NOVA special provides terrifying glimpse of the future

I did not buy cable when I moved for residency. So now instead of watching episodes of the Jersey Shore, I am forced to watch the random and obscure shows available on Netflix instant watch. I stumbled on a NOVA special called "Doctors' Diaries" that profiled 7 doctors starting in their first year of medical school at Harvard in 1987. I watched it mostly out of boredom, but also for a glimpse of what school was like for my attendings. The answer was anticlimactic - school was exactly the same for my attendings, except there was a higher incidence of women with shoulder pads and perms. They struggled through the first two years of medical school reading about the basics with little to no connection to clinical work. They arrived in the second half of medical school knowing nothing while they were pimped. One student was aggressively pimped during his neurology rotation, and he replied with "I don't know because it's only my second day of neurology" followed by a nervous chuckle - a response I used in almost every rotation in medical school.

Not only was school the same, the students were the same even inside the ivy-covered, prestigious walls of Haaahrvaard. There was a slightly creepy mustachioed non-traditional student, a few brainy book nerds, a no-nonsense tough girl, and an emotional do-gooder. Every student on the documentary was a foil of a student in my class. Their lives in medical school were pretty boring and simply told me the story of my past 4 years. The second half of the special, about life beyond the first day of internship to the year 2007, is where their stories went from boring to terrifying.

All of the men on the special were divorced at some point - the mustachioed man managed to squeeze in three divorces. Two of the doctors actually mentioned that treating their spouse like an intern led to problems in their marriage. I can't imagine the poor wives given scut work at home, and admonished when it wasn't done correctly. The book nerds went into academics and seemed to genuinely love their jobs (anesthesiology, ophthalmology), but felt bad about spending time away from their families. Dr. Moustache became overweight, started smoking, got asked to leave his job in the emergency department, and grew a new hairstyle to become Dr. Braided Pony-Tail and Beard. I couldn't really see what element of their lives as doctors was so difficult and was starting to get depressed.

Two of the women no longer worked as clinicians. The no-nonsense young woman became a cardiologist and then a research scientist for a pharmaceutical company. She stated she didn't want to worry about her lifestyle doing heart caths until the age of 70, and she was definitely not worried as she pulled her fancy Audi into the driveway of her massive California home. Another woman, the only pediatrician, delayed intern year to work for a non-profit and get her PhD, and eventually ended up running the same non-profit instead of working as a clinician. The overly emotional girl from medical school became the only female clinician, and was my favorite doctor on the documentary. She worked as an internal medicine doctor for an urban population, she focused on public health, and she seemed to be the only doctor that didn't flaunt the fact that she went to Harvard. The only downside to her story is that she didn't get married until age 40, and even though she's now happily married with children, it does seem kinda late.

After watching these stories, I was left with an image of the future with my family left behind unless I left medicine - it's not terribly encouraging. I hope that I don't become as tired and cynical as these doctors that trained before me. I'm not sure if you can win with this career I've chosen, but I'm guessing I will need a supernatural ability to balance the elements of my life. I think I better take up tightrope walking to practice.

--By Farrah, who was recently told by Mariam to be less sarcastic, pretty good, right?