I remember taking the personality test for career choices in medicine and the result showed that I should do aerospace medicine!!! Yeah, right, I had no idea what that was, and still not interested in looking into it.
So I took a list of different specialties, and start crossing out what I didn't want to do. The only thing I could cross out was surgery, yes, anything surgery related was out of my list.
My pathology professors in medschool were fantastic and that gave me a bit of interest in pathology. I wanted to be a "doctor of doctors". So I went to visit pathology lab one day, and coming out from that lab, I knew it was definitely not for me.
Then I thought I wanted to do Emergency Medicine because I worked in the ER for years as a clerk and loved how exciting it was.
Until I took some OMM-Osteopathic Manipulation Medicine, I fell in love with it. I wanted to practice OMM.
Then I started my family medicine, and loved it. It was a bit slow and repetitive but I could see myself doing it. Now, I still have a list of a bunch of things I would not mind doing.
And, surgery rotation came along. I was not excited for it at all. The first day in surgery, I was pimped bad. I was nervous, got asked so many things that I did not know, my mind went completely blank. During the first week, every night I came home, I just wanted to cry. I got yelled at so much by everyone, from the techs, to the nurses, to the surgeons. I felt so stupid every day and felt like I was the worst medical student ever. I worked so hard, and studied so hard, it seemed like I didn't have time to sleep anymore.
One day, my roommate told me that she thought I was bit by a surgery bug. I stopped and thought to myself. Holy cow, I probably have been. I have thoroughly enjoyed surgery so much. After 12-14 hours standing in the OR, I still felt energetic, happy and excited. I came home with joy every night. My feet hurt from standing all day and I couldn't even stand, but collapsed on my chair as soon as I got home, but I still felt like I have so much energy to do things and look forward to going back to the OR. I started to volunteer to come in on the weekends, staying later and starting my days earlier. I immersed myself into surgery and realized how much I loved it. I never thought I would love anything that much. I didn't have weekends off for 2-3 weeks straight but I still felt good. A 12 hour shift used to sound too crazy for me, became quite a breeze. 16 hours was a good shift for me.
I think surgery is it. People tell me how crazy I am for thinking about it, but I truly love it. It is not like any other specialties that I said I wouldn't mind doing. I think I would be very sad if I don't get to do surgery now. I'll need to study harder, much harder and shoot for a residency spot in surgery. I'm happy to finally find out at the age of 30 what it is that I want to do when I grow up.
