Cutting up people and stitching up their organs? Yeah baby!
My father would have been ecstatic and I would have been a super nerd spending hours in the operating theatre while accumulating a incredibly large amount of money. Hell, I might have even been part of pioneering new and revolutionary surgical techniques.
It's suitably competitive, ambitious and high achieving. The fact that most of my male friends from my new year all want to be surgeons too is not a mistake. I would have used my jocular, tomboyish ways to perfection by hanging with the team. My affinity for anatomy and pathology would have come remarkably handy during tutorials and self-study sessions. I would have practiced pig suturing with relish.
Why didn't I want to finish medicine?
Because I didn't love it enough.
It's funny. I think about my wanderings about hospital and I can't deny that it was kind of fun. Riding up and down the staff elevator. Going to collect x-rays and CT scans. Listening for crackles in a patient's lung. Taking blood and then watching the red tubes go up the pathology chute. Good times with the staff. On the other hand, I don't think there was a single moment when I actually connected with a patient. Perhaps I'm antisocial.
It wasn't bad. But it wasn't life-changing either. Rather than inherently loving it, I didn't mind it. I considered choosing a career path for the suitability rather than passion. I substituted the real theatre for one with diathermy needles and packed ice.
And when I packed it in mid this year, and didn't return to my GP's office, I knew it was the right thing.
Onwards and upwards!
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