What's the MD all about?

When I was a sophomore in college I needed an outlet for my creative energy. This was meant to be my reprieve from the real world, my release. I wanted to write whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. As life has gotten busier, I have left my creativity to the wayside, pretending I would pick it back up when things quieted down. Yet, even in the quite moments, instead of writing, I slept, I watched TV, I ate. I let my creativity become necrotic, atrophied, cachexic. I said, "Oh, it'll all come back," or "I'm just not motivated enough". Yet, it was the writing, itself, that motivated me. I would ramble and ramble in my writings, and eventually would come up with something that resembled a thought, a belief, a story, perhaps. Maybe, (maybe, I thought...) someone else could be inspired by me and create their own beauty in words. But then I quickly realized that was impossible. Perhaps, somewhere on the other side of the world there is someone waiting for my next post, my thoughts, something to get them geared up and ready to create their next work. I kid myself, though. I am not that great. In dreams, perhaps, I write great stories, stories that people want to read, enjoy reading, read at book clubs or "hey, did you read this book...it's amazing" or "my children just love this book. They make me read it to them every night" or "she's such an amazing writer, and to think this happened while she was in med school". But what does a med student write about?

"23 year old female presents with delusional thinking and ideas of grandeur."

"23 year old female presents with vague abdominal pain, head aches, and is convinced she has every disease known"

"23 year old female presents with too many hopes and wishes that will never come true but everyone around her is afraid to tell her the truth"

What do doctors write about? We write about ourselves through other people. We can't face our own truths, so we throw them on our hypothetical patients. They become us. We are touched by those who remind us of ourselves. We brag about the patients that we can fix, but deep down know we are closer to the ones that are difficult cases. The ones we scratch our heads over and proclaim concern over not being able to figure out the problem. But if we do figure out the problem, can we fix it? Can we take the patient and make them whole again? Give them back their identity after it had been stolen away by an EMR number? If we give them back their identity, what becomes of ours? Does it expand or contract? Are we more ourselves or less ourselves?

Are doctors really just glorified, overpaid storytellers? Do we weave truth and guesses together and call it a history, a SOAP note? Do we explain real people? Sad to say that after a little over a year in med school, and I'm not completely sure. We collect histories, perform physicals, do tests and imaging studies, make up something of a differential diagnosis and then cross of unlikelies. In the end, we treat what's the most likely cause of an ailment. Then, we write it up, make it pretty, add pronouns, verbs, flesh it out and give it breath. In the end it looks like a person, but it's only a small piece. The piece we were allowed to explore during the person's time with us in the hospital, the part that was poked and prodded endlessly by doctors, residents, med students. And the person usually gets better and goes home, and the only remembrance we have is that note we wrote that now looks like illegible chicken scratch. Do they realize they touched us and molded us and help shape us into who we become? I am a med student. I know nothing, yet I learn more from the patients I talk to, and they make me who I will become, more so than I think either of us realize. And I thank them, all of them, all the current patients I talk to for my educational benefit, all the patients I will talk to as a 3rd and 4th year, for my educational benefit. I am a selfish being in a profession where all I want to do is give hope. Am I too naive for the career I've chosen?