how residency has already changed me

I'm almost a PGY2.  It's not really until this point have I really gotten a good understanding of what residents go through, with the hierarchy of academic medicine, the anxiety, the blues, being up at night wondering if you've done the right thing for a patient, and so on.

I'm constantly tired.  I'm almost always hungry and thirsty.  I wonder from time to time what my attendings think about me and what they say about me when they talk to each other.  I don't get to use the bathroom whenever I want, and it gets pretty uncomfortable.

I miss my family a lot.  I go without seeing friends for months because of work, irregular work hours, having to study a lot, and lack of energy.  A lot of my money goes to paying off student loans and I don't have much money to spend on making memorable days.

I feel like a replaceable cog in the giant machine of academic medicine.  I understand that I don't have a full medical license and I'm still in training, but it often feels like I'm undervalued and I'm just someone to plug holes in a schedule.  People only really engage me in conversation if it is about schedule conflicts with work.

I follow everyone's orders despite my judgment because I don't want to get fired from the program because I rocked the boat.

I'm cynical about medicine and have thought about leaving the field several times.  I constantly hope things will get better.  I really hope I thrive in residency and won't only barely survive it.

I know the attendings have had a hard life of training and I envy how little some work and how many just are able to stay in practice because they're lifted by the tide of resident effort when they actually make bad or strange clinical decisions.

The days, weeks, months all blend together and my year is this blur of stress, fatigue, medical emergencies, and the rare moment of feeling accomplished or happy.

I have a little more self-confidence in public now.  It's kind of cool being a doctor and people outside of medicine find me interesting and think I'm a hero, while everyone in academic medicine just sees me as the cog I described earlier and everything I do is unimportant.

My time off is very rare.  My schedules are rigid and inflexible.  It's impossible for me to schedule doctors appointments for myself some months..often several months in a row.

 Often times when I get home, it's already time for me to go to sleep.  I miss a lot of meals.  I'm very nauseated in the morning from being so tired and the effect of caffeine on my stomach that I don't eat breakfast and I'm often lightheaded and feel bad until I get to eat.  My fasts are often from 8pm to 2pm the next day.

I settle for a lot of quick meals that aren't that healthy for me.  I'm unhappy with the way my body is and I've only now been able to work up the energy and motivation to do something about it.

I see medical students and hope they will be happy in medicine.

I wake up sad and anxious.  Sad because I'm going to be away from my family and my dogs, and anxious for what the day has in store for me.

I have moments where I hold my dogs and they're everything in my life at that moment.  I want more peaceful moments like that.