job description

"By, I'm off to 'work', or school, whatever. You know where I'm going," I tell my wife.

It's not a job. She's reminded me I don't get paid. She playfully suggested "volunteer" but I said that's even sadder because I'm paying money to volunteer. A LOT of money. Who does that? What do I call my training then? School brings up connotations of a classroom, which doesn't fit either as I'm at the hospital most of the time. She calls me DIT. It stands for doctor-in-training but she likes the way it sounds. It's a fun word. Rhymes, too. Twit. Nitwit. Dipshit. You get the idea. Cuts me down to size.

Sadder still is I come home exhausted but I don't feel like I accomplished or did anything meaningful. I know that I'm learning but it's overwhelming so it feels like it's at a snail's pace. I walk in and see patients, complex patients, I might add, and then try to make sense of it before presenting to the attending doc. Then the real doctors take over and manage the patient. Repeat. Like I said, I don't actually accomplish anything tangible that I can point to, other than the knowledge to say, "if I had to manage another patient like this one, I don't think I'd kill them." Setting the bar pretty low but that's the way it goes. A humbling experience.