I smoke occasionally, so please excuse me if this post is incoherent due to my low IQ. I guess in my own simple way, I try not to automatically associate smoking / drinking / drugs / etc. with intelligence. Sure, there's correlation, but it's never as simple as "You smoke, therefore you're stupid." There's always a bigger picture.
Of course, being smarter than me, you've probably already thought of this.
What bigger picture? Are you smoking because you are forced to? Is the act of smoking keeping terrorists from killing your family?I smoke occasionally, so please excuse me if this post is incoherent due to my low IQ. I guess in my own simple way, I try not to automatically associate smoking / drinking / drugs / etc. with intelligence. Sure, there's correlation, but it's never as simple as "You smoke, therefore you're stupid." There's always a bigger picture.
Of course, being smarter than me, you've probably already thought of this.
It just boggles my mind, because I don't usually think of med students and doctors as being weak minded when it comes to discipline of their daily lives. However, I guess this is an unrighteous assumption since there are still quite a few doctors with drinking and drug problems (not that I am saying smoking is on the same level as performing surgery while drunk, etc).
I judge them based on the their pubic hair. Everyone gets treated equal until they drop their drawers. Damn hippies and their long hair.
I smoke occasionally, so please excuse me if this post is incoherent due to my low IQ. I guess in my own simple way, I try not to automatically associate smoking / drinking / drugs / etc. with intelligence. Sure, there's correlation, but it's never as simple as "You smoke, therefore you're stupid." There's always a bigger picture.
Of course, being smarter than me, you've probably already thought of this.
You guys don't watch enough Buffy around here...This is the sole reason I want nothing to do with peds. I am pretty sure I would be in prison before the end of my career.
That absolutely merits a call to Child Protective Services, and I don't think you would have been out of place at all to point out the obvious - that her smoking is very harmful to an asthmatic child.
So you would rather fat people become even lazier? I think people who are morbidly obese should have special license plates. If they don't park in the fat people parking on the absolute furthest part of the parking lot they get their cars towed and then they are required to ride a bike everywhere for a week before they can get it back.
They're usually bed-ridden by this point, so it's not like they're walking up and down those stairs. You're just carrying them down those stairs.
Quite a bit actually. I was just being funny...
Great idea! Although, I imagine the obese person living on the 3rd floor probably just never leaves, and thus they don't make use of those stairs. That's even more pathetic than a person who is addicted to tobacco and can't quit, IMHO.
Yes. I feel like I judge people so much more now than I did before I started medical school. I'm not sure how much of it is a product of being in the role of "doctor," and how much comes from living in Baltimore. The number of drug-, HIV-, and crime-related cases that we see every day are truly staggering. I see patients regularly who are covered from head to toe in scars from skin-popping because they don't have any veins left. Who continue to smoke cigarettes and use crack while pregnant, and wonder why their baby is born with defects or stillborn. Who come in to the already-packed ER because they need a "form signed" or some other not-even-remotely-emergency complaint. Who refuse to be compliant with HAART, heart meds, or quitting smoking, and come in repeatedly for CHF and COPD exacerbations, PCP, and other related illnesses. I saw my first case of neurosyphilis + HIV in my second month of medical school - a patient who had numerous opportunities for treatment and follow-up thrown at them, but didn't comply, lost their job due to illness, and likely ended up relying on taxpayers for very costly (and very preventable) late-stage care. I get very angry and even disgusted inside, at times. Mostly because there's nothing I can do to break the cycle, or to make these people see reason. I don't let it influence how I speak or interact with the patients that I see, but sometimes I feel it eating away at my soul.
Perhaps I feel this way because I have never struggled with addiction the way that these people have. I was not born into the extreme, utter poverty of many of this city's denizens. I had opportunities that most of these patients never even dreamed of, and probably didn't even realize existed. I did not have to choose between trying to get on welfare/disability or selling drugs and guns. But I find myself asking, more and more, where do we draw the line? When do we start making people responsible for their actions? How much can we blame "the state," "the crime," "the drugs," "the neighborhood," "the parents," "the teachers," "the rich," etc.? I guess my problem is that I hold everybody to the same standard. Be responsible for what you have, or accept the consequences, and don't expect anyone else to pay your way when you screw up. But we reward a lot of delinquent behavior in this country. I just never realized how bad it could be until I moved here.
This is something that plagues me, every single day. I often feel like Baltimore is a hopeless, lost cause. I don't mean the crime - Baltimore is a liveable city, and you truly don't feel threatened all the time - I just mean the general lack of caring, of community, of humility, of shame for one's mistakes, of humanity, of responsibility that pervades here. Sure, it makes for some great medical training to see so many problems. But it will rot your soul in the process, if you aren't careful.
I don't want to turn my back on a needy public. But I find it harder and harder to hold on to the fragments of my optimistic, liberal youth. And I've never wanted to move so bad in my entire life.
