So 2 weeks ago I finished my internal medicine rotation, which is the time where I had to learn how to know what's wrong with someone by asking them the right questions and using my hands and cool doctor tools.
Everyone said it's the most important part of med school.
It was the first time where we actually saw everything we have been studying for two years.
First time where we dealt with souls.
I found it fascinating for some reason to actually see what I had studied in books, to see it real in front of me, to touch it and examine it, to discuss it with my friends and to tell everyone about how amazing it is.
I remember the first time I saw splenomegaly (a large spleen), I almost flew with excitement.
This act of finding out with your mind and your hands and cool tools (the cool tools are the best part) how to help someone go back to their normal life, it's beautiful.
Every day felt like an adventure. Everyday was new and exciting and full of amusement and wonder.
My days were made by signs I saw for the first time.
Hearing, seeing, or feeling abnormalities made me happy, which is twisted actually.
To be so thrilled when finding an abnormality in a person.. that's not very nice. But I just couldn't help it!
I found it hard at first to hide the thrill in me in front of the poor patient.
And I think it's either I got too thrilled or too stressed, or a mix of both, to a point where it overwhelmed me.
I wasn't aware of almost anything around me, my whole concentration being on what I had to do with patients and what I had study about what I saw in these patients.
Everything else was a haze.
No really. Looking back, everything seems hazy.
I was so unaware that I unintentionally allowed a gap to grow between me and a close friend.
And it still surprises me how I let that happen, how I was too busy to notice such a thing.
As exciting as it was, it was the most stressful and hectic time of my entire life.
So hectic that I basically turned myself into a machine without even knowing it.
I let the pressure of having to excel medicine push me beyond my limits.
I reached a point where I couldn't sleep. Never has that happened in my entire life.
I remember in the nights when I couldn't sleep, the only thing that kept me sane was the acceptance.
The acceptance that I was human, that I was weaker than I imagine, and that it's okay for things to go out of control.
Whenever my mind would start to panic about how screwed my situation was, I would remind myself of that, and that's how I managed not to lose my mind.
I noticed the hours before fajr pass quickly.
And I noticed how easy it is to forget how helpless we really are.
So this was about my first step into the clinical life.
Do I regret it ?
Not really.
Mistakes are important to teach us things that we would never forget.
And plus, maybe this insane stress was what I needed to fuel my way through.
