Has medical school ever made you cry?

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Ilikeshoes

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I just like hearing stories and it's occurred to me that I'm more prone to breaking down and wanting to cry these days, even though I never used to. Has anyone felt this way?
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zegrated said:
Just curious, what during residency made you cry?
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Where to start? It was a frequent event.

-- sheer fatigue and being asked/told I had to stay longer
-- the use of insults and/or humiliation as a form of teaching
-- certain dying patients (one I especially recall was a teenage girl who was thrown from the vehicle driven by her older brother; the interaction with the family was very sad)
 
Over the course of the past 2 years, I've noticed more "feels" when it comes to dying individuals, their families, and the interactions between them.

This goes beyond in-person encounters and maybe something even like a tragic news story will hit me in the gut. Just a couple days ago a middle-aged woman was killed while waiting at a stoplight on her way to work [by a truck driver that fell asleep at the wheel]. Watching the reporter interview the victim's watery-eyed brother, as he talked about her and her children - now without their mother. Got those feels revving.

That said -- school stuff, frustration, tiredness, injuries: Nah, no feels.
 
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Ilikeshoes said:
I just like hearing stories and it's occurred to me that I'm more prone to breaking down and wanting to cry these days, even though I never used to. Has anyone felt this way?
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Generally felt like **** after a bad exam? Sure. Never cried, though.
 
Gonna sound lame but I cried in my second week of anesthesia. At the time, I was driving home with my girlfriend. Just broke down all of a sudden. Most of the attendings didn't give a **** about me and the senior resident they kept putting me with straight up ignored me. "Oh yeah go into this room you'll get to do a lot of cool stuff like lines and intubations". Didn't even say hi to me, never mind give me a chance to do anything. I had one awesome junior resident and one attending who took me around, explained things to me and showed me stuff so it ended up being okay but to be treated badly by people in the field you want to go into sucked hardcore. I don't mind having people yell at me or being mad about stupid things that I do but being ignored is the worst.
 
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Psai said:
Gonna sound lame but I cried in my second week of anesthesia. Most of the attendings didn't give a **** about me and the senior resident they kept putting me with straight up ignored me. "Oh yeah go into this room you'll get to do a lot of cool stuff like lines and intubations". Didn't even say hi to me. I had one awesome junior resident and one attending who took me around, explained things to me and showed me stuff so it ended up being okay but to be treated badly by people in the field you want to go into sucked hardcore. I don't mind having people yell at me or being mad about stupid things that I do but being ignored is the worst.
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anesthesists are very shy, talk to them, they are the nicest people you'll ever meet in the hospital. Typical wallflowers.
 
We have a few people that cry on a pretty consistent basis in our class. Whether it be grades, switching up studying, or external stressful situations (long term relationships ending, etc.)
 
I did gyn onc for my OB Gyn rotation and surg onc for my surgery rotation. Definitely had to go to the bathroom to let out a good cry every once in a while...
 
Psai said:
Gonna sound lame but I cried in my second week of anesthesia. At the time, I was driving home with my girlfriend. Just broke down all of a sudden. Most of the attendings didn't give a **** about me and the senior resident they kept putting me with straight up ignored me. "Oh yeah go into this room you'll get to do a lot of cool stuff like lines and intubations". Didn't even say hi to me, never mind give me a chance to do anything. I had one awesome junior resident and one attending who took me around, explained things to me and showed me stuff so it ended up being okay but to be treated badly by people in the field you want to go into sucked hardcore. I don't mind having people yell at me or being mad about stupid things that I do but being ignored is the worst.
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Psai are you still doing gas? I was definitely ignored in my gas rotation and thought they were a** holes until I realized that they were extremely introverted. Once I started initiating conversations with them I realized that they were exptremely nice and pleasant. Just too shy to start the conversation.
 
A nurse cried the other night. Trying to stabilize a CCU patient all I said was "stop talking, I'm trying to think."

I felt so aweful, totally didn't mean it & now I get that evil eye about it 🙁
Off to confession.
 
Yes, I will apologize. It was my 7th shift of the 7 on 7 off, physical & mental exhaustion don't excuse my frontal lobe lack of inhibition. Just one of those cases where I needed to focus and my internal quiet voice was audible.
 
SunnyCCM said:
Yes, I will apologize. It was my 7th shift of the 7 on 7 off, physical & mental exhaustion don't excuse my frontal lobe lack of inhibition. Just one of those cases where I needed to focus and my internal quiet voice was audible.
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I'm definitely in no position to blame you. I have no idea how I would (will?) react in that kind of situation.
 
SunnyCCM said:
A nurse cried the other night. Trying to stabilize a CCU patient all I said was "stop talking, I'm trying to think."

I felt so aweful, totally didn't mean it & now I get that evil eye about it 🙁
Off to confession.
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Expect to be reprimanded, re-mediated and possibly placed on probation for your lack of professionalism.
 
Shikima said:
Expect to be reprimanded, re-mediated and possibly placed on probation for your lack of professionalism.
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Apologized face to face & sent an edible arrangement to the unit Thanking the Staff for ALL they do.
It wasn't nursing but a difficult family that made situation escalate to that point. Strongly committed to my team & resolving issues/conflicts ASAP which is more professional in my experience.
 
SunnyCCM said:
Apologized face to face & sent an edible arrangement to the unit Thanking the Staff for ALL they do.
It wasn't nursing but a difficult family that made situation escalate to that point. Strongly committed to my team & resolving issues/conflicts ASAP which is more professional in my experience.
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Sorry I didn't add a wink or some other emoticon. It was meant to be in jest tbh. I think residency environments forget we're human and that we are allowed to have emotions when taxed.
 
I heard that third and fourth year are so much easier than the first two years? Why is third year so stressful?
 
Ilikeshoes said:
I just like hearing stories and it's occurred to me that I'm more prone to breaking down and wanting to cry these days, even though I never used to. Has anyone felt this way?
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Definitely! Almost same situation. I was never one to cry, even when sad, I wouldn't cry. Since starting med school, I've broken down crying more times than high school and undergrad combined. On the bright side...it's nice to know I can still cry, I didn't think I could till I got here lol.
 
Med school has made my liver cry.

It made me incredibly depressed- like, not sad, not crying, but like, I can't get out of bed and I'm having self-destructive thoughts that I probably should talk to someone about levels of depressed- during the first block, but I'm okay now. It was a rough adjustment, likely made far more so by my having already had a fairly well-established life that suddenly didn't exist anymore. It's probably a different experience for most traditional students that would have jumped into a new life regardless, but that's just speculation. For me it wasn't so much the stress of school itself that got to me as it was the serious change in location, social networks, lifestyle, etc. We'll see how I feel once clinicals come around- at least they're within 10 miles of my home in CT.
 
Mad Jack said:
Med school has made my liver cry.

It made me incredibly depressed- like, not sad, not crying, but like, I can't get out of bed and I'm having self-destructive thoughts that I probably should talk to someone about levels of depressed- during the first block, but I'm okay now. It was a rough adjustment, likely made far more so by my having already had a fairly well-established life that suddenly didn't exist anymore. It's probably a different experience for most traditional students that would have jumped into a new life regardless, but that's just speculation. For me it wasn't so much the stress of school itself that got to me as it was the serious change in location, social networks, lifestyle, etc. We'll see how I feel once clinicals come around- at least they're within 10 miles of my home in CT.
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I just pictured a liver weeping tears of scotch.
 
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