The end of the innocence...

Its twilight time for my post graduation. If all things go as planned, these are the last 2 - 2.5 months that I would have to work as a post graduate (also known as resident/scut etc).

I did some rough calculations. To earn a masters degree in anesthesiology at the hospital I work at, a resident has to put in about 14000 hours of work in 3 years. That is something like 4500+ hours of work a year. This excludes time spent studying. An average worker in the USA spends about 2000 hours a year working.

The last 3 years have had a huge influence on my personality. I've always considered myself as a mild individual and never expected anesthesiology would be my calling. Since it was the only speciality I could get into, I took it, not really knowing what to expect.

Somehow, humans have this remarkable ability to adapt to the worst of situations. That is how we somehow pick up our lives even after the worst tragedies hit us.. like the loss of a loved one, dealing with disability, or having to put up with a spouse's cooking.

I'm not saying that post graduation in anesthesia was a tragedy...i'm saying it was bloody hard. Perhaps one of the hardest things one can do. Long hours, extreme stress, some crazy colleagues and even crazier superiors.I have worked 32 hours straight without sleep, I have had to deal with the wrath of angry inconsiderate relatives of patients, I have had to tell countless people that their relative (father/mother/brother/sister/son/daughter) just died, I've yelled my guts out at lazy nurses, had to watch in horror while doctors make the wrong medical decisions, and had to deal with some ridiculously stupid surgeons. I've even been sued for someone else's mistake !

But most of all, I realized that nobody really knows what an anesthesiologist does. Its bad enough that patients really dont know what we do, but its terrible that people within the medical profession also fail to understand what we do.

Who is the anesthesiologist?

I could write a book on what we do. Maybe i'll write a blog on what we do. But if I had to put it in a nutshell...

An anesthesiologist is someone who guards life, and will fight hard to see that someone in his care stays alive no matter how bad the situation is.

Its like this... when God decides to shift someone to heaven or hell...they wind up at the hospital in transit (hospitals are like small airports), and when an anesthesiologist steps in the room, God would slap his head and says... "Who let that guy in?"

Despite the the crap i've taken over the last two and a half years, I've realized that I serve in the most dedicated field of medicine there is. Nobody may appreciate everything... if not anything we do... but in the end..

I'm a little proud of what I do.