My dad, he recommended to me that I obtain some additional advanced degrees, to which my reply was ppppppppppppblt. I'm already an MD with a hardcore science BS. The only thing left is a PhD, and I'll be damned if I'm going to do that. I've already earned my stripes.
My mother is much more tactful when it comes to the topic of career advancement. She wants me to do endocrinology, not because it is a good field, and one that is in demand, but for office hours. "There's not much call, and not a lot of hospital work, so you just have clinic hours, and then, you can make your own schedule! You should do that! Plenty of time off for life!" This is my mom's way of saying that it will give me the chance to meet some woman and impregnate her, perhaps several times.
And then, I got the most bizarre phone call. As you may know, there's been cases of mumps in the Midwest, and my mom called me to try to force me to get another MMR vaccine, to which I said pppppppppblt. I already had more than my fair share. However, she was determined to convince me. Finally, in exasperation, she said, "Maybe if you were married already..." and then gave up, and let me (her son, the doctor) figure it out for myself.
I had to go home and figure out what she was talking about. Epididymoorchitis occurs in >30% of adult male cases and can cause sterility, but rarely. That's my mom, always looking out for her reproductive success.
Endo is in demand, considering that 1 out of 3 children born these days is going to develop type 2 diabetes. Of course, dealing with diabetes really sucks. I find that all it takes is one non-compliant diabetic patient to ruin my day, and non-compliant diabetic patients are the bread and butter of endo referrals. I'd rather self-trepanate myself than deal with non-compliant diabetics all day, every day, for the rest of my career. Of course, given the predicted prevalence of type 2 diabetes, the bulk of general internal medicine will be dealing with DM2 and its multifarious complications.
ReplyDeleteHaha, my grandma is the same. She wants me to stop medicine, marry a nice Chinese boy and bear her many great-grandchildren ASAP.
ReplyDeleteI tell her, go ask my other (17) cousins instead.
That stupid TV show has been the bane of us all.
ReplyDeleteAnd my mom, being Korean, is happy enough that she can tell people her son's a doctor. That's a hard card to trump in Asian circles.
-IF
I find "ER" extremely amusing. I once did an EM rotation at Cook County Hospital (the hospital "ER" is supposed to represent) and this was before they opened the new hospital in 2003. There are a few things that struck me about how unrealistic the show is: (1)that neat transparent board they have on the show—in the real ED, they had a normal dry erase board, and they didn't even have erasers. They used Kerlix to wipe the marker off instead. (2) there are far more people of color amidst the real staff, and most of the nurses should be Filipino. (3) the traumas don't even go to the main ED. I find "Scrubs" a more realistic representation of a hospital setting than "ER"
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