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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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 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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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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So I am out at a restaurant with SG and some of her doctor friends. The night is a waste. All but one of the male doctors came in their scrubs which is a non-starter and the only one who didn’t removed his until then welcome hand on my knees when his buddy not so subtlely let it slip that he was engaged. The tool then turns his conversation to Egypt where he had recently vacationed with said fiancée and turns out half the table had been. I hadn’t said anything in awhile so I make some cliche crack about rich doctors.

The table goes silent. They look indignant. They say that as residents they make “nothing” and that I make more than anyone at the table. They then proceed to nominate me to pay the bill. I am speechless.

For a split second my half-lawyer instinct kicks in and I drop plastic. They proceed to order drinks and after dinner appetizers. Yes, they ordered more food after their entrees as soon as it became free to them. I had to sign the name of one of those douche bags and report my card stolen and I hate using Mike Triforce tricks.

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Remember as a kid, probably somewhere around 4th or 5th grade, your parents stopped being able to help you with your homework?  Now, if you’re like me with parents who had college degrees (and then some) you probably remember asking yourself, how your parents who not only finished regular school but went to some kind of super school that requires a lifetime of saving AND was so important that it was worth it to live in a tiny prison-like room for four years to attend.  All that and you can’t multiply fractions?  So sad.

Eventually you stopped asking your parents for help with your homework.  That’s what older siblings, tutors and perhaps a little more concentration and a little less TV was for.  But most likely you never reconciled the fact that your parents were intelligent, functioning, employed adults who either didn’t know or had forgotten something so essential that it’s taught universally in grade school.

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So there have been alot of things to get used to working at my new job.  Just about everyone goes on vacation between the 4th of July and Labor Day.  Just about everyone works between 8 and 6.  Many people are content with their current jobs and plan to work there until they retire.  They see their children and significant others.  If you refer to someone as the “nice” guy that’s usually not enough to identify them.  If you refer to someone as an “asshole” usually that is enough to identify them.  But there was always something more…and unfortunately for nurses that “something more” was the fact that my new profession wasn’t subservient to another.

I know being a paralegal and a nurse have many differences, but at the end of the day they are subservients to lawyers and doctors respectively, and it doesn’t matter if the former has been on the job 40 years and the latter is on their first day…JD equals “Just Do what I say” and MD equals ”My Decision.” 

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So my cousin Bobby was making his college decision last year around this time. He committed to Maryland (where he’s from) but then got into Johns Hopkins off the waitlist. At the time I encouraged him to go to Hopkins because Maryland kids are thuggish and Bobby was still known as “Young Breezy aka Bitches n’ Tits also known as TYD.” TYD stood for “Throat Yogurt Dispenser.” However Aunt Jenine wasn’t rich so Bobby had to take out a fair number of loans.

So I spend a weekend with him this summer and instead of listening to my helpful hints about orgo this silly ass can’t stop talking about how healthcare reform is going to adversely effect his earning potential. Seriously?

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