If your heart’s not in it – my journey through medicine

So, you don’t like your career…

Some time in the middle of my fifth year of varsity, I had a heart to heart with myself about my career choice – Medicine. I realized I didn’t particularly like it, and didn’t see myself being happy in the field. However, I felt I had given it too much of my time already, to give up so close to the end. So I continued with my studies. My heart was not in it anymore, but I kept going, had to keep going because, for one, I had one year left of my undergraduate studies and two, no other viable option presented itself.

…now what?

In my sixth year, for the first time in my life, I failed. I repeated the year and, although the second time was markedly better than the first, I had already closed my heart off. The love for Medicine, for studying, for helping others, was gone.

You keep pushing

In my second (current) year of internship, particularly through the Anaesthetics rotation, I struggled to get up for work. I hung onto scraps of sanity while forcing myself to show up everyday. My job, I felt, took away my humanity, my creativity, my soul. And to add salt to the wound, I was dealing with an unnecessarily painful breakup.

breakup-thoughts

As a student, the Anaesthetics rotation was part of our fifth year rotations. And it was precisely this rotation that made me question Medicine as a career.
As an intern, rotating in Anaesthetics, I recalled those student times. I went back to those times. I went back to trying to fight the idea that I have no choice but to be stuck in this career I dislike.
And seeing my seniors, very evidently unhappy and weary (and never letting an opportunity to tell us internship is the best time of our lives) reinforced the idea that it genuinely does not get better in this career (dear God, how much more so, if your heart is not in it?).

You keep showing up

Even now, halfway through my internship, I wake up anxious for work, everyday. I go to sleep anxious, everyday. I am exhausted. Mentally from all the anxiety. Physically, from the insomnia, from the everyday running around required by the job, from chronic fatigue. Emotionally because it has been three plus years since I tapped out of this career, but haven’t found a reasonable alternative, and likely won’t for the next year or so. Hashtag front-liners, or something like that.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

Friends, what do you do when you realize the path you’re on is not the right path for you?
What is the way forward, or backward? Let me know below