Ponderings.....

So I work in a GP's. Its the first job I've ever actually liked (Tesco was living hell), and its interesting too because I handle all the labs and consultants letters etc. so I learn about conditions.

Sometimes the things I get are very sad. I don't know why they seem so particularly poignant, but there is something about reading a matter-of-fact report on someones terminal illness, or how their baby died, or someone who committed suicide that seems to strike a nerve. Its strange from my end of things, because I will never actually meet these people, I will never know if I bump into one of them in the street, and yet I have their whole lives on a sheet in front of me. I sometimes look at the huge pile of papers and think about how each of those pages has a whole life behind it, all the people they know, their families, their colleagues, and how their medical condition will affect them all. What something so easy to write like "HIV+", or "abnormalities detected" actually means. And then I remember that I have to get on with my work, and I stop wondering.

I do realise that medicine has to be like that, to not dwell, to be able to function, to treat as many as possible, and that is a good thing. But I don't ever want to not be affected by the things I read. I don't want to become hardened and cynical, I don't ever want to forget that files and charts are people not just symptoms. Maybe I am naive, maybe I'm too young and inexperienced to realise "how it really is". I don't know. I just really hope that I will be a doctor who cares, and who doesn't forget about the people behind the diseases.