It’s been a while.  When you’re a doctor you end up saying that a lot, especially around friends. Like most black folk, after the initial rage at the Trayvon shooting subsides we reflect on our lives and blessings start thinking about other shit we’re mad about. Mine is health disparities.  Perhaps they are related.  I mean if you had a statistical reason to believe that any meal could be your last before being gunned down by a cop or being wrongfully incarcerated perhaps chicken and ribs would be an appropriate diet.   I have no idea what Simon eats (I am a lousy girlfriend) but subconsciously I am sure I don’t worry about it as much because he’s white. How messed up is that?

As I slave away at my fellowship, becoming a full-fledged doctor in my chosen field is within site.  But I am 32. And I am still poor.  My finance major friends are at a point where there investments yield interest that is equivalent to my salary.  But hey, at least I am helping people right? Well sorta.  Patients.  One at a time. Who would be helped by someone else who would have gotten this spot in this fellowship if I didn’t exist.  I would have preferred to work in policy where my work had the potential to help many people and couldn’t have been accomplished by some other shmuck willing to stay in school until they were 40.

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So it turns out my boyfriend is rich. I figure I am about a dozen GOOD blow jobs away from getting that engagement ring too, and I am not ashamed to admit that now I will be rolling them out with a bit more frequency – particularly now that I can stop rooting through his trash.

Of course now that I’m about to be Mrs. Belmont I am sort of regretting my career choice. Being a doctor is kind of like being a barber after all except your patients usually don’t look noticeably better when they leave and when they die it’s usually your fault.

I should have gone into research. I should have fucking tried to cure something. Every individual patient dies eventually but once you cure a disease…well! Lives in the bank.
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Ugh.  Why Benito? Why would you save our posts and write yours on your phone?  Is this to punish me for not giving you my old laptop when yours broke? Of course this happens when I send you a post that literally solves the healthcare crisis in our nation.

I was inspired by a pompous windbag who saw my Obama ‘08 sticker (but apparently  not my PENN Medical decal) and decided to lecture me on the pitfalls of Obama’s healthcare platform.  During the rant he recounted everything a doctor has to go through and concluded that he “had no problem with doctor’s salaries.” Thanks, because you know, if it wasn’t ok with you I’d be sending some of that money back.

Part of the answer is easy.  Obama plan (including individual mandate) + public option. Nothing was funnier than hearing this fool rail on about people who use emergency rooms as family practices leaving the rest of us to pay while simultaneously condemning the individual mandate. Idiot.

The next part has to do with the training of doctors.  Basically there are not enough of us and it takes too long. Well, let’s let common sense take a crack at this one.  First we create more doctors by creating more medical schools.  These would be public works, the type that create jobs (but really, whose trying to do that in this economy).  Trust me, the demand on the student side is there.  Second you make a medical education free IF you stop at the primary care level.  If you specialize (which now most doctors do because it’s the only way to pay back the loans they’ve already acquired) then the gift becomes a debt and you pay your way from there.
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Thanks to a surprisingly competent group of interns I also have time to write on this second topic.  Medical kids enjoy and don’t expect back to back articles to ever happen again! Cheers!

The best thing about the MCAT is complaining about it.  It’s the first universally recognized rite of passage that the rest of the world gets subjected to.  Marines have their crucible, PhDs defend dissertations but pre-meds have a slightly more difficult SAT and you better believe you’re going to hear about it.

So when I read that they were revamping the MCAT I had mixed feelings.  I was relieved that there was no talk of diversity, because I knew that if there was it would only be to say that minorities under-perform and that’s kind of a downer.  When I read that the MCAT was originally designed to combat the then abysmal attrition rate I thought ok, they are going to say the MCAT was needed so kids wouldn’t take on debt and then drop out with no MD to show for it.  Turns out the article really was just about the MCAT.  I guess I am programmed to see certain things everywhere even if they don’t exist.  But hey, while we’re talking about diversity and debt let’s go ahead and address those issues.
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Well here we go.  No I haven’t written in awhile BUT due to a mercifully slow night you in the medical community are about to get an article that is relevant to you.  Yay.

There are two types of doctors: doctors who want to be doctors and doctors who want to be successful.  Doctors who want to be doctors work at hospitals and volunteer/have lives outside of the hospital.  Doctors who want to be successful build private practices and spend all their time, whether at the dinner table or in the operating room, trying to figure out how to make that private practice more successful.  In a non-bimodal world I like to call reality, most doctors go back and forth.  Unexpectedly, debt is the reason for this, whether you have it or not.
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I haven’t written much lately.  I go to the statuesque bf worth missing sleep over.  That’s about all I can handle.  Unfortunately I have friends.  Friends who have alot more time on their hands than I do.  Friends who make demands on my time.

