Med Man Says Kem Cho?

You know when i started ob/gyn i wasn’t sure if I would enjoy my 6 weeks tryst with it. But, i have to say i come out of it with even more appreciation for what women go through to have a baby. Honestly, if I was a woman I would never ever get pregnant. The pain of labor blew my mind. And, unbelievably there are women who deliver without taking epidurals( epidurals are given for pain management in labor). Amazing! I salute you. I also have to say thank the good lord for the patients. Those nights when I didn’t get any sleep were worth it because of them. Those women went through what they went through, but they were also kind enough to let me learn medicine from it. One of the reasons ob/gyn is so tough apart from the shelf exam and the research paper is the 24 hours and overnight call schedule. And, imagine this from a guy’s perspective. Most of the days and nights there are no physicians on the floor. All the nurses are women and obviously, the patients are women. Most of the call schedules I was the only guy on the floor. I think it is something like 80% of the physicians in ob/gyn are women. So only women plus night calls was a little too much to handle. One more reason why thank god for those patients who I got to work with. They made going through those long hours possible. I also would be remiss if I didnt say that despite all the blood and gore there is nothing like hearing a newborn cry for the first time. It makes all those ridiculous hours absolutely worth it. If you ask me watching a birth is one of the most beautiful processes you can witness. Its amazing to think that small baby actually forms inside something as small as uterus and despite the fact that a million things can go wrong in the embryogenic stages most of the times nothing does. So, there you go I have a lot more respect for ob/gyn than I ever did before. Now, I move on to psychiatry. I was a little apprehensive for the first couple of days. The idea of working with ‘crazy’ people wasnt exactly appealing. And, I have done something along the lines of emergency psych before and hearing those heart wrenching stories from the patients had burned me out. But, back then I was a pre-med student which is a far outcry from a third year medical student. This time around, may be because I am a third year medical student or may be some other reason, behind all those delusions and hallucinations I can actually see human beings. And, just like you and me they ask for help and they want to get better. Just like you and me those ‘crazy’ people have actual parents and family. I saw a patient who had a history of multiple attempts of suicide and current suicidal ideations. He was planning to jump of a bridge or throw himself in front of a bus. He also had a history of substance abuse: cocaine, marijuana among others and, of hallucinations and delusions. When i went to talk to him, he did not want to talk. Well, guess what once i started talking he ended up talking to me for more than an hour. Wonderfully enough, he ended up talking about his son, job and relationships. So from outside, somebody might have considered him ‘crazy’. But look at the problems he has. Those are common to all of us-human beings. It reminds me of the old adage: Dont judge a book by its cover. I have only been in psychiatry for a few days. However, this much I have understood from it: what do you do when this strange process called human mind takes a leap to the south and there is nothing we can do about it? If that happened to us, won’t we wish there was someone to help us and hopefully, that someone didnt call us crazy.