Saturday, July 19, 2008

What Will The Future Bring?

Lately I've been thinking a lot. Right now, with med schools and their wait lists as they are, chances are I will have to spend that year doing my MPH. Which is okay. And now I'm starting to look for apartments and courses that I'll need to take, just in case. My parents offered to give me a $10,000 loan from them. Which, come on, why shouldn't I take? So I'll have to pay them back for that, no big deal (especially since they're not charging me interest or anything like that).

I've also been thinking what kind of doctor I would like to be. I might have mentioned this before, or I might not have. They say the first decision you make when choosing what kind of doctor you want to be is surgery/non-surgery. Well, I choose non-surgery for sure. I don't want that kind of pressure, I don't want to pay that insane malpractice insurance, and I prefer to see my patients when they're conscious, thanks. Most of all, I don't like the idea that a patient's life and death may potentially boil down to whether or not my hands shake or slips accidentally. That's some serious stress there.

Now, for the longest time, I actually wanted to be a pediatrician. I <3 kids and I'm really good at working with them. However, I hear being a pediatrician sucks now. They're barely a tick above your basic primary care physicians, so when insurance and other overhead costs are factored in, most pediatricians don't make much. And you have to deal with parents, which I've heard is the worst part of all. In my heart, I'd like to think none of this matters. But my mind tells me to be more realistic.

Then there's endocrinology. A very interesting and diverse field. You focus all over the body, unlike many other specialties. Like, cardiology is only on the heart, hematology is only on the blood, etc. But the endocrine glands are all over the freaking body, and each of them do completely different things. It's like a hodge-podge of things, as far as organ systems go. But again, I don't think I could only do endocrinology. Many of the patients are old, and past a certain age, most patients are just slowly dying . . . another reason why I'd like to do pediatrics.

But, I think I have an idea of what I may want to do. Pediatric endocrinology or adolescent medicine. I think I'd like to work with childhood obesity and diabetes. I feel like I can contribute a lot to this area. And growing up sucks as a teen sometimes, so I may be able to empathize there as well. I don't know. Perhaps as one who was once quite overweight and lost a lot of it, I could more effectively inspire overweight kids to lose weight healthily and steadily. Inspire them to eat healthier and such.

Who knows. I feel like I haven't articulated myself that well in this post, lol. It sounded so much more emotional and elegant in my head. Whatever. Who knows what the future will bring?

3 comments:

charlie said...

That's a hard decision to take! think well about it, take your time, because once you're in, you can't change very easily. I took me some time to choose, I took a sabatic year because I wasn't sure. It really was a good thing (even if I didn't change my mind after all) and now I'm so happy with what I'm studying!

Good luck!

dccised said...

my parents would charge interest, and not a fixed rate either.

adolescent medicine is so hot right now. i say go for it. not that my whimsical opinion matters.

Aek said...

charlie: Yeah, it's a hard decision. But hey, I have 4-5 years to make a final decision. So I'm not worried just yet. I just like speculating.

j: Wow, your parents need to show you more love, or something. Is adolescent medicine hot right now? Hmm, I should look into it more then.