I’m really enjoying a new medical school blogger, maybe because he’s writing what I’m scared to write, writing what I sometimes feel . And I’m ashamed, frustrated, and sad to say it, but I’m experiencing The Fade , as he calls it, too:

Yet, somehow, in a matter of months, I had begun fading from that which I had been into what I had now become, proficient in the mechanical daily tasks of being a physician (or at least a physician’s scut monkey) but having completely lost sight of the simple human picture that I had once firmly understood and promised to uphold in spite of the sheer nonsense and stupidity inherent in the first two years of medical school.

Only six months into my third year of medical school, my first sixth months as a semi-functional physician, and I had already started veering down that path of apathy, that fade into indifference that I see so many of my superiors and peers having already disappeared into. I could no longer feel the coldness of my surroundings, as I was now humbled by a frigid sense of shame I had never before felt and never wanted to feel again.

Racing back now, eager to get out of the cold and into the comfort of my bed to get my five hours of sleep, I realized that I was lucky this time, that I had someone call me out for my behavior (even if it was not done consciously), and that I was wise enough to know I was not wise enough to know better.

Suggestions are entirely welcome.

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