat them and they're fixable, and at least you can try to do something. Whereas with mental health you can't always help them and the problems aren't always treatable. She seemed to insinuate afterwards that I should be a surgeon, but my stance isn't really related fixing not fixing. Even with things like asthma and diabetes at least you can treat the problem and see a difference in most cases, with things like severe schizophrenia and bipolar you can't really see a difference even with the most powerful drugs and in this case the result is that the person is alive but their soul is lost. It's terrible to say but I'd rather have a patient die after extensive treatment for a general medical condition than loose them to a mental disorder if given the choice. Of course some might disagree.

Maybe part of my opinion comes from loosing my best friend to schizophrenia. I've seen first hand the destruction that mental disorders can have on families and friends. I've seen the end result of the delusions, the hallucinations, and the multiple hospitalizations. Mental disorders destroy the very essence of the human soul. It isn't something I would wish on anyone.

In the end my friend was left as a shadow of his former self, and then he was gone. No one in his family even reported him missing because most thought he'd just gone off the deep end again, many weren't even speaking with him any more, and the remaining few also suffered from the same disorder. (As it happens only family can report a person missing, his few remaining friends tried). They found his body almost 6 months after the last person saw him- just a mere mile from the house where he'd been staying. Stories like this are the sad reality of many severe mental diseases.

In other news: we start OB/Gyn next week. I'm kind of looking foreword to getting back in to a more clinical setting. But, if I'm honest this is a class that I have been dreading from the get go.

Let me explain. First off babies are terrifying. Second, we never talked about the 'birds and bees' in my house growing up, you just didn't do it. As an adult it has made talking about anything even close to the topic especially difficult. My fiends like to joke that I have a "Disney Filter" and that basically whenever they start talking about sex or periods the Lion King theme song replaces what they're saying in my head. It's really not that bad, but it's definitely something that creates anxiety and makes any sort of conversation on the subject uncomfortable on my part.

I know I'll have to get over it (you know being a doctor eventually and all), but I think it's safe for me to admit that the first few days will probably be kind of uncomfortable for me. I'll do my best and hide it in front of the patients, but inside I'll probably be an anxious mess.
Who knows in the end I might really end up enjoying it...