Uncertain Times & Banal Wanderings of a Festinating Soul

There comes a point in a medical student's life where it all gets to be a little much. Even after being a part of the most exquisite wedding in the UAE, desert safaris, ascending towers, watching fountains dance, alight in the night to passionate opera-like music or with local belly-dance flair. You come back to reality. And that reality is more pressure than you've ever felt in your life, threatening to boil over, burst through your pores, your mouth, your eyes, like a fiery volcano. But it's not just the pressure of everything you have to do, it's also the uncertainty about where it's all going... none of which is in your control.

And then, the real icing on the cake, you're stuck in geriatrics. Enough said. Old people need doctors and special care tailored to their needs. But they also need doctors who really love doing just that. For better or for worse, I am not one of them. If it was palliative care, no problem -I like their philosophy and their approach. But regular old-people medicine? So not my thing. I really just want to run to labour and delivery, or the NICU or the nursery for a breath of fresh air. Or talk about contraception and safe sex with some teenager. It's all just a week away, until I'm back where I belong. But until then, I'm stuck in a veritable hell. They are dying okay, or at least most of my patients are. Yet we delay consulting palliative care. We force them into the futility of physio, nutrition, long-term care placement, etc. And for what? I say, consult palliative care now before they're gasping for that last oxygen-full. Let them embark on that existential journey we all deserve at least a chance at, before we die. Let them live their last days or weeks or maybe even months (not likely), in comfort, without someone constantly nagging at them to eat and walk, drawing bloods, stethoscopes. I mean, seriously. Everyone is suffering, suffering, suffering. And we're doing diddley-doo about the most important suffering here, which is the family and the patient's psychological suffering and ensuing demoralization.

I realize I am not the authority. I'm a medical student so maybe it's not my place. But I have learned this. When you truly dislike your work, those are the most exhausting days. We are doctors trained to work long hours, not sleep, not eat and passionately be little medical energizer bunnies. That is changing only very slowly. In the meanwhile, you will be happy to know that when you find what you love, the madness of this philosophy is only half as crazy as you originally thought, and you will happily go through all this in the name of what you enjoy. But put me on a geriatrics ward for a morning and I am beat -physically, psychologically, emotionally.

I miss my women and their babies. I miss the OR terribly. I just want to practice knots and ultrasound. Or share in the tragedy of the occasional miscarriage. That's not an easy job either. But I enjoy it and would gladly give up so much more than geriatrics may have technically ever asked of me. It doesn't matter. I am learning, I am busy, but there is no fire and the undercurrent is boredom. In Parkinson's, individuals develop a festinating gait, defined as "a manner of walking in which a person's speed increases in an unconscious effort to "catch up" with a displaced center of gravity". Geriatrics festinates my spirit -the only way to find my center will be to get out. It has been the longest rotation of my life and in all honesty, I can't wait for it to be over and never go back.