The sad phenomenon I am noticing is that when I do see a friend it’s not the friend I wanted to see most, but the friend guilts me into it, usually through pity.  Consequently I am distancing froom people I care about and confiding in people whose death would rank on par with a patient’s who I’d spent a total of about 10 minutes with, was old, and had family there.  I have always taken for granted that the average person values what I do and understand how long it takes.  benito and his new best friend Latrine always lament that just because they are unemployed and underemployed respectively that everyone thinks their time is worthless.  I for one do, but not because of their employment situation but because 1) I know Benito and 2) Latirne is called latrine because he seeks to maximize the amount of time he spends on the toilet.

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I am not the biggest fan of kids.  I did my rotation through pediatrics and was told I’d be a good pediatrician because I didn’t let emotions get in the way of medicine, and because children are more comfortable with a female doctor.  Pass.  One of the things I did notice though was that there were alot of fat kids.  Half of the kids were in my humble opinion fat enough to be the “fat” kid in their respective class, the one with no friends that everyone poked fun at.  My thought is that an anti-obesity campaign is so benign as to be almost useless.  Michelle Obama is a beautiful, empowered, intelligent woman who could raise awareness about any number of issues.  Then I heard about Rush Limbaugh, a morbidly obese, fat drug addict, attacking the first lady over her anti-obesity campaign.  This indicates the type of bald-faced hatred that still permeates a great deal of the 48% of the country that did not vote for Obama.

I do not know exactly why I found Limbaugh’s commentary to be so much more offensive than Sarah Palin’s similar comments.  Palin constantly goes out of her way to take shots at the first lady, going as far as to dedicate a plate of smores to her in the defiant act of eating dessert.  Sadly, I suspect the reason for this is that Sarah Palin, who is losing her battle with age, is still in far better shape than Rush Limbaugh.  The hypocrisy of a man who can lose well over 50 lbs and not look any different criticizing someone for combating childhood obesity cuts through my political apathy and strikes me as absurd.  It also demonstrates that I was wrong about two things.  First, that the first lady should have taken on something more concrete, and two, that childhood obesity isn’t such a big deal.

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I decided to do a little mentoring in honor of Black History Month so I went back to my undergrad Alma mater and sat on one of those panels for one of those events only uncool freshman and officers in the Black Student Alliance go to. Not surprisingly I was not the only doctor there. One of my colleagues, when asked what was the difference between the kids who got through (med school) and those that didn’t, replied “we’re all donkeys following a carrot on a stick. The ones that make it never stop and eat the grass all around them.” When asked to elaborate he said “we’re also not the ones who starve to death.”

It was the only insightful poignant thing said in a discussion that revolved around numbers and the giant elephant in the room- which of course was how to address the plethora of concealed discriminatory tactics meant to keep blacks away from math and science and pursuing careers in this necessary field.

Therein of course lies the dilemma of the black student. For the white student, after you’ve followed the carrot for a reasonable length of time hell, eat some grass. You only live once. The black student has no such luxury. Why? Because we remember our forefathers who DID NOT get to live once, and to honor their legacy we will follow the carrot until we collapse so long as we don’t see Jim Crow’s son on our backs with the pole and string.

It’s hard to decide whether to confront the younger generation with the truth. They should have the benefit of the knowledge earned with the broken lives of our greatest minds but knowing the truth comes at a price and that price is madness.

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The main thing lacking in Benito’s little manifesto was any sort of idea.  If we assume by default that he is just going to go along with whatever morally reprehensible, legally questionable idea Mike Triforce has in order to turn a buck then naturally I am somewhat skeptical.  However, I don’t have a strong response ala Erin or Alpha Man.  It could be that I just don’t care.  When life and death becomes routine, anything else can seem trite.  However, if I am honest with myself, another HUGE part of it is that it’s tough for me to put myself in non-medical shoes.

When I think of earning X amount to pay off Y debt I immediately think to myself – what kind of specialist has X amount of disposable income? I read Benito’s manifesto and started thinking about Dermatology or Lasik eye surgery in a market like LA or NY where looks mean alot.  After that, I started thinking about other ways doctors make money when their mid to high six figure salaries just aren’t enough – starting one’s one practice, investing and of course selling out to the drug and insurance companies more completely than we already do.

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So I am on call and it’s Christmas Eve. So far it’s been pretty standard. Alot of drunk driving fatalities, alot of long suffering cancer patients going home and alot of sick children. I wasn’t even going to bitch but for two things 1) I am covering for someone who doesn’t even celebrate Christmas and 2) I just got a text from Mike Triforce reading “I’m working. R U?”

First, that bastard is working by choice. Every year he goes into the office on Christmas Eve and stays until late on Christmas day to get face time with the movers and shakers in the firm and to make up for 11.5 months of not doing shit. He then makes his family wait (he insists they not but he knows they will anyway) for three hours before eating Christmas dinner, until he arrives, looking extra frazzled and of course bearing extremely extravagant gifts. It also allows him to avoid bringing the Princess to his parent’s house because even he has the decency not to bring that filthy tramp into his parent’s home on one of the holiest days of the year.
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