'March'ing along

Welcome to March all!
The time that I have spent here in Milwaukee so far has been very special. I am enjoying being a part of a larger, vibrant, oozing city.

However I must be honest. While I don't want this to be a down type of blog, I also want to be honest about what I am feeling and experiencing. I debated a while about posting this, so I hope it will be met with compassion and understanding.

I have been struggling with depression quite a lot in the last week. It has been hard. It really hit me this past week when I was done with my time on Ob/Gyn and the reality of what I had been through had time to percolate to the top. I think the combination of February snow/cold/lack of sun, PMS, the pressure of Ob rotation, the reality of dealing with the only terrible group of residents I have encountered, the pressure of working on my project and feeling like I need to take it to a different level with all the public health tools and literature available and the limited time I have as a med student to do so. While I have dealt with this issue of depression many times before in my life, the prevalence among medical students is astounding. About 22% of med students suffer from depression, versus 10% of non medical peers. I am linking some good (short) articles here if anyone wants to see what others have had to say...
here
here
and here

However the main pressure I think has been a feeling of being trapped in the box, with no escape possible. I feel like a cow being herded from one cattle chute to another, and that there are just more chutes ahead. How did my life turn into this? Where is the person that I used to love to be? I never thought that pursuing education and training would make me feel like I had fewer options rather than more. The difficulty of losing myself, the self I worked hard to cultivate, is almost unbearable at times. I know that self is still there, and that there are changes too, but to know that self still, to feel it, is really hard sometimes, except the suffering.

I used to live in a world of magic, fun, love, friendship, intention and synchronicity. Now, much of that seems to be changed. I am in a box of mime-like ever narrowing proportions, each bit of individuality and joy squeezed out to attempt to fit a cookie cutter mold. Sometimes I resist, other times I am too tired or its too hard to figure out how to be parts of me while still meeting certain requirements. I mean, I even have a dress code now. I never imagined when I started this process how grueling, demanding, and just plain hard it would be. I knew it would be hard work, that part is fine. This last rotation, which was definitely the worst so far, I spent every day, not only being the stupidest and most useless one, but not even being a person worth teaching or acknowledging most of the time, unless it was to be condescended to or humiliated. That really was painful, and continues to be so. Who treats people this way? How can someone ignore you, despite preparation and direct questions, for 14 hours a day, while you attempt to work side-by-side? The one consolation, however small, is something one of my classmates said, "remember its not you, its them!" While I don't usually approach it like that, sometimes it is clearly true.

I really miss having a life outside of school. All our friends, all our social outlets, are through school. We've been trying to go out in the city more often, but DH and I have opposite schedules these days, with him working and schooling at night, and my long days. It can be hard to break into a scene, especially when you have little time. I was at DH's pizza restaurant the other day, and a dready couple were in there, ordering food. I had just come from clinic, so was dressed "professionally", and even though I smiled at them, it was obvious they would never have thought I was someone they would talk to. I have lost my freak flag y'all! No more patchies, no dready do's. Trying to figure out how to keep it real and keep it free.

Anyway, I will end here, I have whined enough. Needless to say, this is a painful part of training. The bright side is that I start primary care today. This is a combination of family medicine and outpatient internal medicine. By far, the family med residents rotating through Ob were the ones who were kind, who wanted to help you learn, and who treated me like a human being, without fail. This gives me hope that this rotation will be much, much better. I am a bit nervous because I really want to do well, to like it, and to be liked here, as this is the field I am wanting to go into. But 3 of the faculty I have met have been great as well, so chances are good.

I will try to write more interesting and good stuff too. It just seems I have more to reflect on sometimes on the things that don't go well. As one of my wonderful teachers says, "we humans are programmed to notice what isn't right. It is what keeps us working on making things better."