The Intern Blues(65)

The important thing that we’ve decided is that we want to be around family and friends. This year has been so hard for me because of the separation. I don’t think internship can ever be easy, but I know I would have been better off had I stayed in Boston instead of coming to the Bronx. Plus, we both think Boston is a nicer and easier city to live in than New York, which is very exciting but also crazy and congested and stressful. So this morning I’m going to call up Scott Thomas, the director at Boston Children’s, and tell him I’d like that spot if he’s still got it. If he hasn’t got it, I’m going to wring his little neck. Then I’ll have to call Mike Miller and let him know that I’ve made my decision. Hopefully I’ll get the contract and the whole thing will be signed, sealed, and delivered within the next week or so.

A couple of days ago, I thought for the first time that I’d ultimately like to subspecialize. It’s not because I have some burning interest in any one field; I don’t really. A lot of things interest me, but there’s not any one field I’m that attached to or interested in. I want to subspecialize because I’m tired of being so inexpert at so many things. I don’t think I could spend the rest of my life knowing a little about a lot of things, like many of the OPD attendings do. I need to feel like there’s one area in which I have a great depth of knowledge. Someone just walked in; I’m going to have to stop now.

Sunday, November 10, 1985

Karen’s still here. I’m finding myself getting all depressed again, and I’m not really sure why. I just can’t put my finger on it. There’s just nothing that’s obviously wrong: I’m in OPD, and that’s pretty easy, I’m not lonely. Something’s just wrong.

I guess one of the reasons I’m depressed is that I made this massive decision about going back to Boston, and now there’s a kind of letdown. It’s official now: I called Dr. Thomas the other day and accepted the job. And Karen officially turned down Cornell and accepted the place at Boston University. On Monday, Thomas is going to call Mike Miller and discuss it with him, then he’s going to call me back and let me know it’s all sealed, and that’s it! That’s it; we’re going back.

Last Friday was a horrendous day. I started working at my clinic at Mount Scopus at nine o’clock, and I began the day with a child-abuse case. A patient who requested me because they had seen me in the emergency room once, came in. I saw signs of abuse and reported them. That was a very unpleasant situation; they were very angry, and I can understand why. And then at noon, I went to the Jonas Bronck ER, and I was there until seven the next morning. I was so tired, I fell asleep taking a history! While I was talking to the mother, I just zonked out! Soon as I woke up, I picked it up with the next question I had in my mind, but I knew I had been asleep. The mother was sitting there staring at me with a strange look in her eyes that hadn’t been there a second before (because it probably had been several seconds). Then I fell asleep listening to some asthmatic’s chest several times. I kept wondering, Why is it taking me so long to get a respiratory rate? Because I kept falling asleep every time I put the ’scope on the kid’s chest, that’s why! So that was an abysmal night.

I guess all the shit I’ve been seeing at Jonas Bronck’s depressing me a little, too. All the child abuse and the codes and all that, that stuff gets me down. And it’s been really cloudy and nasty and rainy, and that doesn’t help. And living in the Bronx is just a bore.

And there’s something else: I’ve started to become obsessed that I’ve got AIDS. I’ve started waking up in the morning feeling anxious, thinking I’m going to die. That’s one of the main criteria for major depression. I’ve been trying to go and get the test [blood test for antibodies to HIV] but I haven’t done it yet, initially because if I think rationally about it, there’s no reason I should have it, and then because I realize I don’t want to find out if I’m positive.

I’m getting a little bit of the feeling I used to have in medical school, that I’m trapped in a prison, and the rest of the world out there is beautiful and happening and I’m not in it. I saw The New York Times today; I read the headline saying that the Democrats had taken over the Senate, controlling fifty-five of the seats. I didn’t even know there was an election. I didn’t know until after it was over. So I feel very much isolated from the mainstream of humanity. And at times I feel like I’m not taking this seriously enough. I mean, each mother brings her kid in and the kid means all the world to her, but to me, it’s just another set of wheezing lungs. I try to do my best with each one, I try to think of each one individually and I do, I know I do, but, I don’t know, in some ways it all becomes a blurred mass of humanity flowing through the doors of the emergency room.