With my decision to write USMLE locked in, choosing the branch was easier. After a month after graduation and being out of work started to bug me. I started getting part time duties at various hospital across the city and then one day said, let me go to the hospital nearest to my place and landed in NeuroZone.
My inability to sit at one place brought me to work under an excellent clinician and help me with a crucial decision, Internal medicine and then. As a person who likes to do thing with my hands, internal medicine was never the choice but after completion of my internship made me realize that you can be a doctor without cutting things. In my opinion avoid taking patients to the OR would be the most beneficial to world health. I don’t mean “SHUT DOWN THE OT” or “FIRE ALL THE SURGEONS”, my point is taking preventive medicine to a level where cutting open people would be termed barbaric.
The decision was down to one simple fact, cutting things is boring. You examine, get imaging, plot an access and get on with the intervention. What I need is problem solving and finding the cause of things and correcting them. Some might say I’ve seen a lot of House M.D, maybe in first year. But realizing what medicine is all about took me some time and fresh experiences. There also exists some peer pressure to get into surgical branches for some weird reason.
Working under a US trained M.D made me realize the difference in approach. It took me a good while to appreciate the precision and accuracy that goes into being a neurologist. The more I learnt form him, the more I realize the vastness of the subject and was basically my Alice in Wonderland situation. Strange, wonderful and terrifying encounter in the neurology department and treating every situation with the same energy as the first one. Working in NeuroZone was physically tiring but I could still keep on going as if it was my first day.