I suppose the title’s a little misleading, because there are few days that I don’t look like a jackass. Be that as it may…

I was following a very high-strung surgeon around a few weeks ago, and we were cruising back and forth across the hospital to see patients in the 5 minutes we had between cases. Did I mention the guy was high-strung? I meant manic. We were literally running.

Anyhow, as is normal for me, I felt like my hands were dirty. I always feel like my hands are dirty. I routinely stick my fingers in orifices that would get me arrested in any other circumstance, and even though I’ve got gloves on, I still feel contaminated.

As we sprinted past a wall-mounted alcohol dispenser, I reached over to spurt some on my hands. Unfortunately this time the cleaning professional† neglected to snap the dispenser in place. I guess I hadn’t realized how much force I normally put on those things to get the sanitizer out, but the point is, as it flew off the wall - breaking in the process - I lost my center of gravity.

BOOM! Down I went.

Naturally, this happened in the busiest possible intersection in the hospital, overflowing with various nurses, techs, doctors, patients, etc. Wide-eyed stares all around. The doc looked back to see why I had stopped talking, only to start laughing as he saw me on the floor covered in antiseptic. A patient muttered “hate to be him…”, chuckling under his breath.

Nothing hurt but my pride.

† PC for “janitor”

Well, after deleting everything, reuploading it, deleting it again, reuploading, and finally erasing the entire blog and retyping all 277 posts by hand (how do I find the time for this on OB/GYN, you ask†?)… Agraphia is back up and running. Comments are back on-line as well, so go ahead and post all those zingers.

And I’m off to write about OB/GYN, now that I can actually access my blog!

†Magic

I know something’s buggy with the site, folks, but I don’t know exactly what. I was wondering if you were all just giving me the cold shoulder (no comments!) but then I realized that anything that isn’t the main page isn’t loading… I’ll try to fix it when I get back for work.

In the meantime my links on the side are all to really good other blogs, so you should read them.

Catching up on my blogs for the evening, I came across this post by Tiny Shrink, in which she discusses the nitty gritty of choosing a medical specialty. She does a much better job than me summing up why, exactly, I’m freaking out about picking a career. Most of my attendings and residents are very laissez faire about the whole thing, and defuse my anxiety with wise sayings based on many years of experience.

“Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out.”
“It’s not the end of the world.”
“I knew right away.”
“I honestly wish I had never gone into medicine in the first place.”

Oh wait.

I now know there are doctors - more than I’d like to think - who are miserable because they picked the wrong specialty. Either they didn’t get exposed to the field they should have been in, or they convinced themselves that the money/lifestyle/fame/etc. was more important than doing something they loved.

I’m stressing because I’m still working on the exposure part. So far nothing has really clicked. Once that happens, then I can struggle with the decision to sell out or not†.

†Stay posted, dear readers.

So, immediately after writing the post about how much I hated ophthalmology, I began to recant. Not because clinic isn’t infernally boring (it is) - but because I got to see eye surgery, which is hands down the most interesting thing I’ve seen this year. Doesn’t make up for clinic, but it tempers things out a bit.

Anyhow, my apologies for how long it’s been taking me to post lately, but I’ve been feeling very ambivalent. Clinic is boring, surgery is cool. I suppose if I tried really hard, I could convince myself that I would be happy as an ophtho; 9-4 workdays, take Fridays off, do sweet procedures, earn $300,000+ a year, have a tolerable clinic. Nothing really all that interesting about the patients, but hey, the surgery is nifty.

I don’t know though. Frankly, the reason I haven’t been posting is that I have nothing interesting to say. Keep in mind, the first person to read any blog post on Agraphia is me.

That being said, I personally find reading back through this post boring. I need to say it (catharsis, remember?) but I can’t even make it interesting to myself. I guess that’s my answer… I will not be looking at eyes for the rest of my life.