In the Realm of Hysteria VI

Time for departure.

Leaving O&G gives me mixed feelings. The doctors in the department are lovely, and I've grown to like and enjoy them as individuals, just as they take the effort to get to know each of us transient juniors in the brief time that we're there. Even throwing us a special 'chicken wings and blue-cheese sauce' night as a send-off. (However my meal of wedges and blue cheese sauce woke me in the middle of the night with a complaining gallbladder).

I didn't think we were that wonderful in our clinical performance, but perhaps just by not creating more work, it was sufficient to qualify for excellence. I've always thought that was the bare minimum, being plagued by low confidence, that is, until I met the new cohort of interns. Were we really so naive and clueless only 12 months ago?

I find it perplexing, and a shift away from the usual self-absorbed anxiety during internship. Somehow, my perspective has changed. I start to be asked by unfamiliar nursing staff if I were the registrar (specialty trainee), receive friendly greetings from consultants and engage in interested conversations about my career path.

The work itself, I would safely say I'd never be an O&G specialist. I may come back in a few years and do a professional development year as part of an advanced skill of a rural GP. But that's definitely not top on my priorities. I'd much rather learn how to anaesthetise someone for operations, or manage chronic pain or terminal illness.

O&G brings to the fore too many realities about life and death. About how a person takes on essentially a parasitic life form in the depth of their being, and morphs their body chemistry, physiology and physical properties dramatically. There are no promises for a safe passage, little prediction, and a lot of the time we just make do with what we have in any given situation. Maybe that's why O&G specialists are kinder than the surgeons, and more open than the medics.

I am also surprised that despite the knowledge and experience, O&G doctors still fall pregnant and bear children. But then again I am also surprised that people can continue to eat meat after anatomy dissection classes. Maybe that's how we survive psychologically, with our blinkers on.

I've never been good at farewells, but then again that's life. Once we know there is an endpoint, mabye it becomes easier to appreciate what we have the present.