Contributing Writer
University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine
Hi! I am a fourth year medical student at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine. I am currently in the process of applying to psychiatry programs with the goal of going into child & adolescent psychiatry. To stay sane, I cook, write, and play with my 3 adorable cats.
In November, I hated medicine. The gray clouds that watched from the sky followed me day after day — to my car, into the hospital, to my car again, and back inside my home. At times the haze was tolerable; an inconvenience, a bother, but no real trouble. Other times, it was suffocating.
Whenever I go to the hospital, I wear my grandpa’s socks. They looked distinguished on an older man, but a little childish on a me, a 25-year-old medical student. I’m okay with that. Feeling like an overdressed kid on Easter helps to balance the overwhelming pressure of becoming a physician.
As a medical student, I always carry naloxone in my backpack. Naloxone is the antidote for opioid overdoses, and is readily available at most pharmacies in Boston. My medical school, Boston University School of Medicine, is located near the epicenter of the opioid epidemic in Massachusetts.
Mental health has been on my mind lately, but not only because of the “Physician Mental Health” and “Resiliency Training” lectures we’ve been receiving during this block. A few weeks ago, one of my best friends from home texted me to say one of her medical school classmates had committed suicide a few days ago.
What happened to his smile? / Minutes ago, he was beaming. / Now the patient’s face contorted as he yelled. / Fury filled every crevice and crack of his face.
Black hellebore, a flower of the deepest black and with petals the sinister shape of blunted arrowheads, grows wild in the cool, mountainous regions of the Balkans. Despite its unintimidating label as the “Christmas rose,” the hellebore has a much darker history, one bespoken more by the flower’s ebony hue than by its innocuous nickname.
My struggle began around nine months before my eventual diagnosis. This was on a background of an entire lifetime governed by this haunting feeling that something was different. Or that something was not right. Yet being the overachiever that I was, no one noticed. I was always left to question whether my reactions were just a disproportionate reaction to certain life events. And I was repeatedly told the same thing.
An addict in detox, again. / Chief complaint of “at his wits’ end” / Manipulation, his malicious game.
A Silver Bullet / The tiny guns held by my little action figures / still remind me of that god forsaken trigger.
As physicians, it is our responsibility to understand these serious implications and to help these patients live as fully as possible. A patient is not just his or her numbers — their vitals or their lab values. A patient is not just an MRI reading or a CT scan finding. Every individual has a mind, and we must take into account mental health when treating these patients because if left untreated, they can have dire consequences. More importantly as people — as humans of society — we must not stigmatize these illnesses.
I followed my surgical rotation with my rotation in psychiatry. My experience was in many ways the opposite of surgery — there was more time to care for each patient, and there was more time to care for ourselves. I would show up at 7:45 in the morning, spend the day conducting lengthy interviews with my one or two patients and then rounding on these same patients later with the team, leaving by 5 p.m. It was refreshing to have time to study, time to exercise, time for sleep. But the work itself troubled me.
“Great, six weeks of crazy people!” This is the sort of attitude with which I went into my psychiatry rotation. Couple this with the fact that while most schools only have four required weeks of psychiatry, my school has six weeks. Of course, I would have more free time compared to other rotations — it is called “psychation” for a reason — but at what cost? Mental illness was something that made me uncomfortable.
Contributing Writer
University of Oklahoma College of Medicine
Wesley Thomas graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelors in Microbiology. He is interested in pursuing a career in Pediatrics and hopes to work both abroad and in his home state. Currently, Wesley is a medical student at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine.
