Graduating med school, there was about 15 days when I thought it was way, way cool that people called me doctor. It was kind of sexy, in that way you feel good when you've done something that only took the better part of 8 years. I was a doctor. I was better than other people, common people.
That thrill wore off as I drove by the scene of an accident on the highway and people were pulled over, and a car had run into a tree, and I realized as I drove by that they might need a doctor, and that doctor was me.
Thankfully, they didn't need a doctor. I couldn't have been more relieved. But it's about then that I realized, much like everyone else who's in medicine has realized before me, that the only time people call you doctor is when they want something from you. Being a doctor stops being sexy when it's 3AM and the nurses on one floor in particular have paged you every 9 minutes for the past 3 hours.
I think a lot that I don't really want to be a doctor. There's a lot about medicine I don't like. But it's always the same: I can't see myself doing anything else.
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